Once Rector was awake enough to get his boots on, he let Huey take him back to the Vaults, where he slept for almost another full day on the same bed in the sickroom where he’d first awakened. No one had given him anyplace else to sleep, so he went back to the spot he knew, and he took it.

He awoke to an empty room.

If anyone had come or gone since Houjin left him there, he had no way of knowing it, and he was alone now. But he remembered the way to the washroom, and he remembered the way to the kitchen. Since an empty bladder and a full stomach were his most pressing needs, he didn’t mind the privacy. He didn’t mind the peace and quiet, either, considering that both of the guys he knew down there were chatterboxes from the word go. But the longer he was by himself, the more he had time to think.

Thinking wasn’t his favorite thing to do, and it wasn’t his strong suit, though he didn’t consider himself a dummy by any means. No, mostly he didn’t want to think because he didn’t trust his thinking engine.

He knew he’d done bad things to his head, using all that sap over all those years. His whole life, it felt like. Well, not his whole life. The sap had a way of burning up old memories, as if it consumed them for fuel. He wanted some now, just short of desperately.

And here he’d been hoping it’d get easier as time distanced him from his last use of the stuff.

How long had it been? About a week, plenty of which was spent unconscious. Did unconscious time count, when it came to breaking a habit? A second thought came on the heels of that one: Could he find his way back to the Station unaided?

They’d have some there, obviously. He’d seen it right there, in Bishop’s workshop. Bishop hadn’t moved the packet, even after pointing out it was there and noting that Rector hadn’t made a dive for it. Maybe it’d be there still tomorrow, or whenever he could reach it next. For one awful flare of a moment, even the specter of Yaozu’s unhappy face couldn’t temper the awful need.

No. He couldn’t have any sap. He had a job to do, and Yaozu had no use for addicts.

Knowing this, remembering this, and clinging to this still didn’t take the edge off how badly he wanted the drug. But it steeled his resolve enough to keep him from setting off for King Street Station right that instant on a lark.

Barely.