Mercy Row (Part 2)

Outside, Mercy Row was beginning to wake.

The passage in front of Rusk's had been built wide enough for municipal service vehicles, though no authorized vehicle had entered it in years. Rainwater gathered in the shallow depression along the center, reflecting the fractured lights above in trembling streaks of white and amber. Grit, food wrappers, and the fibrous roots of a vine that had somehow taken hold inside a cracked utility box had clogged the old drainage channels again.

Amara stepped around the water without breaking stride. Tomas followed more carefully. Without the stabilizer, the left side of his frame no longer adjusted to the smaller movements of his body. The hip stayed stiff until he lifted his leg, then released too quickly as he brought the foot forward. Each step took more attention than it should have. He compensated by shifting his weight through the right brace, eyes down, watching the pavement immediately ahead, so that he looked like a man studying the ground for something he'd lost.

“I am walking.”

“I did not say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was deciding whether speaking would distract you.”

“It would.”

She faced forward again. The clinic stood three blocks away, beyond the old central courtyard and beneath the eastern transit supports. On a clear morning the walk took Tomas less than ten minutes. Mercy Row rarely offered clear mornings.

People had already begun filling the passage. Across from the repair shop, a food vendor raised the shutter of her stall and released a cloud of warm air scented with yeast, oil, and toasted spice, pressing rounds of dough between her palms before laying them against a flat metal griddle that had once belonged to a corporate cafeteria. The bread swelled almost immediately.

Farther down, a barber unfolded a metal chair beneath a hanging work light, wiped rain from the seat with his sleeve, and opened a case of clippers while arguing with the man waiting for the first cut of the day.

“You moved.”

“I breathed.”

“You breathed with your entire head.”

“You cut my ear.”

“I touched your ear. You have another.”

Music drifted from a window on the second level, low percussion beneath a woman's voice, the speaker distorting whenever the bass deepened. Nobody seemed to mind. Someone opened another window above it and shouted for the music to be turned down. The volume increased.

Mercy Row had once been a municipal residential and commercial district serving transit workers, maintenance crews, and the families who kept the northern lines operating, that was the version preserved in old planning archives. The district around Tomas had become something else entirely.

Apartments extended beyond the original buildings on platforms made from cargo decks, scaffolding, and freight containers cut open to create rooms. Balconies leaned over the passage at uncertain angles, supported by braces never meant to carry people, gardens, and laundry all at once. Electrical cables crossed overhead in tangled loops, tied to old support beams, streetlights, window frames, anything that didn't move when the power came on. Condensation dripped from the ventilation pipes in steady lines, striking awnings and metal roofs with the patient rhythm of rain even when the weather outside was dry.

Small gardens glowed beneath ultraviolet lamps in recessed doorways with herbs, beans, and thin stalks of tomato climbing through cracked containers filled with recycled soil. Someone had planted flowers in the housing of a dismantled security camera; purple petals spilled from the empty lens opening. Laundry hung beneath the maglev lines, where the artificial wind of passing trains dried it quickly but never cleanly, lifting whenever the air changed and settling beneath a fine gray dust that residents shook away before bringing it inside.

Old religious icons watched over the passage from walls thick with graffiti, a painted saint beside a faded machine spirit from one of the northern industrial sects, small candles burning beneath both. Nearby, an Orison advertisement still flickered across a cracked display, offering neural clarity through a product that hadn't been manufactured in twelve years. The woman in it smiled through a fault in the screen, a vertical line dividing her face. Someone had painted black teeth across her mouth.

Amara moved through the neighborhood without slowing. People stepped aside when they saw the regulator in her arms, though most didn't yet know who it was for. Tomas followed behind her, his frame speaking for him.

Click. Whirr. Click.

People turned toward the sound. Not everyone. Only those who needed something.

“Rusk.”

Tomas looked toward a doorway. Old Vasko stood beneath an awning with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, gray hair flattened on one side from sleep, his skin carrying the waxy pallor of someone who'd spent too many days indoors.

“The heater is making that noise again.”

“It always makes that noise.”

“It did not make it before you fixed it.”

“Then I improved it.”

Vasko coughed into the blanket, wet and deep. Tomas stopped. Amara took two more steps before she noticed and turned around.

"How long?" Tomas asked.

Vasko looked offended. "How long what?"

"You know what."

"It is nothing."

