Sunday, 10 February 2047

  As I emerged from the hideout, the chill of the night bit through my clothes. Curfew loomed like a steel trap; being caught wandering the streets after hours would bring consequences far worse than any reprimand at the factory. The safest option was to find a tunnel entrance and wait out the dark, out of sight from patrols.

  I crept through the tunnels, guided by faint amber lighting that bathed the walls in a warm, almost unfamiliar hue. Shadows stretched long, and the distant hum of machinery created a rhythm that felt both alien and familiar.

  Ahead, a figure emerged from the glow — a broad, red-haired woman, middle-aged, with the kind of build that suggested she had spent her life moving heavy things and didn't mind it. She fixed me with a flat stare, arms crossed, filling the corridor with a presence that had nothing to do with authority and everything to do with sheer physical fact. "What are you doing here? You don't work at my laundry. Go away."

  "Sorry, madam. I lost my transportation. Can I stay until morning, please?"

  She looked me over the way you'd assess a piece of equipment — deciding whether it was worth the storage space. Then she nodded once, turned, and led the way without another word.

  I slipped inside, finding a corner near the stacks of linens and crates. The smell of detergent and damp fabric filled the air, oddly grounding after the chaos of the night. She disappeared into the deeper corridors and left me alone. I pressed against the wall behind an industrial washing machine, muscles stiff, senses alert to every echo, and waited for dawn.

  After the factory gates opened, I entered, scanned my badge, showered, and let the routine absorb the night's residue. By the time I reached the production floor, the machinery had resumed its relentless rhythm as though nothing had happened anywhere.

  During lunch, I deliberately avoided Miller. He glanced my way, surprised, but didn't approach. I chose a table near Neil instead — a former colleague from my internship, steady and entirely unaware of the currents moving around him. Neil was kind, meticulous, utterly loyal to the Corporation. He tracked production numbers with a precision that earned him consistent reviews, and there was a quiet satisfaction in his eyes when he spoke about it — the contentment of someone who had found his place in the machine and never thought to look beyond it. In him I saw everything Miller wasn't, and the contrast made my own position feel more exposed.

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  I spent most of the shift turning over the question of reporting Miller to HR. Every angle led somewhere worse. Eventually, I let myself play it out fully.

  I imagined scheduling a meeting with Ms. Elaine Porter.

  "Good morning, Ms. Porter. I'm here to report an incident."

  She would elevator her eyes from the files, adjust her glasses, fix me with a piercing stare.

  "Tell me, employee number...?"

  "41729, madam."

  "Ah, operator." She would check her records, locate my file. "We haven't spoken since your induction two years ago. What brings you here today?"

  My hands would shake as I chose my words. "A colleague may be engaged in nonconforming behavior — activity that could harm the Corporation in terms of productivity and financial performance."

  Revenue and efficiency were the only languages that mattered here. My report would capture her attention immediately. She would analyze my body language, wait, and want more. I would describe Miller's activities carefully, omitting any mention of the Shadow District or how I had come to know any of it.

  She wasn't stupid. She would suspect my involvement.

  "Your loyalty will be rewarded," she would say. "What puzzles me is how you know so much about someone from another sector, in a different position than yours."

  I would have no answer that didn't implicate me further. The imagined office felt suddenly airless.

  I let the scenario dissolve.

  Denouncing Miller could cost me the job. Worse, they would pull at threads I couldn't control — my son's place at the EIP, my wife's standing, everything tethered to my continued compliance. Across the canteen I could see Miller talking with the red-haired woman from verification. Their conversation looked easy, familiar. I filed that away and said nothing.

  "Why are you sitting somewhere different today, Forty-Two?" Neil asked, his pink face and rounded glasses catching the cafeteria light.

  "Change of scenery," I said. "Tell me, Neil — what are you working on?"

  He leaned forward and described his spreadsheets: subtle inconsistencies he'd uncovered in the production numbers this year, variances that could have slipped past unnoticed. He had reported each one. The line ran better for it. His performance review reflected that. He was genuinely pleased, and I listened, and nodded, and thought about what it meant that he tracked numbers with exactly the precision that Miller had been quietly undermining.

  Lost in thought at my station later, I found myself back in my first weeks. The clang of metal, the hiss of steam, the bewildering maze of steel and conveyors. Every lever and gauge had felt like a riddle. I remembered the induction hall — twenty of us fresh from the Juvenile Optimization Center, absorbing the Corporation's materials, our supervisors moving among us with clipped instructions while the lights reflected off angular steel panels in sharp geometric patterns. We were expected to fit seamlessly. I remembered sensing, even then, that every choice would be logged.

  My introduction to Ellison was brief. Ms. Porter presented me alongside two other interns. I managed a smile until I caught his expression, and then I looked away and didn't look back.

  I devoured the technical pamphlets that first night, memorized every chart, proud to be part of something so vast. On my very first day I nearly walked into an unauthorized area and was shouted back toward the canteen.

  It was there I met a man with a ready laugh — stories that tugged at something from childhood, impossibly vibrant against the factory's grey. Of the people I met that day, only a handful remain. Neil. Kelly. Myself. Though I'm no longer sure what it means to count Kelly among them.