The future doesn’t sound like flying cars or laser blasts. It sounds like absolutely nothing.
As Atlas pulls me through the corridor, the silence is so heavy it feels like pressure in my ears, like when you dive too deep in a swimming pool. Our footsteps don’t echo. The floor is some kind of matte, rubbery material that swallows sound. The walls are seamless, glowing with a faint, ambient light that has no source. There are no corners, just smooth curves.
It’s like being inside an iPhone that’s been wiped clean.
“Hurry,” Atlas whispers, though he’s not out of breath. He moves with a fluid, efficient grace that makes my stumbling jog feel clumsy. “The sterilization drones patrol the main arterials every six minutes.”
“You keep using that word,” I pant, my mustard coat flapping heavily around my legs. “Sterilization. It sounds... bad.”
“It is the removal of contamination,” he says simply, checking the silver band on his wrist. A holographic map blooms in the air, blue lines intersecting in a grid. “You are contamination.”
“Thanks,” I mutter. “Really know how to make a girl feel special.”
He glances back at me, his dark eyebrows pulling together in that confused frown. “You are welcome?”
We turn a corner, and the world opens up. The hallway ends in a massive viewing deck, a wall of glass—or whatever transparent material they use in 2157—stretching fifty feet high.
I skid to a stop. My breath hitches, but not from running.
Below us lies the city I saw in the anomaly. But seeing it through a shimmer of blue light was one thing; seeing it now, with my own eyes, is terrifying.
Silver needles pierce the violet-gray sky, connected by translucent tubes where pods zip back and forth like blood cells in a vein. Everything is symmetrical. Everything is silver, white, or gray. There are no billboards. No trash cans. No graffiti. No trees.
It’s perfect. It’s the most beautiful, horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
“Sector 4,” Atlas says, watching me watch his world. “Home.”
“It’s so...” I search for the word. Clean? Cold? dead? “Big.”
“It is optimized for maximum population density and resource distribution,” he recites, like he’s reading from a textbook.
“Where are the people?” I press my hands against the glass. It’s cool to the touch. “There must be millions of people down there. Where is everyone?”
“It is 0900 hours during the Production Cycle,” Atlas says. “Everyone is in their designated locations. To be elsewhere is inefficient.”
“Inefficient,” I repeat. “Right.”
A soft chime echoes from the ceiling, making me jump. The light in the hallway shifts from cool white to a warning amber.
Atlas grabs my arm. His grip is firm, his fingers long and strong. “We cannot stay in the open. The biometric scanners will cycle soon. Come.”
He drags me toward a narrow maintenance panel in the wall. He taps a sequence on his wristband, and the panel slides open with a hiss. It leads into a cramped service tunnel filled with pipes and humming machinery.
“In here,” he says.
We scramble inside, and the panel slides shut behind us, cutting off the view of the silver city. The tunnel is dimly lit by emergency strips on the floor, casting long, weird shadows against the pipes. It’s warmer here, smelling faintly of ozone and hot metal.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the metal grating of the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. My heart is hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Atlas stands over me for a moment, then, with a stiffness that suggests he’s not used to sitting on floors, he lowers himself down across from me. He sits with perfect posture, legs crossed, hands resting on his knees.
He stares at me. Just... stares.
“What?” I snap, defensive. I wipe a stray tear from my cheek. “Am I leaking again?”
“Your appearance,” he says slowly. “It is... a lot.”
I look down at myself. My battered Doc Martens, the fading black jeans with the hole in the knee, the mustard-yellow wool coat I found at the Salvation Army three months ago.
“It’s just clothes,” I say.
“Yellow,” he says, like it’s a foreign word. He reaches out, then stops himself. “Why yellow?”
“Because I like it,” I say. “Because it was twelve dollars.”
“Twelve... dollars?”
“Money,” I explain, realizing he probably doesn’t use cash in a world where everything is provided. “Currency. Credits. You know?”
“We are allocated credits based on contribution,” he says. “But we do not exchange them for... color.”
“I bought it at a thrift store,” I say, wrapping the coat tighter around me. It’s my armor. “It’s where you go to find things other people didn’t want anymore.”
Atlas’s eyes widen. In the dim light of the tunnel, they look like pools of ink. “You wear the discarded shells of others?”
“It’s not a shell,” I say, feeling that familiar prickle of shame I get when Chloe makes fun of my outfits. “Look, my family doesn’t have a lot of money, okay? I can’t just walk into the mall and buy whatever I want. I have to hunt for it.”
