Chapter 19

The next day, the Compound summoned Raelin to triage. A doctor unwound the bandage from his hand, easing the cloth away where it clung to the cuts, then peeled the dressing from his side. The shockstick burn had faded to a dark patch ringed with yellow bruising. She had him make a fist, bend his right knee, and fill his lungs. His knee ached when fully bent, and his ribs tightened near the end of a deep breath, although neither prevented him from moving. When Raelin pulled down his shirt, the dark mark showed through the square opening cut into it.

At the recovery panel, FILTER SORTING appeared among Raelin’s options again. The same option came up for Harl, so they took neighboring stations in Sorting Room 3. By midafternoon, Harl had emptied his bin and leaned over to help, only to see the last filter disappear into STRIP. Raelin rose from the stool with his right knee stiff from hours of sitting, but each step toward the Compound gates loosened it.

Several hours remained before curfew, so Raelin went to the Undertown merchants who had hired him for odd jobs in the past. They greeted him the way they always had, but when he asked about work, they only glanced at his wrist and shook their heads.

Farther into the market, Raelin stopped at a salvage stall. A stocky man with a graying beard crouched beside a mixed lot spread across a tarp, turning a corroded fitting between grease-darkened fingers. Several of the stock bins behind him were empty.

“Bren.”

Bren looked up and smiled. “Raelin. Good to see you.” Then he noticed the gray OmniLink. “Oracle’s grace. What happened?”

“Long story.”

“Are you all right?”

“Enough to work.” Raelin nodded toward the tarp. “Need a hand?”

“I do. But I can’t hire you.”

“The points don’t have to go to me. Send them to Kiri, or pay me in food.”

“It doesn’t matter how I pay you. If you’re caught working here, I could lose points for unauthorized labor.”

“But you might not.”

“That’s the trouble.” Bren looked at the empty bins. “I can’t afford to find out. I’m sorry.”

Raelin followed the Undertown road back to the Compound through the thinning market crowd. He went to one of the recovery panels and entered 1847 again. FILTER SORTING COMPLETE appeared with +3 POINTS beneath it. The three spaces above the selection buttons remained blank. Raelin pressed each button in turn and waited. After a moment, he stepped away and joined the evening ration queue stretching across the concourse.

Mara and Harl were already eating when Raelin carried his tray into the mess hall. Mara shifted down the bench as he approached, opening a place beside her.

“Left in a hurry,” Harl said after Raelin sat. “Find what you were after?”

Raelin pinched a piece from the end of his ration bar. “I was looking for work and found it, but no one would hire me.”

“Unauthorized labor?” Mara asked.

Raelin nodded. “I even offered to work just for food, but it made no difference. The panel had nothing else for me, either.”

“So what’s your next move?” Mara asked.

“The five-point assignments,” Raelin said. “I’ll take one every day and keep going until the debt is gone. That should get me out of here in two hundred and one days.”

“After drain clearing yesterday, I was relieved when sorting came up today,” Harl said. “You mean to do work like that for two hundred days straight?”

“I don’t really have any other way,” Raelin said.

The next morning, REFUSE HAULING was the only assignment on Raelin’s panel worth five points. He selected it and joined the residents passing through the rear gates. The reclamation yard smelled of sour waste and caustic cleaner. Handcarts stood in two rows beneath assignment displays, their wheels clattering as workers found their numbers and pulled away.

At the far end of the yard, two residents were emptying a handcart, heaving sealed refuse sacks over the waist-high rim of a deep loading hopper. A warning buzzer sounded while one of them still held a sack. He threw it in, and both backed away before the buzzer stopped. The motor rose to a whine as a hydraulic ram drove across the hopper floor, forcing the refuse into a long container behind it.

Raelin found 1847 glowing above a high-sided handcart. A screen set into its handle mapped his section of the Compound. Twenty-four pickup markers spread from the mess hall and sanitation blocks through several housing rows. Five routes connected the markers to the compactor and back.

Raelin glanced along the carts still waiting in the row. Several more were marked REFUSE HAULING. Their routes crossed many of the same service lanes, though their pickup markers differed. In the lower corner of his screen, 08:14 appeared above COMPLETE BY 18:00. Ahead, cart wheels rattled as the other haulers strode toward the gate. Raelin took a pair of stiff gloves from the cart bed, pulled them on, and followed with his cart in tow.

Raelin followed the other haulers until their routes split, then stopped and turned back to the screen. On the map, M12 glowed white behind the mess hall. He pulled the cart into the service lane, where M12 was stenciled on the wall above a row of lidded refuse bins. Above them, a teal-lit Eye was fixed to the wall, angled along the bins and the service lane.

