Chapter 8: Chapter 8 — The One Who Knocks

The knock still sat in the air, like a ripple that refused to fade.

Three raps. Even. Certain.

Liam stood with his hand on the latch, jaw tight, telling himself it would be a stranger. A neighbor with the wrong door. A collector with a ledger and a smile that did not reach the eyes. Maybe a clerk from the Guild with a form that needed signing. Anyone but the person who had walked away.

He opened the door.

Peter stood in the hall, caught in the weak glow of the single oil lamp that kept this floor from drowning in dark. His hair was a little wild, as if the city had run its hands through it on the way here. Boots wet. Shirt wrinkled at the collar. His face held that careless ease Liam remembered too well, a small smile that acted like the world was not so heavy after all.

“Hey,” Peter said.

Liam did not answer. His first instinct was to shut the door again and let the bolt bite down. He did not move. For a heartbeat the hall felt too narrow, the air too thin. Then he stepped back.

Peter came in as if he had done it before. His eyes made a quick sweep of the room. Cot. Shelf. Rusted valve. The dead steamgraft where it lay hanging from Liam’s shoulder, a weight of cold metal and quiet gears. Peter’s gaze lingered there for the span of a breath. He did not comment.

The door clicked shut behind them. Pipes murmured somewhere in the walls. The rain had ended hours ago, and in its place the city’s breath had returned, soft and distant.

Peter tried on a joke like a coat. “Cozy. Very… efficient.”

Liam sat. The cot gave a small sound. He kept his eyes on the scuffed floorboards between his boots. The graft’s boiler plate pressed cold against his thigh as he let it hang. He had not fed it. He would not.

“You are not going to ask how I found you?” Peter asked after a moment. His tone was light, but careful beneath it.

Liam looked up, just enough to meet his eyes. “No,” he answered, a vindictive edge to his voice.

Peter’s smile tilted, not quite a grin. “I have my ways,” he said, almost in an enticing manner, dangling the information before Liam. An attempt to get him to open up? But Liam wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He let the words pass without catching on them. If he pulled on that thread, it would lead somewhere he did not want to go.

He told himself it did not matter how Peter had reached this door. He told himself he did not care that Peter had left with the priestess and the promise of warm rooms and kind eyes. He told himself many things.

Silence collected in the room. It was a different kind than before. Not the heavy fog that had sat in Liam’s chest these last days, but something thinner, edged. Peter stayed near the wall, hands loose at his sides, as if he was waiting for permission to breathe.

“I wasn’t sure you would open,” Peter said finally. “Thought you might throw me back into the hall.”

“You should have kept walking,” Liam said. The words came out rough. He had not used his voice much since the bunker.

Peter made a small sound that might have been a laugh. “Probably. But here I am.”

He took a step in, then stopped himself and leaned on the peeling plaster instead. He had the sense not to cross the room without being asked. Liam noticed and hated that he noticed.

Peter nodded toward the graft. “Is it… broken?”

“It’s fine,” Liam said.

“You aren’t running it.”

“I don’t need to.”

Peter let that sit. His eyes went to the cracked mug on the shelf, to the corner where the coat still lay in a heap from the night he came home. He was seeing the shape of Liam’s life. Empty space. Clean surfaces. Things set where they would not be knocked over because no one ever came inside to knock them over.

“I didn’t come to make trouble,” Peter said. “Or to… I don’t know. I just wanted to talk.”

Liam’s mouth tasted of iron. “About what.”

“About … I don’t know,” Peter lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “About before, I guess?”

Liam did not say that he did not want to hear it. He did not say that he did. He said nothing at all, letting lay back down on the cot. A sign of acceptance? Or of rejection? He himself wasn’t sure.

Peter for his part slid down the wall until he was on the floor, long legs stretched out, hands resting lightly on his knees. He looked smaller like that. Younger. The cocky line of his mouth softened.

Peter sat there a while, knees bent, arms loose around them, watching the faint flicker of the wall lamp. The silence wasn’t easy. Not the kind that meant rest. It scraped.

