The factory loomed ahead like a rusted monument to desperation. Stamford Manufacturing—though everyone just called it "the grind"—was a massive complex of corrugated metal and concrete, spewing steam from vents that lined its roof. Ray had worked here for three years, ever since he'd turned twenty-five and needed steady time to survive.
He joined the stream of workers flowing through the main gate, each person holding out their arm to be scanned by the automated reader. The machine beeped green as it registered Ray's arrival: 21:43:17. He was on time. Being late cost you extra—fifteen minutes deducted as a penalty, and three strikes meant termination. In Dayton, termination from your job was often a death sentence.
The factory floor was already alive with noise—the clang of metal on metal, the hiss of hydraulics, the constant whir of machinery that never stopped, even when the workers did. Ray made his way to his station in Section Seven, where rows of assembly lines stretched into the dim distance. His job was simple, mind-numbing, and necessary: inspect components, flag defects, pass them down the line. Ten hours a day, six days a week.
"Cutting it close, Shivers," a voice called out.
Ray turned to see Marcus Webb already at the neighboring station, his dark hands moving with practiced efficiency over a tray of metal parts. Marcus was thirty-two—seven years past his activation—and one of the few people Ray considered a friend in this place.
"Twenty-two hours this morning," Ray said, taking his position. "Had to eat."
Marcus whistled low. "That's rough, man. I'm sitting pretty at four days myself. Got a bonus last week for exceeding quota."
"Four days. Living large."
"In Dayton? That's practically rich." Marcus grinned, but there was no humor in it. They both knew four days wasn't rich. It was just less desperate.
The shift supervisor, a hard-faced woman named Kors with a permanent scowl and three weeks on her clock, walked past doing her rounds. She didn't speak to the workers unless it was to criticize. Ray had learned early that supervisors in the factory weren't there to help—they were there to squeeze every second of productivity out of you, because their bonuses depended on the section's output.
Ray fell into the rhythm of the work. Pick up component. Inspect for cracks, misalignments, defects. Pass it down the line or toss it in the reject bin. Repeat. His hands moved automatically while his mind wandered, the way it always did during shifts.
He thought about his mother.
Rachel Shivers had died two weeks ago. Fifty years old—which meant she'd lived twenty-five years past activation, a decent run by Dayton standards. But it hadn't been enough. She'd been walking home from her own factory job when her clock hit zero. Just collapsed on the street, three blocks from their apartment. By the time Ray found her, she was already cold, the green numbers on her arm frozen at 00:00:00.
The funeral had cost him two days of time. Two days he couldn't afford. But you buried your mother. That's what you did.
"You hear about the Fortis brothers?" Marcus asked, breaking Ray's thoughts.
"No. What happened?"
"Both of them zeroed out yesterday. Tried to rob a time lender in Milltown, got caught by Timekeepers. Clocks drained as punishment. Dead before they hit the ground."
Ray's hands paused for just a moment before continuing their work. The Fortis brothers. He'd known them—not well, but enough to nod to on the street. Desperate men who'd made a desperate choice.
"Idiots," someone muttered from down the line. "Should've known better than to cross zones."
"They had families," Marcus said quietly. "Three kids between them. What are they supposed to do now?"
No one answered. Everyone knew what happened to kids when their parents died in Dayton. They scrambled, they begged, they worked whatever jobs would take them. Some made it. Most didn't.
Ray checked his time: 21:38:42. Five minutes had passed. Only nine hours and fifty-five minutes to go.
The morning dragged on. Ray's back began to ache from standing. His eyes strained in the dim factory lighting. Around him, hundreds of other workers performed their own repetitive tasks, all of them watching their clocks tick down, all of them calculating how much time they'd have at the end of the shift.
At the two-hour mark, the first person collapsed.
It happened at Station Twelve, three rows over. A young woman—Ray thought her name was Chen, maybe related to his neighbor—simply crumpled to the ground. The machines around her kept running. Workers nearby barely glanced over.
"Timekeeper!" someone shouted.
Two men in grey uniforms appeared within minutes. Timekeepers—the police force that maintained order and collected the dead. They checked the woman's arm: 00:00:00. One of them spoke into a radio while the other pulled out a body bag.
Ray forced himself to look away and keep working. You couldn't dwell on it. Couldn't think too hard about the fact that anyone on this floor could be next. That he could be next.
"Did she have family?" Marcus asked, his voice tight.
"Don't know," Ray said. "Don't want to know."
That was the truth of Dayton. Getting attached meant grief, and grief was a luxury they couldn't afford.
By lunch break, Ray's clock read 19:42:33. He'd earned back some time, but not much. The lunch break itself was unpaid—thirty minutes where your clock just kept counting down. Ray sat with Marcus in the break room, a dingy space with flickering lights and vending machines that charged two minutes for a sandwich.
"You ever think about leaving?" Marcus asked, biting into his sandwich.
"Leaving where? The factory?"
"Dayton. The whole damn time zone."
Ray looked at his friend. "And go where? Takes time to cross into Milltown. Time we don't have. And even if we made it, you think they'd let us stay? They've got their own workers, their own system."
"Yeah, but they're not dying in the streets. They've got months, years maybe."
"They've also got walls and Timekeepers who shoot first and ask questions never." Ray shook his head. "The system's designed to keep us here, Marcus. We're born in Dayton, we work in Dayton, we die in Dayton. That's the deal."
Marcus was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "Your mom used to say that change was possible. Remember? She'd talk about the old days, before the time zones were so strict."
Ray did remember. His mother had been a dreamer, always talking about fairness and justice like they were real things instead of fairy tales. It hadn't saved her.
"My mom's dead," Ray said flatly. "Dreams don't pay the rent."
The break ended. They went back to the line. Back to the grind.
By the time the shift horn blared ten hours later, Ray's entire body ached. His clock read 19:21:08. He'd earned eight hours and twenty minutes—standard pay after the various deductions. Not great, not terrible. Enough to survive another day.
He clocked out with the rest of the shift, joining the exodus of exhausted workers flooding toward the exits. The evening crowd on the streets was different from the morning—slower, more defeated. People who'd spent their day earning just enough time to do it all again tomorrow.
Ray stopped at a street vendor and bought dinner: three minutes for rice and some kind of meat that probably wasn't meat. His clock ticked down to 19:18:02.
As he walked home through the darkening streets of Dayton, Ray looked up at the wall in the distance. Somewhere beyond it, people were sitting down to meals that cost hours, living in houses that required days of rent, spending time like it meant nothing.
And here he was, counting every second, one day away from zero.
Ray checked his clock one more time: 19:17:33.
Tomorrow, he'd wake up and do it all again.
Because in Dayton, that's all there was.
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