Heavy Lifting

The slaves are split into groups. They vary in size, but average about a dozen. These groups don't seem random. Two of them just have older slaves. The guards leading them away are decently patient with their slow pace. A group of young kids is led off in another direction. Your group consists of more physically fit slaves. The youngest ones seem to be about your age, while the oldest ones seem to be in their early thirties.

Four guards lead your group out of the hoverball court. Naturally enough, one of them happens to be the woman you thought was checking you out earlier. They lead you toward a wide hallway lined with lockers and classrooms. At its end is one of the school's side entrances, and you're being led toward it. Fuck, they do think the clothes they put you in are good enough to go outside in. You pull up your hood. At least it's daytime.

One guard takes a position by the door and props it open with the little stopper at the bottom. The biting Nothian cold rushes in like a vampire eager to feast on the fool who invited it inside. It blasts all of you. "Fuck," one of the other slaves says. They're shivering, and so are you. Gods, these people know nothing of your homeworld.

Outside, there are more soldiers, and, thankfully very close to the door, an empty truck, its back open. a truck. The female guard opens the door to one of the classrooms. Inside, there's a bunch of desks and tables stacked on each other. She points at the objects in the room, then at the truck outside. "Work," she says, in High Imperial. The twelve of you scan the room. Partly, you're trying to figure out where to start. Partly, you're trying to figure out if it's possible to explain that it's too fucking cold to attempt this. The others are standing silently as well. "Work," the guard reiterates in a harsher tone. What's more painful, the cold or the collar?

Two of the other slaves go inside. They grab a table. By turning it on its side, they have a pretty easy time getting it through the door. You and another **** take hold of it, and, exerting a bit of willpower to walk toward the cold, take it outside. The rest of the slaves form two more groups of four, which each grab another table.

"That power armor must be really warm," one of the slaves, a strong looking butch woman of around thirty, says.

"Let's try to get this done quick," you say.

"They'll have more for us," another ****, a tall and muscular man a few years older than you, says. "If we finish off that room, they'll just make us do something else."

"But maybe the next job won't be outside," you say.

The cold is bad enough in the hallway, but once you get through the door, you nearly freeze up and drop the thing you're carrying. "Jesus fuck!" the last ****, a tall, bearded guy around your age, says.

"Gods," you say at the same time.

The bearded guy looks at you in a way you really don't care for. "Gods?" he says, with roughly the tone of voice you would expect from a store manager who had caught you shoplifting.

Fuck. The last thing you need right now is people associating you with the Empire. "I said 'God,'" you say.

"No," the really big guy says. "I heard 'gods' too."

"I didn't," the butch woman says. You reach the truck. The conversation stops while everyone loads the table inside as quickly as possible, then heads back to the room for another one. "I think he was just shivering."

"Yeah," you say. Does she actually believe that, or is she trying to protect you? Either way, while the other two don't seem entirely convinced, the subject is dropped.

As you were the first group to leave with the table, you're the first to arrive back. The cold in this very spot had upset you a moment ago, but now, it's a blessed relief. It's a short-lived one though. Your group gets another table, and it's back out into the fucking cold. "Who is everyone here?" The woman asks.

"I'm Jon," the big guy says.

"Ned," the bearded one says.

"Cody," you say.

"I'm Carla," the woman says. "I'm on Flakefield's women's hoverball team."

"You mean you were on it," Ned says.

"I guess," she says. Even if any or all of you escape, you're not going to find your old lives patiently waiting for you. Still, as you head back outside, and the cold makes your skin squeeze as though we're trying to hug the rest of your body for warmth, you can't help but wonder about getting out of here. You've already resolved against bolting with guards watching, but what does that leave? Last night, you thought they were deliberately putting you in clothes too cold for Nothian weather. Now it seems like they're genuinely clueless. Either way, if you're going to escape, you have to find something that you can wear outside on a Nothian winter night.

You don't have to look far to find an answer. Right now, there are guards who are perfectly content and warm even as they patrol the fence that's been erected outside the school. They're in the same cold that's making you wonder if it's be less painful if they'd just cut your hands off--gods, they didn't even give you gloves--but they're doing fine. It's their armor. Suits of Imperial power armor are designed to be comfortable even in the vacuum of space. Compared to that, Nothian winter is nothing. Plus, it obscures every part of their body, even their face, so if you were wearing a suit of it, you might be able to pass for one of them. Provided none of them spoke to you, you just might be able to walk right out.

