“Ok,” Joe said quickly, “First of all, not a cheater, not really anyway. Ok maybe not the most important thing to focus on right now.” He looked around the roof he was about to land on for an escape path, it was made of a dense forest of metal piping, stairs, lifts, load bearing beams, and all manner of factory crap.

“I am so glad I chose an inactive region; it would have been dangerous to try and hide if the place was on. Would have been kind of like suicide really.” Joe then proceeded to slap himself. “Focus damnit! Okay, time to hide from the coal junkies, gotta hide good. Or maybe try and get to the factory proper, the security would beat the hell out of em and let me get to work.

Then a thought hit him about as hard as those bats were probably about to, “How did they know where I worked, and how the hell did they guess where I would choose to land?” Only one explanation made any sense to Joe at that moment. One of the very few people who knew his routine ratted him out. And just when he thought about opening up to Luke, a little. Then, to Joe's absolute shock and horror, he stopped moving. Then he fell to the cold hard metal ground.

“I wasted all my scouting and planning time already!” He shouted before freezing still.

This time he only screamed in his mind, “Come on, how stupid am I!? Did I really just waste my time distracted, then yell, letting them know exactly where I was. Then sit here on the cold hard ground going in circles in my head? Glass me, I need to work on myself, and I need to run!”

That last thought finally got him up and moving. He didn’t know exactly where he was, but he turned towards the 300m wide column rising out of the middle of the building illuminated by the thousands of panels glowing a soft orange. Using them to orient himself he started running at a slight angle off to the columns left where a worker elevator was located. Since only people with the worker system could activate them it was a safe bet those coal junkies couldn’t follow.

Joes’ foot then proceed to encounter an immovable force resulting in him tripping five feet from where he started. Falling over a waist high pipe and slamming down on a transmitter box. A small squared off box of steel welded to the ground with a bump the size of a large marble perfectly positioned slightly off center where Joe's elbow proceeded to slam into it. It took a long moment for him to realize how the light above changed to be below him. Joe was unfamiliar with tripping and falling. He was quite proud of his rather advanced parkour skills forged from the many many times he needed to turn tail and run for his life.

Glad for his tough gear saving him from any injury other than a bruised elbow and pride, he decided he needed to know what had tripped him, he needed to know how he had made such a massive blunder. He looked around to find the cause of his error and found nothing. There was nothing, literally nothing where his foot had landed and been stopped so completely. Joe stared in disbelief at the spot his foot had been foiled.

“Nothing?” He said. “I didn’t kick something away, my foot was completely stopped, like I had put it under an anvil. How is there nothing there?” Joe heard the sound of bare feet slapping steel only a hundred or so meters away. “Glass this,” He looked once more where his foot had been pranked, “And Glass you whatever you were.”

Joe got back to his feet and once more proceeded to run. He jumped up on the large pipes that ran across the roof, nimbly hopping from one pipe to another quickly leaving his landing site behind. In the dark of the district once you broke eye contact and moved more that fifty meters away the chase was over. Sound did not echo well in the district, something something magic absorbs reverberations or some nonsense. Regardless of the reason for the strange phenomenon, tracking people without some trick was very hard.

“Funny,” Joe thought, “I didn’t hear pink hair telling the kids that. I wonder if it was on purpose. Nah Luke asked her to talk about a specific thing. But she did talk about the ambient light… maybe it slipped her mind. I can’t imagine the city being almost as quiet as it is dark. It's easy to miss. So maybe they already went over it. OH! A good hiding spot!”

Joe passed by an old staircase that went deep into the facility, but he knew that type of staircase always had a hidden janitor compartment to store cleaning supplies. And it would be empty at a time like this. He ran over to the hidden compartment and threw it open. Joes’ mind then came to a screeching stop. “I am so Glassed.”

“Ok,” He panicky thought, “The hidden compartment is filled with dozens of jars of a dark black, slimy, liquid. I know it's an extremely expensive designer drug made by the coal junkie mob. A group I happened to have won twelve chips from about a dozen shifts ago. Who also happened to have five people in their mob hanging out at a warm smoke pipe an easy few minutes walk away. They had seen, and recognized me just a moment ago. And had possibly seen me run right towards their cache. I’m overthinking again. Don’t let Luke's damn foreshadowing come true like this. I got an eighty! What the hell is going on!?

