Zoey smelled it before she saw Red.
Not the ordinary chemical rot that clung to the lower levels of Sigma City, not hot wiring, old coolant, mildew, piss, burned insulation, cheap liquor, or whatever somebody had dumped into the drainage channels this week. Cigarette smoke was different. It had a dry, stale bitterness that seemed to coat the back of her tongue before she even breathed properly, and the instant it registered she stopped walking.
Her ears went rigid.
The maintenance corridor ahead was narrow enough that her shoulders nearly brushed the pipes on either wall. Red's place was somewhere beyond the crooked service door at the end, half apartment and half scavenger den, buried beneath so many layers of city infrastructure that daylight had become an abstract concept. Zoey had been there enough times to recognize the usual smells. Machine oil. Dust. Alcohol. Red herself, when Zoey's nose bothered sorting her out from everything else.
Smoke wasn't one of them.
Zoey pushed the door open.
Red was sitting on the edge of her bed with her elbows resting on her knees.
A cigarette burned between two fingers.
For several seconds neither of them moved.
The ember was painfully bright in the dim room, a tiny orange point reflected faintly in Red's yellow-tinted glasses. A chipped mug sat beside her boot with three dead cigarettes crushed into the bottom. There was an open pack on the mattress.
Three.
Zoey looked at the mug again as though the number might change.
Red slowly took the cigarette out of her mouth.
"Oh," she said.
Zoey stared at her.
That was all Red had.
Oh.
Zoey stepped inside and closed the door behind her, carefully enough that the latch barely made a sound.
Red's eyes shifted toward it.
"You said you'd never smoke."
Her voice came out low and strangely level.
Red looked down at the cigarette. "Yeah."
"You said that."
"I know."
"You specifically said that."
"I know, Zoey."
The calmness in Red's answer did something ugly to her.
Zoey crossed the room in three steps and snatched the cigarette out of Red's hand. She crushed it against the bottom of the mug hard enough to crack the ceramic.
Red flinched.
Zoey's prosthetic fingers remained pressed there for another second, grinding the filter into ash.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Red's shoulders drew inward. "Plenty."
"Don't."
"I'm answering your question."
"No, you're doing that thing where you make yourself the punchline so nobody else gets to actually be angry at you."
Red looked away.
Zoey picked up the cigarette pack.
It was nearly empty.
Her stomach tightened.
"You've been doing this for a while."
"No."
"Don't fucking lie to me."
"I'm not."
"There are four missing."
"I bought it tonight."
Zoey looked at her.
Red's mouth tightened.
"You bought a pack tonight."
"Yes."
"After telling me you would never smoke."
Red rubbed the heel of one palm into her forehead. "Yes."
Zoey threw the pack against the wall.
It hit concrete, burst open, and scattered cigarettes behind a toolbox.
Red watched them roll.
Something in her face closed.
Zoey saw it happen and hated her for it.
"You don't get to shut down now."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"I'm sitting here."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know what you mean."
"Then fucking look at me."
Red lifted her eyes.
Blue.
Normal blue.
That almost made it worse.
Zoey had seen the other colors. Brown when Red sank too deep. Amber when anger burned through everything else. Green when guilt got its hooks into her. Hazel when she turned the knife inward. Grey when she'd drunk herself into softness and distance.
Blue meant she was still here.
She'd made this decision while fully here.
Zoey's tail lashed once behind her, the spade-shaped tip striking a storage bin with a hollow crack.
"You promised me."
"I know."
"Why?"
Red said nothing.
"Why?"
"I wanted one."
Zoey's expression twisted.
"You wanted one."
"Yes."
"That's your answer?"
Red stood, suddenly angry enough that the metal bedframe groaned when her knee hit it. "What answer do you fucking want?"
"The real one!"
"That is the real one."
"You woke up and decided you wanted to smell like an ashtray?"
"I wanted to smoke a cigarette."
"You wanted lung damage."
"I'll survive."
Zoey went very still.
Red recognized the mistake immediately.
Her ears lowered.
"Zoey—"
"No."
"I didn't mean—"
"No, go ahead." Zoey's voice had gone soft. "Say it again."
Red swallowed.
Zoey stepped closer.
"You'll survive."
"I shouldn't have said that."
"Because you regenerate? Because you're engineered? Because you're ninety-three years old and still look like this, so apparently nothing fucking matters?"
"I said I shouldn't have said it."
"You think that's what I care about?"
Red's jaw worked.
Zoey pointed toward the crushed cigarettes scattered across the floor. "I have watched people kill themselves with those. Slowly. Deliberately. Every single day. I've smelled that shit in hospital rooms. I've watched people cough until they puke. I've watched people walk outside dragging oxygen tanks so they can light another one because whatever was happening inside their head was stronger than fucking breathing."
"I know."
"You don't know."
"I fucking know, Zoey."
"No, you know academically. You know like you know how a transmission works."
Red's eyes flashed amber.
"There it is," Zoey said.
"Fuck you."
"You promised me."
