Credits. I need credits.

I found myself on the way to Emmett’s dormitory after having tried to get dinner at the mess hall. My classes didn’t start until the next morning, and I’d wanted to have a warm meal and fill my night with some relaxation before diving into what the academy program had in store for me as a student. But then, one of the kiosks had embarrassingly chirped and buzzed at me, informing me that my meals were no longer provided for.

The doctor had said something about getting a job to earn credits, but I needed to figure out how to do that or what types of jobs this city had that I'd qualify for. And Dex’s database had few particulars when it came to that topic. So, the next best thing was to enlist the help of my student companion.

My stomach rumbled as I climbed the stairs to floor seven, where Emmett said his dormitory was. I clutched my abdomen and groaned. Who knew how long it would take me to even get a job and earn these so-called credits? I might have to go without food for the foreseeable future. But maybe Emmett could help with that, as well…. However, I wasn't keen to take advantage of the only possible friend I'd made so far.

Once I made it to the 7th floor, my stomach feeling even more deprived of food after the climb, I hurried my steps down the hall of many narrow dormitory doors. It looked exactly the same as the floor I slept on, with red rugs stretching through the length of the entire corridor and bare maroon-red walls. Decoration did not act as a necessity on the dormitory floors when it did on almost all others in the academy. Perhaps to avoid the destruction of expensive art pieces by misbehaving students?

Room 103, I recalled Emmett telling me, scanning over the bronze numbers hammered into each door.

His door was one of the first closest to the stairs. Just as I knocked, I had a thought that he might be in the mess hall or a class. I grimaced, hoping that wasn’t the case, then felt relieved once the door swung open and revealed a smiling, whisker-filled face.

“Rayden! Good to see you.”

“Hey, Emmett. Good to see you, too,” I responded with my own smile, though it took great effort to try to match his enthusiasm with my expression. “You said I could come here if I needed anything?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Of course." Emmett waved slightly furry hands and stepped aside, gesturing for me to come in.

I accepted the invitation and stepped into a room identical to mine, with a tiny window high in the top corner, allowing only a sliver of moonlight to light the space. The rest of the light came from a string of blue and purple lights contained in marble-sized orbs that Emmett must’ve hung on the wall above his desk. The glow from the orbs lit up the entire desk, revealing a stack of papers with mounds of words and symbols scrawled over every inch. Next to the papers rested a slim tablet with just as many words displayed on the screen.

“I was just doing some studying,” Emmett said with a nod at the stacks of papers.

I whistled, wondering what I’d gotten myself into as a student. Was there that much schoolwork to do every day? Even after classes?

“Please, sit wherever you’d like,” he insisted.

I opted to sit on the edge of Emmett’s neatly made bed and interlaced my fingers over my lap. Emmett sat just in front of me with his legs crossed underneath him.

“What can I help you with, Rayden?”

“Oh, uh…” I ran a hand through my messy curls and shifted my eyes downward.

How do I even ask?

My stomach did the job for me as I hesitated, growling at volumes that brought red to my cheeks.

“Are you hungry?” Emmett said with wide eyes. “They told me you might need help finding a way to earn credits and pay for food. But if you’re hungry now…”

The boy crawled on his hands and disappeared underneath his desk. The movement looked very cat-like. He re-emerged with a wooden crate and pulled the container between us on the floor.

“I always have a supply of snacks. Take whatever you want, and then I’ll tell you where you need to go to find a job.”

My shoulders sank in relief at the sight of the piles of fruit and dried pieces of meat. There were even a few bread rolls peeking out from the food supply.

With an encouraging look from Emmett, I piled some of the snacks into my eager arms. I depleted his supply by at least half. I dumped each food item onto my lap as I sat back down on the bed and reached for the juicy-looking red ball threatening to roll off my knees. The word “apple” flashed through my mind as Dex’s database informed me of the fruit's name. I sunk my teeth into the crunchy flesh, and my eyes widened as dribbles of its juice landed on my tongue.

“Oh…” I groaned happily.

Emmett threw his head back and laughed. “I take it you’ve never tried an apple before.”

I shook my head as I bit down on the rest of the apple, then moved on to the two rolls I had snagged from the box.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Where are you from, anyway?”

Without glancing up from the piece of jerky I’d torn with my teeth, I said, “A place called Edrona on planet X-47-14.”

“Never heard of it,” Emmett said with a shrug. “But it must be a lot different there than here.”

“It was.”

“Was?” Emmett furrowed his fluffy brows.

I swallowed a particularly large piece of meat that scraped my throat as it went down. “Oh, uh, the planet is still there, but Edrona…” I trailed off, suddenly disinterested in the current strip of meat I held up to my mouth.

“Oh, well, look…” Emmett held up his hands apologetically. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” was all I said in response.

Emmett’s shoulders fell as if he’d wanted me to confide in him. Still, it did nothing to convince me to talk about the destruction of my home and everyone I ever loved. Emmett was still a stranger, and a part of me never wanted to talk about it anyway. Even when said stranger had given me some free food.

We sat in silence as I finished every last crumb of my snacks. Satisfied, I leaned back on the bed by propping myself up with my hands. I sighed happily but resisted the urge to rub my full belly.

Emmett glanced over at his digital clock that hung high above his desk, just like mine did in my dormitory.