Amara stepped closer, and Vasko straightened at once. "I was speaking to Tomas."

"And now you are speaking to a physician."

"I have not agreed to that."

"You do not need to agree."

Vasko began retreating into the doorway. Amara pointed toward the clinic.

"Before noon."

"I have things to do."

"You have a chair and a radio."

"The radio needs attention."

Tomas looked at it through the open door The radio sat on a cardboard box with the casing removed an several wires hanged from the side.

"Do not turn that on again."

"It works."

"It is connected directly to a heating circuit."

"It receives three stations."

"It will receive the afterlife if you touch it."

Vasko looked between them, decided neither offered a useful ally, and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. "Before noon," Amara repeated. He muttered something and disappeared inside.

They continued. A woman leaned over a second-level railing and held up a prosthetic hand. Two fingers closed, the others twitched irregularly.

“Tomas.”

“After noon.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“Yesterday became complicated.”

“It was a kettle.”

“It was several kettles.”

She waved the hand at him. The closed fingers snapped open and struck the railing.

“Bring the old coupling,” Tomas called.

“I threw it away.”

“Then retrieve it.”

“It smelled.”

“It was not decorative.”

Amara looked at him. “You repair several kettles but not your own coffee unit.”

“The kettles belonged to paying customers.”

“None of them paid you.”

“That is not relevant.”

A man emerged from a narrow shop carrying a water purifier against his chest. The unit leaked steadily through a seam near the base.

“It started doing this after I cleaned it.”

“With what?”

“A pressure hose.”

Tomas stopped walking.

“Do not turn it on again.”

“I only turned it on once.”

“The water on your trousers suggests otherwise.”

The man looked down.

“No, hitting it does not count as maintenance,” Tomas continued.

“I did not say I hit it.”

“The housing is shaped differently than yesterday.”

The man shifted the purifier so the dent faced his body. “After the clinic?” he asked.

“Leave it outside the shop.”

“Relay will sleep on it.”

“Then it may improve.”

The man looked uncertain whether Tomas was joking. Tomas wasn't entirely certain himself.

They reached the first intersection, where the central passage widened beneath an old service bridge, its concrete supports claimed by vendors, shrines, and a row of locked storage cages. Children moved through the crowd carrying purified water in reused chemical containers, the original warning labels still visible beneath layers of handwritten names and colored tape. One boy carried two containers suspended from a pole across his shoulders, leaning forward against the weight, bare feet slipping on the wet pavement. Tomas watched until he regained his balance.

Across the intersection, a woman swept rainwater from her doorway with a broom made from bundled plastic strips. Each stroke pushed the water into the passage, and another resident immediately complained she was flooding his stall.

“You live downhill,” she told him.

“That is not my fault.”

“It becomes your fault when it rains.”

Two men sat beneath an awning arguing about the football match from the night before, one accusing the coastal club's goalkeeper of taking a bribe, the other insisting he was simply incompetent.

"Incompetence is cheaper," Tomas said as he passed.

Both men turned. "You watched it?"

"No."

"Then how do you know?"

"Experience."

The argument resumed behind him.

Mercy Row was poor. Tomas knew this because he repaired the evidence of it every day. People wore the same coats through several winters. Children outgrew prosthetics before families could afford replacements. Medical devices were kept in service long after their manufacturers stopped acknowledging they existed. People patched water lines with sealant meant for engines and slept beside heaters that should have been dismantled years earlier.

But misery was not the same thing as poverty. Misery required surrender, and Mercy Row had never surrendered anything willingly. People had taken the district the city abandoned and filled it with shops, kitchens, clinics, schools, gardens, shrines, music, and arguments. They stole electricity because darkness was inconvenient. They redirected water because thirst was not a legal obligation. They built rooms where walls had collapsed and painted over condemnation notices because the notices were ugly.

Near the central courtyard, an old municipal sign leaned against a support pillar:

DISTRICT CLOSED STRUCTURAL HAZARD ENTRY PROHIBITED

Someone had covered the lower half with a sheet of metal and painted four words across it in red:

PEOPLE STILL LIVE HERE

The paint had faded. Every few months someone renewed it. Tomas didn't know who; he'd never asked.

Above the sign, the remains of an old advertisement flickered across the wall: a family walking through a bright apartment with tall windows and white furniture, the words showing only in pieces now. A BETTER LIFE BEGINS ABOVE. A crack ran through the father's face. Someone had added a painted arrow pointing downward.

