The Blue Fire

They’re warming their hands at me. Look at them. Two night-watch technicians, palms out, like I’m a stove in a cold kitchen.

I’m not a stove. The heat coming off me is what’s left after the extraction, the part too small to bother shipping. Waste heat. The dregs of a million lives, and it’s the only warmth in this building, because the Architects don’t heat the rooms where the workers sit.

So I burn a little brighter on their shift. Out of spite, mostly. Somebody in accounts must have noticed by now. Let them.