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Chapter 7: Jade Mint
Nita had trouble playing a worker. Two days had passed, and our breaks were too insufficient to check the factory, and we were only allowed to enter some of the areas. We mainly stayed in our hall to fill up Jade Mint, but sometimes, workers would move to other areas to keep supplies running. However, a worker could only move to one other area.
One of the few female workers told me this prevented them from piecing together the entire recipe. The supervisors feared someone with such knowledge would try to sell it and destroy the Kleptos’ monopoly.
Fortunately, while Nita made cartridges, I worked with the jade refiner. Now, I saw the big mortar in action. It cracked so loud it might as well be crushing a giant’s bones, drowning out the thrusting pistons.
The shards then fell into a multi-layer sieve, which sorted out impurities. Bigger fragments went for another round of crushing, and the small stones were ground into dust by hand. First with hammers, then with regular mortars and pestles. It ran through my fingers like sand, but without a grainy feel and much heavier; no trace of the typical glow either. It only became glowy in the area between this and the hall where I usually worked. It tormented me not to see it.
“Ey, Rookie, quit lazing around. The guards will be back soon.” The man across from me smashed the jade stones like a ravenous animal mowing down its prey.
I upped my pace, ignoring my sore arm’s protests. Some guards didn’t like the slower workers and let them feel it not too scarcely.
“Hey, you know what happens with the dust in the next room?” I asked.
“The scientists mix it with the Mint.”
“And the Mint is coming from . . .” I gestured for him to continue.
He crooked a brow. “From the Mint Extraction, the hall next to ours.” He grimaced. “Poor animals. I can smell the death all the way over here.”
The animals Nita and I had seen when we had broken in.
“How come you work here then?”
“How come you ask so many questions?” His voice grew tired.
“I'm curious by nature.” I shrugged.
“Well, a family needs money, ay?”
I hadn’t meant to ask why he worked in this factory, but why he worked in this sector since he knew the others. But I kept that to myself. For some reason, now I was more interested in his family.
“Former sailor?” I asked.
His ears perked up. He nodded. “I miss the sea.”
“Same here.”
“Ship's boy?”
“Nah, Master Gunner . . .”
“But mostly virtuoso, of course.”
Snippets of Mom and Dad popped into my head. They had told me to follow my passion. But I knew I had shared theirs from the beginning.
“A little young for that, no? Did the old one die?” He kept looking for the guards.
“Sort of.”
He clicked his tongue. “There they are.” His gaze darted to the approaching guards. One of the younger guards sauntered to me with his annoyingly confident pretty-boy-face.
I focused back on my work, avoiding eye contact. This particular guard liked to look for trouble.
“Oi, Finn, how come your bowl is only half as full as usual these days?” The guard said from behind me.
“It's not half,” Finn, the man I had just spoken to, muttered.
“What?” The guard leaned closer and over my shoulder. His minty breath invaded my nose.
“I said . . . that the all-nighter strained me. I’ll give it my best.”
“You better do, or your payment also shrinks to only a half.” The guard came unbearably close. I curled my fingers around the pestle, hoping to endure the itch of his presence.
“Please,” Finn said with a shaky voice. “I have—”
“A family? Oh, yeah, so do I, and if you don’t get your ass to work properly, my pay will suffer too.”
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Finn remained silent.
“Finn?” the guard asked, smugging.
“Yes, sir?”
“You forgot to keep working.”
I heard the guard's grin next to my ear as his helmet straps dangled from my shoulder. Turning around, he brushed me and went to accuse the next worker.
His polished-to-spasm armor already pissed me off, but that he dared to get so close almost made me want to vomit.
I shifted my prosthesis to a higher gear and picked up the largest jade stone. When the other guards weren't looking, I hurled the stone at the harasser's head. It tore his helmet off his head, and he stumbled.
Nonchalantly, I continued grinding the small jade stones into dust, forcing myself to overlook his stunned face to avoid attracting attention.
“Who threw that?!” he yelled. His gaze immediately wandered to Finn.
“Oh no.”
“You . . .” The guard shuffled to the other side of the conveyor belt.
I quickly threw another rock, but this time under the conveyor belt. Judging by the look on his face, I must have hit the jackpot.
“Come on. Your fancy armor took most of the hit.”
The guard curled up into a ball.