“They already want me for the cheating I didn't do, I sure as glass will not be hunted for stealing I didn’t do!” Joe said in a panic as he finally started to move again, slowly shutting the door. Then he turned, and ran like the dark-steel mages themselves were after him. Right into a bat, swinging towards his head. He had a moment for one last thought before blacking out.

“Oh, there's that bat again.”

“The leg bone's connected to the knee bone,” Joe poked the bones in question, bruised and fine.

“The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone,” Joe wiggled the parts mentioned, fine and maybe a hairline fracture.

“The thigh bone's connected to the hip bone,” Joe winced when poked the offending parts.

“Now shake dem skeleton bones! Oh glass, huge mistake, very stupid.”

Joe sighed heavily after his impromptu hip test. Looking around he was happily able to confirm that they had kindly dragged him up against an elevator door, where the gutter rats had then left him. He was testing the damage they had done to him with those poorly aimed bat strikes and found it not actually that bad, just a little painful.

“They were surprisingly weak for a bunch of thugs,” Joe said. “Not a single one of the bat strikes did nearly as much damage as I thought they would. I guess I should just take what I can get at this point and not question it.”

Joe looked up at the elevator call button, just out of sitting reach. “I thought those were all supposed to be reachable from the ground for some reason. Sounds like an important safety measure for idiots who get hurt and cant stand up. Not for me though, I can stand just fine.”

His body did not approve of his standing, but he did the deed anyway, finally pushing the button with his left hand do it could scan his worker ID.

“All in all,” Joe said, “Could have been worse. At least the guy hiding at the cache that got me also heard me say I didn’t cheat or steal. He was definitely the brains of the group. Not to say a well spoken eight year old wouldn’t think he was slow in the head. But he was at least smart enough to understand there had been a huge mistake.”

Because of that they, in the mans words, “only beat em a lil, and take his moneys.”

“At least I think he said that. Things were a lot blurrier a few minutes ago.” Joe said while rubbing his face. “Ugh, my voice hurts my own head.”

“There goes the nineteen chips I brought with me for today's run.” He thought with a smile. “Oh dice, oh dice, I have been injured by a stupid series of events. Lost over thirty hours of money and been accidentally found by a mob. Sorry for doubting you Luke, I should have known better than to think you had anything to do with this. But all that means there has to be something good coming my way. Right? Or is today's lesson to trust my friends more? Or don’t land so far from work because the district can be dangerous.”

Joe laughed to himself and said, “Nah, glass all that, where's my reward, dice? At least they were so happy when they grabbed my money pouch and saw how much money I had, they just patted me on the back like a friend and left me without finishing the beating.”

Joe sighed heavily. Used to the abuse he got when he got caught by thugs, he felt he had gotten off lightly, physically that is. Financially, it was a bad hit. He Mourned the fact that he might have to work three or four times as long the next few shifts to make up what he just lost.

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“What the glass was that anyway,” Joe looked around the pipe jungle until he saw the fire the coal junkies had been huddled around, then back at the direction he had run before continuing his outspoken disbelief. “Out of all the directions I could have possibly gone, and the difference having gone down even one flight of stairs would have made. Or changing my angle of approach by just a little. But nooo, somehow I stumbled into the hiding place of the people I was running from! Even for me that kind of uncanny bad luck is just ridiculous.”

Exhausted, Joe Thought, “I still haven't checked the shift info yet. I’ll just head to the others and check it while gearing up…”

When the elevator arrived, he stepped in and placed his left hand against the panel until the pale elevator options window appeared floating in front of him. He used his left hand again to press the third-floor button. He needed to go to the first floor but didn’t want to show up in his sorry state. Instead, he decided to take a walk from the third floor around a bit until he made his way to work. Twenty minutes after the official starting time.

