Voss had never known a world that wasn't metal under his boots and recycled air in his lungs.
He was born on the fleet. Both parents had been greens their entire lives—guards, escorts, extra hands, whatever the reds needed that day. That was the inheritance. You didn't choose. You inherited the color and the work that came with it. Most accepted it the way you accept gravity. Voss did not.
He was not a watchdog. He was not filler. He watched the reds move through corridors like they owned the vacuum itself and decided, young, that he would stand among them or he would burn trying.
Being green meant you were the spare part for every other faction. Need a body to stand outside a door for twelve hours? Green. Need someone to haul crates no one else wanted to touch? Green. Need a pair of eyes on some high-ranking red's children while the parents attended functions Voss would never be invited to? Green. That last one was the assignment he had just finished when the doctor found him.
The man was medical staff, mid-rank, the kind who usually looked through greens like they were furniture. The day before, Voss had helped him move equipment that should have been handled by two people. No one else had been available. Voss had done it without complaint and without asking for thanks. That was apparently enough.
The doctor waited until the corridor was empty.
"There's a mission," he said. "New faction. They need someone who can follow a directive and keep his mouth shut."
Voss almost laughed. A new faction. Some bored red with enough pull to invent a color and a purpose. He'd seen that kind of vanity before.
The doctor didn't smile.
"You collect what I need. You don't ask why. You don't talk about it. Do that, and I pull you out of babysitting. I put you in red."
That last sentence landed harder than the rest.
Voss looked at the man. Medical staff didn't make those kinds of promises unless they had leverage or they were lying. Either way, the offer was the first real door Voss had ever been shown.
He thought about the children he'd just spent a shift watching. Soft hands. Clean clothes. They would never stand a post. They would never be told their blood decided their ceiling.
Voss nodded once.
"Tell me what you need collected."
The doctor did.
Voss listened, filed it away, and walked back to his bunk without looking over his shoulder.
He did not know which green the doctor would eventually send. He only knew it would not be him if he failed. And failure, for a man who had spent his whole life refusing the color he was born into, was not an option he intended to test.