The small apartment was a hothouse and Solari was firmly cocooned within it. Sweat ran a silent river down her forehead, itching along the scar that split her face like a trench. Distracted, she dragged her sleeve across it, swearing as droplets of residual worm mucus mixed with the salty perspiration in a rush of bright, hot pain. Her fingers twitched, desperate to rip off the heavy respirator mask, but she ignored the temptation. Only idiots opened their mouths to breathe underwater when their lungs screamed for oxygen.

Grimacing, she topped up the small vial gripped in her gloved hand, keeping in check the tremors that always affected her at this part of the cook. At the last minute, she turned her head and averted her eyes, emptying the blue liquid into a large glass beaker dominating the kitchen bench. The rush of fizzing sounded like her brain melting.

Heat continued to build in her too-small studio, the stained plaster walls seeming to press in from all sides and suffocate her. Black plastic covered the only two windows and every vent was either patched closed or clogged with the gum of previous cooks. In the corner of her apartment, a pedestal fan regarded her without sympathy, its silent blades illuminated by a battery-powered torch hung from the ceiling. Worth a month’s takings, the chunk of metal was useless without electricity, and there had been no electricity in the city for days.

Only after the fizzing stopped and the harsh, astringent smell faded did Solari turn back to the counter. The beaker, its glass scratched and discoloured, cradled five large crystals of tetrahydron. Enough to make fifty kilograms of snowrock. Enough to make local crime lord, Yevgeny Worcsulakz, happy.

Fifty million dollars would make me happy as well.

There had been a time when she had considered going rogue and creating her own stash of snowrock—not enough to attract attention, just enough to set herself up after her contract ended; enough to protect her from stumbling back into Worcuslakz’s clutches. A ‘get a better life’ fund, not just a ‘get out of trouble’ fund. But making the highly potent, hallucinogenic drug was the easy part. Moving it in Tasmania’s Southern Reaches? That was a death wish.

Her fingers ripped off the mask and she gulped in lungfuls of stale air. She glanced past the fan to the small vent in the far wall; hidden inside was her nest egg, a multi-coloured assortment of notes she had scraped together over seven years of cooking tetrahydron. It wasn’t much—just over five hundred dollars—but, it would be enough to get her out of the next messed-up situation when it arrived on her doorstep. Always a matter of when, never a matter of if.

Some nights, the sound of its impending arrival was louder than others, echoing with the crack of gunfire in the war-ravaged streets of Hobart. Tonight, it was deafening, merging with the screams of the wounded and the ululations of the ascendant, a hideous symphony that reverberated violently off her apartment walls.

Sighing, Solari pulled off her gloves and threw them into the sink. As contaminated as they were, she should have discarded them; but she had better things to do with her money. Water shuddered from the tap, tainted yellow and smelling funky. Somewhere in Hobart’s industrial sector, the city’s water treatment plants were sitting idle like her fan.

It was possible the brownout was merely symptomatic of Southern Tasmania’s dysfunction, something born of neglected infrastructure or labour strikes. More likely, it was rival crime lord Pierre DuPlessis sending alpha teams into the heart of Worcsulakz’s territory to create chaos; the city’s major substation just another casualty of the decades-long war between two monsters who would burn the decrepit world around them to the ground in order to gain more power.

The sound of gunfire grew nearer, transformed from distant popping to explosions of sound that rattled the windows. Solari glanced around the apartment, spying her hooded flak-jacket lying on the stained, tattered carpet near the door. Flecks of mutant grass seed dotted the bulky fabric, smuggled remnants of her last foray into the Fringes. It had been days since she had travelled across the city into the wild organic mess of mutated life that stretched for thousands of hectares to the west coast of the island. She would need to return soon to gather more ingredients for her tetrahydron, but walking through a hot conflict zone was the kind of disincentive that kept her at home and scraping the barrel of her existing inventory.

On tired legs, she walked slowly towards the jacket, sweat itching between her shoulder blades in protest against any consideration of putting it on. The gunfire was louder now, only streets away, but even it couldn’t mask the heavy banging that erupted into her studio.

“Slaari!” Anders’ voice, thick with alcohol and insolence, slurred its way through the apartment door in-between rounds of banging. Her ex had always been an unpredictable drunk. “Sollllaaari.” Sing-song. Provocative. The calm before the storm. “Come on, baby doll. Open up. Open up, baby doll. Anders needs a fix.”