At a nearby pickup point, a woman rolled her cart alongside the bins and set the brake. She opened the first lid, gathered the top of the liner, and knotted it shut. With one boot against the bin’s base, she worked the sack loose a few inches at a time, then dragged it onto the rim. She shifted her grip and heaved it over the cart’s side. After fitting a fresh liner from a roll mounted on the wall, she reached for the next lid.

At M12, he pulled his cart beside the first bin and set the brake. He knotted the liner, wedged one boot against the bin’s base, and hauled upward, trying to copy the woman’s technique, but the sack refused to move. On his second attempt, he rocked it from side to side as he pulled. He had worked it halfway out when a sharp pain shot through his right hand, forcing his fingers open and sending the sack sliding back into the bin. He flexed his fingers inside the stiff glove and waited for the throbbing to ease.

Rather than try again, Raelin tipped the bin onto its side and pulled the sack free. It slid easily onto the lane, but he had to gather it against his chest and strain to lift it over the cart’s side.

Raelin set the empty bin upright and fitted it with a fresh liner. By the time he lowered the lid, the woman had emptied the remaining bins at her pickup point and was pulling her cart away. Five full bins remained at M12.

Raelin emptied the other five bins the same way. When he lowered the last lid, his collar was damp with sweat, and he rested his forearms on the cart’s side until his breathing steadied. The six sacks lay across the cart bed with room for more above them.

Before moving on, Raelin checked the map. M12 had dimmed, and the next marker glowed three housing rows to the east. He took the handle and followed the service lane east until he reached two bins beside a housing block.

Raelin tipped both bins as before and pulled the sacks free. He crouched for each one, gathered it against his chest, and straightened to lift it into the cart. They were lighter than the mess-hall refuse, but his right hand still throbbed when he fitted a fresh liner into the second bin. Another hauler passed behind him at a brisk walk with a cart piled nearly to the rim. Raelin sighed and turned back to the map.

Only two of the twenty-four markers had dimmed. The next glowed outside a sanitation block on the far side of the housing rows, and from there the white line ran back to the compactor. Raelin pulled the cart across the Compound to the sanitation entrance, where three bins stood beneath another Eye.

Raelin emptied the three bins and fitted fresh liners. The final sack brought the load close to the rim, so he took hold of the cart’s handle and started toward the reclamation yard. It rolled steadily behind him but was heavier to handle than before.

Two haulers with loaded carts waited their turn at the hopper when Raelin arrived. He pulled his cart into line behind them. At the front, the woman from before rolled her final sack over the rim as the warning buzzer sounded. She pulled her empty cart fully behind the yellow line, swung it into the outbound lane beside the queue, and headed toward the service lanes. The motor began to whine behind her as she passed Raelin.

“Skyline boy,” she called over the rising whine of the motor. “You’d better pick up the pace if you want to finish on time. Catch your breath while you wait here, not out on the route.”

“Thanks,” Raelin called after her.

He kept one hand on the handle and rolled his shoulders while the ram completed its cycle. When the machine fell quiet, the hauler ahead pulled forward to the hopper, and Raelin moved up to the yellow line.

The hauler ahead emptied his cart, then pulled away as the next compactor cycle began. When Raelin’s turn came, he pulled forward and set the brake beside the hopper. He dragged the nearest sack to the edge of the cart and lifted it over the hopper’s rim.

Raelin worked straight through the load, reaching for each sack as soon as the previous one cleared the rim. The warning buzzer sounded as he dragged the final sack to the edge. He heaved it over the rim and pulled his empty cart behind the yellow line. The next marker already glowed on the map. Raelin checked its position, turned into the outbound lane, and kept moving.

He completed two more loads, filling the cart, emptying it at the hopper, and setting out again. By the time half the pickup markers had dimmed, his right hand throbbed whenever he tightened it around a sack, and each lift pulled at his bruised side. The heaviest sacks no longer cleared the cart’s rim in one motion. He had to brace them against the side, shift his grip, and shove them over.

The fourth load took longer. Twice, pain sharpened beneath Raelin’s ribs midway through a lift, forcing him to set the sack down and wait before trying again. After he emptied the load at the hopper, the screen showed five pickup markers remaining and 16:05 above COMPLETE BY 18:00.

Raelin worked through the remaining five pickup points without stopping to rest, loading the cart high enough that sacks had to be balanced across the top. When the final marker dimmed, the screen read 17:37. Raelin turned the cart toward the reclamation yard and headed back at a hurried walk.

