Fulfillment

Sergio can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

The problem is that he’s a romantic. Always has been.

But I guess that’s what made him such a great soldier when we served together.

Willing to risk it all to save the world.

Personally, I think he’s going to get us all killed one day.

As our van carries us to our checkpoint, I secure the hose leading from my oxygen tank to my mask. Then, I check the chamber of my shotgun. Every so often, Cruise, our driver, sings the lyrics to a pop song as it howls from the van’s speakers.

Cyrus looks over at Sergio and asks, “You okay, boss?”

Sergio looks different today. Less enthused. Tired. He shrugs.

“This is our first rescue since my mom died,” he says. “The last thing she said before she passed was that she wanted me to stop all this. Said it was a waste of time.”

I point to the small heart-shaped locket that Sergio welded to his mask.

“You ever get around to telling her you did that?” I ask.

“If he sees it, he’ll remember,” Sergio says.

“Well,” Cyrus says, “people pay us good money to rescue their kin. Stumbling across your pops is just a bonus.”

“When was the last time we grabbed a person who actually wanted to leave one of these places, anyway?” I ask.

Cyrus shrugs.

“Not my problem,” he says. “But the cost to reacclimate them is getting more expensive by the day.”

I turn and look out the window. In the distance, we can see our destination: A WealthCorp Fulfillment Center. Ominous and looming. A monolith of mass consumption.

WealthCorp has been building these centers for as long as I can remember, but over the last decade, they’ve added dormitories to them, so their workers never have to leave. People think it’s a great way to start over. I know my parents did.

I kick Cyrus’s boot.

“It does seem tempting, doesn't it?” I say. “Just walk up to one of those giant metal coffins, knock on the door, and say, ‘Take me,’ you know?”

I can hear Cruise’s laugh from the driver’s seat.

“Yeah,” he says, “And all it’ll cost you is everything!”

“Well, sooner or later, we may find ourselves unemployed anyway,” Cyrus says. “I’ve been working in the lab. Don’t like what I’m seein’ in the air samples I take each time we leave a center. Whatever they’re pumping through the HVAC is getting more toxic if you aren’t treated. Can’t figure it out. It’s gonna get harder to reacclimate to the outside world for the people we snag, too, and WealthCorp’s got enough folks in their pocket to stop anyone asking questions at the government levels.”

“Trust me — respiratory re-acclimation will always be the easy part,” Sergio says. “I just found out that the poor asshole from our last rescue marched right back to the fulfillment center, anyway. His family gave us 200k in credits to save him, and for what?”

“Ten Minutes!” Cruise shouts as our van enters a small, abandoned city a mile or so from WealthCorp Center 38.

When I fully engage my mask, a profile of our target pops up onto our display screens. Tommy Sullivan. Nineteen. Had friends from high school working in Center 26. They recommended he enroll.

“The boy hasn’t been enrolled long, but he’s fully treated.”

“Hey Cyrus,” I ask, “Can’t you whip up some sort of hybrid? Something we can take so our lungs can handle the air inside and outside?”

Cyrus sucks his teeth. “Tried, but I can’t crack it. Trust me — if I could whip up something to give us the strength those employees have, I’d be the first in line to take it. That’s how WealthCorp gets away with it, too. Cost of doing business. Employees need to take it to give them the strength to work. Lift whatever needs lifting.”

“Only you can’t breathe the outside air,” Sergio says. “Some trade-off.”

Cyrus taps his tank before he throws it onto his back.

“Until then, we’re just gonna have to deal with lugging these things around. Got the target’s re-acclimation mask?” Cyrus asks.

I hold up a mask with a small canister mounted to its side.

“Right here,” I say before clipping it to my hip.

Eventually, the van rolls to a stop.

“Hacking cameras in preparation to splice footage,” Cruise says as a small keyboard swings out from his dashboard. “Eyes in the sky are now active. The entrance point is through a series of tunnels. Our guy on the inside set them up. This Tommy Sullivan kid is his grandson,”

“The old man’s trying to start some sort of labor revolution from the inside,” Sergio says.

I chuckle.

“Revolution?” I say, “Who will they overthrow? The Emperor of Boxed Wine? The Ayatollah of Unlimited Streaming?”

“You know how it goes,” Cyrus says. “None of it matters. The consumers keep consuming. The shipments keep shipping. And every once in a while, we get a call to save some poor bastard who doesn’t want to be saved.”

When the door to the van slides open, we hop out, enter an abandoned building, and begin our march toward its rear end. Sergio clears a corner, and then we travel down a dark, narrow, concrete stairwell. After moving through a series of make-shift tunnels, we eventually climb a ladder that takes us up through a hole and into a small closet.

Sergio points to the door, and I open it.

