Fourth

All that talk was useless. Escaping is useless. Our keepers wouldn't chalk that kind of loss and they'd find someone else to finish your time. She's here because her husband escaped, processed in less than a few hours after he hit fresh air. At least, that's what we like to think happened.

I'm snapped to attention by a short, but jarring shock running up my leg. A voice that sounds like a man shouting with his mouth wrapped in tinfoil begins speaking. He's asking about my progress. It takes a minute to get my bearings, one of the filters on my mask must have clogged up and now the dizzying fumes of the sealant must have sent my mind elsewhere. In that sixty or so seconds that I do not respond to the master’s calls, I am given three increasingly painful shocks to get my attention; the disembodied voice getting louder and angrier. I finally respond and explain my situation. For some reason, the microphone embedded in my leg-box works better than the speaker, but I get the picture. Sixty seconds out of contact means sixty minutes they won't acknowledge toward my total. This happens once in awhile and it gets slightly easier to deal with as time passes. What are a few measly hours when I'm going to be here for another fourteen years?

A pinging noise and the dim glow of the flashing pink light by the entrance that signals a meal time is my next distraction from the task. My sigh of relief lifts a ton off my back and a gracefully glide through the sludge. I move toward the entrance with a deep hunger in my gut, which overwhelms the feeling of a withering soul. I pull myself out of the manhole and, after removing my gear and tossing it haphazardly down the sterilization chute, I walk into a nearby room to be purged.