#it's just unimaginable... this is a war of course limbs get blown off -- that is not shocking to me

[leeenuu]

There is a cost to war -- to the countries that wage it, to the soldiers who fight it, to the civilians who endure it. For nations, territory is gained and lost, and sometimes regained and lost again. But some losses are permanent. Lives lost can never be regained. Nor can limbs.   And so it is in Ukraine.   The stories of the people who undergo amputations during conflict are as varied as their wounds, as are their journeys of reconciliation with their injuries. For some, losing a part of their body can be akin to a death of sorts; coming to terms with it, a type of rebirth.   For soldiers wounded while defending their country, their sense of purpose and belief in the cause they were fighting for can sometimes help them cope psychologically with amputation. For some civilians, maimed while going about their lives in a war that already terrified them, the struggle can be much harder.   For the men, women and children who have lost limbs in the war in Ukraine, now in its third month, that journey is just beginning.

[a-fools-jester]

How about a one after infinity war where everyone are back and steve and lot are trying to talk to him but he's like get the fuck out of my way and rans straight to peter. Huuuge bonus if at some point everyone finds out that peter is actually tonys biological son

This is it, Tony thinks, this is the end of everything. He watches as Strange’s breathing hitches as he begins to turn into dust, watches as Starlord and the others go, quickly, there one second and then gone the next. His heart beats in his chest like thunder, banging against his ribs and against the arc reactor as he waits. It could be him. It could be him.

It isn’t him. He doesn’t die even if he deserves it. Even if he wants it on some level. “Mr. Stark?” Peter’s voice, shaky, nervous, calls for Tony’s attention and he turns to face the boy, his protege, his boy. He doesn’t die. “I don’t feel so good.” What happens is worse.