“Just in time,” an old man says from a sofa. “Shift change.” He stands, walks over to Sergio, and shakes his hand. Then, he continues. “My name is Peter. I was afraid I would be gone once you’d gotten here. My grandson — Tommy — I don’t want him here. He should be home with his family. When I heard he was coming, I pulled some strings. I hoped I could talk to him, but it’s no use. He works the opposite shift. His room is down and around the hall. Room sixteen. You should be able to grab him and return here. Room twelve. In and out.”

A moment later, a voice comes over an intercom:

“All second shift community members, please report to your stations. To all those leaving their station, thank you for all you do. You are truly a valued member of this community.”

“God bless you,” The old man says before he nods, turns his light off, and disappears through the door.

After a minute, Sergio asks, “What’s the word, Cruise?”

Cruise responds through our headsets before we follow Sergio out of the room.

“All clear,” he says.

The hallway is long, and after clearing a few corners, we arrive at room sixteen. Sergio offers a light knock on the door.

No one answers.

“You’re good. Trust me,” Cruise says.

Sergio turns the knob, and after we enter, he holds up a fist.

We stop.

In the small living room, Tommy Sullivan sits with a VR visor strapped to his face.

Cyrus grins.

“The kid seems a little delicate,” he whispers.

Sergio draws his pistol and places the barrel up against the boy’s head.

“Don’t move,” he says.

The boy, holding his breath, raises both of his hands to the sky.

Then, he says, “I’m not leaving.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Sergio responds before signaling me to cuff the boy’s hands.

“Uh-oh,” we hear Cruise say.

“What now?” I ask.

“It appears we may have ourselves a good old-fashioned trap, fellas. The old man is back in the hallway, and he’s got guards with him.”

Sergio growls. Then, he turns and strikes Tommy Sullivan in the back of the head.

The boy collapses forward onto the floor. The visor falls from his face.

“We carry him,” Sergio says.

“You could have just used your shock stick,” I say, pointing to the wand at his hip.

Sergio shrugs. “Maybe I just felt like hitting something,” he says. Then, he bends over and hauls the young man over his shoulder. “The family probably contacted the old man to save the boy, and WealthCorp probably offered him a better deal to bring us in. God knows we’ve made them angry enough over the last few years.”

“What now?” I ask.

“I’m sending the blueprints to your displays now,” Cruise says. “Walls are thin. You can blast through them. Follow the directions I’m sending, and it will bring you back around to room twelve.”

I strap the re-acclimation mask to the boy’s face and turn it on. Then, I pull my shotgun from over my shoulder, point it towards a back wall, and pull the trigger. Cyrus provides us with cover fire directed at the room’s entrance. A hole opens through the drywall, and when we step through, a dead body lay on the floor. I look at Sergio.

“Cost of doing business,” he says before I nod and open up another wall.

From one room to the next, we move, leaving a trail of bodies in our wake, and within minutes, we’re back across the hall from Peter’s room.

However, just as I plan to open the door and clear the hall, I hear Sergio place Tommy on the floor with a thud. Cyrus continues his cover fire back through the hole.

I turn.

Sergio is standing in front of a man who has tucked himself into the corner.

“We need to go, Serg,” I say. “Now!”

However, before I can say anything else, it dawns on me.

“Dad?” Sergio says. “It’s me. It —”

But he does not finish his sentence.

Instead, he drops to his knees and begins to wheeze.

I look to my left, and Tommy is lying on the floor with a torn oxygen tube in his hand. Before he can do much else, I use my shock stick to make sure he's out for good this time.

I turn to Cyrus.

“Grab him,” I say.

However, when he bends over, I’m tacked to the floor by the man. He’s so strong that I have trouble rolling him to his back. He pulls me to my feet and throws me into a wall. Then, he grabs my shotgun from the ground, points it at Cyrus, and pulls the trigger.

I fall to the floor, pull my pistol from my hip, and shoot.

Before I can ask any questions, he’s lifeless on the floor.

“What the hell is going on,” Cruise shouts.

“Lost Cyrus. Sergio, too,” I say as I look at the bodies at my feet.

I walk up to Sergio’s body, and I remove his mask. Then, I hold my breath and replace my mask with his. Finally, I pick up Tommy Sullivan’s body and throw it over my shoulder.

I can hear security barreling down the halls and marching through the chaos we left behind us. After I open the door, a guard fires a shot, but he misses, and before I’m caught, I’m back in Peter’s room, through his closet door, down the hole, and back out in the tunnels.

When I return to the van, I toss Tommy’s body onto a bench and strap him in. I take off my mask and toss it onto the floor by the front seat before I sit down. Cruise glances down at the welded locket, and then he puts the vehicle in drive.

For a while, we don’t say anything, but eventually, Cruise asks, “Did he at least see his old man before it all went to shit?”

And as much as I wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter, that we saw the man and he didn’t seem to care, all I can manage is an exhausted: “No,” before the van exits the city and turns off down another deserted road.