The House, Chapter 3—Work Orders

Part One · Chapter 3—Work Orders 

‘Gwyston can find me wherever I go, so here is as good as anywhere else.’ 

Eass had known that Niuen wouldn’t be pleased to see her—she had, after all, made it clear that Eass must not come back—but the day had been weird enough, and she was here, and she just wanted something to go right.

Niuen checked her wrist terminal. ‘Keep your eyes on the running track. Who told you that Gwyston can find you?’

Eass picked at the loose threads from her cuff. ‘Charles Graphyn.’

‘Graphyn?’ Niuen drew out the name, then asked, ‘Is he with Amik?’

Eass nodded. ‘He lives in your house at Bay’s End. He told me that Gwyston used Max’s death to create some kind of bond between us.’

Niuen tightened her laces. ‘Tell me what happened, but keep it short.’

Eass pulled her sleeve over her fingers and placed both hands in her lap. ‘I met someone in the Forest—Tayl Bergin. He took me to Graphyn. I asked Graphyn to send me back. He agreed to try. I went with Tayl to find an anchor. But something went wrong. When Tayl touched the anchor, a breach opened.’ Her throat constricted, and she swallowed hard. ‘Tayl thought it was something Gwyston did. We got away, but Gwyston found us again. We were on the Ice, and Ta Curr intervened. We escaped, and Tayl found a way to send me back.’ 

‘Was Tayl staying with Graphyn?’

‘Yes.’ Eass left it at that. Niuen would draw her own conclusions. 

‘And the map?’

‘Tayl took it to the Arc.’ 

Niuen straightened. 

Eass saw her chance slipping away and asked, ‘Where is Gwyston now?’

‘In his penthouse and not in a good mood.’

Eass was not sorry to hear that. ‘How did you know I would be here?’

Niuen ignored the question and used the bench to stretch her calves. ‘Graphyn is right about the bond. Gwyston took something from Max—a leather bracelet.’

Eass nodded slowly. Max had worn it the day he died. 

Niuen switched legs. ‘The bond will feed on your need for revenge, but this city is overflowing with fear and guilt. Finding you here will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.’ She met Eass’ gaze for the first time. ‘Unless you walk straight into a trap.’ 

Eass shook her head. ‘I won’t.’ 

Niuen nodded to a folded paper on the bench that hadn’t been there when Eass sat down.

‘Mitt will meet you at this address. Do not talk to her or anyone about where you have been.’

Eass nodded. Nobody in their right mind would believe her anyway. 

She picked up the paper. ‘What about Gwyston?’

‘What about him?’

‘We need to stop him.’

‘Did you miss the part about not running into a trap?’

Eass’ fingers tightened around the paper in her hand. ‘So what am I supposed to do?’

‘Go to the address. We’ll figure the rest out later.’ 

Niuen re-joined the runners, leaving Eass alone on the bench.

She unfolded the paper. It was a work order for a shift at a lower-level reclaim centre. The data chit stapled to the upper right corner confirmed its authenticity. Not as good as an ID, but better than nothing.

She slipped it into her back pocket. The raven was nowhere to be seen as she made her way back to the gate. She descended the first staircase she found. Her face frowned at her from the posters hanging on more than one landing, but the autons kept ignoring her, and the crews working the lower levels kept their eyes on their tasks and their thoughts to themselves. 

A block from the address, she stopped at a crossing with a transport line. A cart slid by, stopped at a down chute, and opened its top. The chute rumbled, dropping a load of electronic waste into the cart. The cart’s top closed, and it continued down the line. Eass followed it to the reclaim centre’s docking station. A gate in the concrete facade rolled up as the cart approached, and she slipped through behind it. The cart emptied its contents onto a conveyer belt where auton cohorts swivelled on rollers, sorting and dismantling anything from a hand terminal to transport drones as tall as Eass. 

‘Ah, the prodigal daughter.’ The voice belonged to a young woman in bulky coveralls. Eass had never bothered getting to know Max’s friends, preferring to keep to herself, but the woman looked vaguely familiar. 

‘What does that mean—prodigal?’ 

‘That you left to live a lavish life and now return repentant.’ She looked Eass up and down. ‘But you don’t look repentant or like you enjoyed a lavish life. And it’s Mitt, in case you forgot.’ 

‘Eass.’ 

‘I know. Niuen sent a message that you might need shelter for a few days.’ 

A few days? Eass thought. And then what? 

She looked at the long rows of autons. ‘Are you working here?’