Tony’s stomach fill with lead, his chest rising and falling unsteadily because he knows what’s coming but he looks at Peter anyway with a look that begs him to be alright. If the universe has any mercy at all then maybe, just maybe, this one boy could be spared.  A voice inside of him tells him it isn’t something he can just fix with words or ice cream or jokes. The way that blood glistens on Peter’s bruised lip and his splintered voice warn Tony of something dark and painful looming ahead of them like the ax of a guillotine waiting to fall. Not him, please not him, he begs no one in particular, his eyes wide and hands clammy. This is wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  “I don’t know what’s happening.” And Peter, soft Peter, young Peter, stares at his hands in confusion because he can feel it. Tony watches the emotions flit across Peter’s face: confusion, hurt, and then finally, trepidation. He knows something is wrong and it hurts but he doesn’t understand why yet. Except he does. He knows what’s happening even if he doesn’t want to accept it just yet. He’s not ready to accept it yet.He doesn’t want to die yet. He’s too young, he’s too- May is at home- Ned is waiting for him- he doesn’t want to go, he doesn’t, he can’t- he can’t die. “You’re alright,” Tony says on instinct, even though he knows that isn’t okay and isn’t going to be okay and it is never going to be okay. The weight of reality settles in his throat like a boulder and all he can do is hope and pray to a god he hasn’t believed in for years that things will be okay.This is it. This is it. This is what all the visions meant, what his soul has been telling him for years. This is the final opponent. The final fall. The final defeat.This is the end.This is what death must feel like. Peter stumbles forward and falls into Tony’s arms, tears falling from his eyes, hands grappling for something to grab onto. Tony holds Peter fast, firm, steady even as Peter trembles so hard his knees give from underneath him. Tony holds him close and Peter keeps hold of him as if he would disappear at any moment. Peter clings to Tony for dear life like a child begging their dad to save them, eyes wide with terror, tears streaming down his face steadily as his stomach lurches. His body can’t heal him. There’s nothing else he can do but wait and even though he’s a hero, even though he’s an Avenger now, he’s not strong enough or ready enough to face this alone. He can’t. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go, Mr. Stark, please.”Tony keeps his arms wrapped around Peter, keeping himself calm in the face of the storm, digging his feet into the ground so that he could be the anchor for the two of them. Tony knows it is his feet alone that’s holding the two of them up. His mind is completely silent, not a single thought running through it except for a steady chant of no, no, no going through the inside of his mind like echoing gunshots. There’s nothing to say. Tony knew no words to articulate what he wants to say well enough, no words in any language could suffice in expressing the tide of emotions and thoughts ripping through him like hellfire, somehow burning and drowning him all at once, and so he keeps silent, using his body to say what his mouth would not, holding Peter as tightly as he can. As tears stream down Peter’s ashen face, Tony swears that he’s never felt more like iron than he does in that minute. Peter feels it as it approaches. His splintered voice stops suddenly, leaving nothing but silence thick with heartache between the two of them. He stops begging Tony to help him, save him, do anything to keep him from dying. His body knows that the unimaginable is approaching.  Tony wishes he could do something but this time, this one time that mattered, he’s helpless to do anything but tell him he’s alright in a vain attempt to comfort his dying son. Peter shouldn’t even be here today. He should be on Earth. On a field trip. He should be at home, playing video games, building legos, studying for his Spanish test.He shouldn’t be on another planet, fighting for his life, dying in Tony’s arms. It isn’t fucking fair.I told you to go home. “I’m sorry.”And Tony shatters a little bit more inside because he knew this would happen. It always happens. People always die during events like these and he always tried to make sure it didn’t happen but here it is, happening anyway. And he’d tried his goddamn best to prepare Peter, to train him, to keep him from going on this path, but Peter ended up here anyway. No matter how hard Tony tried he couldn’t save him. Tony couldn’t save Peter.Not this time. Peter dies in Tony’s arms, turning into nothing but dust and ashes, blown away by the wind. Blood rushes in Tony’s ears and he’s vaguely aware that tears are streaming down his face as he stares at the spot where Peter was but he can’t bring himself to care. He’s spent too long pretending not to care to bring himself to throw up that mask right now. The pain is thick like blood, mind-numbing, white-hot and sharp. His nostrils are filled with ashes and he swears that all the world smells like burning and on the border of his consciousness he’s aware of Nebula murmuring something but all he can do is clutch at his chest. Something huge and swelling and terrible tears through his chest and he feels it rip him apart at the seams; he closes his eyes and desperately tries to find some semblance of calmness from deep within himself. He tries to find a corner of his mind that isn’t plagued with a pain so mind-numbing he couldn’t do anything but sit there with the image of Peter’s pale, terrified face before he turned into dust stuck in his mind. His heartbeat feels hollow, beating only out of habit. Only because it could. Thanos.  