They sat side by side in the glider. One wiped sweat from his face with the sleeve of his jumpsuit, while the other, panting from exertion, eyed the glowing control panel in front of him. A lever for the lift system, a throttle on the side. Hesitantly, Lex placed his sweaty hands on the yoke.

"And you really know how to fly this thing, huh?"

"Nope, not the slightest idea," he said, gradually catching his breath. His eyes darted over the array of switches and controls. "Which button releases the damn anchor?"

The technician, whose name tag bore only the initials C.R., studied the console for a moment before shrugging. "Doesn’t look like there’s a button for that."

Sparse overhead lights glowed at distant intervals as the platform glided through all-encompassing darkness. They passed under a light barrier. The screens flickered, the compass spun wildly, and one by one, every digital display went dark, navigation, FMS, autopilot, engine status. Before them, only blank black monitors remained.

"The stick won’t budge," the boy said, shaking the locked yoke.

"That was a magnetic shutoff system," the technician replied. "For when a glider leaves the factory with its electronics still on."

"For when someone tries to steal one of these?"

"No. For when a glider in the assembly hall isn’t properly powered down. Keeps it from arriving at the delivery site with a dead battery."

"Pretty clever of them."

"Pretty awful for us."

The boy twisted halfway around in his seat, glancing tensely behind them. The light barrier receded into the distance, and their pursuers were nowhere in sight. Suddenly, he felt the technician’s firm hand on his shoulder. He turned his face forward, squinting against the rushing wind. The icy air carried a heavy scent of machine oil.

"Look ahead."

The track led them through a lock and into a brightly lit glass tunnel. The tube must have stretched hundreds of meters. Lex caught sight of the technician’s reflection in the passing glass panels. From his first day at the glider factory, their paths had crossed on every shift. Fate disguised as a random encounter.

The technician was over six feet tall and lanky, only slightly older than Lex. His thick black hair gave Lex the sense he was sitting next to an older brother. Their destination: anywhere but here.

Suddenly, the lights inside the glass tunnel flickered out, and the reflections on the panes vanished. The grim face of the workers' city came into view beyond the glass, like the opening scene of a dark drama. CR stared outside, his gaze shadowed, where the poisonous sky flared and acid rain streaked down the curved glass in shining rivulets.

"Tell me that’s just a coincidence. Do you really think that storm out there caused the power outage?"

CR didn’t answer. The rushing wind had disheveled his jet-black hair. Strands fell across his straight nose and prominent cheekbones. His chin tilted slightly downward, his eyes sunken deep into their sockets. The boy saw the green of his irises glinting from the shadows, as if his soul lay hidden, watching. It was Keldaraan’s ugly face CR saw through the glass that made him so angry. His breathing was deep and steady yet intense, as if he were holding back something immense. The distant glow of three holographic letters spilled over them through the glass.

JOY

The sign flickered in the rain, casting its light over the black towers and barrack camps of the workers’ settlement. The glass tunnel was an artery of a living machine; the factory heart pumped new glider models through its veins, thousands by day, thousands by night, around the clock. As long as the factory churned, and the power plant chimneys smoked, the beast lived on. For those outside, the tunnel was a window into the eternal cycle; for the workers, it was carved into their very bodies. The beast that thrived on exploitation.

"The whole misery of this city at a glance. What a depressing shithole," CR muttered. Faint scars lined his face. One ran vertically from the corner of his mouth to his cupid’s bow, cutting through both lips—pale lips, nearly as colorless as his skin. His mouth hung slightly open, and anger and despair condensed into mist with every breath he exhaled. Like a smoldering engine within him, an ember that refused to be extinguished. A stubborn heart forged from the dark memories of this brutal world.

"We should get moving," he suggested, swinging his long legs out of the glider. The boy gripped the top edge of the side window with both hands, gazing outside. A hundred meters below, the worker camp sprawled, a grid of cramped Nissen huts, hundreds visible in his field of view. Some were dark, others dimly lit, all squalid. Rising above the stench of poverty and despair loomed the corporation’s logo, stretching skyward. A projector at the tip of a black metal column beamed the name and motto of the New World’s largest glider manufacturer into the night sky:

Wolf Glider – The Future Is Our Promise

They walked alongside the decommissioned rails under the pale glow of the city lights, heading toward the black towers. Three massive cylindrical structures loomed ahead, visible even beyond Keldaraan’s borders. The Glider Towers... symbols of the city’s pride, the heart of its production.