“So…” he started, then caught himself, glancing toward Liam as if checking for permission. Liam didn’t move.

Peter pressed on anyway. It hadn’t been what he wanted to say, but one had to start somewhere. “I thought I’d bring some conversation. Feels like this place could use it.”

Nothing.

Peter gestured lazily at the cot, the shelf, the steamgraft slumped like dead weight. “Man, you weren’t kidding. Spartan setup. I don’t even see food. Don’t tell me you survive off… what, just staring at the wall until it blinks first?”

Still nothing. Liam’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look up.

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Peter’s smile faltered. His voice dropped a little. “Guess it’s better than back home, though. There, I had noise all the time. Friends, family, lectures, sermons. Couldn’t find a moment to breathe. Here… you’ve got silence down to an art form.”

Liam shifted, the cot frame creaking. His eyes flicked toward the shelf, then to the floor again. He didn’t know if Peter’s words stung because they were true, or because of the casual way he said them.

Peter leaned his head back against the wall. “You’re a hard guy to talk to, you know that?”

Liam finally answered, voice low. “Then don’t.” Resentment colored the words.

Still, it earned a quiet laugh. “See, that’s the thing. You act like you don’t want me here, but you still opened the door. Let me in. You could’ve shut it in my face. You didn’t.”

Liam frowned, unsure what to say. His silence was safer than trying to untangle the knot in his chest.

Peter looked down at his hands, the joking edge slipping away. “Truth is… I didn’t know if you’d let me in. Figured you might just shut the door and disappear back into the silence. Would’ve been easier for you, right?”

Liam’s eyes narrowed. “Why’d you even bother coming to find me?”

Peter hesitated, fingers tightening slightly on his knees. For a moment, he looked like he might try to laugh it off, then gave a small shrug instead. “Maybe I just didn’t want to leave things like they were.”

Liam studied him, trying to decide if that was the truth or just another line. Either way, pressing wouldn’t get him anywhere. Better to let the words sit where they were and keep the distance between them.

Peter drew a long breath, then let it out slowly. His tone softened. “Look, I didn’t come here with a plan. I just… didn’t want to leave things like they were.”

Liam’s chest tightened at that, though he kept his face unreadable. The words touched on the one thing he hadn’t let himself name.

Peter’s gaze stayed fixed on the cracked ceiling. “If you’re not going to talk, then fine. I’ll talk. Maybe that way it won’t feel so quiet in here.”

He shifted, resting his arms on his knees, and gave a lopsided grin that tried to mask nerves. “Guess I’ll start at the beginning.”

Peter scratched at his knee as if stalling for time, then gave a short breath that could have been a laugh. “Alright. So… the beginning. My parents were the kind of people who thought the end of the world was around the corner. Religious fundamentalists. Whole lives built on waiting for the big finish.”

Liam shifted slightly on the cot. He didn’t look up.

“They dragged the whole family across the sea to the promised land,” Peter went on. “Said it was where salvation would start. Where we’d be safest when everything went down. The land itself would protect us.”

He paused, watching Liam for a flicker of reaction. Nothing.

“I had friends there,” Peter continued. “Plenty, actually. Got by on jokes, music, that kind of thing. The church part was harder. Everyone else seemed caught up in it, hanging on every word, but I never felt it the same way. I’d sit there trying to look like I belonged, nodding along as if it meant something to me too. It didn’t.”

Liam snorted before he could stop himself.

Peter grinned faintly at the sound. “Yeah. Exactly. That’s how it felt. Like smiling through a joke you didn’t get, hoping no one noticed. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes… not so much.”

Liam shifted on the cot, the dead weight of the graft tugging at his shoulder. The limb hung cold and useless, metal joints slack. He told himself it was just a story. Nothing more. But the way Peter’s voice dipped, lighter here, heavier there, made it difficult to stay detached.

