Kat’s lunch tray clicked against the wood of the table as she sat down next to Jasper and Iris. They stopped talking for a second to toss a pair of smiles her way before they resumed their discussion on labor theory for their upcoming exam.

She stuck a fork in her baked potato, splitting the steaming tuber open in order to apply butter and sour cream. She often didn’t eat in the expensive end of the college cafeteria every day, after all the college provided better food than she’d had access to as a ‘hereditary employee’ for free. Still, she’d made enough money in the last year or so that treating herself to thinly sliced and marinated steak with a potato on the side wouldn’t break her finances.

“What do you think, Kat? She blinked, looking up from her plate at Iris’ smiling face.

“Uhm.” Her mind raced, trying to remember what the other woman had been saying.

“She asked what your thoughts were on Vemlain’s theories on unionization,” Jasper interjected helpfully. “Iris wants to write her term paper on whether they don’t go far enough, but-”

“You don’t want to be the one to tell her that she’s being too much of an idealist.” Kat let a ghost of a smile flicker across her face.

Jasper nodded gratefully, avoiding a meaningful glance from Iris as he dug hastily the seared fish on the plate in front of him.

“My take on Vemlain is that he’s right from the perspective of motivating workers,” she continued, skewering one of the steak slices. “Creating a small unit or team of employees that can collectively earn benefits for excess productivity is a great idea. If you ban unions entirely, people will start to wonder what it is the corporation is clamping down on. They’ll see them as forbidden fruit and seek them out.”

“Vemlain gives people a taste.” Kat shrugged. “He turns labor organizing into an exchange of merit for benefit. If excess productivity earns workers a day off a month or some updated safety gear, the average employee will see progress. I mean, they’ll still grumble, but it creates enough of an illusion that things are moving in the right direction to avoid a revolt or a work stoppage.”

“But things aren’t moving,” Iris replied, brow furrowed in irritation. “It’s a treadmill. You can work for years and never actually get ahead.”

“That’s just how things are.” Kat shrugged. “The corporations offer stability, but pretty much every employee knows that there is a hard limit on how far they can go within the structure. If they want genuine wealth, the only way forward is to leave the corporation and sign on with an independent contractor.”

“That’s inhumane.” Iris frowned. “Independent contractors are functionally mercenary outfits. You’re saying that any worker that wants to get ahead should just leave behind their corporate life and risk getting gunned down in the street just to earn a couple of credits?”

Kat raised an eyebrow at the woman. Maybe that wasn’t the way things should be, but it was certainly the reality that they lived in. A handful of megacorporations controlled everything, from the food and media they consumed, to the water they drank and the houses they lived in, it could all be traced back to a megacorp or its subsidiaries.

That system wasn’t designed to allow workers to rise to the top. Despite outwardly presenting as a meritocracy, the corporations tightly controlled which employees had access to institutions such as colleges and the leadership training programs needed to advance. Every once in a while an employee was allowed to throw off the shackles of debt slavery in order to progress to the ranks of lower management, but in reality it was little more than an illusion of fairness to keep the workers placated.

“It’s not fair,” Kat replied, savoring the taste of the meat, “but it’s what we’ve got. A freshman term paper at a corporate college isn’t the place to talk about your ideals and wishes. The professor wants us to write about whether banning unions outright or allowing them as a neutered motivational outlet is better. My advice is simple. Swallow your opinions and answer the prompt.”

“But you don’t understand, Kat!” Iris leaned forward. “People are dying because of unsafe work conditions, and you’re demanding that they join mercenary gangs if they want to get ahead in life? Do you know how dangerous it is for independent contractors? Executives hire them for plausibly deniable muscle every day.”

The steak tasted like ash in Kat’s mouth.

“Is that what you want?” Iris ranted, eyes wild as she failed to notice Kat’s discomfort. “The working class exchanging being disposable tools for a megacorporation only to become disposable tools for an Executive? I don’t see much difference between dying in an industrial accident and getting shot in an alleyway while your employer networks with the employer of the person that shot you over cocktails.”

“Iris,” Jasper hissed, reaching across the table to grip the woman’s wrist. “Enough. Not everything needs to be a polemic. Think about your audience.”

Kat slowly set down her fork, barely noticing the clink of metal on porcelain over the general hubbub of the dining hall. The past couple of months running through her head as she tried to settle her suddenly racing pulse.

Her entire life had been a risk. From the day her father died on the job due to unsecured and poorly maintained machinery, she had known that success wouldn’t come from coloring within the lines. The corporation gave her mother a two week extension of their family’s former weekly spending limit at the company store.

That was it.

Fifteen years of service and her mom was a single mother without even an e-mail of condolence. The closest the company got was a notice two months after her father’s death that their internal investigation found that ‘the incident’ was mechanical rather than operator error. That saved their family a fine for ‘delaying corporate production’ while her father’s body was pulled from the machinery that had killed him.

At thirteen, that memo drove the callous cruelty of the world home to Kat. Even if she did everything right, life was an uncertain and fragile thing. That was the moment when she decided, if she was going to risk her life it would be for her own benefit.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The next day she’d ventured into the Shell, the collection of abandoned and barely maintained buildings that surrounded the glittering tower of her home, the Schaumburg Arcology. It took years to realize how lucky she was when Xander found her, wandering the streets with nothing but the clothes on her back and a determined look on her face.

Years of training honed her into the best runner in Xander’s gang, the ChromeDogs. She worked her way up from a clandestine courier to an infiltrator, pulling a series of high profile heists and break-ins that kept her friends safe and wealthy.