"By the way," Jon says, "does anyone here know what happened to the elementary school?"

"Probably being used the same way as this place," Ned says, "unless it got bombed or something."

"My niece was there," Jon says. "At least I would think she would have been."

"My little brother would have been here," you say, "but I've not seen any sign of him. If this place was evacuated, maybe other schools would have been too?"

"Communications were down," Ned says. "They couldn't have put out any kind of general order to evacuate."

"I don't think they would have dropped a bomb near the school," Carla says. "There's nothing of military significance around there. It's not even near any kind of real infrastructure."

"I don't think these imperials care about that kind of shit," Ned says. "If they didn't want to hurt civilians, they wouldn't be treating us like this."

"Still," Carla says, "they don't exactly seem to want us dead."

"Right," Jon says. "Right, of course, how foolish of me. They wouldn't kill my niece because they want to enslave her."

"As long as someone is alive, there's hope," Carla says.

"I guess," Jon says.

"Does anyone know about the securitech offices?" you ask.

"Why?" Jon asks.

"My mom would have been there."

"Shit," Ned says. His tone worries you.

"You know something?" you ask.

"I saw a bomb hit it," Ned says.

You thought you were freezing before, but as he says that, you realize it's only now that your blood has gone cold. "When?" you ask. If it was later in the day, maybe she wouldn't have been there. Once the invasion started, she probably would have rushed here to find Nick, then tried to collect the rest of you before heading home.

"Right at the start of things," he says. "Like, it was how I found out shit was happening."

"How bad did it get hit?" you ask. Maybe she could have survived?

"It was gone," he says. "Explosion took out one side and the rest fell over right away."

He could be wrong, right? He has to be wrong, right? "How did you see this?"

"I was at the community college. I saw it happen out the window, just as things were starting."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah. Sorry man. If you had someone in there--"

"I get it," you say.

Your mom is dead. She's dead. Gone. Crushed or vaporized. Her sweetness. Her strength. Everything about her that you needed, that helped you through hard times, that taught you that power and kindness could coexist in perfect harmony in a single person, it's all gone. Before now, there was some hope that maybe if you got out of here, and somehow rescued the others too, your life could go back to some version of normal. You could live with your family. You could see them all again. They'd still be there for you. At least you'd have gotten to say goodbye. Now, though, there's a hole in your world that can never be filled.

That hole didn't form naturally. It was carved. These people killed her on purpose. They meant to do it. The bastards meant to do it! And these people think you're going to spend the rest of your life serving them?

"Fucking move," Jon says. "Don't get the rest of us shocked." His tone wakes you up. You start moving again.

A few trips between the classroom and the truck pass silently. It's Carla who breaks the silence. "Hey, I'm sorry," she says.

You breathe in. You breathe out. "Thanks," you say.

"You should focus on what's left," Jon says, "not what's gone." He's right. He's right of course, but it's only the threat of the collar that keeps you from dropping the table and punching him in the fucking face.

With the silence broken, more questions are exchanged. No one knows anything about the auto charging station where Hana worked, and none of them even recognize your neighborhood when you try to describe it. No one knows anything about place Jon's parents lived, either, or the town where his birth father lives.

Ned had a twin sister who worked at a hologame store on one corner. You know the place well. "It was empty," you say.

"Even the back?" he asks.

"Yeah. I hid from a patrol there. I was there for almost an hour. There was no one in the building."

"Thank fuck."

You and the other two teams of slaves work until noon. You clear out two rooms full of tables, desks, chairs, and the like, and get a good start on the third one. You're halfway through the day and, it's already worse than any work day you've ever had at the warehouse. Every part of you aches. Despite the freezing cold, you're covered in sweat. Your fingers and toes are numb, and you wish the rest of you was as well. You wish you could pass out. When you go to get your tenth desk and the soldier stops you, You feel for a moment like you could fall on your knees and thank her, even though she was part of the same army that killed your mom. "Come," she says. All twelve of you follow her.