14.3

Fingers drops Vander and me off at the logistics station fifteen minutes early, right at the crest of twilight. It's wide and long, taking on the shape of a giant square in the middle of the scrubland. The front's a slab of reinforced glass and concrete, washed pale in a suffocating floodlight. A dozen drones drift over the entryway with all the flick and snap of gnats, and above the fence there are two red scanners peering out into the dark, ready to catch any slip. If Neo Arcadia has corruption, this place has order, and somehow that's the crueller of the two.

We hurry up to the checkpoint. The glass doors blink awake and spit us into a cold glass foyer where the air smells a touch alcoholic. It's cold in that weird, uneven way too: one side of the room freezing, the other barely cooled, like the ventilation system's fighting itself. Someone's clearly been tinkering with the coolant. The floor is polished to an antiseptic shine that throws back the ceiling fluorescents in long, accusing strips. To the right, beyond a bank of waist-high turnstiles, a long corridor runs deeper into the building: a straight spool of concrete punctuated by service doors and the occasional lit sign: LOADING / SORT / SECURE LOCKERS. To the left, a low mezzanine hugs the wall where conveyors drop parcels into chutes; you can see them farther in, rivers of packing foam and metal crates threading towards the belly of the station.

People in grey jumpsuits swarm the place, some rolling trolleys stacked to bursting with tools I can't even begin to name, others carrying fuel drums by hand, and a few holding tablets as if distinguishing between write-up and promotion. Typical corporate set-up.

At the centre of the foyer, separated from the rest by a transparent booth, a man sits hunched over a console, looking like he hasn't seen a good night's sleep in the last five years. We head over to him and give our names; after a moment, he flicks a switch and a miniature scanner swings down from the ceiling, flashing our bodies in pale blue. When it finishes, he tells me to hand over my visor, which I do without complaint. He then wheels back on his swivel, keys a locker on the wall behind him, slides my visor in and seals the lockplate with a fine little click that tells me, 'You're not bringing this out on to the floor without me having something to say about it'.

It's a problem – a huge one, even – because without my ability to run Routine Doppelcast and, by extension, change the logistics of the Lumina trucks, this plan will fall flat on its face. So, our first point of order will be figuring out how to get access to that locker, without him noticing. Though, for now we'll just have to deal with it, at least until we get a proper layout and understanding of this place.

"You must be Rita and Lander," a female voice calls from over my shoulder.

I turn around, feeling rather jumpy, and see a middle-aged woman standing in a white suit, who also doesn't look like she's seen a good night's sleep in the last five years, though her insomnia feels somewhat self-inflicted. A neural shunt wraps across her eyes, its interface lights twitching in restless sync with her gaze, like she's running six different checklists at once. She grips her tablet tight against her chest, stylus tapping in short, staccato bursts that sound almost like reprimands. Everything about her posture says supervision. Despite this, she offers a welcoming hand, and we shake it one by one.

"Yeah," I say. "From Forward Priority. Sorry, we're still getting used to the layout. Wasn't exactly sure where to go."

"I heard a lot about you," the woman says. "You're the veteran from Arkansas, correct?"

My skin heats up a little. Hate lying. Hate it so much. "Same girl."

She nods, jotting something on her tablet. "Good. We like punctuality here. Most of the new hires show up on the dot and still manage to look late. You're already off to a better start." She gestures for us to follow and starts down the corridor at a brisk pace.

We trail after her through a security door that slides open and swallows us into a more peculiar smell: metallic, so strong one could only assume it's blood if this weren't a place operating on wet metal and burning exhausts.

The woman's heels clack annoyingly against the floor as she strides. "Name's Cassandra Holt. I'm shift coordinator for Bay Two. You'll be with my team tonight while I run you through procedure. You'll be doing the same thing as everyone else: moving crates, scanning manifests, staying out of the loaders' way. Simple, right?"

"Simple's good," I say, smiling. "Can't say no to 'simple'."