Then things went wrong. Xander and her managed to pull off the job of the year, but they bit off far more than they could chew. From the fateful moment they auctioned off the data retrieved from their operation, an inexorable series of events was set into motion.

It was like something from one of the daytime entertainment channels. Shareholders from multiple companies conspiring with aliens to overthrow their leadership with alien backing. Worse, the aliens actually had begun to infiltrate Earth, replacing key members of various megacorporations. Finally, the stallesp, the aliens in question, were unmasked and their conspiracy was laid bare. It should have been an unparalleled success, but-

“Oh my God,” Iris interrupted Kat’s thoughts, clapping her hands to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, I just caught up in the moment.”

Kat closed her eyes letting out a shaky breath.

“Of course you know the risks,” the other girl continued frantically, almost babbling. “How could you not know the risks after what happened to Xander.”

There it was. The intervening months had robbed the words of some of their sting, but it still felt like a brick to the small of the back.

Xander was dead. Sacrificing himself to ensure Kat’s survival and the mission’s success. In the wake of his death, everything had fallen apart.

His wife, the co-leader of the ChromeDogs, retired, shuttering the organization. Kat’s partner and support operative, Whippoorwill, dropped off the grid. Other than a couple of e-mails that sat unopened in her inbox from former ChromeDog deputies that she barely knew, all trying to recruit her to some mercenary team or another, Kat was completely adrift.

“Kat,” Jasper started, pausing for a second to gather his thoughts. “You know Iris just got a little hot under the collar. She’s passionate about the cause of employee rights, and sometimes it gets the best of her.”

“Of course!” Iris nodded earnestly. “I know how much Xander and you did for us. Without the two of you, Jasper never would have made it out of that prison camp, and my entire family would have died in the purges.”

Kat exhaled, opening her eyes as she plastered a weak smile on her face.

“Don’t worry about it, Iris. Jasper and you have been here for me these last couple of months. It seemed unthinkable a year ago, but after things went wrong, having the two of you and the steady routine of college really helped center me.”

“I’m not going to say I’m comfortable here,” she continued. “Being the only former employee in a school this full of wealth and privilege has made me feel more like an animal in a zoo rather than a student, but I know that the two of you have gone out of your way to make me feel as at ease as possible.”

“We’re your friends, Kat.” Jasper smiled at her encouragingly. “We've had very different childhoods, I get it. If I could trade some of my money and status to have made your youth a little easier, I would in a second, but despite everything there’s no reason why we can’t open up to each other.”

Part of her wanted to believe him. Even before Jasper knew the extent of her career as a mercenary, he’d always been friendly toward her. After she rescued him, he’d only tried to draw her further into his orbit. Whether that was out of gratitude, curiosity toward a worker, or some other motive-

“Even if you won’t talk about what you know regarding my father’s death.” Jasper continued nonchalantly.

There it was.

As nice as Jasper could be, he still couldn’t leave it alone. Every interaction between the two of them was colored by him seeking answers that she couldn’t safely divulge. On one hand, Kat could understand Jasper’s obsession. One of the ChromeDogs’ rival gangs had faked an equipment failure in the helicopter Jasper’s father was using, killing the man instantly.

Kat’s first missions as an infiltrator revolved around uncovering the truth of the incident. With Xander and Whippoorwill’s help she learned enough to implicate one executive and the daughter of another, but the evidence was simply too neat and orderly. Both of them were guilty as hell, and Kat didn’t lose a minute of sleep over collecting the bounty set on the evidence by Jasper’s family, but at the end of the day, she had reason to believe that there was a third conspirator.

Specifically, Belle Donnst had all but told Kat and Xander about her involvement as she offered her daughter up on a platter. They just never had the evidence to accuse an executive of her caliber, and Belle knew it.

The woman made Kat’s blood run cold. Belle made no pretenses about who she was. Efficient, practical, and utterly amoral, the woman would do anything to get ahead. She was straightforward about it, too. So long as there was some mutual benefit, she would be as a pragmatic and effective ally.

On the other hand, the minute you became a liability to Belle, you were done. She wouldn’t even leave fingerprints on the plot that ended you unless she wanted to send a message to anyone else considering a double-cross.

“Ask Davis.” Kat shook her head, trying to clear her morose thoughts as she resorted to the perennial refrain she’d adopted whenever Jasper pestered her on the point. “He knows just as much as I do.”

Jasper frowned, a cloud flickering across his face.

“You know he won’t tell me anything, Kat,” the boy grumbled. “He just says that it ‘isn’t a productive question’ and tells me to focus on school.”

“Maybe you should listen to him,” Iris interjectected quietly. “Look, you know that Davis has done and seen some crazy things. He might be your butler right now, but I saw that footage of him from the raid on the Field Tower. If he told me that I was asking questions that I shouldn’t, I’d believe him.”

“I know.” Jasper’s hands squeezed into fists around the pristine cutlery he was holding. “It just doesn’t seem right to drop something like Dad’s death just because someone involved might be powerful or important. Some things need to matter more than power and money, and if family isn’t one of them, I don’t know what’s on that list.”

“And now we’re full circle,” Kat said, stabbing her fork into her lunch. “The world isn’t fair, and we’re all bit players in a larger story. There’s a time and place for fighting the man. The time is ‘later’ and the place is ‘once you’ve climbed enough levels in The Tower of Somnus that no one wants to be your enemy.”

“There’s really nothing for it but to keep your head down,” she continued, popping a forkful of steak into her mouth, “and eat lunch.”