The name enters his mind unbidden and he grits his teeth, unfiltered hatred filling him and leaving his entire body freezing with rage. Thanos will pay for his crimes. Tony will make sure that Thanos burns in the deepest pits of hell for what he’s done. The drumbeat against his ribs is a call to war and Tony swears that he will tear open the sky if it means that he will bring Peter back to him.I’ll find you, Tony promises himself as he stands and the tears in his eyes turn into flames as he clenches his fists. Rage fills him, giving him the strength he needs to pick himself up off the ground and get on the spaceship with a determined step. His tongue tastes like gunsmoke but he doesn’t care, hands shaking. He will rip the world apart with his teeth. He’s hungry enough that he’ll devour the fucking stars. I’ll avenge you.]  –Tony’s limbs ache, a hollow throb that he feels deep down to the bone as he stands in the middle of debris, the post-battle adrenaline not enough to keep his knees from shaking ever so slightly. He’s tired in a way that sleep cannot fix, his armor weighs heavy on his frame, and he just wants to go home.But first, he has to find Peter. Ever since that day on Titan, that day that refuses to be forgotten, finding Peter has been Tony’s mission. There were two types of grief, Tony learned from the pain of that day. There’s the type of grief that binds around you, clenching around your heart and weighing you down like concrete around your ankles, the type of grief that’s all gray rooms and days in bed and wanting to sleep away the pain. That was the grief he felt when mom died.But this grief was like a wall of fire around his heart, burning in his veins like lightning, all the wrath of the old gods fueling him on, spurring him on in his quest to save Peter. The grief didn’t hold him down, it freed him, gave him the energy he needed to keep fighting. It made him grit his teeth past the pain and spit the blood out of his mouth and decide that he’d either rip Thanos apart with his bare hands or go down trying.In the end, it was the former that happened. Thanos is gone, dead, the universe is returned to what it was pre-purple-dick-with-a-bedazzled-glove and everyone who had died is alive again. Whoops of joy and laughter and crying fills the streets with sound, some people calling for their loved ones. Sirens could be heard all over the city, probably giving medical attention to everyone who was dead just a few minutes ago.Tony doesn’t bother to pay attention to any of this. Tony searches the crowd for him, trying to find the familiar red and black suit that he’d personally made to try and protect the kid as much as possible. Unfortunately, the suit didn’t appear to be disintegration-proof. He’d need to work on that, maybe add some adjustments, add some necessary protections from different magical artifacts which could control and destroy the world with a snap of a finger.“Tony,” he hears, the voice so familiar it sends an ache coursing through him and he hesitates before he turns, afraid of what awaits him. Images of cold air in his lungs and concrete beneath his back and pain exploding through his chest and the reactor flickering out as the snow fell somewhere beyond him fill his mind, crushing his lungs for a second before he remembers to breathe. It’s over. All of that’s over. The trauma of that day feels so far away now with everything that’s happened. I’m ready. He turns. A familiar set of blue eyes greet him, soft and open and welcoming like a warm fire on a rainy day. Tony looks away quickly, his nerves still aflame as he searches for Peter in the crowd almost frantically. “You did really well out there. I’m glad that you’re back. The earth needs you,” Steve tells him, voice low and soothing. Bucky stands next to Steve, eyes hollow, leaning in close to Steve as if afraid. Tony hopes that Peter’s eyes are not the same when Tony finally finds him. My son needs me, Tony almost says, and in the crowd, he sees Clint also searching for his kids. Their eyes meet from across the street and Clint gives him a small salute before he continues looking for his kids, pushing past people and yelling for Lila and Cooper, uncaring about whoever else heard him so long as his kids did. “You’re back in the game?” Tony had asked, meeting Clint’s solemn gaze with nothing but a determined look. He didn’t care about what happened what felt like eons ago. He didn’t care about anything except for the song in his veins that kept saying, Peter, Peter, Peter. “Why?”“He took my kids,” Clint replied, his fists clenching around the bow he held in ash-covered fingers.Tony’s eyes closed, his throat constricting. “He took mine too.” They share a look. Clint doesn’t ask who he means, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing. Together, Clint says without speaking, we’ll bring them back.“Tony?” Steve calls him again and Tony finally takes the time to look at him, seeing the concern and affection and open remorse. There is a bridge between them, open and inviting even though the road would be long. They can be close friends again, in time. Maybe they can be something else. Tony can feel it like a tangible string connecting them. They are ready to mend.But now is not the time to begin walking down the bridge.