The woman looks at me, cocking an eyebrow, before leading us up a mezzanine to an office door. She presses the ID on her lanyard to the scanner and it beeps open, bringing us into a large office – a very large one in fact – set up darkly with long panes of tinted glass overlooking the bay below. Rows of freight trucks sit beneath sodium lights, while conveyor arms glide back and forth between them, feeding crates into the open cargo maws. From up here, the workers look like insects: tiny shapes scurrying between machines, one misstep away from being crushed beneath the corporate boot overhead. Such is life in Paxson, I suppose.

Off to the right there's a simplistic desk with an even more simplistic set-up: only one monitor that spans the width of a watchtower's eye. Some plants in the corners, though they're crusted enough to pass for husks, and a transparent partition that divides the office from a smaller chamber filled with screens, each one streaming live feeds, shipments, and biometric data.

Then I notice something else: a figure standing in front of the screens, a dark shadow of a person.

Then Cassandra opens her mouth, and my skin goes cold: "Ms. Harrow, the new recruits are here."

Well, shit. Guess I'm meeting her early.

The figure turns around, and in the darkness I can just about make out her head atop that monstrous seven-foot frame. She steps out from the shadowy security office and passes through the glass doorway. She somehow looks worse than she had in the image, though still faintly familiar. She's all metal and jut, with broad shoulders, piston limbs, and armour so smooth it doesn't even look designed so much as it does grown. Cables snake from her spine into a chrome exoshell that flexes and sends a wave of pulsing purple through whatever implants pass for her veins. And that singular eye, that awful red thing fixed on the only bit of humanity left: a patch of skin on her face, and nothing more.

"You look-szzzz familiar-szzzz," Sloan Harrow says, and the lisp immediately strikes me.

I do recognise her.

This is the girl from Cierus' camp, the one who had an unhealthy obsession with technology, the one who couldn't say a sentence properly, the one who took the picture and inadvertently sent me on a sprawling witchhunt to find my memory.

Snake Lady.

Shit!

Despite this realisation, I can't remain quiet, so I speak, very softly: "I… do?"

She takes another step, looming over me with her hands behind her back. "What did you say your name was-szzzz?"

I cross my arm across my belly, heart pounding. "Rita, Miss." And perhaps in an act of bravery – or stupidity – I offer my hand for her to shake.

She stares at my hand, and her face is impossible to read; no surprise, considering there's not much face there to begin with. "And your surname?"

This is the part that scares me most of all. If she pulls the memory – Rhea Steele – out of my fake name and connects the dots, this will be over. Done before it even starts.

Shit. This is horrible luck, and a horrible decision on my part. Why did I have to pick such a similar-sounding name?

I suck the fear down my throat, drop my hand, and say: "Scale. Rita Scale, Ms. Harrow. It's nice to meet—"

"Rita Scale?" She takes another step towards me, her voice louder. "That name sounds-szzzz familiar. You look familiar."

There's silence – awful, haunting silence, and I realise there's a strong chance that I'm about to be crushed into the concrete, that we're about to be crushed into the concrete.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

But that doesn't happen – at least, not yet. Instead, Vander cuts in:

"And I'm Lander Vainclair." He has absolutely no fear in his voice whatsoever. He has one hand stuffed in his pocket while the other is, to my shock, rubbing a stick of blue lipstick across his lips.

This, thank goodness, shifts her attention.

"The engineer," Sloan says, again in her horrible, stretchy snake accent. "You could come in handy. You know anything about coolant systems-szzzz?"

Vander smacks his lips, checking the reflection off a black monitor. "Yer."

Cassandra Holt makes a noise halfway between a gasp and a groan. "Mr. Vainclair, please—"

"What does-szzzz 'yer' mean?"

"Yes," I say. "He has an accent himself, although less… particular."

But Sloan Harrow just tilts her head. "I think I might get you on that, Vainclair. As-szzzz for you, Rita, I want to make something-szzzz very clear: in this building, you are being watched – always-szzzz watched – and I don't take well to any laziness, any slacking, or any form of disobedience."

"Oh," I say. "You don't have to worry about that. I'm not here to cause any problems."