"I know!"
The shout bounced off the pipes overhead.
Both of them froze.
Red turned away first.
Zoey stared at the back of her head.
When Red spoke again, the anger had drained out of her voice.
"I promised because I knew you hated it."
"No. You promised because you said you hated it too."
"I did."
"Did."
Red shut her eyes.
Zoey felt something colder than anger settle through her chest.
"Why did you start?"
Red didn't answer.
Zoey waited.
Outside the room, somewhere in the maze of utility tunnels, a pump kicked on. Water hammered through an old pipe and then settled into a steady vibration.
Red picked at the edge of one glove.
"It makes me stop wanting other things for a few minutes."
Zoey's expression changed.
Red stared at the floor.
"What things?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
"No, it doesn't."
"It fucking does to me."
"That's the problem."
Zoey recoiled as if she'd been struck.
Red immediately looked up.
She didn't apologize.
That was worse.
Zoey's mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Red's eyes had gone green.
"I didn't mean it like that."
"How did you mean it?"
"I mean everything matters to you until you're drowning in it."
Zoey stared.
Red continued because she had already gone too far and apparently had decided there was no reason to stop.
"You make everybody else's damage your responsibility. Mine especially. Every time I drink too much, every time I disappear for a few days, every time I don't eat, every time I look at you wrong, you come charging in here like you can fix it if you just get angry enough."
"I don't think I can fix you."
"Bullshit."
"I know I can't fix you."
"Then why are you acting like I committed some betrayal against you by smoking a fucking cigarette?"
"Because you promised!"
"It's my body!"
The words filled the room.
Zoey's face emptied.
Red's breath caught.
There were things she could have said after that. She could have softened it. She could have explained that she meant autonomy, not rejection. She could have reached for Zoey. She could have acknowledged the obvious hypocrisy of demanding distance from the one person she repeatedly let drag her back from the edge.
Instead she stood there.
Zoey slowly nodded.
"Yeah."
"Zoey."
"No. You're right."
"Don't do that."
"It is your body."
"That's not what I—"
"You want to smoke, smoke."
"Stop."
"You want to drink until your eyes turn grey and you can't stand, do that too."
"Zoey."
"You want to disappear into these fucking tunnels until nobody can find you, that's your choice."
Red stepped forward.
Zoey backed away.
That stopped her.
Neither of them seemed to know what to do with the distance.
Red's ears flattened.
"I didn't ask you to care about me."
Zoey laughed once.
It was a terrible sound.
"No. You just kept letting me."
Red's eyes changed.
Hazel.
Zoey looked at them and immediately wished she hadn't.
Red removed her glasses.
Without the yellow lenses, there was nothing between them.
"You want to know why I bought them?"
Zoey said nothing.
Red's fingers tightened around the glasses until the frame creaked.
"Because I spent four hours staring at a wall thinking about Nikolai."
Zoey's anger faltered.
Red kept going.
"I found...more."
She laughed under her breath.
"I remembered it."
Zoey's brow furrowed.
"You said the resets—"
"They did."
"Then how—"
"I don't know."
Red's voice cracked.
"I don't know, Zoey. That's the fucking point. I remembered my hand. His hand. Mine. Whatever. I remembered knowing exactly where it was. I remembered being annoyed about it. Something stupid. Ordinary. I remembered being annoyed."
Her shoulders began to shake.
"I don't remember my mother's face."
Zoey's anger vanished so quickly it left her nauseous.
Red looked down at her own hands.
"I don't remember what my bedroom looked like. I don't remember what food I liked when I was twelve. I don't remember who taught me to drive. I don't remember whether I ever loved anybody. But I remembered a fucking human hand."
"Red—"
"So I went upstairs."
Zoey stopped.
Red drew a breath.
"I walked until I found a store. I bought cigarettes because Nikolai's parents smoked."
Zoey's stomach dropped.
Red gave her a helpless little shrug.
"I thought maybe I'd remember something."
The room seemed much smaller.
"Did you?"
Red looked toward the cracked mug.
"No."
Zoey pressed both hands against her face.
Her prosthetic palms were cold.
She dragged them downward.
"Jesus Christ."
"Yeah."
"You could have called me."
"I didn't want you."
Zoey looked at her.
Red's eyes widened slightly.
Again.
Again she had found precisely the sentence capable of doing the most damage.
"I mean I didn't want you there."
"I understood."
"Zoey."
"I understood perfectly."
"No, you didn't."
"I really fucking did."
Zoey turned toward the door.
Red caught her wrist.
Zoey jerked free so violently that Red stumbled.
"Don't touch me."
Red froze.
The color drained toward brown now.
Zoey saw it.
She saw all of it.
She saw Red standing in the middle of a room that barely qualified as shelter, surrounded by scavenged machinery and dead cigarettes and pieces of a life that belonged to somebody who no longer existed. She saw someone who had spent decades having identity stripped out of her by force and was now trying to resurrect fragments with nicotine because there was nobody left who could tell her what those fragments meant.