He needs to find Peter.“Steve. It’s great to see you again, bud,” Tony breathes, patting him on the shoulder and squeezing. He’s vaguely aware of Bruce, battered and banged up but grinning next to Thor, whose eyes search through the crowd even though he doesn’t move from his spot. Natasha stands next to Wilson and a bit further away, Tony’s eyes can see Gamora and Starlord. Wanda and Vision.Stephen Strange and Wong.King T'challa and General Okoye.They’ve all found each other so where is Peter? Where is-“Mr. Stark!” The voice, so familiar and so cheerful brings tears to Tony’s eyes even before he turns and sees the boy running towards him, a grin on his face. Tony meets him halfway, uncaring about the eyes that follow him as he wraps his arms around Peter. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Peter, Jesus- fuck… How are you? Are you hurt?”Peter, grinning even as tears well in his eyes, shakes his head. His entire body trembles against Tony, but this time it isn’t from fear. “I’m okay.”This time he actually is.Tony nods, spending a while with Peter in his arms just to let it sink in that Peter was back, feeling the fear and grief seep out of his bones slowly until he feels like he’s himself again. When he finally turns, he keeps his arm wrapped around Peter’s shoulders, facing the Avengers who had curious looks on their faces. He cracks a grin. “Shawarma, anyone?”Steve laughs gently just like he did the first time, shaking his head fondly. “Just like old times. Lead the way.”Tony begins walking, knowing that the others were following him. Stephen steps beside Tony, giving him a courteous smile. “Your ward is safe, I see,” Stephen says, looking the two of them over with wisdom in his eyes that came from the necklace around his neck. “I’m glad you are both okay. You exceeded my expectations of you. I’m rather impressed.”Tony shrugs with a playful look on his face, clapping Stephen on the back. “Such sweet words, I’m flattered. Very flattered. Honored, even. Thanks for not letting me die from a stab wound on a foreign planet, buddy. Come on, let’s go grab something to eat.”“You’re inviting me.”“To be fair, you did die for me. Temporarily, sure, but still. I want to show my gratitude and what better way than with food? Everyone’s invited. You, your buddy Wong, the Avengers who want to come, the Wakandans, even the talking tree and his group of ragtag space vigilantes.” Everyone goes without complaint. Apparently taking down an evil far greater than any mortal was a fantastic team-building exercise and all the tension between them has been erased. After all, they’ve spent days fighting alongside one another, desperately trying to bring back whoever they lost. If that didn’t strengthen their relationships, then Tony doesn’t know what would.The shawarma restaurant is open, thank god, and Tony wastes no time in renting out the place to keep it semi-private to them. They push the tables together and Tony takes a seat at one end with Peter sitting at his left and Stephen to his right. The room is abuzz with tired conversations but when the food arrives, the room becomes quieter. Peter eats enough to put up a competition for Steve, Bucky, Thor, and Drax, but even he looks sluggish as he eats. Tony has to blink his eyes repeatedly to keep from falling asleep right then and there, the adrenaline fading and only tiredness left behind.Thor raises a glass. “To glory,” he says, voice solemn and as dry as silver. Tony can see the hard lines of his face, the exhaustion and loss behind his eyes. He’s lost someone, Tony surmises silently and he has a niggling feeling about who it is. Tony raises a glass, “to glory,” he repeats and everyone else does the same, a tired and honey-thick vow to the universe to protect it come hell or high water. Drax gives him a grin as he looks at Tony and Peter. “Your son is a valiant fighter. He takes after you.”Tony pauses, giving Peter a look. Peter’s eyes are soft, bordering on hopeful, giving Drax a shy smile as he blushes. Tony only nods. “He’s the best one I know.”Thor squints, looking up from his shawarma. “Your son? What is his name?” he questions, curiosity piqued and Tony fidgets. Peter isn’t actually his son, he wants to say, but he hesitates briefly. “His name is Peter,” he begins, “he’s not actually… I mean, we have more of a mentor-mentee type of thing. He’s Spider-Man and I met him a while ago and… well… I’m not the best mentor or role-model or anything but-”Stephen shakes his head, not looking up from his plate. “Wrong.”Uh, excuse me? Tony frowns. “What?”“You said he’s not your son,” Stephen says with a squint as he looks at Tony. “That is false.”Peter and Tony share a confused look. Something flutters in Peter’s stomach as he looks at Stephen, the hair on his arms standing. Something big is coming. He can feel it, even if it’s different than his sense for danger he can feel it just as strongly. “What do you mean? My parents were Richard and Mary Parker before they died and Aunt May and Uncle Ben took me in. How can Mr. Stark be my…” He doesn’t continue but the words hang heavily on the atmosphere of the room anyway.How can he be my dad? Tony can feel everyone’s eyes on the three of them but Stephen doesn’t seem to notice. He continues. “You were adopted. Your birth mother put you up for adoption in order to continue her education and never alerted Tony about your existence. While we were on Titan I had to explore every possible timeline and see every event which could lead us to victory. It is in this one where we win. I saw every little detail which brought us here.”The silence is thick and quickly bordering on awkward so Tony coughs, shrugging. “Well, congrats to me. It’s a boy,” he says, taking a drink as chuckles broke out through the restaurant. “Fatherhood suits you,” Clint says with a knowing