Joe walked into the dark-steel recycling room, headquarters six, limping slightly from his bruised leg. It was one of the many many rooms in the facility with managers waiting for a full group to start their day's work. Joe questioned his luck again when he walked in to see Mr.Soar sitting at an old cheap metal desk.

As a tier two worker, Mr.Soar was in command of up to fifteen tier one workers at his respective job. While tier one workers can pick up work anywhere in an entire block if they have the right block license handed out by the government. A tier two worker usually has a general field of specialty and can only function as a tier two worker in that area. So, for people like Mr.Soar who work a rare specialty as a tier two he was reliant on specialty tier one workers, like Joe, actually showing up regularly, thus Mr.Soar hated Joe, and Joe in turn did not care one bit about the man except for when he was stuck working under him. Like today apparently.

Joe had been working on and off with Mr.Soar for over a year now and genuinely debated just leaving the second he saw Mr.Soar looking at him. Mr.Soar hated Joe with the passion any manager would have when an unfireable employee only comes to work for two in every ten shifts. The vehemence at which Mr.Soar did everything in his power to make Joe become an upstanding employee, or just never come back, rivaled the amount of effort he put in his actual job. Joe did not like being treating like his managers pet project. Joe wasn’t going waste his soul in the place more than he had too.

“Damn,” Joe thought, “If I leave now there is no chance the eighty on the dice gets me something from work. The more I get from work the less I have to be here.” It was a difficult choice, but he decided to stay for the shift.

When Mr.Soar finally spoke he immediately started in on a tirade. “Look what finally decided to do some real work. Did you get tired of hiding from the real world and come to man up a little? Are you ever going to work enough to make yourself useful, you little glass light piece of coal dust!”

Mr.Soar continued to rant and rave at Joe for a while. For his part Joe just stood there and let him talk out his issues while thinking to himself, “Not my fault there are no set schedules for workers. When your leader's method of employment is to just work whoever shows up for whatever you have available, you're bound to have issues. People either show up or they don’t.

In the end even Joe had to admit that the worker culture did make that practice fairly reasonable for most sites, but only a few hundred tier one workers in the district were licensed for dark-steel recycling facilities, and even fewer in his field of work. There were always thousands of people showing up every day to nearly every other factory to work ten to fifteen hours. With that many people working that long, there was no need for things like schedules. You just never stop the work. That just never happened here.

The issue is the factory Joe works at is special, almost no one was willing to work dark-steel. That was it. No special tricks. No special abilities. Just a willingness to suffer for a better life. Lack of workers is why huge parts of the factory were not even on and there is a back load of tens of millions of kilos of dark-steel waiting to be recycled for use. The only reason Joe worked there at all is his worker license was on the condition that he work exclusively dark steel. Otherwise even Joe would run from the god forsaken place.

Joe snapped back to the deluge of insults when Mr.Soar clapped his hands near his face and, in an oddly defeated and quiet voice said, “Stay here Joe. Stay in this place and listen. I know you don’t want to hear it, but you are letting everyone down. Putting them in danger because you want to act like your above everyone else who comes to work every day.”

At this point Joe was getting pissed but managed to keep his mouth closed but vigorously defended himself in his mind. “If they want to not be in danger than maybe they should get a license of their own. And I don’t think I'm better than everyone because I found a way of living without suffering this hell every day!”

“And fuck you Mr.Soar,” Joe accidently added out loud. He finally looked around the small room for the first time since entering. They were in a small room that was once probably an area break room. He saw eight other people inside checking their gear, he only recognized three other people as long time dark-steel workers. Lisa was here as usual, she was sanding a dent out of her copper baton and looking right at him. Pine, a tall lanky guy, was in the corner sitting on a cooler sewing his boot looking at Joe with an amused grin. And then there was Mark who wasn’t doing anything.

“Wait, Joe thought, “why is he just holding the strap on his boot staring at me like that. And the others are looking at me too. Wait, is everyone looking at me? Why- oh glass, I said that out loud didn’t I. Well, time to double down. Not like the man’s opinion actually matters anyway. Yea, I'm not freaking out at all. And he can’t do anything to me he hasn’t already, right?”

