Second Shift - Order(6)

Mission could feel his cheeks tighten, could sense the burn of the whelp around his neck.

“All I’m saying, son, is that the older you get and the more seniority, you’ll earn your own choice of rows to hoe. That’s all. I want you to watch out for yourself.”

“I’m watching out for myself, Dad.” He nearly added: It isn’t like I have anyone else.

Riley climbed up, sat on the top rail, and flashed his teeth at his own reflection in the knife. The kid already had that band of spots across his nose, those freckles, the start of a tan. Damaged flesh from damaged flesh, father like son. And Mission could easily picture Riley years hence on the other side of that rail, could see his half-brother all grown up with a kid of his own, and it made Mission thankful that he’d wormed his way out of the farms and into a job he didn’t take home every night beneath his fingernails.

“Are you joining us for lunch?” his father asked, sensing perhaps that he was pushing Mission away. A change in subjects was as near to an apology as the old man dared.

“If you don’t mind,” Mission said. He felt a twinge of guilt that his father expected to feed him, but he appreciated not having to ask. “I’ll have to run afterward, though. I’ve got a . . . delivery tonight.”

His father frowned. “You’ll have time to see Allie though, right? She’s forever asking about you. The boys here are lined up to marry that girl if you keep her waiting.”

Mission wiped his face to hide his expression. Allie was a great friend—his first and briefest romance—but to marry her would be to marry the farms, to return home, to live among the dead. “Probably not this time,” he said. And he felt bad for admitting it.

“Okay. Well, go drop that off. Don’t squander your bonus sitting here jawing with us.” The disappointment in the old man’s voice was hotter than the lights and not so easy to shade. “We’ll see you in the feeding hall in half an hour?” He reached out, took his son’s hand one more time, and gave it a squeeze. “It’s good to see you, Son.”

“Same.” Mission shook his father’s hand, then clapped his palms together over the grow pit to knock loose any dirt. Riley reluctantly gave the knife back, and Mission slipped it into its sheath. He fastened the clasp around the handle, thinking on how he might need it that night. He pondered for a moment if he should warn his father, thought of telling him and Riley both to stay inside until morning, to not dare go out.

But he held his tongue, patted his brother on the shoulder, and made his way to the pump room. As he walked through rows of planters and pickers, he thought about farmers selling their own vegetables in makeshift stalls. He thought about the cafe growing its own sprouts. He thought of the plans recently discovered to move something heavy from one landing to another without involving the porters.

Everyone was trying to do it all in case the violence returned. Mission could feel it brewing, the suspicion and the distrust, the walls being built. Everyone was trying to get a little less reliant on the others, preparing for the inevitable, hunkering down.

He loosened the straps on his pack as he approached the pump room, and a dangerous thought occurred to him, a revelation: Everyone was trying to get to where they didn’t need one another. And how exactly was that supposed to help them all get along?





•4•




After the best meal he’d had in ages—as fresh as it was free—Mission hurried down four flights toward Sanitation to see Jenine. He felt light as a feather downbound and with the load off. With just his empty porter’s pack on his back, his canteen jouncing on one hip, his knife on the other, he skipped down the steps side-style with one hand on the rail. At times like these, descending after a long slog up, it felt as though he could leap over the rail and float unharmed to Mechanical like a mote of dust. He apologized to those he overtook, saying “porter, ma’am” and “porter, sir” by the book, even though he wasn’t carrying anything official.

Weightless as a bird, with his heart thrumming like one was trapped in his ribcage, it occurred to him that maybe it wasn’t the descent that had him feeling giddy. Everyone expected him to grow up a farmer, to settle down with the girl who loved him, but Mission wanted the opposite of what was easily attainable. He wondered if this was a punishment of sorts, a slow strangulation, his thirst for distant things. Did he love the chase? Or was it that staying on the move made it more difficult for the past to catch up to him?

He arrived at Sanitation, a rumble of footfalls on steel treads, and pushed through doors in need of oil. Sanitation was one of the levels laid out in a spiral; a single hallway coiled its way from the landing and did three circuits before dead ending into the waste plant. Fresh water emerged near the landing and was piped out to the rest of the Up Top, while gray water and black water—euphemisms both—were pumped into the waste room. The gray came from showers, sinks, and drains, the black from toilets.