smile, sitting beside his children and wife, holding his daughter’s hand underneath the table and still trying to erase the images of her disappearing right in front of him from his mind. Steve’s eyes are unreadable, looking over at Tony and Peter, who lean against each other as they eat. Across the table, his eyes meet with Tony’s and he gives him a nod. Tony seems to understand and gives him a small smile, nodding back. “You are all welcome back at the compound,” Tony says, not removing his eyes from Steve’s, whose eyes are like moonlight, soft and gentle and welcoming. “I as well?” Stephen asks softly, and Tony hums in approval. He misses the way Stephen looks between him and Steve when he turns to take a drink, and he misses the way Steve’s lips pull downward. They all go back to the new tower and Tony offers everyone medical attention and warm beds. Even T'challa goes back with them, happy to join his team for the next few days before he returns home to work on fixing everything. They put up a movie- some film called Cargo that Stephen insists on watching, saying that he’s curious about something- and Tony ends up seated in the middle of the couch, Peter on the dreadful orange beanbag chair that he’d insisted on using every time he stayed over, asleep. By the time that they reach the middle of the film, most of the team’s already fallen asleep in the living room. The rain tapping against the window lulls them all to slumber, the storm outside raging, wind whistling against the glass. In spite of the calm environment and the post-battle exhaustion, Tony cannot sleep. He takes note of everyone awake, eyes scanning the room. Thor is sitting in the corner with a large jug of beer in his hands, somber, eyes focused elsewhere, mind occupied. Stephen sits beside Tony, eyes shut, light surrounding him as he explores the different versions of reality and Tony wonders what it is he’s looking for this time; Tony wonders if he can ask Stephen about how many universes Tony is happy in, how many of them he is alive in. He wants to ask how many of them can be as satisfying as the one he has now, if some of his alternate lives are so mundane he would prefer to drown in sorrow than die of thirst from a lack of experiences to sate his hunger for the world.He doesn’t ask. “Boss, there is someone at the door,” Friday says over the intercom and Tony frowns, trying to figure out who could be here at 4 pm, a few hours after the End was supposed to happen.“Who?”There is a moment of silence and Thor looks up from his spot. Friday speaks again, “a pizza delivery person.”Thor’s face falls and Tony tells Friday to let the pizza delivery person in even if he doesn’t remember anyone ordering pizza. The wait as the person comes in makes Tony’s palms tingle because he knows that this is something significant but he doesn’t understand yet. When the pizza delivery person’s hair is long and black, he finally understands. He understands before Thor does, because Thor’s eyes are kept firmly glued to the floor until Loki sheds his Midgardian attire and shifts to his true form, shrouded in soft golden light and his eyes are so ethereally blue that Tony remembers for the first time that he is standing in front of two gods. His eyes are clear, a smile playing on his face as he faces Thor, dressed in blue and gold. “I told you that the sun would shine on us again, brother. Do you not trust my words? I’m rather insulted.”Thor is silent for two seconds before he launches himself from the couch and pulls Loki to his chest, desperate and filled with heartache and wild as a dream. Loki doesn’t pull away, letting himself sink into his older brother’s arms and trembling, uncaring as Tony stares at them as they speak in tongues older than the Earth, soft and dulcet tones that makes Tony’s chest rumble when he hears it. A piece of him feels as if it is not something a mortal is supposed to hear, but he listens anyway, allured by the words only his soul understands. The storm outside ebbs and calms, the rain stops. Steve falls asleep and his head rests on Tony’s left shoulder. On Tony’s other side, Stephen’s soft green light warms Tony’s skin like paradise’s glow. Everyone is safe. Peter is finally alive and he’s back, healthy and unharmed. It’s time for mending. It’s time for healing.The voice in the back of Tony’s head, the one that drove him to create bigger and stronger suits and machines to protect the ones he loves, the one that kept him up night after night with visions of starfire and crimson and wounds that throb paper-cut sharp, the one that told him danger, danger, danger every second he spent not moving to prepare for whatever was coming-The voice that was born from the first moment his eyes caught sight of the blue stone in his father’s lab when he was four, the voice that whispered to him and showed him the universe in his dreams, the one that made him yearn so strongly it broke him every time-The voice that wrapped around his mind, warm and alive in the way that Howard’s lab wasn’t, friendly and soft in the way that Howard’s arms weren’t, honeyed and sulky, showing him the constellations spread through space like flecks of honey, showing him the cosmos and burning masses of matter-The voice that told him, you are not alone, and this is very dangerous for you, old soul, for the universe will test you and break you down to your cosmic mettle. You must be prepared. You must be prepared.The voice is finally silent, and the thoughts in Tony’s mind finally feels like it’s only his own.  He smiles and closes his eyes. He allows himself to sleep, his dreams peaceful for the first time he can remember. It is okay, his heart tells him. It’s finally over and he is alive, and the people he loves are alive and in the same room as him, well and healthy. The sun shines outside.