Joe started to open his mouth again but was cut off by Mr.Soar. “You're right Joe. I wouldn’t last out there. The used dark steel would probably drive me mad in minutes. That’s why I’m here, and you and everyone else here goes in there. There aren't many people anywhere willing who can re-cycle dark steel. You lot were some of the people desperate enough for a license to pick this job. I didn’t make that choice for you, but I expect you to do the job you were licensed for. Instead, you fly around all over the place wasting the districts resources for your own amusement. Five people in the other groups have died in the last thirty shifts because they didn’t have enough back up and their manager sent them in anyway. I don’t risk people's lives, but sometimes that means no one works unless an extra shows up somewhere. What we are doing here matters Joe. It matters more than just normal steel and you know that. The mages need us to recycle this material for the other districts and the prison mages. And the other people here right now need you here so they can do their job.”

Joe angrily replied. “If what we do is so important, and only we are willing to do it, and it sucks so damn bad. Then Why are we getting paid the same as someone who just has to make pillows all day?!”

Mr.Soar let out a long, tired, breath and sat back into his chair. He wasn’t a very impressive man, physically that is. He was barely over 175cm tall with a military style buzzed hair. But he was smart.

Joe chose to take a moment to think before he said anything else. “Damn it. I know he’s just doing his best, I think. But I'm not backing down on the dam pay issue. I don’t care if this man just wanted to do his job. I'm not going to be another mindless worker dying for a hundredth of what I deserve to get paid. And the others could use what we learned here and make a better life for themselves if they wanted to. But they choose to stay here all day.”

Joe made up his mind and spoke to Mr.Soar again. “I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn, and you didn’t deserve that, but-”

“Stop at sorry,” one of the rando new guys cut him off. Speaking in a dull, matter of fact, mocking tone. “We get it, you think we deserve better, and that's nice of you. However, unlike you, we are able to accept what the district is, and the mages, and the millions of innocent people in the city need us to do. Save the ‘we deserve better’ speech. If you want better, get a higher worker tier.”

Hank, a recent member only joining ten shifts ago, decided to speak up too. His harsh voice told Joe that he was far more brainwashed than the average. “Sorry friend, but I'm happy to come to work and go home with my riches. We make enough to live like kings in the gutters. And that's what we are. We're all in the city gutter down here. Let the manager do his thing and let's get to it.”

The rando quickly cut back in, flipping 180 to an annoying peppy tone. “Woah now let’s not be too hasty, were already on the clock, I say we let the two of them settle things and collect time on the clock.”

Joe was stuck trying to figure out if the guy was actually a loyalist of the city or just an ass.

“Who’s side are yo-”

“Lazy bi-”

“Hell no I ain't waiting for tho–”

“Can you two ever just-”

The whole room broke out into a half dozen people talking over each other as Joe stared at Mr.Soar straight faced. He believed what he said was right and fair. But he had to admit he had been letting these people down. Not that he owed them anything. Besides, his runs were just so much more fun. The rest of the city just rested on their asses content with things so why shouldn’t he enjoy himself some. It also netted him way more money than any of them released. Except maybe Mark, he was pretty sharp, even for this crew. Joe had grown up with some of the people in this room. Even if he rarely interacted with them outside of work and wasn’t really friends with them, they were still important people to him. The dark-steel factory was a harrowing place and the bonds he made with the people there were strong. Until they died. Then they were just memories. And memories can’t make new memories.

“Okay! Okay!.” Joe spoke as loud as he could without shouting to get everyone's attention. “I'm sorry I’ve been absent recently. I'll try and come in more often.”

That's all he could say. He wasn’t really sorry, even though he cared about some of them, he wouldn’t hold his life up for them. And he didn’t see a life for him in the factory.

Mr.Soar looked at Joe with an odd expression on his face. Somewhere between acceptance and sadness as he spoke. “Just get ready Joe, you're all going on a layer four dust dive.”

Everyone in the room froze at those words, then they got to work. Even Joe put on his game face and put everything other than the work at hand aside after one last stray thought.

“Today's eighty might just be that everyone comes out in one piece.”