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2

She followed the group until her arms ached and the corridor swelled to an open expanse. An expanse that was, for once, not dark or small or stuffy. It was an industrial workshop, one supported by riveted bar grating and flying buttresses. The bridges wrapped around and across enormous mechanisms, and people – not children but fully grown adults – were stuffing vials of dark-green liquid in cases. Snotty hash? That was Sarah’s initial thought, but after she saw the long furnaces, types with steel pipes crossing overhead, she figured it was the Afterburner Andy had mentioned. It made sense.

She could even smell it, that burning odour, billowing from the pressure ducts as stinking clouds of black smoke.

Teslaface wandered off to talk to another guard. Ten seconds later the two came over.

“Alright,” said the guard, “because you have a newbie I’ll give a quick recap of what you’re meant to be doing.”

Sarah had expected him to be full-throated and resonant, but he was surprisingly gentle with his words, as if he had some sort of respect for the kids.

“You have to help the adults with the Jade,” he continued. “Empty the hash into the scuttle tubes and shut the hatches. When you’re done head back down with… him” – he pointed at Teslaface – “and grab another set. Head to dinner when you’re all done.”

“But these are the last sets,” said Sarah.

“No,” said the man, “those are your sets. You have to bring up this week’s supply.”

“We have to do more?”

“Yeah.” He let out a heart-warming laugh. “It’s not that tough. Don’t worry, kid.”

Why’s he being so nice? He looks like a robot zombie, but he’s not… a robot zombie?

Sarah couldn’t tell if this was just the way the man spoke – and perhaps he was evil deep down – but it made her feel much safer. Gave her a flicker of hope even. Hope that she might live after all. She didn’t know why she felt that way, but it was how it was.

Maybe Mr Steel hadn’t given specific orders to be such rotten people, she supposed. Or maybe he had but this man refused to go along with the mistreatment of children.

Keep them in line! Sarah imagined Mr Steel saying.

Nah, replied this mysterious man. I don’t work that way.

Or maybe it had gone a little along the route of: Do what you want, but make sure you have our drugs ready by the end of the week, got it?

Yessuh, this mysterious man would say.

Yeah, that sounded right.

“Any questions?” the man said, and she was immediately reminded of Mr Steel and his musky smell.

“No,” said Sarah, but it didn’t sound as if she didn’t have any. And that was because she wanted to know more about him. Her curiosity had to be contained.

“Alrighty,” the man said, and then he spent a little bit of time assigning the four to different numbers, which were written on the backs of the adults’ jumpsuits in messy white paint.

Sarah was given the number sixty-five: a man on the far side of the factory sweep, wearing thick polyurethane gloves and a purple-visored welding helmet. She hauled the Jade cart across the grated platforms, around the yellow railings, and approached him tentatively.

“’Scuse me, sir?” she said quietly.

The man was busy pulling the scuttle lever. With each pump a globule of the green substance squirted out the stopcock and filled up the vial beneath. Through a small circular window Sarah saw the liquid slosh around like socks in a washing machine. The device was loud, very loud, so she tugged on his jumpsuit sleeve to get his attention.

He recoiled.

“I’m still not sure what to do,” Sarah said. “Can you help me, sir?”

There was a pause, and then the man said, “Hi Sarah. How’s your first day goin’?”

Sarah’s eyes sharpened, as if she could somehow see through the visor, surveying the man with absolutely no recognition at all… and then they snapped open. “Chip?”

“Same fella, different outfit,” he said, and suddenly his muffled voice became more recognisable.

Sarah wasted no time: she shot forward and wrapped him in a face-to-chest hug. It was sudden, so sudden that even she didn’t expect it.

Chip stood there, not speaking a word.

“Chip…” she said sadly.

“I know, kid.” He patted her shoulder, then broke the hold.

“I missed you.”

“I know,” he said.

“This place is horrible! I wanna go home!”

He chuckled. “I take it it’s not like the movies, huh?”

She shook her head nimbly. “How do we get out of here?” she asked, but she already had a hunch that Chip – the supercool computer guy that helped her sister on her heists – didn’t know.

Sure enough, he said, “We don’t. We gotta wait.”

She gave him a puzzled face. “Wait for what?”

