Mara sat in the front office, her trembling hands still soaked with blood, waiting for one of the managers to finally speak to her. One of them, the shift leader, finally hung up the phone he was speaking into and turned his attention to Mara. "So, what happened."

"We decided to take turns on the early stops like we always do." Mara explained. "He went down first and didn't come back up...I waited too long to check on him."

"It wasn't your fault." The manager stated in an attempt to calm her but his tone was strikingly unemotional. "These things happen. Just get yourself cleaned up and go home. Feel free to stay home tomorrow, you only have a half shift anyway."

Mara was bewildered by the shift leader. Of course, it was her fault. A human being was dead because she didn't react fast enough and the shift leader spoke of it like it was just another broken machine. She didn't know what to say but she knew she couldn't take a day off work. "No, I can still work."

"Alright." The shift leader looked at her blood-soaked sleeves. "You can leave the uniform here, we'll have a new set ready for you ready when you work tomorrow. Same shift?"

"First shift." Mara corrected, her hands still shaking.

"Ok. I'll let the shift leader know." He returned to his desk. That seemed to be the end of the conversation. So, Mara stood up and left the office.

She went straight to the ladies' locker room and started to take off her uniform. She frantically unbuttoned her blood-soaked work shirt and proceeded to remove pants which were a tad more difficult. She pushed them down her thighs and worked them up and over the mechanical joint at her knee.

Today was not the first time Mara dealt with the dangers of factory work. About six months after being hired, a large piece of scrap had crushed her right leg. She quickly passed out from the pain and, by the time she came to, the bottom half of the leg was gone. Shortly after she had been outfitted with a robotic prosthetic. It was paid for by the factory seeing how the accident happened on their watch. Though technically, the factory was owned by the city of Wakefield so they paid for it. The only act of decency the city ever showed her.

Mara placed her thumb on a sensor right above the knee joint, triggering a mechanism between it and the stud of her real leg to spin and detach the prosthetic. It wasn't really good to shower with. She placed the prosthetic leg into her locker and got herself over to one of the showers stalls. She got used to walking with a robotic leg but hopping around with only one leg was always a chore for Mara. Not that she was all that aware of what she was even doing at the moment.

She operated mostly on muscle memory as she grabbed one of the towels and stepped into the shower stall. Mara was still in shock, she switched on the hot water without even taking off her bra and underwear and just stood there. Images of Jose bleeding out below her flashed through her head while the scalding hot water fell down on her. Mara wasn't sure how long she stood there with her hands clenching the metal rails at the sides of the stall with steam building up around her. All the while, images of Jose bleeding out below her kept flashing in her mind and, in a sudden panic, she quickly grabbed the soap and scrubbed away the blood. Mara had heard of people dying in the factory before but this was the first time she had witnessed it.

Once the blood was off her, Mara turned the shower off and proceeded to dry herself off. Her hands were still shaking, she wrapped the towel around her and hobbled her way back to the locker. A couple of the other temps asked Mara if she was ok while reattaching her prosthetic and got dressed. She insisted that she would be eventually.

After she got her jeans over the prosthetic and threw on her shirt and old jacket with tears in its seams, Mara reached into her locker and pulled out her oxygen bag. A large carry bag that held a heavy oxygen tank and other items, Mara strained to sling it over her shoulder and proceeded to leave the locker room and head over to the pay station near the front of the factory. It was payday after all.

Mara swiped her ID-card at the pay station computer and watched as it tallied up her hours and pay. She worked a lot over the past week but, as a temp, it was at a significantly lower rate then full-time employees, and Mara was certain that they didn't have to worry about the kind of choice she was about to make. Once the computer was done calculating her pay, Mara had to decide whether to receive the payment in the form of credits or oxygen.

The factory was owned by the city of Wakefield, the city was a part of the United-Sectors, and oxygen, like electricity and water, was a heavily regulated resource. Since the Death of Earth, humanity had struggled to maintain its oxygen supply and The Union had to take steps to control the crisis. The air was now owned by the state. Even so, most people probably didn't need to sacrifice most of their pay for air, but Mara wasn't most people.