"Good," she says, "but that doesn't mean you won't be kept an eye on, closely. New recruits always… concern me. They tend to cause problems, even when they say they don't – so I need you to understand, regardless-szzzz of intention, that even when you think I'm not watching, I am." Her red eye suddenly turns blue, and a sound like heavy machinery goes off on the other side of the loading bay windows. I turn to face the sound.

Then it emerges.

From the far end of the bay, something enormous unfolds from the ceiling: a gleaming metal mass taking the form of a gigantic eye, suspended from a web of piston limbs and cable tendons. It has huge mechanical arms that reach down like the pincers of a crab, and the bulk of its body is attached to a sliding mechanism built into the loading bay's ceiling. Before long, it slides over, extends down on its pistons, and casts a harsh blue light through the office windows, directly from its iris.

"What is that?" I ask, disturbed.

"That is The Overseer," says Sloan. "Courtesy of Calyx Ward, after the need for constant surveillance became necessary. You see-szzzz, we get too many troublemakers thinking they can fool the system, steal from us, or slack off. We can't afford unproductivity, so The Overseer makes sure-szzzz you aren't here to game me or your employer."

"A giant er eyeball with claws," says Vander. "What happens if someone does something er wrong?"

"Use-szzzz your imagination," Sloan says, and her eye turns red again. The Overseer retracts back up and out of sight, sliding off somewhere else. I can't imagine anyone doing anything out of line with something that monstrous hanging over them, so I guess from that point of view it's an effective productivity strategy, even if it is downright insane.

"The rules are simple: do your job, avoid mistakes, and don't try to game the system. If I find out any of you are here to screw us over, I'll deal with you personally. Do I make myself clear?"

I nod, thinking this isn't the sort of place where ideas are up for debate. "Yes, Ms. Harrow, but like I said, you don't have to worry about any of that. We're just here to do a job and get paid."

"Good," Sloan says. "You and I will have to get better acquainted sometime-szzzz, Rita. I have the feeling you'll become quite the character."

"... Is that a good thing?" I ask.

She tilts her head. "I don't know why, but you seem-szzzz so familiar to me, as if I've seen you in a past life. You never happened to live in The Scrubs-szzzz, did you?"

My heart jumps again. "No, never. Arkansas, born and raised. Moved to Paxson a couple years ago looking for a new job. I've been unemployed for a while and haven't been doing so well. Not many people want to hire a disabled person, at least not for heavy labour jobs like this."

"Cassandra will get you better accustomed," Sloan says, turning to her. "Bring Rita down to Bay 2 and get her started-szzzz on manifest rotation. No heavy labour yet, until she's done the basics. Simple scan-and-tag off the conveyor. Can you handle that, Rita-szzzz?"

"Yeh-yeah," I say, unsure of what she means exactly.

A nod, and then a sigh. She walks past me and Vander. Even though Vander is quite a tall man, he barely comes up to Sloan's ear – if you can call an embedded circle an 'ear'. "You, Lander, will be joining me to work on the coolant system-szzzz." And she makes her way over to the desk on the far right; she reaches into the drawer and pulls out a lanyard, attached to which is a large control shard of some sort.

That must be it, the logistical shard, stored for safe keeping with her ID. That's the second problem: finding a window of opportunity to copy that data using Doppelcast Routine. Once I find a way to get my visor without that man in the booth noticing, I'll have to then come up with a plan to separate her from the shard, and with this much security – especially a giant eye playing corporate God – that seems almost impossible.

I'll have to think it through in greater detail. Maybe Fingers or Dance can put their heads together and guide me in the right direction off-hours. I don't know. But things aren't looking too great either way.

Afterwards, Cassandra brings me to one of the changing rooms deep in the station, where she hands me a plastic package of a grey jumpsuit along with a key for a clothing locker, telling me to change. She also gives me an employee number – 8-5-1-8-1-5 – and tells me there's a hand scanner inside where I can clock in. When I step inside, there's another woman undressing herself; she has slicked-back crimson hair, is pale, and, for the third time this hour, also seems like someone who hasn't seen a good night's sleep in the last five years. That really seals the deal that that's the theme of this place.

