A couple days earlier, I had been moving boxes. That was my entire world, boxes, crates, and the usual grayness of dust particles dancing in the light. The constant hum of the air recycler, and the constant ache in my arms and knees.
The warehouse in the orphanage of the Citadel was small, cold, and smelled sour, like rotten paste. The crate in my hands was marked 'Nutritional Paste.' It weighed as much as a small child. I raised it onto my shoulders. And started walking away, into the maze of shelves.
"Last one, Allaran." Jaxon, the foreman, grunted from his desk. He was a Zero, his father had survived the Exile, came back with an agility boost, and secured his son a cozy management job. "Big day tomorrow. You ready?"
I grunted, an all purpose noise. Truth was, I had made peace with the Exile years ago. Not because I was brave but because, after a while, fear and hope both turn into the same ache behind your ribs. You learn to ignore it.
I wiped the sweat from my brow with a dirty sleeve. "For the grand teleportation to certain death? Yeah. Thrilled."
He chuckled, and said with a raspy voice. "Hey, you never know. Maybe you'll get a good power. Something to help you… I don't know, run faster."
"I move boxes for a living, Jax. What do you think I'll get? The power to slightly accelerate cardboard decomposition?"
"Optimism, man. It's free." He tossed me my final credit chit. "Spend it well. Don't waste it on tea."
I caught the chit, the week's wages feeling pitifully light. I wouldn't waste it. I'd give it to Mrs. Kael at the orphanage dorm. Maybe it could buy the little kids an extra flavor packet for their paste.
That was the life of an Orphan in the Citadel. You worked, you contributed, you tried not to think about the ticking clock in your blood that went off the moment you turned twenty one.
You hoped the parents you never met died quickly. If they had survived the Exile, they would be Ones, and you would know them. Instead, you got the Citadel's version of parenting. A cot, a chore, and a countdown to your own exile. Really makes you feel the love.
I walked back through the Citadel's lower corridors. The walls here were silver metal, but scarred. Old graffiti was drawn on the metal. Not art, but scars left by hands with nothing left to lose. You could read the occasional neon scribble, bleeding through layers of cheap paint you couldn't fully erase.
MY LIFE WAS POINTLESS.
THE OUTSIDE DOESN'T WANT US EITHER.
BORN TO DIE, TRAINED TO FEAR, FUEL FOR THE BARRIER.
Above, in the Spires where The Ones lived, I heard the air was scented. They had gardens under artificial light. Their children trained in martial arts, studied tactics, practiced with bow and arrow, all in the futile hope it would influence their awakening power into something combat worthy. They aimed for a myth, the child who would finally strike back, instead of just being struck down.
It was late, the end of the third shift, the corridors were quiet, except for me and the endless low frequency hum that roamed around Argent. I walked into the kitchen, a small room where the rations were distributed. Mrs. Kael was there, same as ever, her dark hair pulled back so tight it looked like a headband. She was three years younger than me, but for some reason it felt like she was older.
She greeted me with a smile, or at least she tried. "Allaran, you're 20 right? How're you feeling?"
"Everyone's talking about the Exile." I said. "I wish I could say I'll miss this place."
She shrugged. "Nobody does. But you'll be missed, all the same."
I handed her the chit. "For the little kids. I won't need it."
She felt like refusing for a moment, then there was an understanding glint on her eyes. "They'll eat well tonight. Thank you, Allaran."
"It's nothing." I meant it. It was less than nothing. The Corruptors wouldn't care if I had a week's chit in my pocket while they tore me apart.
Outside, I could see my breath condense in the freezing air. I walked back the passageways, past the med bay, up to the dormitory itself.
A vast, open hall filled with rows of cots and a few hundred of us, all born the same day, January 1st, all turning twenty one together tomorrow. The air had a thick scent of despair, with the sound of manic laughter, and quiet tears.
"Allaran!" A voice called. Kira, a girl I'd been friends with since childhood waved from her cot. Her eyes were red rimmed.
"Our whole cohort will be teleported at once. Fifty three of us. Just… gone from here, and dropped out there together."
"They say a lot of things." I said, while sitting on my own cot. "They also said the System rewards hard work. And yet here I am, a top tier box mover, about to be fed to the Corruptors. Really feeling the rewards."
She managed a weak smile. From my pocket, I pulled out a yo-yo, a cheap, luminous green thing I'd found in the scrap as a kid. I looped it around my finger and let it fall, watching it spin. Thump thump against the floor. A soothing, mindless rhythm. My thoughts were grim, but my hands were busy. It helped.
"What do you think you'll get?" Kira asked, hugging her knees.
"Based on my stellar career? Super strength in my lower back. Maybe the ability to instantly find lost inventory."
She laughed, a genuine one this time. "I worked in the hydroponic yield labs. Maybe I'll get… plant talk. Or the power to be extra moist."
"A formidable survival skill." I nodded solemnly.
The lights began their slow dimming sequence, it was Argent's approximation of night. Conversations died down into whispers, then into the sound of ragged breathing and suppressed sobs.
I laid back, the yo-yo still in my hand, tracing idle patterns in the air above my chest.
My last night as a citizen, as a living person with a minuscule future, I thought about the boxes I'd moved. The millions of them. The sheer, pointless volume of it all.
Volume.
Distance.
A strange, half formed idea flickered at the edge of my exhaustion. I dismissed it.
Tomorrow, I would be given a tool. It would be useless. I would die.
The yo-yo spun, like a tiny green star in the dark.
Thump. Thump. Thump