Nasir stopped counting the days. At first, he'd tried — not with chalk or slates, but by carving shallow lines into the underside of his cot's rusted frame. The cuts had started off neat, careful, one for each passing sleep.
He wasn't sure what he thought would happen. Maybe if he counted enough, something would change — a better posting, a new Overseer, Caine walking back through the door. Maybe someone would notice.
But sometime after the thirtieth line, he stopped. Not because he lost count, but because it didn't matter. Counting didn't help him sleep, and sleep was the only way to be ready for work.
In places higher up — Sector 10, maybe even 11 — kids didn't start working until sixteen. Sometimes younger, if their families were desperate. But there were families — and with them came education, better living, more paths than just one.
They had schools up there. Real ones — not just training slates or tool diagrams, but lessons, books, maybe even desks. Some said they earned credits for finishing terms. That the better your marks, the better the work you got. Clean hands. Cleaner clothes. Not the patched-up sleeves and recycled boots they handed out down here. And not the same machines passed from shift to shift, half-broken and rigged to keep running — but tools that worked the first time. Polished. Intact.
And the pay — it was still scraps by any measure, but it stretched farther in those places. Enough for soft food. Enough for options.
Down here, there were only assignments. If you could walk, if your hands could wrap around tools, you worked.
Nasir was ten. And already strong enough to haul scrap bins half his weight, twist off pipe valves jammed with grit, and lift the smaller floor panels with a hook rod when older workers told him to "make himself useful." His palms stayed calloused. His forearms ached more nights than not. But he kept up. He had to.
The adults didn't coddle the kids, but they didn't ignore them either. Some grumbled orders. Some tossed scraps of advice between breath and smoke. Others joked just loud enough to remind you they still had mouths. But no one stopped to explain.
You learned by watching. You figured things out by doing them wrong first. The only difference between Nasir and the men beside him was how much their backs had bent over the years.
The work didn't care how old you were. And neither did the people
And then there were the disappearances.
They didn't happen all at once. No dramatic alarms, no storm of guards kicking down doors. Just… quiet absences. A cot left unmade. A voice missing during meal line. A pair of shoes under a bed no one would touch.
First it was Mila, the girl who used to sneak extra fiber bars to the youngest kids. Then Arvo, the boy who never spoke and always smelled like cleaning acid. Then two more in the same week. Each time, the Overseers said nothing. The rest of them weren't stupid enough to ask.
Nasir watched it all. He said less, now. Smiled even less than that. Not because he wanted to become cold — but because warmth was like soap: a luxury, and short-lived.
The worst part was that he no longer expected to see Caine when he woke.
For a long time, some small animal part of him still glanced around when the doors opened, hoping to catch a glimpse — maybe he'd be back, maybe this was all just a test. But Caine hadn't returned. The last thing Nasir remembered was that quiet moment, the one with no words, when Caine had handed him half a ration bar and gripped his shoulder tighter than usual. That was two vanishings ago.
Now, Nasir lay still at lights-out, arms folded behind his head, staring at the stained ceiling and listening to the creaks of others shifting in their sleep. In the Gut, even dreams felt rationed.
In the mornings, Sector 12 hummed with dead noise. Machines too big to see the top of droned above them. The floors trembled when the haulers passed through, shipping crates stacked high with processed waste and soil samples. The sky — if you could call it that — was a layered dome of pipework, steam vents, and suspended walkways. No one looked up anymore.
Nasir's assignment this cycle was in the Filter Sinks. A narrow trench where cooling ducts condensed thick vapor into drinkable water. It was hot, wet, and smelled like heated rust and fungal growth. His hands were often raw, wrists red where the plastic sleeves rubbed.
Today, he worked beside Eyne, a skinny, nervous boy with scabbed lips and too many questions.
"Ever think about Sector One?" Eyne asked, whispering like he always did, even though no Overseer could hear them over the hiss of vapor. "Like… if we work long enough, maybe they move us up?"
