I understood the situation with the game challenge. If someone else had the chance to get extra sol instead of you, then, dirty as it was, it made sense to drag that lucky guy away from the screen and not let him take advantage of it. The system would use a random number generator and give someone else that chance. Maybe it would be you. And if it wasn’t you, you would just find the winner and claim part of the reward for yourself.
But why hadn’t the thug just punched me in the face? I hadn’t seen any cops around. No one seemed to care about anything. One good punch would’ve definitely taken me down. Maybe even knocked me out. Hell, I’d have fallen over if he had just kicked my thigh, and it would’ve taken me forever to get up again. But he hadn’t. Why not? The answer was simple: he was afraid of something. Of someone. I raised my eyes to look at the rail that ran across the ceiling. At that exact moment, a metal dome covered in electronic eyes rolled by with a buzz.
That was what the thug was afraid of. After he pushed me, he had taken a step back and turned sharply, and I saw him looking at the ceiling in the moment before our eyes met. For a split second, fear engulfed his face. He was afraid of being caught. And if he was afraid of being caught, that meant there was such a thing as punishment around here.
I was so excited about my win that I had forgotten to check my balance, which should have increased by three sol. Glad of the chance to stop again, I leaned against the wall, activated the interface, and checked the financial section. I looked at the numbers... and a chuckle escaped my lips. Yeah. It had been foolish to hope. The system was definitely on top of things.
Balance: 0
Debt status: in debt.
Debt details:
Limb lease: 1 sol.
Immunosuppressants: 1 sol.
Vitamins: 1 sol.
First meal: 1 sol.
First water ration: 1 sol.
Total debt owed: 5 sol.
Not much to be excited about. But at least my total debt was down, and that was a good thing. I thought about my upcoming lunch, dinner, and water rations, which I’d have to pay four more sol for. Four sol I hadn’t even earned yet.
“A job to do,” I said out loud, pushing myself off the wall and continuing down the hallway. “A job to do...ORL... A job to do... ORL...”
I repeated these words like an endless mantra, over and over. It helped me push past the weakness and dizziness, helped me keep moving along towards my goal. To Zone 3. If only someone could tell me how much farther it was...
* * *
Zone 3. Block 6.
I made it. There I was, at the entrance to Block 6
I stood there, scanning my surroundings. Things looked pretty bad.
To get in, I would have to walk about five hundred yards further along the hallway, then, following the signs, turn right and go roughly three hundred yards more, if I counted two of my pathetic steps as a yard. I had taken almost two thousand steps on my rubbery spaghetti-legs, and now that I had arrived and had a chance to look around, I realized I should’ve stayed where I was and let myself rest.
Zone 3 was made up of six blocks. Each block was an oval-shaped corridor that looped back on itself, kind of like a stretched-out gear with rectangular teeth. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all metal. Two domes moved in slow circles around the ceiling, and the walls were covered in gray spatters. The floor had gray puddles all over it... and dirty, sweaty workers were running, walking, hobbling, or even crawling over these puddles, slipping, sometimes falling, holding one or occasionally two buckets filled to the top with viscous gray slime. The buckets swung in their shaking hands, spilling gray droplets over the edge. One worker fell... and his bucket hit the wall with a clang and overturned, the gray slime spreading onto the floor, adding to an already large puddle.
