The Long Way Home

[Jay Carpenter]

It turned out Natalie had no painkillers. No aspirin. Not even a forgotten bottle of expired cough syrup. Just bare shelves. Not surprising. Her apartment was bare-boned. A woman who lived light, unburdened, as if permanence might catch her off guard. He offered to stop at a vendor on the way back, toss a few dollars at something stronger, but she told him not to worry. The order had already been placed, and the delivery would beat him home.

That was when his mind began drifting. Dinner. Takeout, probably. Neither of them cooked. Grilling was always an option, but it wasn’t like he could haul a charcoal drum onto a fifth-floor balcony in central Moscow without setting off alarms. literal or metaphorical. He considered the usual spots. Ramen, maybe. Or the Turkish place with the flatbread that always came just a little burnt. And then.

Then it hit him.
He was planning dinner. Not for himself, but for them.

This is what people in relationships do.
'Hey, should I grab milk on the way home?'

The thought tightened around his chest like a rope, soft but inescapable. For a moment, he just stood there on the wet concrete, lips parted as if the cold had caught him mid-thought, and he forgot to breathe.

Was this what he wanted? This domestic drift? The soft gravity of someone waiting for him behind a door, with arms and silence and warmth?


Because when he was with Natalie — really with her — the rest of the world fell away. Her body against his, her glare, even the way she challenged him in the quiet… it felt like all the good things he thought had been scorched out of him in the years between then and now.

But when he stepped outside of her, it was like catching his reflection in some fogged mirror. He barely recognized the man he was anyway. This was like another life. It scared the hell out of him.

So he sent another message: Going to swing by the RLD. Grabbing something better for my hand. The good stuff. The kind you didn’t get in the upscale dispensaries. What he didn’t say. What he didn’t have the guts to say was that he needed a little more time. Just a few more streets between himself and that quiet warmth he couldn’t stop wanting.

He pulled up the collar of his coat as he turned off the main road. Government-issue, heavy, and warm. Buttoned up enough to hide the uniform beneath, the one marked with the sigils of the Dominions. The CCD crests were sewn into the shoulder and chest beneath, but here, he wanted to blend in. The RLD didn’t care for symbols of power, only money. Only customers.

The Red Light District was humming under frost and shadow, alive with false heat. Neon poured from every overhang, advertisements flickering through condensation and low static interference. The air carried a chemical sweetness. Engineered pheromones, vaped synthetics, electric cinnamon. All designed to dull, entice, pacify. Snow was piled in the gutters like forgotten ash.

Around him, bodies moved through the streets like ghosts. Augmented limbs. Glowing eyes. Faces too perfect to be anything but curated. Jay passed by a VR parlor pumping out soft moans and colorwashed light, then a bio-lounge that promised transcendence in five microdoses or less.

He’d been here before. Of course he had. But never looking for relief. Never like this.

Tonight, he wasn’t chasing pleasure. He was chasing silence. A chemical kind. Something to numb the ache in his knuckles, which were still sore and purpled from striking both Matías and the wall behind him. But it wasn’t just his hand that hurt. It was the hollowness in his chest. The kind that nothing could fix.

It took a few tries. Most dispensaries catered to the weekend crowd. Dream-syrups, synth-mirage injectables, neural-slow patches. But eventually, tucked between a gene-tweak parlor and an automated pleasure bar, he found a vendor that carried the military-branded stuff. Combat residue relief. Nerve quieters. Burn-skin regenerants. Things marketed to a specific group.

The attendant barely looked up. Just slid a digital display across the counter and gestured at the scanner. The place was warm, artificially so. Overhead, a reactor coil hummed softly, and red light spilled from the strip-lighting above like diluted blood.

Jay keyed in a code, jaw tight, shoulders hunched beneath the heavy weight of the coat. He could feel the eyes of the district behind him. Not specific, but aware, the way this part of the city always was. Like the whole block was a creature watching from the cracks.

As the machine processed his payment, he wondered again if he was stalling because of her or because he didn’t know what kind of man he was once he let himself be happy.

Either way, the drugs would help. Not just the hand. Not just the bruises.

He stepped out into the street once more to find a place to use the very product he just purchased.