No one was waiting at the hopper when Raelin rushed into the yard. He set the brake and threw the sacks over the rim one by one. COMPLETE replaced the map when the last one dropped into the hopper, only a few minutes before the deadline. Raelin pulled the empty cart behind the yellow line and slumped to the ground beside it, breathing hard.

Eventually, Raelin entered the mess hall with his tray in his left hand, taking short, careful steps between the tables. Mara looked up and nudged Harl. He stood and took the tray, and Raelin eased onto the bench beside her.

“Five points?” Mara asked.

Raelin nodded. His right hand rested half-curled on his thigh. He tried to draw a deeper breath, but the ache beneath his ribs sharpened before his lungs were full.

Harl set the tray in front of him. “And tomorrow?”

Raelin picked up the ration bar with his left hand and sighed. “The first of two hundred more.”

The next morning, Raelin woke stiff from the previous day’s hauling and used the wall to steady himself as he rose from the mat. The cuts in his right hand burned with every pass of the cleaning cloth, and bending over the mat sent pain through his bruised side. At the recovery panel, DRAIN CLEARING was the only assignment worth five points. He considered the lower-paying choices, but forced himself to press the button beneath DRAIN CLEARING.

Residents assigned to drain clearing collected grate hooks, jointed rods, and lidded buckets from the equipment rack behind the sanitation blocks, then split up across the Compound. The overhead screen listed eight blocked drains beside 1847, from the western housing rows to the reclamation yard.

At the first drain, cloudy water had risen through the grate and pooled across the service lane. Greasy foam and strands of hair clung to the bars, and the water smelled of old soap and rot. Raelin pulled on rubber gauntlets, slipped the grate hook through an opening, and caught it beneath a crossbar. He braced his boots and hauled until the grate came free. Pain cut through his bruised side as he dragged it aside, exposing the flooded basin.

Raelin spent the next several hours lifting grates, dragging clots of hair and grease from the drains, and hauling lidded buckets of sludge away for disposal. By the sixth, his injured hand throbbed around the bucket handle, and the bucket’s weight strained his bruised side with every step.

At the seventh drain, Raelin’s boot slipped in the greasy overflow as he dragged the grate aside. He caught himself against a wall, but his left ankle twisted beneath him. When he put his weight on it again, pain flared through the joint.

Raelin forced himself to finish the seventh drain before limping to the eighth. Once the final blockage was clear, he returned the equipment and headed for the mess hall. Wastewater had dried in streaks across his clothes. He had made it only a few steps between the tables when his left ankle buckled. He caught himself on an empty table with his right forearm, set down his tray, and lowered himself onto the bench with his left leg extended.

Mara and Harl left their trays at their usual table and hurried over. Mara stopped across from him while Harl moved to his side.

“Are you all right?” Mara asked. “What happened?”

“I slipped clearing one of the drains and twisted my ankle,” Raelin said. “It wasn’t this bad at first.”

“Those grates are nasty once the runoff gets soapy,” Harl said. “There’s a reason they pay five points for jobs like that. Keep pushing yourself and sooner or later you’ll miss a deadline. One penalty can wipe out days of work.”

Raelin looked down at his ankle, then back at Harl. “You’re right,” he said.

Mara and Harl retrieved their trays and joined him at the empty table. They traded complaints about the ration bars, then asked Raelin to settle an argument over their last game of Conduit. He broke his ration bar into small pieces with his left hand and answered with no more than a word or two. After a while, they stopped talking, and the three of them finished their meals in silence.

The next morning, Raelin limped to the recovery panel. The cuts in his right hand stung when he closed his fingers, and the bruise beneath his ribs ached whenever he bent. The panel offered MESS HALL SANITATION for +4 points, SERVICE-LANE CLEANING for +4, and REFUSE HAULING for +5. None of the tasks he hadn’t tried yet sounded like they could be done sitting.

Refuse hauling was out, and service-lane cleaning sounded like a full day of walking. Raelin pressed the button beneath MESS HALL SANITATION. At least the mess hall had benches.

The benches offered no relief. Raelin spent the day carrying stacks of returned trays, wiping tables and seats, and scrubbing dried ration paste from the floor beneath them.

Finally, MESS HALL SANITATION COMPLETE appeared on the assignment display with +4 POINTS beneath it. Raelin lowered himself onto the nearest bench. He ached all over, and the injuries from his climb hurt more than they had when the doctor removed his bandages.

Two hundred days had sounded possible when he laid out the plan. Three days later, Raelin knew he could not earn his way out like this. Tomorrow, he would tell Kiri he had been wrong.