“It’s not even six yet,” he said. “I can take you to the job center now if you’d like. They stay open until eight.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “That would be so helpful, thank you. I don’t want to keep eating all of your food.”

Emmett’s delighted laugh brought a small smile to my face. I was starting to feel more and more welcoming toward our growing camaraderie.

***

Once I’d seen depictions of the “lifts” in the academy through Dex’s database, after the registration woman named Lucinda had told me to take them to get to my classes on time, I’d decided that I didn’t want to ride one. Ever. But Emmett had different plans.

“The job center is on floor 39, so we should take the lift.”

I halted as Emmett took a narrow turn away from the spiral staircase just before us. “We should?”

Emmett turned on his heel and lifted a brow. “Yes…?” He spoke as if he questioned my hesitation. “Is there a problem with that?”

I gulped. “I guess not.”

Emmett shook his head with a chuckle but continued walking. With my nose and eyes crinkled up in discomfort, I followed.

You flew a spaceship, Rayden! I chastised myself. Surely, this “lift” device won’t be any worse.

After another ten seconds of walking, the wall that disrupted our path didn’t look like a wall at all. In fact, I thought we’d ended up on a branch of hall that had broken off of the building altogether, overlooking the rock of the massive cave the city resided in as if we stood on the precipice of a cliff.

“Here we are!” Emmett sang with a clap of his hands.

I squinted my eyes to look past the seemingly invisible wall. “We are?”

“Come on.”

Emmett dragged me closer to the edge of the corridor, where I thought we’d surely tumble to our deaths toward the ground below. But the closer we came to the edge, I noticed an eerie sheen that reflected the glow from the lit orbs hanging in the hall behind and around us.

It was glass. The entire wall was made entirely from transparent glass.

The images Dex’s database had shown me presented a transparent box that shot people up or down. I guessed the invisible glass wall contained some of these boxes if not many.

“You coming, Rayden?”

I shook myself out of my reverie and found that Emmett had somehow opened one of the lifts and had already stepped inside. Two panels of glass had slid open for him–I wasn’t sure how… I hadn’t been paying attention. And now Emmett stood atop a slice of completely transparent glass. I wrung my hands together as I stared at his feet–it seemed like he hovered in the air.

“It’s completely safe,” Emmett said with another one of his chuckles. “You know, I’m becoming more and more curious about where you lived and how you were raised. You act like you’ve never seen a lift before.”

I gave Emmett a pointed look, and red crept around the skin underneath his whiskers.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend you. But really! There hasn’t been an accident with one of these for at least a decade.”

“There have been accidents?!” I cried, taking a step back.

Shame snuck through me, making my chest grow tight–shame from my acting so cowardly. But I’d take on a Rockcrawler any day! These crazy machines that seemed to only exist out of convenience (Like, seriously? Was everyone here really that lazy?) were much too foreign to me.

Emmett maintained a friendly smile, and I relented with a sigh and joined him in the glass box. But I couldn’t help wondering about these so-called “accidents.” Had glass broken while the lift operated because of particularly heavy-set people? Had some of the lifts malfunctioned and plummeted to deadly depths?

Before I could change my mind and escape the death trap, Emmett shoved a thumb into one of the cube’s glass walls. A button appeared underneath the pad of his finger and lit up with a dim blue ring as he pushed it in even further.

“What floor is your destination?”

I jumped, whirling around myself to find the source of the strange female voice.

Emmett bit his lip, but I knew it was to keep himself from laughing at me. “Floor 39, please.”

“Understood. Taking two passengers to floor number 39.”

Emmett nudged me with his elbow. “The voice belongs to an AI. The lifts are operated that way.”

I nodded, feigning complete understanding and rolling my shoulders back to keep from looking like I wanted to run out of the lift.

“Wow,” I thought to Dex. “You’d think you’d warn me about other disembodied AI voices before I make a fool of myself.”

“I could not, Rayden. My scans are not perfect. It will take me much more time to attain all the functions and facts about this city and planet.”

I discreetly rolled my eyes, careful to not allow Emmett to see the gesture. Codex could have said that in the first place!

I heard a soft click that seemed to come from somewhere underneath my feet, and then our little box rocketed upward so fast I could feel the food I’d just eaten threaten to make a reappearance. I recentered myself and stood my ground but refused to look below my feet at the perfect view of both one side of the academy and one side of the cave whizzing by on either side.

The lift suddenly made a smoother stop than even I’d been hoping for, thankfully. The glass panels in front of us slid open with a high-pitched ding followed by a mechanical “Thank you” from that same female voice that had spoken earlier.

I took the longest stride of my life over the transparent threshold and let out a long breath of air once both of my feet landed on a regular, wonderful red rug with no sight of the ground underneath to be seen.

Floor 39 differed from the other floors; it didn’t branch out into many long corridors, and only one door stood before Emmett and me. Wide double doors that stretched from one wall to the other, maybe 20 feet or so, loomed tall and ominously. The wood had been painted a deep black, and an equally black sign hung over the doors read "JOB CENTER" in big yellow block lettering.

Emmett shoved his slightly furry hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit and strolled toward the doors with a jolly whistle on his lips. I followed, of course, but wondered what this Job Center had in store for me.