“Hunt,” he repeats. He shifts closer, sliding on the grate. “You... hunt for your coverings?”
“Yeah. You dig through bins of unmatched socks and stained t-shirts until you find something that actually works. Something that fits. Something that...” I trail off, running my thumb over a loose button on the coat. “Something that feels like you.”
“That sounds...” He pauses, searching for the word. “Dangerous. Unpredictable.”
“It is,” I say. “Sometimes you find nothing. Sometimes you find a designer coat with a missing button for twelve bucks.”
“And you chose it,” he whispers. “You looked at all the options and you selected this one. Because of... preference.”
“Yeah.”
He reaches out again, and this time, he doesn’t stop. His fingertips graze the sleeve of my coat. The wool is rough and pilly, scratchy against the skin. He rubs the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, mesmerized.
“It is textured,” he murmurs. “Inefficient. It creates drag. It traps particulates.”
“It’s warm,” I say. My voice comes out breathless.
He looks up from the coat to my face. We’re so close I can see the flecks of gray in his dark eyes. I can smell him—he smells like rain on concrete, clean and sharp.
“In my time,” he says softly, “we do not choose our coverings. We are assigned Unit attire based on our sector and function. Gray for Sector 4. White for Medical. Blue for Administration. The fabric is self-cleaning, temperature-regulating, and perfectly uniform.”
“Sounds boring,” I say.
“It is safe,” he counters. “No one is judged for their covering. No one lacks a covering. Everyone is equal.”
I think about Chloe Madison and her sneer when she looked at my coat. I think about the video she posted. Poverty Princess.
“That sounds nice,” I admit. “Not being judged.”
“But,” Atlas says, his hand still lingering on my sleeve, “you have variety. You have... the hunt.”
“I guess.”
“Tell me more,” he demands, dropping his hand but leaning in with an intensity that makes me want to shrink back and lean forward at the same time. “What else do you choose?”
“Everything,” I say. “Well, not everything. I can’t choose my parents or my house or the fact that our car breaks down every other Tuesday. But... I choose what I listen to. What I eat.”
“You choose your nutrients?” He looks scandalized.
“I work at a diner,” I say. “Murphy’s. It’s a place where people come to eat.”
“A communal feeding center.”
“Sure. But we have a menu.”
“A menu,” he says, tasting the word.
“It’s a list,” I say, my hands moving as I talk, trying to paint a picture of Murphy’s in this sterile metal tube. “Pages and pages of options. Pancakes. Waffles. Burgers. Fries. Salad. Milkshakes in three different flavors.”
“And the unit—the person—selects the nutrients based on what their body requires for optimal function?”
I laugh. It’s a dry, ragged sound, but it’s a laugh. “God, no. People pick the stuff that’s terrible for them. They pick the bacon cheeseburger with extra grease because it tastes good. They pick the chocolate shake because they had a bad day and they need comfort.”
Atlas stares at me, his mouth slightly open. “They consume based on... emotion?”
“All the time,” I say. “I have this regular, Old Pete. He comes in every Tuesday. He orders the meatloaf special, not because it’s good—it’s actually kind of dry—but because it reminds him of his wife who passed away. He eats it and he remembers her.”
Atlas looks like I just told him I can fly. “He ingests inefficiency to provoke memory.”
“He eats it because he loves her,” I say.
Atlas pulls back, leaning against the curved wall of the tunnel. He looks overwhelmed. “Love,” he says. “We read of this in the Archives. A chemical imbalance that creates irrational attachment.”
“It’s not a chemical imbalance,” I say, feeling a sudden, fierce need to defend Old Pete, and my parents, and Kevin. “It’s... it’s everything. It’s why my parents fight about bills—because they want to take care of us and they’re scared they can’t. It’s why I was crying. Because I was scared I’d never see them again.”
Atlas looks down at his hands. They are perfectly clean, unscarred. “We do not have fights,” he says quietly. “We do not have bills. We do not have fear.”
“That sounds...”
“Perfect,” he finishes. “That is what we are told. The Optimization removed all variables that lead to conflict. No poverty. No hunger. No war. Every Unit has a function. Every Unit is provided for.”
He looks up at me, and his eyes are haunted.
“But we do not have meatloaf that tastes like memory,” he says. “We do not have yellow coats that you hunt for. We do not have...” He gestures to the space between us. “This.”
