Chapter Text
Mbege started the fight, bellying up to one of the guard’s pets with sneers and spit. The kid cringed and blinked, trying to fold his lanky body in on itself like it was the amount of space he took up that was giving advance. Gratifying for Mbege, but the muttered apologies weren’t the distraction they needed. When Mbege glanced over the kid’s head - mouth tweaking into ‘he was talking a big game’ lines - Murphy gave him a twitchy nod.
Approval given, Mbege grabbed the kid by the jumpsuit to wrench him up onto his toes.
‘What did you fucking call me?’ he roared.
‘I didn’t - I didn’t say anything!’
‘You callin’ me a liar?’ A front of practiced anger made Mbege’s face redden, veins throbbing in his temples and eyes bulging. The guards were already shoving their way through the jeering crowd, sparking any kid that didn’t get out of their way quick enough.
While no-one was looking, Murphy popped the tube out of the applicator - quick fingers tucking it up into his sleeve - and jammed an empty tube into its place. That was the sweet shit. One dose for him, but dry it onto rations and he could get 20 doses out of it to sell. More like 50 if he cut it with dry gel and let them snort it. It would rot out their noses, and their lungs, but what the fuck did Murphy care? What the fuck did they care? You didn’t need a nose in vacuum.
He glanced around quickly. The guards were wrenching Mbege and the kid apart. Both got sparked; Mbege got kicked while he was down. There was a caste system, even here. The flash of anger tasted like sour water, sickly and invasive.
It lingered, a taint at the back of his brain waiting for...later. When he didn’t have the next month’s luxuries stuffed in his cuff. He watched sullenly while the guards hauled Mbege to his feet, a bruise knotting his forehead and blood clotting one eye shut, and dragged him out of the hall.
‘Animals,’ the med-tech muttered, then turned unfriendly eyes to Murphy. ‘You done?’
Murphy handed the empty applicator over, pulling his best cozening smile out from under his temper. ‘Clean as a whistle, sir.’
He needn’t have bothered. All he got was a grunt and a hand waving him away. He stole the dick’s pen on the way out, flipping it through his fingers and tucking it into the back of his collar.
Mbege was already back in their cell when he got back, lying on the narrow cot.
‘You ok?’ Murphy asked.
He didn’t care, and he thought the pretence was stupid, but Mbege demanded it. They couldn’t just be alphabetically convenient partners, they had to be friendly.
‘Assholes,’ Mbege grunted. He rolled onto his side and sat up carefully, hugging his ribs with one arm. ‘You got the stuff?’
Murphy smirked and shook the tube out of his sleeve, holding it up so Mbege could see the oddly milky liquid. ‘Don’t I always?’
It didn’t take long before the first jitter-eyed kid came sniffing around. ‘Hey, Murph,’ the girl, her t-shirt tugged down to flash tits. ‘You got anything for me?’
‘Later,’ Murphy said flatly.
They’d pay more later, with a few hours of anticipation to hone their appetite. The girl looked disappointed, but hitched her t-shirt up and huffed off. A couple of months back one of the bigger kids, the ones with swollen knuckles and swagger, had tried to beat Murphy into his own personal drug mule. Murphy had gotten a cracked tooth and burst eardrum, the swaggering kid had gotten dead. So sad, not that bad. Hell, Murphy snorted to himself as he got to work, it wasn’t even that sad.
‘You ever think about going for med?’ Mbege said, out of nowhere.
Murphy looked up incredulously, squinting around his straggling hair. ‘What the fuck?’
His cellmate blinked his unpuffed eye and picked a scab from the corner of his mouth. ‘You know, after we get reviewed.’
Yeah. Even in Murphy’s head, that was drawn out and sarcastic. The likes of him and Mbege didn’t get paroled at review - they were born vacuum fodder. Still, he needed the other kid on side. He wiped his hand over his mouth and shrugged.
‘Yeah, I figure Councillor Griffin’d be all over that notion,’ he said sardonically.
Mbege leered genially. ‘I’d not mind her being all over me.’
Murphy rolled his eyes. Whatever. Sex - the whole drive of it - kinda passed him by. He had the urge, the stick hard dick first thing in the morning, but there was no...association.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Mbege pushed.
Die. They weren’t going to parole Murphy when he hit 18. He’d be lucky if they didn’t just walk him straight to the airlock. What was it Griffin had written on his records? ‘Damage to the frontal lobe due to febrile neutropenia, affecting impulse control and ability to understand consequences.' Which wasn't true, he understood the consequences. He was sick in the head, people that were sick in the head got floated. Cause, consequence and screw you, Councillor.
He didn't tell Mbege that. 'Don't know,' he said, shrugging bony shoulders. Mbege looked...expectant, so Murphy hesitated, fingers sticky with the water-free cleanser, and tried to think. 'My Dad was a janitor,' he said. 'He fixed things, made them work...right. I figure I'd like to do that.'
It felt...nice...for a minute, remembering greasy fingers and sweaty hugs. A feeling connected to a memory, not just free-floating through his brain like mis-fired neurons. The Mbege had to go and spoil it, opening his mouth. 'Lame,' he said, lying back down and closing his eyes. 'Me, I'd be a guard. Be the one giving the kicking for once.'
Murphy stared at his fingers, at the scars on his knuckles. When had he ever fixed anything? He was the kid who ruined shit, who got his dad killed and his mom... His mind shunted away from there, shying from the black rage that lived under that particular rock. He was still pissed off from earlier, and he didn't want to have to get lumbered with another roommate if he choked this one.
'Yeah,' he said instead. 'Getting to do the kicking for once, sounds good.'
He hunched over and got back to work, Mbege finally shutting up.
It was three months later that the guards came, dragging them out of their cells and through empty corridors, the lie of an alarm clattering dismally as they were hurried along. Murphy saw her with a blonde girl, clinging onto her as the guards took her away. Doctor Griffin. Councillor.
He thought about her as Jaha talked about opportunities and second chances on the way down to Earth.
'Can you fix me?' he'd asked. He'd genuinely wondered. If his dad found something broken, he'd fixed it. Or he'd at least tried.
She'd looked at him like he'd spat in her face. 'You murdered your mother,' she said. He scratched his fingers at the reminder, the scabs rough and itchy where they were healing. She'd bitten down, sharp teeth tearing his skin, but he'd ignored it, pinning her down and shoving his fingers in her mouth until she puked and coughed and SHUT UP. 'I can't fix that. If you were even one year older, we'd defer review and just float you now...I'm sorry. I can't.'
He sat next to Mbege, alphabetically convenient as always, and knew there were no second chances for people like him. Just new, different prisons.