Caleb stepped into the Armorer’s Quarter at oh-five-forty-five with thirty hours of awake stacked behind his eyes and a dull pressure in his right shoulder that the foam under his shirt had stopped helping with two hours ago.

The Quarter was waking up.

The stalls ran four deep along the alley as always. Vendors were stacking crates in front of their tarps. A hot-water cart steamed at the corner where the alley met the maintenance ramp. The smell of broth was already coming off Yui’s place at the far end, mixing with the rust smell off the corrugated awnings and the faint chemical edge of the solvent the night sweepers used on the gutter grates.

Two years ago he walked through this Quarter for the first time, broke and bruised, with a surplus contract in his coat pocket and a head full of optimism he no longer carried. The Quarter was the same. The kid selling stim packets out of a folding crate at the corner was still selling stim packets out of a folding crate. He had a different crate now and a haircut.

Caleb pulled the brim of his cap lower.

He noticed it in stages.

A recruit in a brand-new harness saw him from twenty feet away and stopped walking. A pair of off-shift Third Division operators turned their heads in unison and pretended they hadn’t. The kid with the stim packets called his name across the alley.

"Mercer."

Caleb lifted one hand without breaking stride.

The kid grinned and went back to his crate.

-----

The armorer’s stall was at the far end of the Quarter under a hanging sign with one letter missing. It still said ARMORE.

The armorer was at the back of his stall sanding a forearm guard. He had been sanding forearm guards in this same stall since Caleb was a recruit. His apron was the same apron. The pile of surplus returns behind him was the same pile.

The armorer kept his eyes on the guard when Caleb stopped at the counter.

"Surplus return."

"Not today."

"Then you’re in the wrong stall."

"I’m in the right stall. I just wanted to say hello."

The armorer’s sanding hand paused for one stroke.

He set the guard down. He wiped his palms on the front of his apron, leaving two darker smudges on the canvas. Then he lifted his head.

His eyes went from Caleb’s cap to Caleb’s coat to Caleb’s hands on the counter.

"Rank C," the armorer said, and the words came out like an invoice finally paid.

"Yeah."

"I told you," he added, wiping his palms on the apron again.

"You did."

"Three times."

"You did."

The armorer studied him for a long second. Caleb had known him for two years and seen him smile exactly zero times. The jaw shifted a quarter inch. Caleb counted that as a smile.

The armorer’s eyes narrowed. "You eat anything in the last twelve hours?"

"No."

"Yui’s place. Tell her I sent you."

"I’ll pay for my noodles."

"You’ll pay for your noodles, Yui will refuse the credits, and you’ll leave them on the counter anyway. That’s how this works."

"That tracks."

The armorer picked up his guard and turned back to his sanding block.

"Go."

Caleb went.

-----

He took the alley slow. The light at the eastern end of the Quarter was thin and grey, the kind that only lasted forty minutes before the upper sectors’ billboards woke up and started painting everything pink. Caleb counted the stalls he passed. Twenty-three. The same twenty-three. A gear hawker, two food stalls, a knife sharpener, a chip merchant who definitely sold things he wasn’t licensed to sell, three armor refitters, a man who made boots, a woman who fixed boots, a stall that exclusively sold zip ties.

The stall that sold zip ties was open at oh-six-hundred because the man who ran it had been there at oh-six-hundred every morning Caleb had ever walked through this Quarter. Caleb caught his eye and nodded. The man nodded back without expression and went back to organizing his zip ties by color, length, and tensile rating.

At the boot fixer’s stall Caleb paused. He checked his own boots. The right one had a split along the outside seam that had been growing for two weeks, and the foam in his shoulder shifted when he leaned to inspect it.

He decided not today and kept walking.

The Quarter opened up at the south end into a small triangular plaza where three alleys met. Yui’s place sat in the corner. Six stools under a corrugated roof, a hot kitchen behind a curtain that smelled like five things at once, and a hand-painted sign that just said YUI in red brush strokes that were older than Caleb was.

Caleb sat down on the second stool from the wall, set his cap on the counter, and ordered without looking at the menu because there was no menu and there had never been a menu.

Yui set a bowl down in front of him eight minutes later. She refilled his water glass. The second pour came free. She had recognized him from the stream and was working through whether to say so.

The kid swallowed the credential whole. "You’re the rank-up guy."

"I’m the rank-up guy."

"You answered the kettle one good."

"Thanks."

"My boy watched it three times. Asked me what a kettle was."

"What’d you tell him."

"I told him a kettle was a thing you boil water in, and that he should pay attention, because there are people in this city who say things on streams that mean two things at once, and if he wants to be a smart man he’s going to need to learn the difference."

"That’s a good answer," Yui said. "He’s a good kid."

She walked back to the counter.

-----

Iharu found him six minutes into the bowl.

He dropped onto the stool next to Caleb with a small grunt that Caleb registered as the sound Iharu made when his left knee was tight. A Drudger plate had clipped him four nights ago. Iharu had kept it quiet. Caleb filed that away for later.

Iharu ordered two of whatever Caleb was eating and reached over with his chopsticks to lift a fishcake out of Caleb’s bowl.

Caleb let him without turning from the bowl. "You’re up early," Caleb said.

"Had a feeling."

"You’ve been having a lot of feelings lately."

"My feelings have been accurate." Iharu chewed. "That fishcake’s good."

"That fishcake was mine."

"It was. Now it’s information."

A kid at the end of the counter, eight or nine years old, in a jacket two sizes too big, was staring at Caleb without blinking. He had a half-eaten dumpling on a stick in his hand. The stick was tilting toward the floor.

Caleb met the kid’s eye and lifted a hand.

The kid lifted his hand back.

The dumpling fell off the stick onto the floor.

Iharu choked on his noodles.

"Heroic," Iharu said when he recovered. "The Seventh’s finest. Children will remember this moment."

"Shut up."

"I’m framing this in my head."

The kid froze over the dumpling on the floor. His mother appeared from somewhere behind the curtain, swept the dumpling up in a napkin, and pushed a fresh one into his hand without breaking stride.

The replacement dumpling landed in his grip, and his eyes stayed on Caleb until Caleb went back to his bowl.

-----

The comms-chip behind his ear ticked at oh-six-forty-eight with Iris’s message: [Iris Calder: Briefing room. Now. Skip the noodles.]

Iharu glanced sideways at his half-empty bowl. "Skip the noodles, she says."

"She says."

"Disrespectful."

Caleb dropped a stack of credits on the counter. Yui pretended not to see them. Iharu reached for one last fishcake and Caleb slid the bowl out of his reach without looking. Iharu huffed once through his nose and gave up. They walked toward the door together.

At the end of the counter the kid was still watching.

Caleb stopped.

He took a credit chit out of his coat pocket and set it next to the kid’s plate.

No speech. No explanation.

Just the small nod the armorer had given him twenty minutes ago.

The kid’s attention moved from the credit chit to Caleb.

Caleb walked out.

The morning air was colder than an hour ago. The upper sectors’ billboards were starting to flicker awake, painting the corrugated roofs in soft pink. The Quarter was filling with the first wave of recruits coming off the dorm shift. Harnesses creaking. Voices calling. The noise stretching itself awake.

Caleb tugged his cap lower and walked.