She selected oxygen on the screen and the computer did a quick calculation. The price of oxygen had gone up again, the price of oxygen always went up. But Mara didn't really have any other choice, she had to plug her oxygen tank in and selected to fill the tank up which used up almost the entirety of her paycheck. With a sigh, Mara unplugged the tank, swiped her credit chip to collect the remaining credits and left the factory.

Mara cleared the noise of the factory facility and made her way into the central-station of the city of Wakefield. It was here that Mara was confronted with a different sort of noise. The rumble of the crowd, thousands traveling to various destinations throughout the city. And then there were all the obnoxious screens that literally ran all along the walls and around every corner, blazing whatever entertainment was currently trendy. People who live and work in the central-station could apparently filter out what content they weren't interested in and focus on what gave them a mild distraction from their daily routine. Mara didn't understand how anyone could do that though. Traveling home through the central-station was like fighting through persistent static.

Already exhausted, Mara fought her way through the crowd with her heavy oxygen tank in tow. She knew the route to the transit-terminal like the back of her hand and she knew that she needed to be quick about getting there. Not a lot of transit-cars traveled to where she lived and the one she was rushing to grab was the last one of the day.

She pushed and shoved and, at last, she was there. She ran up the stairs to the terminal, took a quick glance at the schedule to confirm that she wasn't late, and bolted to the ticket kiosk. It was automated like most things in Wakefield and, also like most things in Wakefield, it was glitchy as hell. But, thankfully, it didn't take too many tries for Mara to get her ticket. After that, it was to the security desk to have her bag checked by Union-Security. It was tight but she made it.

Mara got onto the loading platform, breathing heavily from exhaustion, just as the transit-car pulled up. Hanging from the electric tracks, the transit-car came to a full stop at the loading platform and opened its doors for passengers. Mara scanned her ticket at the door as she walked in and quickly found herself a window seat near the rear of the car. Transit-Cars were long, capable of carrying a few hundred people at a time and were, naturally, completely automated. If Mara had shown up a few seconds late there would've been no driver to wait for her like they did when her parents were still young.

It wasn't a very full car. Only a few dozen more people loaded in as dozens of others stepped off. Mara was thankful for this because it meant that she could place the bag with her oxygen tank down on the seat next to her. There really wasn't enough room for it on the floor between her and the seat in front of her. Her entire body was sore from work but her shoulder was particularly thankful to not have the tank strapped on it. Mara took a deep breath and leaned back into the cushion of her seat. It would be a few stops before she needed to get off the car, she could afford a quick nap.

As soon as she closed her eyes, all she could see was Jose bleeding to death beneath her. His eyes fading away. Her heart started pounding in her chest. The shock and the trauma were quickly beginning to settle back in. Mara took a long, slow breath to try to regain control of herself…

"Good Evening, Wakefield!"

Mara jumped in her seat as the news broadcast continued on in front of her. "I'm Steven Lewiston of 'Wakefield Tonight' here with the news of the hour. Our top story tonight, as you all know, is the upcoming Rhea Day ceremony this Sunday. We have updates about the inbound delegation from Rome led by Colonel Basileus Ryker as well as the mayor's planned visit to the Memorial wall tomorrow. A visit that, surprisingly, will take place a day before the Colonel's arrival on Saturday."

It was always so easy to forget that every seat in transit-cars had their own personal media feed attached to the back of the seat in front of them. They would always switch off automatically when the passenger got up and then turn back on after leaving a terminal when it senses that someone was sitting in the seat. This also meant that the feed for the seat with the oxygen tank was on, Mara quickly reached over and switched that one off by waving her hand in front of its sensor. She then leaned back into her chair as the news broadcast carried on.

"To explain these developments is Wakefield news correspondent, David Williams." The anchor, Steven Lewiston, explained as the broadcast went into a split-screen with the correspondent on the right side. "David, this is unusual, isn't it? Doesn't the Mayor and the Chancellor's delegate usually go to the memorial wall together prior to Rhea Day?"

"Well, the delegation is usually here by now." David answered. "But my sources have informed me that Ryker plans to visit Memorial Wall in Central Park on the morning of the Ceremony."

"Why is the delegation running late? Original reports had it coming today, and then that was changed to tomorrow, and now Saturday."