She stared at the door, heart thundering in her chest, silently willing Anders to give up and go away. Sometimes he did—sometimes he got bored, or came to the conclusion she wasn’t at home or didn’t have any snowrock to steal; sometimes he turned paranoid at the thought of someone else turning up, or found an easier way to feed his addiction.

The banging erupted again. Each crash of his fist against the flimsy wooden door set Solari’s heart racing faster. Subconsciously, she rubbed at the raised white line of scar tissue on her wrist—a permanent reminder of Anders and his temper.

“Solari!” He was angry now. The melody gone from his voice. “Open up, you bitch. Open this fucking door.” The banging was insistent, shattering. The door shuddered on its hinges. “I know you’re in there. I can smell your fucking sweaty stench from here.”

She bent down slowly and picked up her flak jacket. It wouldn’t be beyond Anders to fire a round into the apartment just to release some rage. The heat was already a thick blanket around her, but she shrugged into the long black sleeves regardless. Pulling up the zipper to her chin, she cringed at the rustling of fabric and clicking of interlocking teeth.

Loud thuds shook the door. Anders had replaced his fists with his shoulder, or his foot. It was the circuit-breaker she needed; no longer caring if he could hear her, she ran to her phone. Fingers poised above the screen, she paused, grimacing before she punched in the only number that could help her.

Two rings in and an unfamiliar male voice answered. “Details.”

“Solari Peterov. ID 161115. Precursor Manufacturing.” Her voice was shaking.

Another thud. The door would not hold forever.

“Someone’s trying to break into my home lab. I have five tetrahydron crystals ready for collection.”

“Priority dispatch is on its way. Secure the rocks and await advice.”

The line went dead. Solari grabbed the beaker and ran for the bathroom. The small room was crowded with vats of chemicals—her poor attempt to keep the precursors cool during the power brownout. She pushed the large plastic tubs aside to make some room. The smell was caustic; every breath burned her nostrils and left her gasping for air.

 She looked back frantically at the mask lying on the kitchen countertop. Another thud and the door groaned loudly—a begging for mercy, a forewarning of imminent submission.

There was no time left. Solari took a deep breath and locked herself in the bathroom.

The inevitable coughing and spluttering split her skull, the chemical fumes making her light-headed and nauseous. Solari gripped her phone, tempted to patch another call to Worcsulakz’s protection racket even though it would do no good.

A final thud and then a loud crash. Anders was yelling, his vitriol no longer muffled by the thicker external walls. “You’re going to pay for this, you fucking bitch!”

The sound of glass shattering and wood splintering punctuated his grunting. He was tearing her place apart, looking for the crystals that shimmered in a glass beaker on the broken tiles of her bathroom.

She gagged, bile rising up her throat. Chemical residues alighted on her skin, causing her to itch, and her breathing fell shallow and ragged. Her eyes could no longer focus, her vision fracturing the space into triplicates that shivered and stuttered. Anders’ voice shifted to a high-pitched whining, the buzz of a thousand drones.

A cool touch unexpectedly caressed her cheek. Through a fog of incoherent thoughts came the realisation she had slumped to the floor.

Like a bad recording loop, the sound of the banging returned.

“Solari.” Anders’ voice was muffled. A thousand broken drones, with shattered wings and spluttering power devices.

There was a time when she had enjoyed the sound of her name from his lips. Back when he was a courier, before he went from merely transporting shards to sampling them.

The cracked floor tiles turned sticky, her meagre breakfast of soybeans and rice ejected from her compromised body, its sickly-sweet smell a quiet accent against the harsher vapours.

She stared at her wrist. Through an explosion of colours and black spots she could make out the scar that Anders’ knife had carved just over a year ago—when he had been aiming for her throat. The damaged skin moved feebly, her pulse erratic and slow, a whispered stutter.

Her vision blurred, the scar losing definition and disappearing from focus. Gratefully, the smell of chemicals and her vomit also faded. Her brain—which only moments before had felt as though it was embedded with a thousand spikes—now felt like a soft, mushy blob.

And silence. Finally there was silence. No more thudding, no more screaming, no more Anders…

Until it shattered. The silence and the bathroom door, together.

***

Solari woke up wet and stinking of vomit.

Pieces of plastic debris from the broken bathroom door lay scattered around her. The glass beaker and its blue crystals were gone.

The effort of sitting up exploded grenades of pain in her head.

