The Basement Wolf

Chapter 19. Offline

The knock was three short taps, a pause, then two more. Roy unhooked the chain and let Bradley slip in sideways, a cardboard pizza box balanced on his forearm and a cheap tablet tucked under the other.

The safe house smelled like old dust and new fear. Liam lay on the cot, eyes open, turned toward the wall as if he could scrape the paint with his stare. Sandra’s shape was still in the room—knees on the floor where she’d dropped earlier—but now she stood, too stiff to be steady.

Roy jerked his chin toward the boy, then toward the tiny kitchenette. “He heard himself out,” he murmured to Bradley. “Nothing left in the room but echoes. They cut.” He looked older when he said it. “He’s stuck in hate.”

Bradley set the box on the table and put the tablet beside it. “Good place to be stuck,” he said quietly. “Hate has edges. You can put your hands on it.” He flicked a look at Sandra. “You should take air.”

She nodded without looking at either of them. Her voice was hoarse. “I’ll be outside.” She slipped past Bradley and out the door, leaving it ajar just enough to prove she hadn’t run.

Roy stayed. “You sure?”

“Let me try,” Bradley said.

Roy grunted and folded himself into the armchair, big hands loose on his knees. “I’ll be furniture.”

Bradley stood over the pizza for a second, breathing in the simple heat, the normal. He rolled his sleeve an inch and touched the strip of copper at his wrist until the metal bit skin. He imagined turning a dial in his chest, shoving his presence down until the room felt like weather without wind.

He walked to the cot and crouched, not too close. “I brought pepperoni,” he said to the air between them.

No answer.

“And,” he added, setting the tablet on the floor, “a dinosaur that plays video games.”

A glance, quick and sideways. Ten-year-old skepticism paired with ten-year-old curiosity. “That’s not a dinosaur.”

“Not with that attitude.” Bradley tapped the power button. The screen woke to a lock screen with a cartoon fox and a profile named Guest. No Wi-Fi bars. “No internet,” he said. “No messages. Just dumb games.” He slid it across the floor until it stopped a palm’s width from Liam’s fingers.

Silence stretched. Roy didn’t breathe loud enough to register.

Bradley stood, went back to the table, and opened the box. Grease perfume rushed the room. He took a slice, folded it, bit in, pretended to care only about the pizza, not about the boy he could feel watching him from behind his shoulder.

He chewed, then looked over, casual. “You want one?”

Nothing. A longer stare this time, though, and a swallow that wasn’t about spit.

“You don’t have to like me,” Bradley said, turning fully, one hand full of pizza, the other empty. “You don’t have to like her. Hunger doesn’t care.”

He put a slice on a napkin and set it on the floor within reach. Then he retreated two steps and sat cross-legged on the worn rug, exactly where Liam would have to look past him to reach the food. He set his own slice on the box lid and wiped his fingers on his jeans.

The tablet dinged softly. A game’s menu pulsed—bright cars in brighter colors, Split-Screen blinking.

Liam moved. Not much—just a shift of weight that made the cot creak. Then a hand crept down, grabbed the napkin, dragged the triangle of heat onto the mattress like stealing. He took a bite like the pizza had insulted him.

Bradley didn’t smile. “Good idea,” he said. “Starving is over-rated.”

Another bite. Another swallow. The tightness around the boy’s eyes eased a millimeter. He slid off the cot to the floor, knees up, back to the wall. He ate with suspicion, like the food might change its mind halfway through.

“Race?” Bradley asked, as if they’d already decided. He nudged the tablet with a knuckle. “No internet. Just local. You can crash me into a wall without witnesses.”

Liam’s lip twitched—the ghost of almost. He wiped his fingers on the blanket and, without committing to wanting anything, tapped Split-Screen. Two cars idled on a cartoon track. Bradley took the left, Liam took the right.

“Accelerate is the big pedal,” Bradley said mildly. “Everything else is forgiveness.”

They raced. Liam drove like a trapped animal, slamming into guardrails, overcorrecting, refusing to ask for help. Bradley skidded to keep pace, let himself spin out when Liam did, laughed under his breath when the game made their cars flip like coins. Grease stained the cardboard in a spreading sun.

Roy watched, saying nothing. He looked like a cliff pretending to be a chair.

After two laps, Liam’s breath came steadier. He shoved hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist and spoke without looking up. “You know my name.”

