“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

Saif’s voice came out muffled with the screwdriver in his teeth, and he pulled it out and flipped it into his other hand, instead. Key sighed, leaning his head back against the wall. His foot shifted an inch or two forward when he did, but though Saif frowned up at him, he didn’t seem to notice. “There is no need to exaggerate. The damage is not severe.”

“It looks bad enough from down here.” He plucked out the tiny screws from the panel in four twists, quick as a bird picking up seeds. The metal was dented so badly it had crumpled inward, and Key’s face and shoulders seemed to lose some tension at having it off. Saif caught his eyes lingering there, and forced them back down, to the tangle of wires and circuitry inside. “Doesn’t look like there was much damage on the inside, at least… Thick-skinned, you are.” Key snorted, and Saif grinned up at him in spite of himself, sniffing and arming stray hair off his sticky forehead. His gloves were covered in grease. “There’s one receptor terminal that’s barely hanging on, though. That’s probably what’s hurting you. I’ll have to replace it — brace yourself.”

Key blinked down at him, then scowled. “You have a very poor bedside manner.”

“Most of my patients don’t complain as much as you. Hold still, too.” Saif grabbed up the pliers and a pair of wire-cutters in one hand without looking, settling his spectacles back in place with the other. He only needed them for close work, but considering he practically had his nose buried in Key’s leg already — “I mean it, you know. You shouldn’t work for anyone who thinks of you as a doorstop.”

“See you after school.”

It wasn’t loud enough for anyone else to hear, just a hiss across the aisle between the rows of desks. For a second Kiran stopped, in the middle of getting up, frozen with his backpack halfway hefted up; then he swallowed, and made himself finish and pick up his test sheet to deposit at the front on the teacher’s desk. He made a business of keeping his body between it and Jeff, though, blocking any possible view of the paper from across the aisle, and ignoring the sullen glare up from the circle of Jeff’s arm on his desk. If he was in for a penny, he was in for a pound, he guessed.

There was always something to set him off, anyway. A wrong look in the locker room after gym, a wrong word in the hallway between classes. Sometimes even less than that. It was just how guys like Jeff worked; they’d find any excuse in the end. This time it had been the history test, but it might have been anything. When Jeff had turned his head toward Kiran, under the screening cover of Tammy Fitzpatrick’s frizzy hair in the seat ahead of him, and whispered, “Hey loser, let me copy off you,” Kiran had just set his jaw, and shaken his head No. The consequences, whatever they might be, were beyond his control.

See you after school.

“Rental,” was the first thing Col managed to gasp when he finally separated their mouths, wheezing into Gary’s, “rental, rental, god damn you, rental.”

[AUTHOR’S WARNING: This story may be disturbing to… humans.]

You had to be so careful about blood these days.

The fight started after the last gas station stop up I-5 before the turn-off, although it didn’t start as a fight. Just as (Jon would maintain to himself, pathetically) an attempt at advice — but in their still-rattled state after their near-miss with that 14-wheeler it had bristled Cris immediately, which in turn had stung Jon, until the whole thing was blown out of all sense and proportion, another shambling, misshapen beast loping off across the landscape, tearing down buildings and ripping up powerlines without losing its fangy malformed grin. That was the thing: it was always stupid to start, always nonsense. Otherwise they might notice it instead of letting it fly under the radar, and could stop it before it began to grow.