"The reason for that would be the last-minute decision to have Ryker as the Chancellor's representative. But we are now certain that the delegation will arrive Saturday afternoon and that Ryker will be able to attend the Gala being held in the Upper-Station that evening."

"What's the story behind Ryker being the representative?" The anchor asked. "As Director of Special-Operations, Ryker has always spent Rhea Day in Rome with Chancellor Sinclair. Why the sudden change?"

"I don't have an answer to that question. Up until a few days ago, it was the understanding of just about everyone that Ryker would be in Rome at the Chancellor's side, just as he had done since his appointment to Special Operations 10 years ago. News of the change didn't reach Wakefield until the delegation had already disembarked."

"Ryker has always been one of the Chancellor's top advisors. Has something changed? Has the Colonel fallen out of favor?"

"That's the real question, Steven. But news travels slowly from city to city and the answer hasn't gotten here yet. The last report I saw said that Rome was buzzing with rumors. But it's only rumors at-"

Mara switched off the news feed with a scoff. The anniversary of the greatest tragedy since the death of Earth is a few days away and Wakefield's finest journalists were using it as a platform to discuss court intrigue. Mara thought about how sickened her parents would've been by it. Though, if her parents were still alive, it probably wouldn't be happening at all. As two of Wakefield's most famous journalists at the time, they held themselves to higher standards. Standards some people didn't like...but that was a long time ago.

Unable to sleep and having nothing else to do, Mara just looked at the window as the transit-car carried her across the central-station. The largest of the three unofficial sections of the city-station, central-station housed the majority of Wakefield's citizens. It was a labyrinth of platforms, tunnels, transit-lines, and tall buildings that ran vertically from the top of lower-station all the way up to the bottom of the upper-station. The buildings, in addition to housing citizens, acted as the support structure for the city-station as a whole. The platforms and tunnels house stores, gaming centers, and sports arenas. And between them, all were various domes that house city parks where people could experience 'life before Earth was lost'. That was the tagline anyway though, from the pictures she had seen, Mara figured life on Earth was much more beautiful than any of the Wakefield parks.

As the transit-car continued its route, Mara looked up to get a glimpse of the affluent upper-station, the home of the Wakefield government, and its wealthiest citizens. Mara had never been up there and probably never will as the transit-car carried here lower and lower into the central-station. Before long, the upper-station was completely out of sight.

With each stop, the transit-car grew more and more empty. By the time it had arrived at her stop, Mara was one of only a small handful of people left. The automated PA system announced the name of the terminal, confirming that they had arrived at her stop. The doors opened and Mara forced herself out of her seat. After being able to rest in the seat after a day in the factory, standing back up was difficult. And picking up the oxygen tank was downright painful. But she powered through it and stepped off the transit-car.

The terminal in this part of Wakefield was much more run-down than most. Half of the media-screens were either broadcasting broken up transmissions, static, or were simply broken down, and there were significantly fewer people...much less noise. Mara couldn't have been more relieved, no matter how many times she made the long journey home.

Not that there weren't any people on the terminal at all. A woman was standing by the stairway handing out flyers while saying, "The Earth is dead but the Goddess is not."

The woman extended a flyer to Mara who shook her head. "I'm not a witch."

"You don't need to be." The woman replied as Mara took the flyer. "It's just a meeting where we meditate and share positive energy with ourselves and the Goddess. We're all that's left of her garden, all that's left of her. We need to keep our spirits strong for her or she'll die with us."

"I'll think about it."

"If no harm done, do what you will." The woman said with a smile as the two parted ways.

Mara left the transit-terminal and continued downwards. Staircase after staircase, elevator after elevator, things grew quieter as Mara approached the lower-station of Wakefield. She soon arrived at the maintenance shaft she had used at the start of the day to leave the lower-section. The city was a giant space-station, everything about it was artificial, so there had to be various maintenance shafts and tunnels burrowed throughout the infrastructure to accommodate repairs of any large scale malfunctions.

These shafts and tunnels were now the only way to get down to the lower-section of Wakefield. Most of the elevators, stairways, and transit-lines have long been sealed off. Only a few emergency elevators were left operational, all of which required special access cards only members of the Wakefield construction department possessed. But that didn't stop people like Mara from living down there...even if they didn't really want to. But it was the only place that didn't cost money to live in. Money she didn't have.

