Jack’s knees hit concrete, and the pain told him he was still alive.
His memories of the transition were a series of jagged, disjointed flashes—cold steel cuffs biting into his wrists, the teeth-rattling vibration of an armored hull, and the stench of rain-soaked coal soot giving way to the dry, sulfurous choke of subterranean air.
The residual static of the stun-baton lingered in his jaw like a bad tooth, vibrating through his spine in a low, rhythmic hum.
He tried to push himself upright, but a heavy gauntlet seized the back of his collar before his arms could fully extend.
“Up. Stay up.”
The guard’s voice was flat, bored, carrying the tired cadence of a man who had muttered those same two words to ten thousand other draftees.
Jack’s legs buckled, and the guard hauled him upright, half-carrying him forward into a staggering shuffle.
They entered a raw concrete transition chamber where a row of high-walled metal sorting bins dominated the center.
Overhead, industrial exhaust fans whined, sucking up the smell of stale sweat and wet wool.
“Strip!” a voice barked over a static-choked PA system.
“All civilian layers into the bins. Personal items are state property. Move!”
A guard shoved Jack toward one of the scratched metal bins.
His fingers, stiff and numb, fumbled with the buttons of his mud-caked canvas coat.
The heavy fabric had kept him safe in the wet alleys of New Chicago; now, he was forced to peel it off and drop it into the metal chute.
It hit the bottom with a dull, hollow thud.
Next went his boots—the worn leather soles that knew every cracked brick of his home sector.
He pulled them off, then his thick wool socks, his bare soles immediately meeting the aggregate floor.
The chill of the poured stone was immediate, a deep, mineral cold that climbed through his ankles and into his shins.
He unbuttoned his salt-stained outer shirt, tossing it after the coat.
“Trousers too,” a guard said, tapping a plastic baton against his thigh.
“Everything but the skin. Keep moving.”
Jack hesitated, his hand hovering near his right wrist.
Under the flesh, a buried chill threaded through his tendons—a seam of ice along the bone.
The device remained silent, its physical footprint invisible, but the fear of exposure was a sharp, copper taste on his tongue.
He stepped out of his trousers and kicked them into the bin, standing entirely exposed in the drafty, cavernous intake hall.
A long line of shivering, naked bodies stretched ahead of him, curving around a massive, grime-scabbed concrete pillar and disappearing into the blue-white glare of an enormous processing hall.
The queue moved forward with a slow, grinding rhythm.
Step.
Wait.
Step.
Wait.
Overhead, sensor rigs tracked the movement of the queue, their red optical eyes sweeping the crowd with mechanical disinterest.
The only light came from strip fixtures bolted to the ceiling, casting a harsh, shadowless glare.
Jack’s left arm was wrapped tightly over his right forearm, pressing his wrist against his ribs, trying to shield the hidden mechanism from the cameras.
Three paces ahead, a woman stood at the front of the adjacent lane.
She was thin, shivering, her bare feet planted on the yellow safety tape that marked the boundary of her processing station.
Her shoulders were squared, her jaw set in defiance.
Her face was sharp, intelligent, but exhausted.
Dark circles ringed her eyes like smudged charcoal.
She was studying the scanner—a large biometric arch studded with optical lenses and sensor ports.
The machine hummed, a single lens flickering at irregular intervals.
The woman tilted her head, her eyes narrowing as she pointed a finger at the misaligned component.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice quiet and precise.
“That lens is out of calibration. It’s going to flag a false positive on the retinal match.”
The technician at the terminal blinked at her as if she had spoken in a foreign language.
The woman continued, her tone patient, explanatory.
“If you rotate the mount three degrees counterclockwise, the alignment will correct. It’s a manufacturing defect, common on these units.”
Jack’s stomach tightened.
He knew that tone—the voice of a fixer who could not help but correct a broken system, even when that system was designed to crush them.
The absolute danger of her competence made his chest ache.
The technician opened his mouth, but a heavy tread cut him off.
“Step away from the scanner.”
A broad-shouldered corporal strode toward the lane, his heavy black combat boots thudding against the concrete.
The name tape on his chest, HESS, was stamped in yellow polymer.
His face was flushed with a familiar kind of institutional anger.
Hess reached the machine and slammed his palm down on its chassis.
The impact rattled the housing, and the flickering lens clarified for a second before shuddering.
The woman stumbled backward, her bare heels scuffing against the yellow tape.
“You don’t touch equipment,” Hess said, his voice flat with menace.
“You don’t speak to equipment. You stand on the line and wait until a number is assigned to you.”
The woman’s chin remained high.
She did not look away.
Hess thrust a digital tablet toward her face.
The screen displayed a newly generated alphanumeric string.
“Your conscription designation,” he barked.
“Repeat it.”
The woman drew a breath, her shoulder muscles tensing.
But then her eyes flickered back to the scanner, to the lens she could not stop trying to fix.
She hesitated.
“Your designation,” Hess repeated, louder now, the words scraping against the raw concrete walls.
The woman flinched, but her head tilted just slightly.
“My name is Sable Orin.”
A heavy silence followed, filled only by the distant, mechanical hum of the ventilation shafts.
Then Hess moved.
He drove the polymer butt of his stun-rifle into her midsection.
The impact was brutal, precise.
Sable folded forward, her breath leaving her in a sharp gasp.
She hit the floor on her knees, struggling to drag air back into her lungs.
Hess grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled.
He dragged her away from the scanner, her bare knees leaving a pale trail through the volcanic dust.
She did not cry out, her jaw locked as she fought for breath.
Jack’s fingers curled into fists.
A sudden heat flared in his forearm, a sharp, needle-point of warmth that spread upward through his elbow and into his chest.