“I swear, it wasn’t me,” Finn pleaded.
The other guards couldn't help grinning when they saw their comrade in pain.
“I don't think he's just mistreating the workers.”
Finally, two other guards picked him up and dragged him away, his armor screeching satisfyingly on the floor.
Finn heaved a great sigh of relief. Then he smiled solemnly. “Thanks.”
—
I stared at the high ceiling of the dorm room and counted the many copper pipes. The darkness made it hard, but I couldn't think of anything else to distract myself.
A man in a far corner muttered in his sleep. I called him Grunt. For some reason, though, he didn't like the nickname when I brought it up at breakfast. Speaking of which, the food far exceeded my expectations; it should have been way worse. The work felt like slavery, but the security, food, and dorms matched my idea of a mansion spoiled by pipes and gears.
The ordinary workers shared dormitories. The furnishings were pretty. Only the engineers—or as they always corrected me, ‘scientists’—had their own rooms and generally more freedom. I would have liked to ask for a promotion, but Nita stopped me. ‘It would cause too much of a stir.’
I blew my bangs off my forehead. “That's why I prefer to work alone.”
Nita and I were lucky to have our beds only a few rows apart. So, when the snoring reached the level of the previous night, I crept over to her.
My temporary colleagues were lying in unique sleeping positions: everything from a perfectly angled L-shape to a four-winged windmill. One girl straight up presented her bare toes in the air, pushing me to my limits not to tickle her. Of course, there was also the obligatory blanket refuser.
Nita slept like a log.
“Yo!” I stressed quietly. “Nita!” I shook her gently.
“I’m awake,” she said curtly.
“Oh.”
She eyed me. “Did something happen?”
“No. Well, you know—we’re kinda not making any progress with our investigation.”
“Be patient. For now, everything is going according to plan. We made it here, so don't go crazy because you're bored.”
“I’m not bored—maybe a little. I just want to explore a bit. It’s torture to just bottle the finished product. I want to see more. I want to experiment with it myself, with my prosthesis. And the mask! You've given me such a cool toy and taken it away a few minutes later.”
“Hercu . . .” Her clear tone of compassion went somewhat profound.
“Come on,” I said playfully. “No one's gonna catch me.”
“Sorry, I can't jeopardize the mission. My crew is relying on me.”
“Your crew . . . that's right, I'm hardly a member.”
“I didn’t—”
“No, no. It’s all good. You’re not wrong. It is what it is.”
We remained silent for a bit. Then she turned away. “Get some sleep, Hercu.”
“Ye . . . good night.”
—
Another day of boring work went by, and another day without me discovering any mysteries. The urge to unravel the factory’s secrets itched inside me, and the risks involved only added spice. My heart burned with curiosity.
“I had never cared for any crew anyway. Sorry, but you’re just another stepping stone for me. I’m finally on the verge of crossing the line into the unknown, and nothing will stop me.”
That night, I waited longer, even as the snoring got louder.
With bare feet, I crept past the two rows of beds and left our dormitory. The guards were sitting at the main entrance, a high double door that missed a door leaf.
“I miss you, my grappling hook.”
Not that it would have helped me in this situation, but it must feel incredible to swing around in this maze of pipes and gears behind the door.
I carefully checked if any pipes on the walls weren’t loose and rickety. They still felt warm, even though the factory had gone to sleep hours ago. Eventually, I found a solid pipe. The guards were already half asleep. I climbed up and crawled upside down along the ceiling pipe.
Halfway through, my body had trouble keeping up the slow pace to stay quiet, and I worried my sweat might drip onto the guards. Instead, I slipped and only held on with my prosthesis. Without feeling in the lump of mechanics, there was no sign of strain, fatigue, or success. It was like hanging from a rope attached to my shoulder. The movement worked through pneumatic control via the Jade Mint pistons and gears. However, it failed to simulate any sense of touch or feeling.
And it also made a lot of noise when it had to lift something heavy like a person.
The guards below me dazed into the dark corridor, sparsely lit by their lanterns. Their long shadows behind them looked like beds, trying to persuade their owners to fall in.
I twitched my shoulder muscles to pull myself up slowly. A low hiss came from the tiny exhaust pipes, and I barely moved upward.
“They will wake up like this. . . but I can’t go back either.”
I sighed.