Cassian trudged down the street, dragging his stumbling father along behind him. Cassian stopped in front of his father's workplace, the steel plant, and left him swaying drunkenly just outside the gates. It's up to him if he wants to make money today; he probably will — he needs it to buy more beer. Cassian turns and continues marching a few more blocks to the electronics manufacturing facility, which belches black smoke up into the sky from the melted plastic polymer that is used in many of the components. He walked up to the gate, guarded on either side by enforcers in grey gear, helmets strapped to their heads and a stun gun grasped tightly in their hands. He scanned his bracelet at the door; it flashed green, and the security guard to the right of the gate grunted and nodded him through. Inside the facility, cheap fluorescent yellow lights shine down, buzzing slightly above the heads of the factory workers. The smells of burning plastic, solder, burnt skin, and hair hung in the air. The noise of the facility was thinner than the steel plant Cassian's father slaved in—no molten roars or scream-grinding gears—but it had its own kind of hell. Tiny sparks, ultra-fine dust, and the constant, shrill whine of precision tools grinding microchips into form. Thousands of workstations lined the many conveyor belts that turned the large expanse of the factory into orderly rows. Cassian grabbed his gear from the hook next to his workbench, putting the weathered overalls over himself to avoid the worst of the burns, and putting on his oversized plastic goggles and slipping on his gloves. Cassian's station was in the optical sensor cable assembly, a row of workers hunched over the long tables making thousands of eyes that ended up scattered around the city in cameras. Each of the finished products was placed into a small plastic bin on the left of the station, which was then collected at intervals by the drones that flew around the factory floor. In the seat next to Cassian's, Eitri was already there, bent over the table, the tips of his gloves smudged with black soot and burnt by the soldering iron. "Morning, Saint," he says, not looking up. "Your dad still breathing?"
"Barely. Drank his salary's worth of beer last night. Pissed himself again." Cassian grumbled back.
"Luxury," Eitri muttered. "Mine just cries in the pantry when he thinks no one's home."
Cassian smiled despite himself. That was Eitri —always ready with a joke, always just barely holding it together. He wore the same faded grey overalls, stained at the cuffs with flux paste. His dreads were pulled into a tight coil at the back of his head to keep them from getting near the heat of the laser welder. With quick fingers and twitchy eyes, he was one of the best workers on the line. That's probably why the overseers had let him stay after his little sister collapsed last quarter — workers were replaceable, but productivity wasn't.
"How's your crew?" Cassian asks, nudging his shoulder.
"Hungry again, just like always. Nora needs some medicine; Dax broke his inhaler-"
Cassian whistles at the mention of the inhaler, interrupting Eitri. "That's not going to be a cheap fix."
"Yeah... well, I have a contact that can get me some medicine for not too much upcharge, so it should be fine." Eitri responds. "Anyways," he continues in a joking tone, "Juno's still doing equations on the walls like a psychopath; Can't tell if she's a genius or just some sort of demon."
"Same thing in this city," Cassian snorts back. They laugh a little too loudly, and one of the overseer drones zips past overhead, its camera pausing above them as a reminder that laughter isn't part of the quota. They fall silent, their fingers moving on muscle memory. Tweezers in one hand, laser welders in the other. Soldering, clipping, and placing lenses into sensor modules that will soon watch people like them get arrested for stealing clean water or urinating in public, even though there are no public toilets. Wonder if the Citadel engineers ever thought about the people building their toys. Two hours in, Eitri's laser welder nicks the edge of his hand, and a red stain spreads through his glove.
"Again?" Cassian says, quickly grabbing the first-aid gel from beneath the bench.
"Hazard of being fast. Can't be delicate and efficient, right?" He says through gritted teeth as the ointment stings the burned flesh of his wound.
Cassian laughs and shoots back, smirking at him, "Maybe slow down before you bleed out on a luxury drone."
He looks at me, and for once, he doesn't smile. "If I slow down, I fall behind. If I fall behind, I get flagged. You know what happens next."
By the time the end-of-shift chime rings out, Cassian's hands are shaking. The laser cutter had burned too hot again. He flexed his fingers, letting the sting slowly fade away. Eitri wiped sweat from his brow and rolled his shoulders. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Don't tempt fate." Cassian retorted.
They nodded to each other as they headed their separate ways. Cassian clocked out, the scanner beeping as his wristband flashed red, and he stepped into the windless dusk of the Lower Meridian. The streets still smelled of melted plastic and wet stone. The light from the billboards painted everything in a sickly hue, like even the ads were tired of lying. He trudges through the darkness, and a slight drizzle begins to drip from the sky, stopping at the food station to get another protein cake. He slipped into a narrow alley with broken pipes and sharp shadows, following a shortcut near the old train line. A drunk figure shouts some incoherent slur of words and trips, falling to the ground with a dull thud. Cassian kept walking, keeping an eye on the fallen drunk in case it was a ploy to rob him. The drunk stumbled back to his feet just as Cassian rounded the corner, making no move to jump him. Cassian continued back to the shelter; the rain, getting heavier by the second, blurring the grey walls around him. He picked up his pace slightly, trying to escape the rain that is now pelting down from the sky, stinging his skin like a swarm of bees. He approached the shelter and brushed the flap of the tarp out of the way, finally freeing himself from the rain pounding down on the tarp and the concrete outside. Cassian trudged over to his pallet and sat down on the edge of his makeshift resting place, wringing out his now soaked jacket. He took the one bit of rations that he had in his coat pocket and eagerly shoved it into his mouth. The nutrient-filled protein cake filled his mouth with a bland, sandy sensation. He lay down on the discarded broken mattress that he had placed on top of the pallet and pulled his damp jacket over him. Placing his head on the bag full of rags that he called a pillow, Cassian drifted off into a dreamless sleep.