The train coasts to a stop somewhere past midnight. Coal bin empty, boiler dead, wheels rolling on nothing until nothing is enough.
Ahead, at the edge of the Ash-Plains, is black water. And sitting above it on wooden stilts is a half-dead border town.
BLEAK-WATER STATION.
We walk to it in the dark. The boardwalk groans under my weight every step, which is something I've noticed since the Tissue Vitality upgrade. I'm heavier than I look. I'm heavier than I should be.
Harrow notices too.
He falls into step beside me as we cross the boardwalk toward the main street.
"The coupling pin," he says.
I don't answer.
"I wedged the pry bar, put both hands on it and my full body weight, and it barely moved." He keeps his voice down, conversational. "You opened the equipment hatch on the engine earlier with one hand. In the dark. While the train was moving."
"Different kind of tension," I say.
"That's not an answer and we both know it."
He stops walking. I take two more steps before I stop too. Clementine is ahead of us, giving us space she isn't pretending not to give.
"Are you dangerous to us?" Harrow asks.
Direct. No preamble. Just the thing he's been sitting on since the cathedral.
I turn to face him.
"Not to you," I say. "Not to her."
"How sure are you of that?"
"Sure enough." I hold his gaze. "The drugs change what I can physically do. But I decide what I do with it. That part hasn't changed."
He studies me for a long moment. Harrow the doctor, reading the body he can't fully explain.
"I'll wait for the full account," he says finally. "But I want it soon. Not as your physician. As someone who has walked into the dark with you on the strength of a handshake."
Something about that lands in my chest in a way I wasn't expecting.
"Before we reach Golgotha," I say. "I'll tell you everything."
He nods. He starts walking again.
"One thing," he says, not looking at me. "Whatever this it is. Whatever it costs you. Things like this are designed to make the next cost feel smaller than the last one. They normalize incrementally." He pauses. "That's the insidious part. Not the big ask. The thousand small ones."
I don't answer.
Because he's right. And he knows he's right. And he doesn't need me to confirm it.
Up ahead, the Ledger starts burning.
New bounty. New target.
The town isn't as dead as it looks.