Mitt nodded. ‘The stations are fully automated, but the autons need to be serviced. Nobody likes the job, so it’s easy to trade work orders.’ She pointed to a door. ‘The shower in the staffroom is working. I left a spare towel by the basin and coveralls in the locker. And eat something—you look ready to keel over.’

The authoritative tone didn’t sit well with Eass, but she couldn’t find fault with Mitt’s instructions as such and let it pass. 

The utilitarian bathroom had not seen a cleaner in a long while, but the shower was scalding hot. Eass let the water run down her hair and back until her skin turned pink, then towelled herself down and opened the locker closest to the showers in search of the coveralls. It was empty but for a rusted metal box. The paperback inside was mouldy and missed half of its cover. She flicked through the pages—a handbook made obsolete by automation. Eass was about to return it when she spotted the folding knife stuck to the bottom of the box. The straight blade folded into the handle was shorter than her pinky. The strangely shaped metal tool on the other end must have been needed for one of the machines in the centre. 

Sector citizens weren’t allowed to carry anything with a blade longer than two digits, and Max had hammered into her to never be caught with a knife. 

But Max was dead. 

She slipped the knife into her parka and dropped the paperback back into the box. The coveralls in the next locker matched the one Mitt was wearing. The upper city paid no attention to work crews, and wearing a bulky crew coveralls would make her as invisible to human eyes as she seemed to be to autons. She shook it out and pulled it over her underwear. 

She placed the parka and the clothes she had worn on a rusted table and sat in one of the creaking chairs. A carton on the table offered bottled water and the ever-present ration bars. She opened a bottle and chose a bar promising chocolate flavour. They all tasted like cardboard, but that had never stopped her from choosing.

Her left palm itched, and she rubbed the skin where the Arc mark used to appear. The mark had fallen dormant after her return to the city. Whether it was gone or simply had nothing more to tell her now that her memories had returned, Eass couldn’t say.

The bulge in the parka’s sleeve reminded her of Tayl’s scarf. She drew it out, then emptied the contents of the parka’s pockets onto the table: the black game stone from Crossroads, the curl of shadow weave, a piece of charcoal and a few seeds from the Summer Sea; the pencil she had taken from Tayl’s room, the notebook and pen Graphyn had given her at Bay’s End, the leaf from the Arc Forest, and Niuen’s token. This scarce collection, and a tapestry of fading bruises, were the only proof that the last week had happened. 

She leaned forward and buried her face in her hands. She had been obsessed with returning to a world that had already forgotten her, to rescue a friend that had already been dead, and now that she was here, she felt nothing but lost.

‘I wondered where this had gone.’ Mitt set down a crate overflowing with wires and circuit boards and touched the parka, gently smoothing the creases. 

For a moment their gazes met, and Eass found too much understanding in Mitt’s eyes. She pushed Niuen’s token across the table. 

‘This was in Max’s parka when I took it.’ 

She sounded more defensive than she had intended, and Mitt said, ‘Nobody is blaming you.’

‘What is going to happen to it?’

Mitt rummaged through the food carton. ‘That is for Niuen to decide. Keep it for now.’

Eass hesitated, then drew out the crinkled poster and flattened it on the table. ‘I think this is supposed to be me. But why use a drawing? Why paper?’ 

Mitt only glanced at the poster. ‘It’s a weird side effect of Niuen’s scraper. The code she used to erase you from the SectorNet feeds remains active—no SectorNet device can take or store digital likenesses of you anywhere within their system.’

‘Is this why the autons ignore me?’

Mitt nodded. ‘It won’t last forever, and it won’t help you with SES security drones. We’ll need to get you out of here as soon as possible.’ 

‘No.’ Eass had almost shouted the word and added more quietly, ‘I want to stay.’ 

Mitt raised an eyebrow. ‘To do what?’ 

She leaned forward. ‘The Half House—Niuen’s faction? What are they doing about Gwyston?’

‘You should ask Niuen.’

‘Like she ever gives straight answers?’

‘Look—’

‘Why not just get rid of him?’ Eass interrupted.

‘You want to be judge and jury?’ 

Eass looked blank. 

‘You know—deciding who lives and who dies?’ 

‘Gwyston killed Max.’ 

Mitt leaned forward. ‘And I don’t know that?’ 

Eass did not retreat. ‘He threw him off a roof like garbage, just to make a point. And he might be responsible for the death of entire spheres.’ 

‘Do you really think a single person is so powerful?’ 

‘Yes—I mean … isn’t this why Niuen is here?’ 