“Well, for starters,” he said, “wait for Luna to find us.”

“Find us? Can’t you call her with your MD?”

He sighed, shook his head, and then pulled off his helmet. It was Chip alright: curly crimson hair, glowing eye, but wrapped around his head was a blood-stained gauze, brown at his left temple.

Her eyes bulged until they looked like they were going to leap from her skull. “What happened?”

“Rick Steel and his buddies took out my signal chip is what,” he said. “My wifi connection’s gone, and my wrist cable is fuc – ” He paused abruptly. “Screwed.” And he pulled his jumpsuit sleeve up to show his cable-slot; a bundle of frayed wires stuck out. “No more calls for me, no more anything.” Then, as if suddenly remembering, he said, “You might wanna hurry before the guards get mad. Toss the hash in the scuttle. The little hatch there.” He tapped the window. “I’ll keep the lever going, okay?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She nodded, grabbed a strongbox from the dolly, and opened the scuttle. She waggled the Jade into the opening and shut the lid. Immediately the window flashed with white, as if being caught in a hellish blaze, then it fizzled out until the hash churned into a clayish substance.

“What is this?” she asked, heart racing slightly.

“Afterburner,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “Just do that a few more times while I pump this jack. That’s all.”

She nodded again, continuing to put the hash in the machine. Every once in a while Chip would swap the vial after it got full and place it in one of the cases. It was boring, but better than cutting the Jade from the stems, which she despondently remembered she would have to do again, later, after dinner. But at least she got some time to spend with Chip. She was delighted that he had been okay. Last night, when Mr Steel said he would deal with him, she thought that they would beat him up or something, but no. It seemed they weren’t that violent.

Teslaface later told her to hurry up. The others had finished emptying their Jade boxes, so she spent a good thirty seconds pouring the remaining hash into the scuttle – perhaps too much at once (a swatch of goo spat out over the railing, barely missing her) – before heading back to the group.

“Took your sweet fuckin’ time.” Teslaface turned and led them down the corridor.

She wanted to say that number sixty-five was her friend, but remembered:

Keep your mouth shut.

The sentence actually meant something to her. Before, she chalked it up to people just finding her annoying, but now, now, it had weight to it. Chunkiness. She wasn’t sure about what she could and couldn’t ask; she didn’t know how to bring up anything with him around; and she figured that the rest of the group were the same way. Andy who struck her as the quiet type, Pip who chirped up only sometimes, and Valerie who, while curt, seemed optimistic. Sarah liked that very much. She liked all of them even.

Together, they caught the elevator down to the bottom floor and began their journey back to the Package Area. Along the way, shortly after crossing through the prison, someone whistled from behind. They all turned, and Sarah recognised the whistler immediately as Bic.

“Grimes,” Bic shouted, his boots clattering down the marble tunnel. “Steel wants a word with you.”

So that’s his name: Grimes. Better off saying sir, though.

“Now?” Grimes said.

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” replied Bic, and then added scornfully, “You aren’t paid to say now, you know that right?”

He straightened his back. “What’s it about?”

Both sides of Bic’s mouth sneered. “Business, the expensive kind,” he said, his voice echoing. “Need you on the top floor, pronto.”

Grimes facepalmed, as if trying to soothe a bad headache. “What about these fucks?” He jerked his head at the group.

Bic said: “Leave ’em do their jobs. They can’t go anywhere.”

“I don’t trust this white-haired girl,” he said.

Bic looked over Grimes shoulder, sneaking a glance at Sarah. “Oh yeah, I know you.”

She waved at him.

He laughed. “Guess you learned quick.” Then he glared at Grimes again and, after a moment, snapped his fingers. “But c’mon, leave ’em do their jobs.”

“But Bic – ” he said curtly.

“Shut the fuck up and follow me,” he snapped, turning to walk down the corridor.

Sarah smiled without meaning to. Serves him right.

Grimes looked back and said, “Package the Jade and wait for me. Any funny business and – ” He paused, and his stare intensified on Sarah.

Her smile depleted.

“What are you smilin’ about – ? ”

“Grimes!” bellowed Bic, a heavy scowl on his face. “Now, you faceless fuck, or I’ll cut you like a dog.”

