The truck stopped.
I'd been staring out the window for... I don't know how long. Time felt different now. Broken. Like someone had taken all the minutes and hours and mixed them up wrong so they didn't connect to each other properly anymore.
We were at some kind of building. Big concrete thing that went down instead of up. Most of it was underground, I could tell, because there were these metal grates in the ground with yellow light coming up through them and the smell of... chemicals maybe? Something sharp that made my nose burn.
One of the men opened the truck door. Not the door I was sitting next to. The other side. Like they didn't want to get too close to me or something. Which was stupid because I wasn't going to do anything. I wasn't going to run or fight or even ask questions.
I wasn't going to do anything at all.
"Out," the man said.
I got out. My legs felt shaky, like they'd forgotten how to hold me up. But they worked enough. I followed the man toward a metal door in the side of the concrete building. There was a number painted on it: 7. Just 7. Like that meant something important.
Inside was a hallway that sloped down. The walls were the same gray concrete and there were lights in the ceiling that hummed and flickered. The chemical smell got stronger the further we walked. Made my eyes water.
We went down stairs. A lot of stairs. I tried counting them at first but gave up somewhere around forty because what was the point of knowing how many stairs led down to wherever I was going to spend the rest of my life?
The rest of my life. That was a weird thought. Before Maya... before the girl who wasn't Maya... I never really thought about the rest of my life. Just thought about today and maybe tomorrow if I was feeling optimistic. But now I had to think about all the days stretching out ahead of me in this place with the chemical smell and the flickering lights.
Forever was a really long time.
We reached the bottom and there was another hallway and another door. This one didn't have a number. Just a small window made of thick glass. The man knocked and someone inside buzzed us through.
The room on the other side was bigger than I expected. Like a warehouse, but underground. The ceiling was low and there were pipes running everywhere and the sound of machinery somewhere I couldn't see. Grinding, churning sounds. And voices. People working.
Kids working.
I could see them now, moving around between these big metal containers that came up to their chests. Most of them looked my age or maybe a little older. All of them were wearing the same gray coveralls and all of them looked... empty. Like someone had scooped out whatever used to be inside them and left just the shell walking around.
"Another one," said a woman who came over to us. She was wearing different clothes. Cleaner clothes. She looked at me the way Maya had looked at me when she was pretending to care. Like I was something she needed to evaluate and categorize.
"Small," she said to the man who'd brought me. "What's his processing capacity?"
"Standard rate. He's young but he's been conditioned. Won't cause trouble."
Processing capacity. Like I was a machine.
The woman nodded and made a mark on a clipboard she was carrying.
"We'll start him on the sorting line. See how he handles the quotas."
She handed me a set of coveralls like the other kids were wearing. Gray and stiff and smelling like chemicals.
"Change," she said, pointing to a corner where there was a screen set up. "Leave your clothes there. You won't need them anymore."
I went behind the screen and took off the clean clothes Maya had given me. The ones that had made me feel special. Feel like someone who mattered.
I left them in a pile on the floor.
The coveralls were too big. They hung loose on my shoulders and the legs were long enough that I had to roll them up so I wouldn't trip. But they fit better than anything I'd worn before Maya. Better than the torn, dirty clothes I'd lived in for... however long it had been.
When I came out from behind the screen, the woman was waiting with a badge on a metal chain. She put it around my neck. The badge had a number on it: 847.
Not Echo. Not even my old name that I'd never told anyone. Just 847.
"Your processing station is over there," she said, pointing toward the metal containers where the other kids were working. "Station twelve. You'll work with 623 until you learn the process."
Station twelve. 623. Numbers instead of names. Numbers instead of people.
I walked over to station twelve. The sound of the machinery was louder here, and I could see what the other kids were doing. They were reaching into the metal containers and pulling out... things. Pieces of metal and plastic and glass. Sorting them into different smaller containers. Their hands moved fast and steady, like they'd been doing this forever.
623 was a girl about my age with short dark hair and burns on her arms. Chemical burns, looked like. The kind that healed wrong and left shiny pink scars.
She looked up when I got to the station but didn't say anything. Just moved over a little to make room and kept working.
I watched her for a minute. Reach into the big container, grab something, look at it, put it in one of the smaller containers. Repeat. Over and over. Fast enough that her hands were just blurs.
"The quota is five hundred pieces per shift," she said without looking at me. Her voice was flat. Empty. Like the voices of all the other kids in this place. "Shift is twelve hours. You get two ten-minute breaks and one twenty-minute break for food."
Five hundred pieces in twelve hours. That was... I tried to do the math but my brain felt fuzzy. More than forty pieces per hour. Almost one piece every minute for twelve hours straight.