"Tell me, did you ever dream you’d become so important that they would shut down their machines for a grunt like you? Every minute production stops, they lose thousands of credits. Go on, how does it feel to piss off our mighty plutocrats like that?" CR laughed out loud, the kind of laughter that hinted at a long-held dream realized. This was the moment he had been waiting for, the moment worth fighting for.

The boy wanted to share in the excitement, to feel the same thrill. But the echo of CR's laughter carved out a hollow inside him, leaving him chilled. A loneliness crept over him, dimming his joy with one persistent thought: How did it come to this?

Just to be sure, he activated the PDA on his wrist and checked his mail folder through the floating hologram. Skipping over a message from a girl he was supposed to meet in a few hours, he noticed something odd in his sent folder: a resignation email to Wolf Glider Corp. It was barely an hour old, yet he had no memory of writing it.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

CR came to an abrupt stop, and the boy, still engrossed in his screen, bumped into him. They had entered the western Glider Tower. Ahead, the rails ended in a vast chasm. The air was icy and oppressive, carrying the leaden stench of the worker city, JOY, through the tower’s skeletal walls.

"I almost walked straight into the abyss." Lex switched off his PDA and clung to the tall technician for balance. His heart raced as he took a bold step forward, the toe of his boot dangling over the edge. He peered into the darkness below.

"It’s a dead end."

"Not if we settle for what we’ve accomplished so far. Then it’s an exit."

"What?"

CR scanned their surroundings. Rising from the center of the chasm, a massive hydraulic mast emerged from the shadows, supporting the lift system and two glider elevators. One of the elevators, burdened with cargo, had frozen one floor below them due to the power outage.

The boy shook his head. "This is all insane. I don’t even remember why we’re running."

"What’s the last thing you do remember?"

"My back hurting," he said, "from carrying batteries."

"Anything else?"

"Well, yeah. I was on break in the lounge. Then you sat down next to me and gave me a capsule of that... stuff."

His words brought a fleeting smirk to CR’s face. A faint, fleeting smile that didn’t stand a chance on such a grim visage.

"They killed him right in front of us," CR said solemnly.

"Who?"

"Elvin."

The boy repeated the name thoughtfully. "Yeah, he was with us. Why’d they kill him? What did we ever do to them?"

CR didn’t answer. He tilted his head back, gazing upward. The boy followed his gaze. All he could make out in the dim emergency lighting were the faint outlines of factory-new gliders parked in their bays, spiraling upward into dizzying heights beyond view.

In the heavy silence, footsteps suddenly echoed toward them. The metallic clink of boots on steel filled the air.

When the boy lowered his gaze, CR was gone.

"Where’d you go?"

"Down here," came the whispered reply.

"How’d you get down there?"

"How do you think?"

"That’s what I’m asking. Haven’t seen a ladder."

"There isn’t one."

The boy wiped his sweaty palms on his jumpsuit and cautiously lowered himself over the edge. His legs dangled freely above the void. A nearby lightning strike lit the tower’s interior in ashen light, but the depths remained an impenetrable black. One small misstep, he thought, and he’d fall to his death. The thought made him dizzy.

Taking a deep breath, he swung himself down, landing two meters below on all fours atop a glider bay. His wrists throbbed from the impact, and his knees ached, but he managed. With a short leap, he crossed the chasm to the next platform, where CR was already seated in a two-seater sports glider, ripping the plastic cover off the control panel.

"I think I heard some guards," the boy said.

"You think?"

He strained to listen. "Stop making so much noise. I can’t hear anything."

"Almost there." With a forceful tug, CR tore the panel free and fell back into his seat, the ripped plastic held above his head. Tossing it into the abyss, he pulled a flashlight from his tool belt and studied the tangled mess of wires beneath the controls with piercing green eyes.

"How’s it looking?"

"Not great. No use sugarcoating it."

"I don’t hear the footsteps anymore," Lex said into the silence. "Why don’t I hear them anymore?"

"Because they were never there. You were hearing my footsteps earlier. You’re letting fear mess with your senses."

"I wasn’t scared."