And Zoey still hated her for it.
That was the part she couldn't forgive herself for.
Understanding didn't erase the betrayal.
Love didn't erase disgust.
Trauma didn't turn every choice into an accident.
"You knew what this would do to me."
Red's mouth trembled.
"Yes."
There it was.
No defense.
No misunderstanding.
Zoey felt her throat tighten.
"You knew."
"Yes."
"And you did it anyway."
Red nodded.
Zoey's eyes burned.
"Why didn't you just lie?"
Red looked genuinely confused.
Zoey wiped angrily at her face.
"You lie about everything else. You lie about whether you've eaten. You lie about sleeping. You lie about drinking. You lie about where you've been. Why leave the fucking mug sitting there?"
Red stared at her.
Then her face crumpled.
"I think I wanted you to catch me."
Zoey stopped breathing.
Red looked horrified by her own admission.
"I don't know why."
"Yes, you do."
"No."
"Yes, you fucking do."
"I don't."
"You wanted me to prove I still cared."
Red backed into the bed.
Zoey followed.
"You wanted to do something you knew I couldn't ignore."
"Stop."
"You could have cut yourself off for a week. You could've gotten drunk. You could've disappeared. But those are normal now, aren't they? Those don't guarantee anything."
"Stop."
"So you picked the one thing you knew would make me come apart."
"Shut up."
"You wanted me angry."
"Shut up!"
"You wanted me here."
Red shoved her.
It wasn't hard.
Zoey shoved her back.
Red hit the wall.
For one suspended second they stared at each other.
Then Red grabbed the front of Zoey's vest and kissed her.
There was nothing tender in it.
Zoey should have stopped her.
Instead she kissed her back.
Red tasted like tobacco.
Zoey recoiled instantly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as disgust twisted through her.
Red's face collapsed.
That should have ended it.
It didn't.
Zoey grabbed her again.
The second kiss was worse because they both knew exactly what they were doing.
It wasn't reconciliation. It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't even comfort in any honest sense. It was two people taking the shortest possible route around everything they had just said because neither of them could tolerate standing in the wreckage anymore.
Red pulled Zoey closer.
Zoey let her.
They stumbled against the bed, knocking the cracked mug to the floor. Ceramic broke beneath them. Red's glasses vanished somewhere under a cabinet. Zoey's tail struck the wall, then wrapped instinctively around Red's leg as if her body had chosen intimacy while the rest of her was still furious.
They stopped only once.
Red's forehead rested against Zoey's.
"Do you want this?"
Zoey shut her eyes.
"Yes."
Red searched her face.
Zoey hated that she was grateful for the question.
"Do you?"
"Yes."
That was enough.
What followed was hurried and graceless and painfully familiar, stripped of anything either of them could mistake for healing. They knew each other's boundaries too well to hurt each other physically, and that almost made the rest of it crueler. Red knew where Zoey tensed. Zoey knew when Red needed her to slow down. Their bodies remembered trust even while their minds were tearing it apart.
Zoey kissed Red again and tasted smoke.
She nearly cried.
Red noticed.
She turned her face away.
Zoey pulled her back.
Neither of them said anything.
Afterward, Red lay on her side with her back to Zoey.
The room smelled like sweat, dust, and cigarettes.
Zoey sat at the edge of the mattress putting her clothes back on.
Her hands were steady now.
That frightened her more than the anger had.
Red watched the wall.
"You staying?"
Zoey paused.
There was no accusation in the question.
That made it worse.
"No."
Red nodded.
Zoey pulled her boot on.
For a while the only sound was the old ventilation fan scraping somewhere overhead.
Then Red said, "I won't smoke again."
Zoey closed her eyes.
A few hours earlier those words would have mattered.
Now they landed dead between them.
"Don't promise me things."
Red didn't move.
Zoey stood.
She saw the remaining cigarettes scattered near the wall.
One had rolled underneath the bed.
She could have crushed them.
She didn't.
At the doorway, Zoey stopped without turning around.
"I'm not coming back tomorrow."
Red swallowed.
"Okay."
"Or the next day."
Another pause.
"Okay."
Zoey gripped the doorframe.
Part of her wanted Red to argue.
Part of her wanted her to beg.
Part of her wanted to hear footsteps behind her, feel arms around her waist, hear some impossible collection of words that would undo the last hour.
Red stayed on the bed.
Zoey opened the door.
Behind her came the tiny cardboard scrape of something being picked up from the floor.
Zoey knew the sound.
She turned.
Red sat exactly where she'd been.
A cigarette rested between her fingers.
Neither of them spoke.
Red looked at it.
Then at Zoey.
Her eyes were brown.
Zoey waited.
Red put the cigarette between her lips.
She didn't light it.
That distinction was so small and pathetic that Zoey almost laughed.
Instead she walked out.
The door shut behind her.
Red remained sitting in the dark with the unlit cigarette in her mouth until Zoey's footsteps disappeared completely into the tunnels.
Only then did she reach for the lighter.
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