HIT ME HARDER

The man sitting next to Kai in the back of the car breathed through his mouth.Loud. Wet. Like a dog. A very large dog in a three-thousand-pound suit who had forgotten, somewhere between the tailor and the car, that humans were supposed to inhale through their noses. His name was Greg. Not Kai's roommate Greg. A different Greg. A bigger Greg. A Greg with a neck that had its own postal code.Kai sat between Greg and another man whose name he hadn't been given. The second man didn't breathe at all. Or did it so quietly that Kai couldn't tell. He just stared at the window. At the streetlights passing. At nothing. His hands were on his knees. Very still. Very clean. Manicured nails. Kai looked at those nails and thought, "those are not fighting nails. Those are 'I have never washed a dish in my life' nails."The driver had a name. Terry. Terry had introduced himself. "I'm Terry." Then he'd driven. That was twenty minutes ago. Terry had not spoken since. Terry drove like a man who had been

The first kilometre was the worst.Not because of the ribs. The ribs were bad. Four of them, broken, singing a little song inside his chest every time he breathed, a song that sounded like a man stepping on dry pasta. Not because of the collarbone, which had gone from "broken" to "broken and angry" somewhere around the second traffic light. Not because of his bare feet, which had stepped on something wet and cold and probably alive in the first thirty seconds and he had chosen, consciously, with the full authority of a man in penguin pyjamas at two in the morning, not to look down.The first kilometre was the worst because of the cameras.Northside had cameras. Everywhere. On every pole. On every building. On every shop front and every traffic light and every ATM and every bus stop. Cameras that belonged to the city and cameras that belonged to the Vane family and cameras that belonged to people who just liked watching other people walk. And Kai Ashford was walking. Barefoot. In pengu

The wall cracked on the seventh punch.Not a big crack. A small one. A thin one. A crack that said, "I was a perfectly good wall and now I am slightly less perfectly good." Kai pulled his fist back. Looked at it. Looked at the wall. Looked at his fist again. His knuckles were red. Not bleeding. Red. Warm. The warmth was spreading. Up his wrist. Up his forearm. Not hot. Not painful. Just warm. Like holding a mug of tea in a cold kitchen. Like putting your hand on a radiator in November. Like the hand of a father you don't remember, on the top of your head, in a house that burned down twenty years ago.He hit the wall again. ×8. The crack grew. ×9. A piece of plaster fell. Hit his foot. His bare foot. His sockless foot, because Greg's grey socks were in the wash, because Greg had put them in the wash, because Greg was a man who washed socks, who owned a washing machine, who understood the basic human concept of "clean clothes," which Kai did not, because Kai's washing machine was a buck