The device was responding to the spike of defensive intent surging through his nervous system.
He forced his eyes down, staring at his own bare toes.
He loosened his fists, one finger at a time, forcing his arms to hang loose.
The heat subsided, retreating back into his forearm.
You cannot help her, he told himself, the thought a cold, quiet weight behind his eyes.
You cannot help anyone if they see what is under your skin.
A heavy metal security door slid shut behind her with a pressurized hiss.
Temporary correction hold, probably—that was what the yellow warning light above the frame implied.
But Jack knew better than to trust a door once it closed on someone.
The queue moved forward.
Jack took a slow, dragging step.
His bare feet carried him past the yellow line, past the flickering scanner, and into the clinical blue light of the Medical Processing Bay.
The room was smaller, the ceiling low and heavy.
The space was dominated by a steel platform flanked by the high-resolution arches of a CDF Neural Scan array.
The machine hummed with a low frequency that vibrated through the soles of Jack’s feet.
A woman in a sterile, high-collared blue uniform stood behind a thick acrylic partition.
The name DUNNE was etched into the glass.
Her fingers hovered over a diagnostic terminal, her scowling face entirely detached from the human material passing through her station.
“Step onto the pressure plate,” she said, her voice coming through a static-laced intercom.
Jack obeyed.
The metal plate was colder than the concrete, a sharp shock that climbed through his shins.
He raised his arms, holding them out from his sides, but turned his right forearm slightly inward, keeping the pale, shadowed vascular lines hidden beneath the plane of his wrist, away from the direct line of the scanning arch.
“Hold position,” Dunne said.
The scanner arches hummed.
A grid of blue lasers swept down his bare chest and legs in long, even passes.
Jack held his breath, his chest locked.
The laser crossed his right wrist.
A sharp, high-pitched static whine chirped from the console.
The indicator light on the glass partition flickered amber—a warning that something had registered outside the expected parameters.
The blue scanning line faltered, splitting into a jagged, dancing arc across his forearm.
Jack’s breath caught in his throat.
For one sick second, he imagined the device hiding, pulling its energy inward to dampen its own signature.
He had no idea whether such a thing was possible; he only knew that the scanner had noticed something, and his survival hung on a thread.
The medical officer did not look at him.
She tapped the edge of the display with her stylus, her face tightening with impatience.
“Transient noise,” she muttered, her voice crackling through the intercom.
“Calibration drift. Geothermal interference from the lower levels.”
She entered a manual override sequence.
The amber light faded, replaced by the steady green of an all-clear reading.
“Standard anomaly,” she said, still staring at her screen.
“Step off the platform. Next.”
A sudden wave of relief hit Jack so hard his knees almost softened.
He let his breath out in a slow, controlled stream.
The relief died before it could become anything useful.
A technician in a dark grey jumpsuit stepped forward, a pneumatic branding device glinting in his gloved hand.
“Provisional designation: TC-17-BR,” the automated speaker above the terminal chimed, a flat synthetic voice cutting through the hum of the machines.
The technician grabbed Jack’s shoulder.
His grip was uncompromising as he spun Jack around, pinning him upright beneath the low ceiling, forcing his left collarbone toward the device.
The cold metal of the branding head pressed against his skin.
The device clicked—a sharp, hydraulic pop, followed by the searing sting of the mark being etched into his flesh.
The smell of singed skin rose in the damp air.
Jack bit his inner lip, his jaw straining, but he did not cry out.
The technician slapped a digital routing sheet onto Jack’s bare chest.
“Suit up. You are provisional conscript. Routing designation: Battlefield Recovery.”
Jack looked at the routing sheet.
It listed his physical metrics, followed by a bold stamp: PRIOR INFORMAL SALVAGE CLASSIFICATION.
MANUAL RECOVERY APTITUDE.
“You know how to pull useful parts out of wreckage,” the technician muttered, shoving a thin polymer lanyard with a cheap alloy tag into Jack’s hand.
“Congratulations. Wear the tag. Lose it and you lose your life.”
Jack looked down at the tag.
TC-17-BR.
No name.
No sector of origin.
Just a string of characters.
He slipped the lanyard over his head, the metal tag settling against his fresh, stinging brand with a soft click.
“Move along,” the technician said, gesturing toward the dark corridor beyond the exit gate.
The corridor was narrow, its raw concrete panels scarred with the gouges of past machinery.
The air was colder here, the stale smell of recycled oxygen replacing the medical bay’s sharp scent of disinfectant and singed skin.
Behind him, the heavy steel security doors slid shut with a definitive, pressurized seal-breath.
He clutched the scratchy, grey-issue uniform to his bare chest, the fabric rough against his skin.
He had not put it on yet.
He was barefoot, his naked soles finding the cold concrete of the passage.
Ahead, the dark mouth of an intake transport waited—a blocky, armored personnel carrier with its engine rumbling in a low, guttural vibration that Jack could feel in his teeth.
A guard stood at the open ramp, his face hidden behind a mirrored visor.
He gestured sharply.
“Move. Now.”
Jack stepped forward.
His bare feet slapped against the cold metal of the ramp, a hollow, ringing sound that echoed in the enclosed space.
The interior was dark, lit only by a single amber strip bolted to the ceiling.
A dozen other conscripts sat on the metal benches, their heads bowed, their cheap tags resting against their bare collarbones.
Jack sat on the bench, his back pressing against the cold metal wall.
He pulled the grey uniform onto his lap.
The engine roared, and the ramp began to rise.
The heavy hydraulic mechanism groaned, cutting off the dim light of the corridor, sealing the compartment in near-total darkness.
The lock engaged with a definitive, pressurized slam.
My name is Jack Calloway, he thought, the words forming a barbed, ragged line inside his skull.