The fresh questions prompted a wry laugh, an almost humorless smile. "Hah... friends."

It wasn't that he hadn't. It was just that the circumstances of being friends with anyone in this place were just as fucked up as everything else about it. When a person could disappear at any moment, and you spent a not-insignificant amount of time wondering whether any of this mattered...

"There's some people you're gonna want to meet, yeah." People who had nothing to do with any licensed properties, as far as Eliot was aware. People who'd become important to him.

His train of thought started jumping tracks: meeting people, parties... apartments.

"Where'd they put you, by the way? For your City-provided housing?"