He wondered if someone was looking for whoever it was. His hex had to have noticed that he hadn’t come home. The dead guy had been a bad dude, if he was working for those folks. But . . . he’d been someone, right? He’d been someone. They’d called him ‘kid’. Someone else had to be looking.

Kip dug around the clothes lying by his bed and found his scrib. He did a skim through the news feeds. Bot upgrades, council meetings, Aeluons at war, Toremi at war, boring Human politics, boring alien politics – nothing about a body down in cloth recycling.

Shit.

He rubbed his face. Maybe they just hadn’t found it yet. They’d find it today, though, definitely. Kip thought back to the time he’d won the shit lottery and spent two tendays in the recycling centre. He’d been on food compost, not cloth, but he’d walked through there, and seen all the folks washing and folding and stitching, all the folks walking by the . . . the . . . the giant piles of cloth. The piles you’d never get through in one day.

Kip thought about what it would be like to pick up an armload of everyday laundry and discover something horrible shoved underneath. A dead face lying silent. Cold eyes staring still. He wondered how it would be – how it would look – if the body lay there for a few days. His empty stomach knotted. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop.

Someone else would find the body, yeah. Someone else would find it, and xe wouldn’t expect it, and it’d be the worst day of xyr life.

And those people he’d heard the night before . . . they were gonna get away. Throw a person away like it was nothing and hop to some planet where no one would ever find them. That wasn’t okay. That wasn’t right.

That wasn’t right.

Kip thought about what Ras had said – how those people in the garden might come after them. He thought a lot about that. That thought made his stomach hurt, too. But he also thought about the opposite: what if they went after someone else? What if they did this again? Could he sit with that? How would his stomach feel if he read the feeds one day and . . . and . . . ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. He sat up and searched for some trousers. His head tightened, the last remnants of smash sleep still making him feel crunchy around the edges. His heart hammered, too, but that wasn’t because of the smash. That, he’d done on his own.

He stood at his bedroom door for a while before waving it open. Mom and Dad were in the living room, reading their scribs, drinking tea. The scene was so normal, so boring. So comforting. His heart beat harder, and even though there was nothing in his stomach, he wanted to throw up.

‘You came home late,’ Mom said. Her voice was annoyed, and her face was, too, right until she looked at Kip. The lines around her eyes let go. ‘Kip, what’s wrong?’

Kip had barely realised that he’d started crying. Stars, he was such a fuck-up. His parents were dumb, but they cared, in their own dumb way, and they’d always cared, and then he went and did shit like this. He stood there stupidly, hands in his pockets, trying to pull the tears back. He failed. Fine. He failed at everything else anyway.

He cleared his throat and frowned at the floor. ‘I need to tell you guys something.’

Eyas

Eyas sat in her chair and stared at Sawyer’s corpse, lying ready on her worktable. This was a typical sight, an everyday tableau, and the tasks ahead were normal as could be. But nothing about this body was normal. Nothing about this was okay.

She sat for half an hour before she finally got to her feet. She walked to her cabinet, opened the top drawer, and took out a belongings bag. The bag was made of throw-cloth, clean and well-stitched. A neutral way to contain objects that were anything but. She turned to the body, hesitant like she’d never been. Knowing him in life wasn’t what troubled her. She’d prepared corpses of people she’d known, and known far, far better than a one-time acquaintance such as this. Hexmates’ family members. Her favourite childhood school teacher. Her grandfather, which had been bitterly difficult. No, her reticence came from elsewhere. This wasn’t a heartbreak. This was a desecration.

Her nose itched beneath her heavy breathing mask. She rarely wore a mask at work, not even when the person had been old or the death had been gruesome. But then, she’d never worked with a corpse in this state. It wasn’t dangerous, of course – it had gone through a decontamination flash on arrival like all the rest. However, it was in the early stages of unchecked decay, and neither Eyas nor any of her colleagues encountered that regularly. This corpse hadn’t been brought to the Centre on the day of death, accompanied by a grieving family and sombre medical staff. This corpse had been brought in by a patrol team, still retching and moaning over what they’d found hidden away.

Are you sure you want to take this one? her supervisor had asked. They’d been assembled that morning, every caretaker and apprentice, sitting in shock as it was explained what had been left for them.

I’m sure, Eyas said. She’d volunteered, and no one had argued. Everyone knew it was right. She was the one who’d gasped when the patroller displayed a picture of the corpse’s face. She was the one who’d known the deceased’s name.

Someone had thrown Sawyer away. Like garbage. Like a thing unwanted, used up. The thought filled Eyas with silent rage. The feeling smouldered in her chest as she removed a soiled shirt, a pair of thick socks, a trinket ring of alien make. It rattled her hands as she washed the body and saw flecks of trash floating down the drain. It wrenched her jaw as she reset visibly bent bones. She hoped whatever happened had been quick. Stars, she hoped it had been quick.