She gives me a funny look, but I ignore her, head over to the locker that matches the key number – twelve – unlock it, and start undressing. Just when I strip down to my underwear, I notice she still hasn't stopped looking at me. It's annoying, especially since I hate getting undressed with other people looking. I've been like that ever since I got undressed back in the Old Mill, for the job with Li Wei and his goons, and this particular case feels like she's judging me. I do my best to push her eyes aside and dress into the grey jumpsuit, tuck my right sleeve through the armhole so it's not hanging loose, and lock my clothes in the locker, hoping that the girl would have left by now. But when I turn around, she's still standing there, though now she's dressed up, meaning she doesn't have a reason to be here, and she has her arms crossed firmly as she leans against the wall, staring right into my eyes.

It's at that point that I have to address it: "Do you have a problem or something?"

"I don't," the woman says, "but you do."

I scowl. "What do you mean 'I do?'"

She unfolds her arms, revealing a phone; she turns the screen towards me and shows an image.

When I see it, my heart drops.

It's the photograph taken at The Ghost in Satin, from months ago after we'd snuck in to raise the drawbridge. Hell, in the picture I'm wearing a strikingly similar grey jumpsuit to the one I'm wearing now; there's almost no denying that that's me.

"You know Sloan doesn't take kindly to criminals," the woman says.

My throat goes dry. "That's not me." Worth a shot, anyway.

"Sure looks like you," she says. "No right arm. Pretended to be Juno Harlyn, a disabled vet who became an electrician. Remind me, what was the story you told at the interview? Cassandra said something about a Rita Scale who had one arm and was also a veteran?"

I stay silent for a moment, looking at her sternly. The look loosens. "Look, please don't say anything."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Because I'm not here to start trouble," I say, forcing the words out slow, even. "I just need the paycheck. That's all."

She smirks, tilting her head. "Everyone here just needs the paycheck. The difference is, they're not wanted up north."

"It's not like I'm a bad person," I say. "I just had to make money – do a quick job. I had no other options but that or starve. Please, I only just got here."

"Forced to do crime, huh?"

"Yes. Neo Arcadia isn't exactly handing out job opportunities, especially since the market got flooded with androids." I go quiet before continuing. "I finally got this job to turn my life around; I'd really appreciate it if you didn't say anything."

She hums, folding her arms again. "What's your real name then?"

I eye her with suspicion, unsure of what she'll do. I stuff the key in my front jumpsuit pocket, fiddling with the flap nervously. "It really is Rita," I say. "Like I said, I'm just trying to turn my life around. I had a bad spell in Neo Arcadia where I couldn't land a job. I found one here. I'm not asking for much, just a break." I go silent. "Besides, I didn't hurt anyone."

She hums once again, biting her bottom lip curiously. "Not sure I believe it," she says. Then, reluctantly: "But alright, I'll take your word for it, Reee-tah." She drags out the syllable. "As long as you don't cause any problems, it should be fine."

I smile with relief. "Thanks."

A smirk. "Don't mention it." She offers her hand. "Name's Rivena, but everyone calls me Riven."

The second handshake today. Hers is quite firm, however, like it's been muscled up from years of manual labour. "That's a nice name. Have you been here long?"

"Five years," she says, "long before the big eye in the sky."

"Yeah," I say. "That thing looks terrifying. And a bit extreme."

"It's Sloan's way of monitoring everyone at once," she says, walking over to a clock-in terminal. She types in a code, places her hand on the scanner, and watches as the clock-in time shows up: 21:00. I head over and do the same.

"Do many people slack off then?" I ask.

"Oh, they do," she says amiably, "because Big Eye in the Sky has a weakness. I'll show it to you sometime, Reee-tah. But for now, it's time for you to get your hands – or, sorry, hand – dirty."

"Don't worry about it," I say, chuckling. "Friends call me Mono for this very reason."

"Mono," she says. "I like that name. Hope it sticks."

I follow her out the door, with only one thought running through my mind:

I hope so too.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.