I absolutely loved this prompt! Thank you for it! I hope you don’t mind the angst, because… it’s me. Angst is sorta My Thing™ lol I hope this is okay!

how dare you make me write something related to infinity war now you have to suffer with me lol jk

[quickfics]

The Labor of Objects (excerpt)

From the corner booth, the bar spilled out in front of me like a holo-still. Like something posed. Behold the soul-weary masses, playing to the camera with conviction. Fingers delicately brushing along the curves of half-drained bottles. Relaxed smiles powered by chemical assistance. Slack-faced absence from those with something rougher riding through their veins.

    Spin the camera one-eighty and I’d look the part, same as the rest. One carbon-black arm cradling a tumbler of whiskey, the other idly rolling a cigarette between matte-finished thumb and forefinger. Such a fucking cliche, I know. But we’re all just creatures of habit when you get right down to it. Pile them up high enough, what takes shape is personality. Most of us aren’t exactly bursting with originality. And while I’d love to say my party-circuit approved attitude came back with me from overseas—war makes a convenient enough excuse for most things—the truth is I’ve always kept Life at arm’s length. Just tamped it down better before all my limbs were blown off.

    “You’d think staying alive’d be less of a chore,” someone muttered, pulling the bar back into focus around me.

    I flicked my gaze over to the aging armchair philosopher. Watched him jam an autoinjector into his thigh with the casual autonomy of practiced motion. Faint whine of the magnetic distribution spring charging followed by the snap-click of its release. The discomfort drained from his face as he snapped the pen into a cylindric groove scooped into the forearm of his prosthesis.

    This far out in on the edge of Philly, you aren’t likely to come across the same look of suspicion thrown at anything that isn’t Classic White. In all its willful ignorance of history, society thought itself ready for the march into biomechanical augmentation. But as soon as post-humans came into the picture, we joined the honored ranks of the disenfranchised minority. After all, if something as surface-level as skin color can compel xenophobia, imagine the sort of bone-deep distrust the merging of man and machine would breed. Work placement? Social acceptance? Forget it. Same album of binary tribal bullshit, just a different track.

    So after a few tours worth of organic damage and subsequent enhancement—some elective, some not—my heroic return home was met with a distinct lack of interest in anyone built beyond “natural” human hardware specs. Baseline species insecurity mixed with the usual brand of aversion toward anyone with time in the trench made sure that, once back Stateside, I had few options to market my particular suite of skills to beyond those with an obvious interest in professional violence. Corporates and criminals, mostly, and two are interchangeable as far as I’m concerned.

    That’s how I wound up running with the unimaginatively named Future Now Collective, an eclectic mix of vocal socialists clamoring about the inevitable failures of capitalism. Not something I could buy into so readily—though I envied anyone who could muster an honest fuck let alone full-blown belief—but good company for anyone who doesn’t blindly accept the established architecture. Modernizing the blueprints to a design three centuries out of date sounds good on paper, at least.

    “You’re one morose-looking motherfucker, Morgan, you know that?”

    Izzy Faraday dropped into the booth beside me, wide slash of smile cut eat to ear. Hair swept off to one side, leaving nothing to distract from the clock-face round glasses straddling her nose—a nod to the movement’s roots, I’m told. A slimmer-fitting description might be “ostentatious.” From the neck down, she was clad in an immaculate gray suit punctuated by a red tie like a Spanish exclamatory.

    She carefully laid her pint on the marred surface of the table and leaned back into the bar’s non-light, like an apparition shifting in the muted haze of some some cheap horror sim.

    “You could try smiling now and then,” she thumbed open her jacket and eased back into the booth some more. “Pretty sure nobody put a bullet through the part of your brain that lets you.”

    “Nah, paid for that myself. Needed space for the tac overlay.”

    “There’s that sense of humor. Hang on to that—hard to find something to laugh about these days.

    “Been watching the riots?”

    “Of course. Every newscast on the net’s got that hired muscle blasting the kid into oblivion. On loop.”

    “I know the guy.”

    She leaned forward. “Are you fuckin’ serious?”

    “Served with him KPK back in ’45. Name’s Devereux.”

    “What’s an ex-commando doin’ muscling for the corporations?”

    I shrugged. “Same as me, I reckon. Working within the exceedingly limited number of career options available to people like us.”

    “Sure. Just seems, I don’t know. Hypocritical? Those slick-haired shitheads won’t give you the time of day otherwise, at least for anything that doesn’t involve throwing weight around. What’s the line? Your enhancements would give you too much of an advantage in an otherwise meritocratic environment, quote unquote.”

    “Yeah, well, principles don’t cover upkeep.”

    “Maybe not, but when it all shakes down everyone’s gotta pick a side. Cozy complacency is what got us into this mess. What gave it an unnatural long life.”

    “How’s that moral high ground, Zee?”

    She held up both hands. “I’m just saying. The problem’s been self-evident since the turn of the century. Don’t know how anyone didn’t see algorithmic V.I. coming. Seventy-some years later, a lot of machines are making a lot of money for a very small number of people while the rest of us wait with our hands out. The continuing erosion of independence. No going back from the expenses of modern tech, as you said. And who would want to?”

    I stopped fiddling with the unlit cigarette and tucked it behind my ear. Took another pull of whiskey and let the silence soak through a little longer. She wasn’t wrong by any stretch, but a passing understanding of the complexities behind the strained situation made it hard not to be argumentative.

    “I’ve already heard FNC’s brochure bullet points. What’s the scan, Zee?”

    She laid her chin on her both fists. A grin tugged at the corner of her lips.

    “As your South Philly scumbag friends might say, we got a rat problem.”