"What happens if you don't make quota?" I asked.
623 finally looked at me. Really looked at me. Her eyes were brown and completely dead.
"You don't want to know," she said.
Then she went back to working.
I reached into the big container. My hand came out with a piece of twisted metal. Sharp edges, covered in some kind of oily residue that made my skin tingle in a bad way. I looked at it, trying to figure out where it was supposed to go. There were six smaller containers, each marked with a different symbol I didn't understand.
"That one goes in container three," 623 said without looking up from her own work. "Metal fragments with chemical residue."
Container three. Metal fragments with chemical residue. How was I supposed to know that just by looking?
I put the piece in container three and reached for another one. This time it was a chunk of green glass. Still sharp, still covered in the oily stuff.
"Container five," 623 said.
Container five. Glass with chemical residue, I guessed.
I kept working. Reaching, looking, guessing, placing. 623 corrected me when I was wrong, which was a lot at first. After an hour I was getting maybe half of them right on my own.
After two hours my hands were starting to burn from whatever was on the pieces. After three hours my back hurt from bending over the containers. After four hours I was starting to fall behind.
623 was still maintaining her steady pace. One piece every minute, or faster. I was taking almost two minutes per piece because I had to think about each one, had to look carefully to see what it was made of and whether it had the chemical residue or not.
"You need to go faster," 623 said during our first break. We were sitting on metal benches in a small room with vending machines that didn't work and fluorescent lights that made everything look sick and yellow.
"I'm trying," I said.
"Trying isn't enough. The supervisors check the counts at the end of every shift. If you're short..." She didn't finish the sentence. Just showed me her arms again. The burns.
"That's what happens if you don't make quota?"
"That's what happens if you don't make quota and it's your first time. It gets worse after that."
Worse. What could be worse than having chemicals poured on your arms?
"How long have you been here?" I asked.
"Two years. Maybe three. Time gets weird down here."
Two or three years. She looked like she was maybe thirteen or fourteen, which meant she'd been brought here when she was around my age. Maybe younger.
"Do people ever... leave?"
623 looked at me like I'd asked if people ever turned into birds and flew away.
"Where would they go?" she said. "Up there?" She pointed toward the ceiling, toward the surface. "Up there is broken. Down here at least you get fed every day and you have a place to sleep and work to do. Up there is just... nothing."
Maybe she was right. Maybe up there really was just nothing. Maybe this was better than starving in an abandoned department store, waiting for someone like Maya to come along and pretend to care about me.
At least here nobody pretended anything. Here I was 847 and my job was to sort five hundred pieces of contaminated scrap per shift and that was it. No lies. No false hope. No one telling me I was special just to sell me later.
The break ended and we went back to our station. I tried to work faster. Reach, grab, quick look, place. Repeat. Don't think too hard about each piece, just trust my instincts.
But my instincts were wrong a lot. And every time I had to stop and really look at something, every time I hesitated, I fell further behind.
By the end of the shift I had sorted four hundred and twelve pieces.
Eighty-eight short.
The supervisor came by with her clipboard as everyone was finishing up. She counted the pieces in my containers, made marks on her paper, and looked at me with the same expression Maya had used when she was pretending to be disappointed in me.
"847," she said. "Four hundred and twelve. First day?"
I nodded.
"First warning," she said, and made another mark on her clipboard. "Tomorrow you need to make quota. No exceptions."
First warning. Which meant there would be a second warning, and then... what 623 had shown me. Or worse.
I followed the other kids to another room where there were rows of metal bunks. Three high, with thin mattresses and gray blankets. 623 showed me which one was mine. Top bunk, no pillow, blanket that smelled like disinfectant and sadness.
I climbed up to my bunk and lay down. The mattress was thin enough that I could feel the metal frame underneath. The ceiling was close enough that if I sat up too fast I'd hit my head.
This was my life now. Twelve-hour shifts sorting contaminated scrap. Gray coveralls and a number instead of a name. A bunk in a room with fifty other kids who'd all had their souls scooped out and replaced with nothing.
This was what Maya had sold me for.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But all I could think about was tomorrow. Another shift, another quota I probably wouldn't be able to make. Another eighty-eight pieces short, or maybe more if I got tired or if my hands hurt too much from the chemicals.
First warning. Second warning. Then what?
I guess I'd find out soon enough.
In the bunk below me, 623 was already asleep. Or pretending to be. Around the room, other kids were settling in for the night. A few were crying quietly, but most were just... silent. Dead silent.
Like me.
I was one of them now. One of the empty ones. One of the numbers.
That was all I was now. All I would ever be.
I closed my eyes and waited for tomorrow.