“Take it easy, Solari.” She knew the deep voice that addressed her, pictured the bulky frame attached to it. “You’ve been whacked with a decent chemical cocktail.”

Jerath. Her usual courier.

“Anders?” She croaked, pushing past the pain to prop herself against the bathtub.

“The piece of shit with the gun?”

Despite the pounding in her head, details began to coalesce; Jerath stood in the empty doorframe picking his nails, a large leather satchel slung casually over his shoulder, the scuffed glass of her beaker poking out the top.

“I gave him a bit of a touch up,” Jerath continued, smiling as though recounting a funny story. “Sent him on his way with a warning.”

He looked down at her, his face turned serious. “Not sure he’s the type to listen to reason, though. How does he know you?”

The question came laced with a more subtle menace; a hidden threat.

Solari and Jerath got on well enough. Jerath was less pushy than the other couriers, less smug. And Solari didn’t give him the grief that other manufacturers did—no lip, no begging for extensions, no tasting the merchandise. They did their transactions, swapped a bit of banter, and moved on to the next job. Simple. Just the way they liked it.

She stared at his hands, the way his thick fingers flicked quickly about each other. He would have no hesitation strangling the last breath out of her if it was necessary. If Worcsulakz ordered it. Or merely suggested it with the cock of an eyebrow.

‘How does he know you?’ Jerath wasn’t making small talk. He wanted to know why a drug freak was belting down her door. How he knew about Solari, knew that she manufactured. It reinforced her earlier conclusion—going rogue would be a death wish.

“He’s an ex. Used to be a courier, before he started skimming.”

Jerath nodded and looked around the apartment. “He did a number on your place. What were you doing cooking here, anyway?”

Another question. Maybe calling in protection was a bad idea. With only a year left on her contract, she just needed to stay quiet and play it safe. Staying under the radar was the only way to survive the gangland war and it seemed to her that she had stuck her head out a little too far. Far enough to have it hacked off.

“I know it’s against protocol, but with the power out, I can’t access the coolroom in the lab.”

Jerath offered no indication of whether he was satisfied. Solari held her breath, her stomach still queasy from the chemical sauna and jacked up on adrenalin.

In the end, he shrugged. “The brownouts are pissing off Worcsulakz as well. He’s hearing rumours DuPlessis’ thugs are running raids on the power grid.”

It seemed Worcsulakz’s arch-rival was getting bolder.

“You got the crystals?” she asked, changing the subject, drawing his attention back to what she could offer, what she was best at—why some breaches in protocol should be forgiven.

“Yeah, I’ll deliver them tonight.” He stared at her, his body still. “You know, we can arrange a more permanent solution to this ex problem of yours.”

Images of Anders’ head spiked on a borough marker flitted pleasantly through her shattered mind. But negotiating another deal with Worcsulakz would only tighten the noose he had fitted around her neck.

“Thanks, Jerath, but I’ll manage.”

“Your call.” He pushed off the bathroom’s door frame and exited through the hole in the far wall where her front door used to be.

Wincing, Solari pushed herself up on unsteady legs. Jerath had understated the level of damage Anders’ rampage had exacted. Her life lay broken and scattered on the floor—a microcosm of the outside world, a diorama of gangland decimation.

Broken glass crunched underfoot, blood blooming against a shattered picture frame to paint a red filter over the photograph below. She bent slowly, ignoring the rush of vertigo, and picked it up. Dragging gentle fingers over the broken glass left red smears behind, but afforded her a better view of the picture. Her favourite.

A young Solari—maybe ten years old?—stood leaning against a taller boy. His shock of black hair fell thick around his face, hiding his eyes and giving him a roguish look. Denavim, her brother. He looked so young, so vibrant in that photo. Robust. Invincible. Untouched by the cancer that would take his life less than five years later.

She pulled the photo from its confinement and let the frame slip from her fingers. Cradling the picture in one hand, she pulled her flak jacket tighter in the other, and found a place where the destruction was not as severe. A patch of carpet, littered only with discarded books and broken vinyls.

Slowly she crouched down, the burning in her legs flaring brighter than the pain in her head. With a trembling hand, she swept away the relics of her past—treasures she had collected, remnants of a life before violence; beautiful, inconsequential things she had spent too much money on. Things that would never die and leave her like her family had.

Collapsing on to the carpet’s worn threads, she pulled her knees up and hugged them tight against her chest. And screamed until her hoarse throat gave out.