"You still are." CR clenched the small flashlight between his teeth, his breath swirling in the beam of light, dissipating in the draft before rising again. For a while, he stayed motionless, then carefully pinched a bundle of multicolored cables between his thumb and forefinger, tracing them with his other hand. The wires disappeared behind another panel near the footwell.

"Dammit."

"Turn off the light, for crying out loud."

"What?"

"I said, turn it off!"

CR pulled the flashlight from his mouth and clicked it off.

The same quick footsteps echoed again.

"See? I wasn’t imagining it," the boy whispered.

The sound grew louder and louder, until—

Suddenly, beams from several flashlights crisscrossed the abyss. On the far side of the tower, their shifting circles of light revealed gleaming gliders emerging from the darkness.

"Shit. They’re right above us," CR whispered. "Not a sound."

"I’m not saying anything."

"But you’re breathing louder than thunder outside."

The boy clamped a hand over his mouth, forcing his breath through his flared nostrils. His heart pounded with fear, and his mind unwillingly returned to Elvin’s fate. The memory surged forward, vivid and horrifying: shoulder to shoulder, he and Elvin had hidden behind a luxury model in the assembly hall. A high-energy laser tore through the air, slicing through the glider’s frame and cutting Elvin’s torso clean from his legs. He hit the ground in two pieces. It was the last memory the boy had from the past half hour, and it told him one thing about the mercenaries: they showed no mercy. If they found him, they’d do the same to him.

The metallic clatter of armored boots rang out directly above. Slowly, he raised his head, catching a glimpse of the mercenaries’ booted feet as they strode across the grating. Their silhouettes moved with precision, spreading out like a practiced routine. A flash of lightning illuminated the scene, followed seconds later by a deafening clap of thunder. The mercenaries began searching the upper platforms, checking every glider for signs of rebellion. Their movements were mechanical, methodical. No empty seat escaped their scrutiny, no corner went unnoticed.

In the beam of a flashlight, the silhouettes of two augmented mercenaries stood face-to-face, their dark shapes casting oversized shadows across three floors. They appeared to be conversing, but Lex couldn’t hear a word. His gaze lingered on their monstrous shadows. Battle armor and heavy weapons. One carried the same long-barreled high-energy laser that had ended Elvin’s life.

"Why can’t I hear them talking?" he whispered.

"Because, unlike them, you don’t have a neurochip in your brain," CR replied.

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Telepathy tech."

"What?"

"The old-fashioned man-to-man dialogue? It’s ancient history." CR watched the mercenaries’ footsteps closely, calculating their distance. "The guards read each other’s minds," he continued, "and more than that: every security team, no matter which corporation they work for, and the entire police force of the World Union, are all puppets of Thandros. Electrodes in their brains upload their thoughts in real-time to a secure section of the Infonet, accessible only by the government. And..."

"And what?"

"And what the mercenaries and police know, Thandros knows too. But it’s not just their conversations stored there... it’s their thoughts, dreams, emotions, and memories." CR glanced toward the mercenaries as a flashlight beam swept dangerously close. He leaned toward the boy and whispered, "Brain-computer interfaces are one thing. But anyone who wants a career in security has to sign a waiver to have part of their frontal lobe removed. It’s the center for creativity and... humanity. Wrap your head around that: they steal their workers’ imagination."

"But without that, a person isn’t even a person anymore," the boy murmured.

"That’s the point. Mercenaries aren’t meant to be people. To the corporation, they’re just tools without a conscience," CR said softly. "Thandros wants to enslave the entire global population. Three years ago, they tried to make telepathy mandatory for everyone. Thankfully, the protests in Vega Prime stopped them."

"How could they even try to push that through?"

"With lies. They claim it’s for counter-terrorism. Every time Crimson Dawn attacks, Thandros Corp. pushes the narrative that accessing people’s thoughts and emotions is the only way to protect citizens. Even Thandros University is under their control. The corporation understands the importance of education... they know that education leads to independent thinking, and independent thinking inevitably leads to revolution in this system. So, they only teach fabricated knowledge there. Lies."

The boy lowered his gaze, turning CR’s words over in his mind. Before he could reply, a hunter light mounted to the barrel of an assault rifle swung toward them.

He froze.

The beam of light locked onto him, blinding and relentless.

One thought blared in his mind: We’re screwed.