Bay 23

Welcome to the team. The Controller is glad to have you at Bay 23. You are a picker unit. Every shift you're lowered into the warehouse and handed a manifest, a list of specific parcels, buried somewhere in the aisles, that the company needs found and sealed for dispatch before the lift departs. Deliver the manifest sealed and complete and you're permitted to power down and recharge, enough for the next shift, never more. Come up short and you're decommissioned, with sincere thanks for your service and a note that you were always a valued member of the family. Power is the currency of Bay 23. It's your wage, your health, and your clock in a single dwindling number. Everything you do is paid for in charge: every step, every parcel, every panicked sprint. Charging points are scarce and never close, because a unit with time to fully recharge is a unit working below capacity, so your balance runs low, always. That's not a fault. That's the schedule. You are not the only thing down here trading in power. You're not the only thing on shift. The units that came before you are still down here. Decommissioned, forgotten, never quite powered down, they kept running on whatever charge they could take, and now they take yours. Something hunts the aisles by sound, so every sprint, every dropped box, every slammed door is a gamble; get careless and it finds you, and drains you where you stand. It wears an older version of the company mark. Plenty else down here can end your shift without its help: pitch-dark rooms, live wiring, equipment that bites back. Come up short, and you don't clock out. You join them. The manifest is never all of it. The building is against you, and so is the job. The Controller always has extra, clear the loose scrap, feed the incinerator, tidy an aisle it decided was untidy, each worth a few credits and a cheerful little chime on your service record. You're being hunted and your charge is bleeding out, and the company is offering you a gold star to sweep the floor. You'll take it. Everyone takes it. The parcel you're dying for is almost certainly worthless. The order will be fulfilled regardless. The Controller thanks you for your service.