Mara set her bag down and opened it up. She attached a hose to the oxygen tank, a hose that had a mask on the other end. She put on the mask and twisted the valve on the tank, giving her the ability to breathe in the lower-station. She picked the bag back up, opened up the maintenance shaft, and made her way down. All the maintenance shafts and tunnels were manually operated, the only manually operated things left in Wakefield. It was impossible to have them be automated or, in any way, controlled by computers, otherwise, they would be susceptible to system-wide malfunctions.

It took a while to climb down to the 'Sewers of Wakefield' as people took to calling them. 'Sewer' was a fair description for the lower-station even if it wasn't originally meant to be seen as that. Sure, the lower-section was the home of the water-recycler, energy cores, waste disposal, and the central life-support system. Everything that the city of Wakefield needed to function. But there were also apartment complexes and store centers as well.

The lower-station was meant to house the people who operated all the essential Wakefield machinery just as the upper-station was designed to house the government. This was the case with all city-stations apparently, the brain that controls everything is at the top and the feet that make everything moves are at the bottom. A simple, albeit inherently human way of designing large structures like a mobile city. But then the 'Oxygen Crisis' began.

When the Union government started having difficulty maintaining oxygen levels, all the cities started taking more and more radical steps to conserve the vital resource. First, came the decision to enclose all the public areas and bridges between buildings. Creating bubbles within the bubble to allow the majority of space inside of the City-Station to fill up with Co-2. Then came the population controls, originally it was a maximum of three children per family, then two, and now they're talking to lowering to just one child per family. And finally, the decision was made to deactivate the life-support in the lower-station one level at a time. Even the people who operated the essential systems in the lower-section need oxygen masks to travel down and conduct any necessary maintenance. Dozens of levels have now been left abandoned.

It was certainly a surreal experience to walk around the empty corridors as Mara did every single day, twice a day. After climbing down the maintenance shaft, she walked through the darkness clenching her oxygen tank with one hand and a metal pipe that she had stashed in the maintenance shaft with the other. There were plenty of people in the sewers who would kill for a full tank of oxygen. She moved carefully through the dark corridors, past all the abandoned stores, deactivated media feeds, and inactive transit-terminals, with nothing but the emergency lights to provide illumination...which wasn't much.

The windows meant to enclose all the platforms were broken out, the stores had long been ransacked, and, on occasion, Mara would find the bodies of those whose tanks ran out on them. Succumbing to Co-2 poisoning, their tanks were always gone by the time Mara had spotted the bodies.

Every now and again, Mara would look out one of the broken out windows. Above she could see the light of the Central-Station, but below she saw only darkness. It was like being at the observatory, looking out at the stars, only, instead of stars, she saw the faint glimmer of security lights. Although, some of the lights down below were moving in the blackness. Sewer Gangs. Loners like Mara would never call attention to themselves by using their own lights while moving around the lower-section.

One of the sewer gangs was on a nearby platform but they were in the opposite direction of Mara's apartment and they seemed to be moving away. It was a mild comfort to Mara who tightened her grip on the metal pipe. She walked down the bridge towards the tower where her apartment resided. A few people were squatting in this building, Mara could hear them walking around in the floors above and beneath her, but she never spoke to them and they never spoke to her. When it came to living in the Wakefield Sewers it was best to keep a low profile.

Mara was always careful to make sure no one was around when she got to her door. She checked around the corners on both ends of the hallway, she was clear. She set the bag with her oxygen tank down on the ground, pulled a small black box from it, and then opened up a panel on the wall next to her door. The black box was a portable battery, it cost a lot but it was worth the expense. Mara gently tugged out a couple of wires from the wall and connected them to the battery, activated the apartment's security system. The electronic handprint next to the door lit up and Mara quickly placed her hand on it to unlock the apartment.

She had a member of the cyber-underground reprogram the security system of the apartment for her a while back. That was another major expense, Mara practically starved for the next two weeks after that but she couldn't just sleep in one of the ransacked stores. Her oxygen mask could fall off while she slept, or worse, one of the sewer gangs could stumble upon her. Nonetheless, it was an expense she would prefer not to make again and, in fact, couldn't make again in the near future. The cyber-underground had since been driven out of Wakefield and it would be a while before they regained their foothold.