Amara adjusted the regulator in her arms. "How is the leg?"

"Attached."

"That was not the question."

"No. But it is the relevant fact."

She glanced toward him again. The left brace struck the pavement with less control than before. Tomas kept placing the foot too far forward, then pulling it back into line once the frame caught the mistake. The correction adding a scrape between the click and the whirr. He could hear it. So could she.

They entered the old central courtyard, though calling it a courtyard was generous. Once a transit plaza ringed by shops and service offices, most of its original roof had long since collapsed, leaving a broad opening through which the elevated lines crossed above. Over the years people had patched the gap with greenhouse panels, cargo seals, and reinforced plastic, and still the rain found its way through. Morning light filtered down in gray columns.

A row of food stalls lined one side, steam rising from metal pots. Someone roasted peppers over an open heating element, filling the courtyard with smoke that caught in the light. At the far end, a group of women arranged vegetables beneath ultraviolet lamps while children moved between them carrying cups, tools, school tablets, and pieces of equipment no responsible adult would have handed them.

Tomas heard the imitation before he saw its source.

"Click. Whirr. Click."

He kept walking. Behind him, louder this time: "Click. Whirr. Click." A heavy stomp was added at the end.

A pause, then Pip Aranda hurried to catch up. Nine years old, he seemed to occupy more space than most adults despite being thin enough that his coat hung off him like borrowed fabric. His black hair had been cut unevenly, probably by his older sister, and one pocket bulged with objects that clicked whenever he moved. He stiffened his legs and tried again.

"Click. Whirr. Click."

"Worse."

"That was exactly right."

"The whirr is too short."

Pip listened to the next step — click, whirr, click — and tried once more. "Click. Whirrrrr. Click."

"That sounds like a dying pump."

"It sounds like you."

"Then I am a dying pump."

A second child fell in beside him. Mina Quell, ten, small and sharp-faced, dark hair cut close around her ears. Her right arm ended in a pediatric prosthetic Tomas had rebuilt so many times that almost none of the original components remained. The casing had once been pink; Mina had painted it dark blue and covered the forearm with tiny white stars. She listened for two steps.

"Click. Whirr. Click."

Exact.

Tomas looked back at her. "Traitor."

Mina smiled, and the expression transformed her face so completely he almost smiled back. Almost.

"You practiced," Pip said.

"I listen."

"That is cheating."

"That is why she is better," said Tomas.

Pip fell in beside him, examining the frame as they walked. "Can you build me one?"

"Your legs work."

"I want to be stronger."

"Carry water for your grandmother."

"That is not the same."

"She will disagree."

"I want to lift machines."

"You cannot lift your school bag."

"My school bag has books."

"Machines are famously lighter."

Pip considered this, decided Tomas was mocking him, and kicked a loose piece of plastic across the pavement. It struck a support pillar and vanished beneath a food stall.

"What is in your pocket?" Tomas asked.

"Nothing."

"It sounds like several dangerous things."

Pip covered the bulge with one hand. "They are parts."

"From what?"

"I do not know yet."

"That means they are not yours."

"I found them."

"Where?"

He hesitated. "Inside something."

Tomas looked at him. Pip looked away.

"Bring them to the shop later."

"They might be valuable."

"They might be charged capacitors."

Pip's hand moved off the pocket. "Can those explode?"

"Yes."

"Good explode or bad explode?"

"Ask your grandmother."

He decided not to.

Lio Bell emerged from the crowd near one of the stalls. At twelve years old, he was taller than the others, and already carried some of his grandmother's seriousness. He wore a clinic sweater with the sleeves pushed above his elbows and a canvas bag of medical supplies over one shoulder. His gaze went first to Amara, then to the regulator in her arms.

"Is that Niko's?"

"Tomas repaired it."

Lio's eyes settled on the left hip. "What did it cost?"

"Nothing," Tomas said.

Lio kept looking. Amara answered for him. "More than it should have."

Only then did Pip notice the regulator. "What happened to Niko?"

"The unit failed during the night."

"Is he all right?"

"He is on emergency support."

The children went quiet all at once, the change moving through them without instruction. Pip stopped imitating the frame. Mina lowered the prosthetic hand she'd been flexing in time with the clicks. Even the mystery parts in Pip's pocket seemed to stop making noise.

Lio stepped toward Amara. "I can carry it."