Nasir didn't answer. He just kept wiping down the condensation funnels with his cloth, scraping off the buildup and tossing it into the chemical slurry.
Eyne took silence as an invitation to keep going.
"My sister said once she saw grass, back when she was little. She said it was soft. Green like algae, but brighter."
Nasir looked at him. Not with scorn — more with the flatness of someone measuring a rock before throwing it.
"You believe that?" he said.
Eyne hesitated. "I mean… it's possible. Right?"
Nasir turned back to the funnel. "No. Not for us."
There was nothing in Sector 12 but rot and sweat. They were the Gut. Meant to swallow the waste of every sector above them. Even the story of Sector One — all white walls and air you didn't need to scrub — felt like something fed to them on purpose. A bedtime myth for orphans. Work hard, be still, obey — maybe the Dream Sector will take you in.
Nasir didn't believe in dreams anymore. But he didn't mock those who did. He just let them talk while he scraped the filters and kept his mouth shut.
That was what Caine had taught him — not in words, but in example.
That evening, after cleanup, they were lined up for slates.
Slate assignments came once a week. Thin metal cards etched with a name and a job. Sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent. When your name wasn't on a slate, it meant one of two things: you were being moved… or you were being removed.
Nasir stood near the back, not because he was slow, but because he'd learned it was better to be overlooked than noticed.
The Overseer handing out slates was a new one — a tall woman with matte gray gloves and a face too smooth to be from the Gut. She didn't look at them, just called names and handed slates.
When she said, "Nasir," his fingers twitched slightly.
He stepped forward, took his slate without making eye contact, and stepped back into line.
Maintenance Delta-5. Sector 12, tunnel branch 8R. Third shift.
Third shift was the worst. It meant working while the others slept — alone, in long corridors where the lights sometimes flickered and the pipes hissed without warning. But Nasir didn't complain.
At least on third shift, no one talked. No one looked at you like they were measuring how many calories they'd gain if you stopped breathing.
That night, he walked the tunnels with a maintenance lamp strapped to his chest, casting a dull cone of yellow forward. His job was to clean the vent ports along the 8R stretch. He moved slowly, methodically, wiping and scraping without thought.
Somewhere down the tunnel, a steam valve released with a hiss that sounded too much like breath.
Nasir paused, then knelt by the next vent. He didn't look around. Looking invited questions. And questions invited notice.
But as he reached for the scraper, he saw something scratched into the rusted wall just beside the vent panel.
A name. Caine.
Nasir's fingers hovered above it. The letters were rough, uneven, as if etched with a nail or a scrap of metal. It wasn't fresh. Rust had already begun to eat the corners of the lines.
He stared at it for a long time. Not in awe, not in grief — just stillness. Like his body knew what it was seeing but didn't know how to react.
Then, slowly, he touched the letters. Traced them once.
And kept working.
He didn't mention it the next day. Not to Eyne. Not to the others. Whatever it was — message, mistake, memory — it was his.
If Caine had left it, then he had been here. And if he'd been here, he might still be somewhere deeper.
That week, two more kids vanished.
No one spoke about it. Not even Eyne.
Instead, they focused harder on their work. Moved faster. Ate slower. As if any wrong step would make them next.
Nasir noticed a change in himself. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Just small things.
He stopped flinching when someone screamed during the night.
He stopped dreaming about food or warmth or rescue.
And he stopped waiting.
Waiting for Caine. Waiting for Sector One. Waiting for something that might lift him out of this place.
Now, he watched. He listened. He worked. Quietly. Precisely. Without the heaviness of hope.
One night, during third shift, he found a trail of boot prints in the dust near tunnel branch 9A. Too large for a child. Too deep. He followed them for six paces before they simply vanished.
No drag marks. No return prints.
Just gone — like the wind had come through and taken whoever they belonged to.
Nasir stood still in the silence of the tunnel.
He didn't speak. He didn't cry.
He just knelt, ran his hand through the prints, and smoothed them out until the floor looked untouched again