Grimes snarled, then followed Bic through the tunnel.

When they were gone and everything was awkwardly silent, Andy said, “Not often this happens.”

“Did you see his face when Bic shouted at him?” said Sarah excitedly. “He was shaking!”

“Yeah,” said Pip, “that’s sort of what he is. A coward around adults, a bully around kids.”

“Always a bigger fish,” chuckled Andy.

“We should probably get that work done,” said Valerie. “If we don't, Big Bully will come back here after his spanking. And he’ll be very mad.”

“True,” said Andy, and then he led the way through the tunnels. His dolly squealed with each turn – the noisiest of the bunch. Eventually, they made it to animal cages with the dogs and cats and Lulu, who was at the opposite end.

Sarah slowed down, watching the tiger closely; it was asleep, lying flat on its stomach with its paws beneath the jaw. Black with white stripes or white with black stripes? thought Sarah playfully, and then she realised Andy and Pip and Valerie were much farther ahead. Then she noticed something else: a big wooden box covered with a polyethylene tarp.

She looked at the corridor she had passed through, made sure Grimes Teslaface was nowhere to be seen, and snuck up to the box. The smell of urine sank down her throat with a peculiar, acidy drive. She tugged the tarp and peeked inside. Raw venison, lots of it, stacked to the brim.

Oh…. For some reason she expected something else, something much more sinister.... That boy Billy perhaps?

No, it's not like the movies, she thought. Don't be ridiculous.

She placed the tarp over again and –

A chest-tightening growl from behind. Loud, sudden, and aggressive.

Sarah jumped and banged into the dolly before slipping and whopping her head on the marble. She sat in a half-swoon of panic at first, but then her vision smoothed. She saw the caged animal staring back at her.

Sarah scrambled away, heart racing, expecting it to lunge from its stance. But the bars, the rungs, entrapped it, and the padlock chain made sure of that.

Relief sunk in. Sweet, cold relief. She picked herself up and brushed dust from her jumpsuit. “You must be Lulu....”

A growl, low, continuous. Those green eyes, almost glowing in a way, cutting through her. Slowly, as if just noticing for the first time, Lulu turned its head towards the venison box.

Sarah's eyes were wide and curious. “Are you hungry?” She inspected Lulu closely, its emaciated muscles, the thin fur, so flat that at first glance one might have mistaken this creature for a kaross, and the decaying teeth.

It was horrible.

Sarah loved animals: dogs, cats, birds, monkeys, and even some species of snake. To see an animal like this being mistreated…. It almost made her angry. Animals deserve the same rights as people! she thought ardently, and then she remembered that she and Lulu were in a similar situation. Oh, right….

“You know what?” She tore away the tarp.

Lulu sat up and growled, eyeing the meat ravenously. Thick slaver oozed from its sun-yellow fangs, dripping with loud splats.

Sarah took a venison trunk from the box and approached the cage slowly, keeping her distance a little. Never in her life had she been this close to a dangerous animal, not even in zoos. She’d always listened to her mother when she said to stay away from the cages, because animals didn’t care about human life. They only cared about food. That was all.

She tossed the slimy piece of meat in through the bar and Lulu caught it, devouring it in no more than six chomps, sucking it up how a dog might suck up a thin slice of ham.

Lulu stared at the box, then at her, then at the box again. It wanted more.

“Sarah?” a high-pitched voice called from down the hall.

Valerie.

Sarah’s mouth flew open, suddenly remembering that she had somewhere to be – and that a guard could stroll by at any moment.

She covered the venison box with the dusty tarp, grabbed the dolly handle, and took off down the tunnel. “Coming!” She saw Valerie emerge from around the corner.

When they caught up with each other, Sarah explained that she couldn’t keep up. And although Valerie knew it was bulldust (she had that flat look on her face), she told her they had a lot of work to do and shouldn’t waste any more time.

Sarah agreed.

They made their way back to the Package Area, where she would tell them the same story about not being able to keep up. Where Andy would say sure and shrug it off.

He and Pip were stacking more Jade boxes in the mesh carts.

“I thought you were trying to escape,” said Pip.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not that stupid.”

Andy snickered. “Whatever you say.”