"I have it."

"You need to open the clinic."

She hesitated, then handed it over. "Keep it level."

"I know."

"Do not run."

He ran, not recklessly, but with the precise urgency of a child who'd spent enough time in a clinic to know that being told not to run usually meant there was no time to waste.

Pip and Mina watched him go.

"Will Niko be able to breathe?" Mina asked.

"Yes."

"You are sure?"

"The regulator works."

She nodded. That was enough for her. It was the same kind of trust Tomas had seen adults place in machines they didn't understand. Coming from a child, aimed at him, it made him uncomfortable.

Pip eyed the frame. "Did you use part of that?"

"No," Tomas said, and kept walking.

Amara looked at him. Pip followed the look. "You did."

"It was a spare."

"It was inside your leg."

"The frame is not my leg."

"It moves your leg."

"Sometimes."

"That makes it part of your leg."

Tomas didn't answer. Mina walked on his other side, her prosthetic hand opening and closing with a soft electric hum.

"When I outgrow this one, can someone else use it?"

He glanced at the arm. The wrist assembly had begun sitting too high against the socket, another month, maybe two, before she'd need a larger fitting. "Yes."

"Then it is not really my arm."

He looked at her. Her expression stayed serious, and he understood exactly what she was doing.

"That is different."

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

Pip laughed, and Mina smiled again despite herself. They followed Tomas and Amara until the courtyard narrowed into the eastern passage, where a painted line marked the boundary of the small school cooperative and the children stopped.

"You are making a new noise," Pip said, pointing at the hip.

"I contain multitudes."

"What does that mean?"

"It means go to school."

Pip groaned. Mina raised her prosthetic hand in farewell. Tomas watched them join the others waiting beneath the awning. Pip was already whispering into Mina's ear, one hand still guarding his pocket of possibly explosive parts.

He made a note to check on that later.

"You like them," Amara said.

"They are loud."

"That was not a denial."

"They dismantle things."

"You like them."

Tomas kept his eyes on the pavement.

The clinic stood ahead, built into the base of the elevated line inside an old transit security station. The city seal still hung above the entrance, though someone had painted a red cross over it and the word BELL in white lettering beside it. The original glass walls had cracked years ago; heavy fabric hung behind them now, offering privacy while letting pale shapes and movement show through.

Lio was already at the door, holding it open with one shoulder while keeping the regulator level. Amara went in first. Tomas followed.

The clinic smelled of antiseptic, damp fabric, old plastic, and too many people breathing the same cold air. The heating failure had settled into the room. Patients sat under blankets on benches along the wall, a woman with a sleeping infant inside her coat, an older man leaning forward over a cup of hot water held in both hands, two children arranging used bandage rolls into towers near a medical cabinet.

The examination area had once been a security screening room. Cracked glass partitions separated it from the waiting space, and curtains made from old hospital sheets, none matching, hung between beds built from municipal benches, folding frames, and padded panels salvaged from transit vehicles. Medical equipment covered every surface: a cardiac monitor from Helix beside an Orison imaging unit so old its logo had faded to gray, an intravenous pump stamped with a military inventory mark, a respiratory compressor from a company Tomas remembered going bankrupt before he ever moved to Mercy Row. Nothing belonged together. Everything worked. Most days.

Lio carried the regulator to the last bed, where Niko lay beneath two blankets, small enough to seem almost lost between them, a clear mask over his nose and mouth. The emergency respiratory unit beside the bed pulsed loudly, its compressor vibrating against the floor with every forced breath.

Sera Vennik sat beside him, one hand in her son's hair, the other gripping the edge of the bed. Her coat was still on, though she'd forgotten to close it, and her eyes were red from exhaustion. She stood when Amara came in.

"You fixed it?"

"Tomas did."

Sera looked past her. Tomas had stopped near the entrance, the left side of his frame locking as he shifted his weight, forcing him to catch himself against the glass partition. The frame scraped loudly. Sera noticed. So did Amara. Neither said anything.

Lio set the regulator beside the bed, and Amara began disconnecting the emergency unit.

"Niko." She touched his shoulder. "We are changing the machine."

His eyes opened briefly. "Is it the quiet one?"

"Yes."

"The loud one is stupid."

"That is a medical assessment I agree with."