‘Look. I’m not saying that Gwyston isn’t a murderous sociopath. He is. But he is not alone. He is surrounded by people who believe they possess a single truth—a cure for the human condition. They want to turn us all into angels. In their image and under their thumb. And in the process, make more money than should be possible.’ Mitt leaned back in her chair. ‘And Gwyston is hard to kill.’ 

‘How do you know?’ Eass asked.

‘I tried.’ 

Eass stared at Mitt, but Mitt didn’t give her time to ask the hows and whys. She stood and said, ‘I need to get back to work.’

‘Wait.’ Eass sprang to her feet. ‘There must be something I can do.’

‘Well, I guess we could use you as bait.’ Mitt’s voice was deadpan, but when she saw Eass’ expression, she said, ‘Don’t look at me like that. I was kidding.’ 

Eass didn’t see the humour—after all, was that such a bad idea? ‘Let me at least help with what you’re doing here.’

Mitt looked her up and down. ‘Well, you look the part. You can sort material while I am running the maintenance routines.’ 

She opened a locker and drew out a worn pack. ‘Put your things in here and keep the pack close. You never know when you might need to run, and we can’t risk leaving anything behind. When Eass joined Mitt at her workbench, she had set aside three crates. ‘Our friends over there—’ Mitt pointed to the autons dismantling electronics ‘—are doing the hard work. We sift through the reclaimed parts, looking for rare metals and metal alloys.’ She pushed a crate filled with parts to Eass and handed her a smaller box filled with samples.

Eass pointed to the second crate. ‘What about these?’

‘Handheld terminals. If we take too many, it will show in the statistics, so I look through them here. Use the gloves. There is an empty workbench over there.’

Her tone discouraged further questions, and Eass took the crate to the bench. She put on the gloves and arranged the samples in a neat row before overturning the crate at one end of the table. She sorted through the tangle of conductors, switches, and processors, placing her finds in tidy stacks next to each sample. Her mind calmed, and she soon got into a steady rhythm. 

She had made it through three crates when Mitt’s terminal pinged and she went to stand by the roller gate. It had opened throughout the day, letting in transports to dump their contents onto the input belt, but this was the first time Mitt looked through the waste before it got to the autons. Eass pretended to untangle wires while keeping Mitt in her peripheral vision. Halfway through the load, she reached into a pile and removed an orange bag, then came over to Eass’ workstation.

‘That’s not too bad for your first day.’

They swiped the piles into bags similar to the one Mitt had taken from the belt but grey, returning an item here and there to the discard pile, before dropping the bags into the empty crate. 

When the klaxon outside announced the end of the shift, they cleaned the benches and Mitt signed them out. They carried the now-full crate to the docking bay where a crew container waited. Eass raised an eyebrow at the sight of the scratched and dented hull. 

‘It has seen better days,’ Mitt admitted, ‘but it has bunk beds for crews on double shifts or on-call duty.’

She tapped codes into the control panel. The ramp lowered onto the dock, and Mitt gestured for Eass to step inside. 

The container’s manifest listed two crew on general maintenance duty for the city’s automated lower-level service infrastructure. Behind the cargo bay, the container housed a small workshop and a crew compartment with two bunk beds. A lost-looking plush rabbit sat on a bedroll on the upper bunk. It was missing one ear, and the threadbare fabric had been patched so many times its original colour was indiscernible. 

Eass dropped her pack on the lower bunk and joined Mitt at the hatch to help her load the crate with their scavenged goods onto one of two auton carts parked in the cargo bay.

‘Have you been living here?’ Eass asked when they were done and the hatch closed. 

Mitt nodded. ‘After you left, Niuen insisted we move every twenty-four hours. The crew containers allow us to do that without having to find a new place to stay every night.’

Mitt’s terminal pinged. She read the message, then looked at Eass. 

‘It looks like Niuen plans to keep you around after all.’  

Some of the tension melted from Eass’ shoulders, but Mitt’s expression turned sceptical as she read on. 

‘We are moving to a new safe house.’ She looked up. ‘Did you know anything about this?’

Eass shook her head. 

Mitt puffed out air, then tapped new coordinates into the control pad, and lowered a narrow seat from a wall panel. 

‘It will take us—’ She checked her terminal ‘—just past the final curfew signal to get there.’

The container lurched forward, then clunked along the rail. The few lights flickering past the porthole were not enough to see where they were going, and Eass felt disinclined to ask. She staggered across the swaying floor and lowered the seat next to Mitt’s. 

She leaned back, resting her head against the metal wall. The engine’s hum and rhythmic rattle lulled her to sleep before she could finish another thought.

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