“Yeah,” Bradley said.

“You were there.” Not a question. A memory stitching itself with thread it didn’t trust.

“I was nearby,” Bradley said. “Today. And before.”

“My father hates you.”

“Your father hates gravity when it works without his permission.”

Liam’s mouth flattened. He dinged a digital cone and laughed despite himself when Bradley’s car did the same a second later. “He said she left me.”

Bradley’s heart tightened, but he kept his eyes on the screen. “He says a lot of things that crack a person clean in two.”

Liam’s fingers tightened around the tablet’s edge. “He said she ran to be with—” He cut himself off, jaw knotting. “With someone.”

Bradley didn’t rush in. He didn’t touch the boy’s story. He just breathed slow, hoping the room would learn the rhythm. “He hurt you,” he said simply. “He hurt you when you were as perfect as any ten-year-old can be. He locked doors when you were loud and when you were quiet. He picked rules like teeth to fit his bite.” He let the car miss a curve. “None of that is on you.”

Liam’s voice came from somewhere scraped raw. “She didn’t come.”

“She was taken from you,” Bradley said, still level. “That’s different from leaving.”

“She wasn’t there. That feels the same.”

“Yeah,” Bradley said. “It does.” He swallowed. “You’re allowed to hate the hole where a person should have been. That’s not a crime.”

The boy’s shoulders rose, fell—one two three—like he was lifting something heavy alone. They drove in silence for another lap, the game’s cartoon crowd roaring for ghosts.

Finally Liam said, “If I believe you, then I have to feel something else.” His voice was smaller now, and older. “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“You don’t have to do anything with it tonight,” Bradley said. “You can park it like a car you’re not ready to drive.”

Liam snorted. “I’m not allowed to drive.”

“Exactly. So don’t.” Bradley flashed a quick look at him. “You can play and eat and sleep. You can let your brain take a shower. The truth will still be there when you dry off.”

Liam’s mouth did the almost-again. He chewed the last bite of pizza, then licked sauce from his thumb with a focus that belonged to hunger, not history. “You talk weird.”

“I’m very old,” Bradley said gravely.

“How old?”

“Older than pizza.”

“Liar,” Liam said, and this time there was no barbed wire in it.

Bradley dropped his car into a wall and made a big show of it. Liam’s laugh broke free for an instant, clean as a bell. Then he slammed his thumb and took the win. He didn’t crow. He didn’t look at Bradley. He just set the tablet down between them like a boundary he could control.

The front door whispered. Sandra slipped back in, cheeks cold-flushed from the wind, eyes rimmed in red she hadn’t given Roy or Bradley permission to see. She stopped in the doorway.

On the rug: the tablet glowing with a victory screen, the pizza box yawning empty, Bradley and Liam shoulder to shoulder but not touching, both of them breathing like two people who’d remembered how.

Liam didn’t look up. He tapped Rematch.

Sandra pressed her lips together to stop them from shaking, then let them move anyway. She mouthed, thank you.

Bradley didn’t answer out loud. He met her eyes for a heartbeat and dipped his chin once, as if to say: I didn’t fix anything. I just made room for the part that can be fixed later.

Roy pushed himself out of the chair and gave Bradley a look that wasn’t quite approval and wasn’t quite relief. “I’ll take watch,” he muttered, and lumbered to the window.

Sandra moved to the sofa and sat on the very edge, hands folded so tight her knuckles bleached. She let the game’s ridiculous music fill the space where her words couldn’t go. She let the smell of pizza and the glow of pixels do the quiet work of normal.

Liam won again. He didn’t smile big. But something in his face uncoiled a fraction, something that wasn’t hate loosening its grip just enough to let breath through.

He glanced up, accidentally, and met Sandra’s eyes. The look lasted a second, and then he dropped it like it burned. “I’m only playing,” he said to the air, to her, to himself.

“I know,” she said, voice steady for the first time all night. “That’s enough.”

Bradley nudged the tablet back to Start and leaned away, making himself small. The copper at his wrist bit skin and stayed there.

Outside, the wind shifted and carried the city’s indifferent noises across the glass. Inside, there were crumbs and greasy napkins and a boy who didn’t have to be perfect to be allowed to be awake.

For tonight, it would do. Tomorrow had teeth. But tonight had a cheap tablet with no internet, a cardboard box gone empty, and a mother who could say thank you without using her voice.