His eyes closed again. Amara pulled the emergency line and connected the repaired regulator. For one short moment the boy received no assisted air, and Sera held her breath along with him. Then it activated, a soft pulse moving through the line, the mask shifting slightly against his face. The display climbed. Pressure stabilized. Niko finally inhaled, his chest rising without the shuddering effort Tomas had noticed on the way in.

Sera lowered herself into the chair beside the bed, one hand over her mouth.

Amara watched two full cycles, adjusted the flow, and glanced at Tomas. He nodded, the unit was holding. Niko's breathing settled into something quieter.

Tomas listened to it. He'd heard machines imitate breathing before, and most did it badly with hissing, clicking, pushing air with enough force that every breath sounded borrowed. This regulator had a softer mechanism: pulse, pause, release. Niko's small chest followed it exactly.

Tomas looked away.

Sera crossed the room. "Thank you."

"It was a burned filament."

"I do not care what it was."

"The stabilizer failed too."

"I do not care about that either."

She reached into the inner pocket of her coat and drew out several folded notes, the paper creased and handled soft at the corners. Tomas stepped back.

"No."

"You used parts."

"They were already used."

"That does not make them free."

"It does today."

She held the money out. He didn't take it, so she pressed the notes against his chest instead. The contact caught him off balance. His left hip failed to adjust, the world tipped sideways, and the frame locked hard enough to send a jolt through his spine. He caught the counter before he went down.

Sera pulled her hand back. "I am sorry."

"I am fine."

He straightened. Amara was watching him now. Sera bent to gather the notes that had fallen, but Tomas got there first, the change in height sending another wave of disorientation through him. He fixed his eyes on the base of the counter until the floor stopped rising, then picked up the money and pressed it back into her hand.

She closed her fingers around it anyway. "No."

"Yes."

"Tomas."

"Niko will need another filter before the month ends."

"I know."

"He will also need medication."

"I know."

"Then keep it."

Sera looked toward her son, the regulator breathing softly beside him, and her shoulders finally lowered. She set the notes on the counter between them.

"I am paying you."

Tomas looked at the money but said nothing. Sera had already turned back to the bed.

Amara made a show of adjusting the regulator. Once Sera's back was turned, Tomas slid the folded notes across the counter toward her.

"Put it toward his medication."

She didn't look at it. "You know she will find out."

"Eventually."

"Then she will be angry."

"She is healthier when she is angry."

"That is not how health works."

"It improves circulation."

Amara looked at him a moment longer, then let it go. Tomas moved away from the counter, his left leg dragging, trying to compensate by lifting from the hip. The rigid support resisted. The foot struck the floor too early.

She heard it. "Sit down."

"No."

"You nearly fell."

"I nearly do many things."

"Sit."

"I am fine."

The words came out automatically, sounding reasonable the way they always did. He'd used them so often he rarely examined what they meant anymore. Amara stepped in front of him.

"You are not fine."

Tomas looked past her, toward the back of the clinic, where Niko's breathing stayed steady and Sera had leaned close, whispering something he couldn't hear.

"You are functional," Amara said, lower now. "You keep confusing the two."

He held her gaze long enough that answering with another joke would have taken more effort than he had. So he didn't.

"The district heating," he said instead. "You said part of G is out."

Her expression didn't change. "Yes."

"Which rooms still have heat?"

"The pharmacy and the rear storage area."

"Not the examination rooms?"

"No."

"Then the western junction is still carrying current. The distribution valve just isn't opening fully."

"Tomas."

"If it were the main pump, the pharmacy would be cold too."

"Tomas."

"We should check the line pressure before Jonah resets anything."

She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them she looked tired rather than angry, and she let him have the subject change, for now. "Jonah was here before dawn. He checked the clinic connection. Pressure was low, but the pump signal looked normal."

"That is not possible."

"He said the same thing."

"Did he bring the reader?"

"It is in the office."

Tomas looked toward the curtained room at the back. Amara stepped aside.

"You will sit while you look at it."

"I can stand."

"You can sit."

He considered arguing, but the left actuator scraped again as he shifted his weight, and Amara pointed at an empty examination bed. He sat, not because she was right, but because the diagnostic reader would be within reach from there.

She brought it to him from the office and put it in his hands. Behind her, Niko went on breathing quietly through the machine built from parts Tomas had taken out of himself, pulse, pause, release, filling the cold clinic. Tomas lowered his eyes to the reader. The district heating data waited on the screen.

Something was wrong with the grid. Very wrong.