Peter leaned his head back against the wall. “Anyway. For all their fire-and-brimstone speeches, my parents weren’t bad people. Just… blind. They thought they were saving me. Thought dragging me halfway across the world was love. Maybe it was, in their way. Didn’t feel like it at the time.”

He rubbed his face with both hands, then let them drop. “And then one day, all that didn’t matter anymore. Because I stepped off a curb at the wrong second.”

That caught Liam’s attention. His eyes lifted, narrowing slightly.

Peter’s mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “It was a truck. A… wagon of steel. Loud, fast, too bright in the sun. Didn’t even have time to be scared before it hit. Just… bang. Done. No pain, no slow fade. Just gone.”

Liam stared, trying to picture it. “Like a freewheeler?”

Peter shook his head. “Bigger. Meaner. Nothing like the machines here. Just… trust me, it was fast enough to make everything else not matter.” His voice dipped quieter. “Next thing I knew, I wasn’t on the street anymore.”

He hesitated there, eyes unfocused, as though replaying the memory in his head. “I was standing in front of her. A goddess. Not like the ones you’ve talked about. Not like Qunetria. She wasn’t cruel. Just… vast. Like the sky if it decided to notice you. But also warm. And she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever laid my eyes on.”

A silence stretched. Liam’s stomach coiled tight.

“She looked at me like I wasn’t supposed to be there. Said I’d died too soon, and because of that, I could choose what came next. Going back wasn’t an option, but I could start over somewhere else. She offered me a class, said it would shape the way I lived, and changed what I was inside and out. Made me godborn. Then she gave me the lute,” he lifted it by its strap, letting it dangle against his leg, “and sent me here.”

Peter let the words sit for a moment.

Liam stared at the floor. Part of him wanted to ask what made Peter so special. Why he got special treatment, while Liam stayed here. Miserable. In the dark. And alone. But another part already knew the answer: nothing ever broke right for him, so why wouldn’t the gods hand someone else everything?

Peter’s voice had softened without him realizing it. “That’s the truth. No grand purpose. No explanation. Just a goddess I’ve never seen again and powers I barely understand. And me, stuck here, trying to pretend I know what I’m doing.”

His eyes flicked sideways toward Liam. “That’s the part I don’t say out loud. Not to the priestess. Not to anyone. Only you.”

Liam’s throat felt tight. He wanted to tell him to stop talking. He wanted to ask why he was saying it at all. Instead, he kept silent.

Peter gave a weak laugh and dropped his head against the wall. “So yeah. That’s me. The foreign idiot who got flattened by a wagon and handed a songbook by a goddess.”

The words drifted into silence.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. The lamp on the wall hissed faintly, the flame inside fluttering against the glass. The pipes ticked as the city pushed heat back into the bones of the building. Beyond the thin walls, distant voices rose and fell, neighbors going about their lives as if nothing had changed.

In here, everything felt suspended.

Liam sat on the cot, the weight of his graft pulling his shoulder down, the rest of him heavy with thoughts he could not voice. He told himself Peter’s story didn’t matter. That it was just noise in the silence. But his chest felt tight, and his jaw ached from holding it shut.

Peter shifted on the floor, leaning his head back until it touched plaster. His eyes were half-closed, voice soft. “Feels better, saying it out loud. Even if it’s to the guy who answers with grunts.”

Liam’s lips twitched, though the expression never quite reached his face.

Peter cracked one eye open. “That almost a smile?”

“Don’t push it,” Liam muttered.

That earned him a laugh, quiet but real. The sound filled the room in a way Liam hadn’t realized he missed until it was there.

The silence that followed was different than before. Not scraping, not edged. Just quiet. Easier to sit in.

Liam’s eyes drifted toward the shelf. The vial of plasm still sat where he’d left it, faint light catching on the glass. His stomach tightened at the sight, but he didn’t reach for it. For once, he didn’t feel the pull. Peter’s voice was enough to drown it out.

Peter let out a slow breath, then turned his head to look at Liam fully. His expression had lost its grin, stripped down to something bare. “Liam… have you ever felt a god?”