Free Acid by Emma Pass

doors close, he starts to sag. ‘Not in here,’ I whisper fiercely. ‘There are cameras!’ I haul him upright, one arm clamped around his waist. A little voice in my head keeps asking me what I’m going to do when I get him up to my flat. I have no idea, so I ignore it.
    When the lift doors open, I peer out, my heart thudding, but the corridor leading to my flat is empty too. Fumbling my c-card from my pocket, I haul Max down it. He’s barely conscious, a dead weight against me. I don’t even want to think about what’ll happen if someone comes out of one of the other flats and sees us.
    I have to pass my card across the scanlock twice before the lights change from red to green, and it makes a horrible grinding sound as it disengages. As soon as I’ve kicked the door shut behind me, Max slides from my grip, curling up on his side with his arms clutched across his stomach. ‘Hurts,’ he groans.
    ‘Yeah, that’s what happens when you take Cloud-Nine,’ I snap. I’m more shaken up by my near-miss with Mrs Holloway than I thought.
    ‘I need some gear!’ he says. He looks up at me from beneath the hood, grimacing.
    ‘I told you, I don’t have anything like that,’ I say, thinking with panic of the neighbours beyond the flat’s skin-thin walls.
    ‘So find some,’ he snarls. His mouth twists in anger and he uncurls and hauls himself to his feet. I brace myself to fight, but as he lurches towards me his eyes roll back in his head and his legs fold underneath him like a puppet that has just had its strings cut. He lands face-down. I wait a few seconds, then cautiously approach him.
    He’s not moving. I roll him over, pushing back his hood, and when I see his grey lips and greenish face, my heart squeezes in panic. Then his eyes fly open and he sits up, coughs, and vomits a stream of bile down his front and onto the floor, missing my feet by inches.
    ‘Great,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
    By the time I’ve bunched his hoody up, wrestled it over his head and thrown it into a corner, I’m close to puking myself. I go into the kitchen, taking deep breaths. Our building’s automated recycling system broke down last week, so ACID have given all the residents special boxes to sort our recycling into until the system’s fixed, and for some reason, I’ve ended up with two. I grab the spare one from by the fridge and wedge it between Max’s knees, then clear up the mess, dropping the hoody into the washing machine and pouring half a box of detergent pods in before setting it to the highest temperature it can go.
    In the living room, I hear the unmistakable sound of Max throwing up again. When I head back in there to open the window and let in some fresh air, he’s curled around the box, his head hanging down. He mumbles something that might be
Sorry
or
Help me
, but his voice is so shaky I can’t be sure.
    Eventually, he pushes the box away and I help him over to the sofa where he crunches up, shivering. I throw the box into the incinerator chute, then find a blanket to cover Max. Only as I tuck it around his shoulders does it occur to me to check whether he has a komm. To my immense relief, he hasn’t.
    By the time he’s drifted off into an uneasy sleep, it’s completely dark outside. I pace around the room, wondering what the hell I’m gonna do. Max needs medicine, but I have no way of getting hold of the drugs to get him through CloudNine withdrawal safely. I can’t even look up any information on the kommweb, because it’d be flagged as a suspicious search and an alert would be sent to ACID. And I can’t ask Jon or Mel, because they’re away, and linking them on my komm would be way too dangerous.
    I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have, because I’m no longer in my flat but in the hallway of a house I haven’t seen in two years. Everything’s just as I remember: the high ceiling, the gold and white papered walls, the expensive paintings (real, never holocopies), the antique black and white