“This?”
“Conversation,” he says. “Curiosity. In Sector 4, we exchange data. We do not exchange... stories.”
I look at him—really look at him. He’s beautiful, in a statue-esque way. Symmetrical features, clear skin, perfect hair. But there’s a hunger in his eyes that has nothing to do with food.
In my world, I’m the girl with the thrift store clothes and the empty bank account. I’m the girl people look through, or look down on.
But here, looking at Atlas, I feel... rich.
I have stories. I have tastes. I have choices, even if they’re just between paying the electric bill or going on a field trip. I own my mess.
“You really don’t get to choose anything?” I ask. “Not even your friends?”
“Associations are determined by work proximity,” he says. “I was decanted in Hatchery 7. Raised in Cohort Beta. Assigned to Structural Maintenance based on aptitude tests at age five.”
“Decanted?” I choke out. “You don’t have... parents?”
“Bio-contributors are irrelevant,” he says dismissively. “The State is the parent.”
My stomach twists. I think about my dad’s tired eyes when he comes home from overtime. I think about my mom frantically cleaning the kitchen when she’s stressed. They drive me crazy. They scream about money. But they are mine.
“That’s lonely,” I whisper.
“Lonely,” he repeats. “A state of distress caused by isolation. I am rarely isolated. I am always connected to the Grid.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “You can be in a room full of people—or connected to a Grid—and still be lonely if no one actually sees you.”
Atlas goes very still. The amber light in the tunnel reflects in his dark eyes.
“I see you,” he says.
The air in the tunnel suddenly feels very thin. My heart does a traitorous little flip.
“You’re just a glitch to them,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the ceiling, toward the city above. “A variable to be corrected. But...” He reaches out again, and this time, he touches my hand. His skin is cool, dry. “You are vibrant. You are... loud.”
“I’m loud?” I laugh nervously.
“Your colors. Your emotions. Your stories. You are the loudest thing I have ever encountered.”
He laces his fingers through mine. It’s awkward, like he’s testing the mechanics of how hands fit together, but it sends a jolt of electricity straight up my arm that has nothing to do with sci-fi tech.
“I do not want you to be sterilized,” he says gravely.
“I’m big on that too,” I say.
“I want...” He frowns, looking at our joined hands. “I want to know what a burger tastes like.”
I smile. A real smile, the first one since I woke up this morning. “Grease and salt and heaven.”
“Heaven,” he murmurs. “An archaic concept of paradise.”
“Murphy’s Diner,” I correct him.
Suddenly, the amber lights in the tunnel turn a pulsing, angry red. A klaxon blares—a sharp, digital screech that makes me clap my hands over my ears.
Atlas scrambles to his feet, pulling me up with him. The gentle curiosity is gone, replaced by instant, high-alert tension.
“They found the breach,” he says, his voice tight. He taps frantically on his wristband. “The sensors picked up your thermal signature. Or maybe the sound of your... laughing.”
“My laughing set off an alarm?”
“Joy is inefficient,” he says, grabbing my shoulders. He looks behind us, down the dark tunnel, then back at the panel we came through. “They are sealing the sector. We cannot go back to the viewing deck.”
“Then where do we go?” Panic rises in my throat, choking me.
“The waste disposal chutes are too narrow,” he mutters to himself. “The ventilation shafts are monitored.”
The panel behind us hisses. Someone—or something—is trying to override the lock. I hear a mechanical whirring, like a drill.
“Atlas,” I say, grabbing the front of his gray tunic. “Atlas, do something.”
He looks at me. For a second, he looks terrified. Not for himself, I realize with a jolt. For me.
“There is one place,” he says. “It is strictly prohibited. If we are found there, it is not just sterilization. It is immediate deletion.”
“Better than immediate death right now!” I yell over the klaxon.
“It is my... archive,” he says. “My collection.”
The door hisses louder. Sparks fly as the lock melts.
“Take me there,” I say. “Now.”
Atlas nods. He grabs my hand, tighter than before. He pulls me away from the door, deeper into the tunnel, toward a dark, gaping hole in the floor that looks like a drop into nothingness.
“Jump,” he says.
“What?”
“It is a gravity slide. It will catch us. Jump!”
The door behind us explodes inward. A silver, floating drone with a glowing red eye swoops into the tunnel.
I don’t look back. I squeeze Atlas’s hand, shut my eyes, and step into the dark.