The door accepted her handprint and slid open with a quick whish. Mara quickly grabbed her stuff together, closed the wall panel, and went inside, closing the door back up behind her. She then opened up another panel and disconnected the security system from the primary computer processor to prevent others from entering the apartment while she slept. Of course, they could always just cut through the door but that would require battery power that most people wouldn't be willing to use.

Mara was finally home but her work wasn't quite finished yet. She hauled the oxygen tank over to the apartment's localized life-support system located on the wall opposite to the door. She had left the panel for it open, exposing it's four empty slots for oxygen tanks. Mara placed her bag down, pulled out her screwdriver, and went to work on the floor. She had hidden the other three tanks beneath the floor panels in the event someone decided to investigate the abandoned apartment while she wasn't around. Working through the full-body soreness, Mara reinstalled all four oxygen tanks, including the one in her bag that was connected to her mask, and switched on the life support. Each individual life-support system ran on the same power system as the emergency lights and the union never took the time to disconnect all of them in every apartment after they all became abandoned as the price of oxygen continued to rise.

She held her breath as the system cycled out whatever Co2 had come into the apartment from leaving and coming back and fresh oxygen came in. And, finally, she took off her mask and took a deep breath. At long last, she was home. Mara slumped down with her back against the wall next to the life-support. Every muscle in her body was throbbing in pain, Mara could have passed out then and there.

"Get back up." Mara said out loud to herself, "Get back up!"

Mara willed herself back to her feet and walked over to the kitchen. The abandoned apartment was decent in size, it was probably built for two. A small living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a small bedroom. Whoever used to live here was low on the income chain though, not as low as Mara was now. There was no built-in carpet or even wood floor, from one end of the apartment to the next it was just the cold plastic material that lined the walls of the city's various corridors. It was hard and very uncomfortable to stand on. There was no furniture left but it was a place to call home.

Mara opened up one of the cupboards to take out a small bag of noodles, her dinner for the evening, and one of the small water bottles she had in there. The water to the apartment had long been shut down. She opened up the bag and dumped the raw noodles with the water into a small boiler on the counter. Mara then connected the boiler to her portable battery and waited while the noodles cooked. It was only now that Mara was realizing just how hungry she was and that the 'meal' she was now preparing was going to do very little to help.

Once her 'dinner' was ready, Mara disconnected the boiler from the battery and twisted off the bowl from the base that contained the heater. She quickly grabbed a fork and carried the bowl of noodles and the battery into her bedroom. Though, 'bedroom' was probably not a good descriptor as there was no bed. Instead, there was a large pile of various blankets that Mara slept on every night. She placed the bowl on noodles on the ground next to the blankets and went over to the emergency lights in the upper corner of the bedroom. She opened up the panel and disconnected the lights from the station's power. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness but then she connected her battery to the station's emergency power to charge it up.

Mara then grabbed her pajamas from the pile of clothes that she had resting next to the blankets and began to change. After taking off her shirt, Mara noticed several strains of brown hair on her hand. At age 24, she was losing even more of her long hair. She still had plenty left but it was still demoralizing. She then checked the shoulder where the strap of her oxygen bag rested the whole way home. Even in the dark, there was a noticeable mark left by the weight with the skin cracking around it. Living in the Wakefield Sewers away from the artificial light had made Mara sickly, an issue exasperated by the harsh work and schedule.

But there was nothing Mara could do about that, she continued getting changed. It was while she took off her pants that she remembered the flyer that the woman had given her. She had folded it up and stuck it into her back pocket. She pulled it out and unfolded it. It was a flyer promoting 'The Children of Gaia', featuring an image of the Earth at the center of a Pentagram and the address of their place of meditation. Gaia was the Goddess of the Earth and the Children of Gaia believe that she has suffered along with humanity since the death of Earth and most of her creatures. So they strive to strengthen themselves and the Goddess by sharing and promoting positive energy. A nice sentiment, but Mara had no positive energy to share.

Mara tossed the flyer aside, took off her pants and robotic leg, and finished getting into her pajamas. She then sat down, ate her noodles, and mentally prepared herself for the next day.