Without thinking, Cole slammed his shovel into the enforcer's helmet. The enforcer fell to the ground.
"Shit," Cole murmured. He didn't want to get in a habit of attacking enforcers, but he didn't have much of an option. He threw his shovel to the side and dragged the unconscious man into the far corner of the room. The clocked showed more than 30 minutes until the next feeding.
"What were you doing here so early?" Cole rhetorically asked the man on the floor. He paced the room. There was almost no way this man would stay blacked out the entire time, but Cole didn't have many options. He could throw him into the fire of the machine, but that seemed brutal. He could finish off the job with his shovel, but that may cause more problems as well. He paced until the clock was under 30 minutes. Without any good options, he picked up his shovel, crouched next to the door, and stared at the enforcer on the ground.
The man remained motionless for another 5 minutes. Cole's legs grew tired, so he sat and stared. After another 10 minutes, Zach walked through the door, and paused in the middle of the doorway.
"What the fuck happened here?"
Cole stood. "He was already here when I got here, I didn't have a choice."
"Is he... dead?"
Cole shrugged. "Hasn't moved in almost 30 minutes."
"Well what are we supposed to do with him?" Zach moved toward the body, leaned over, and inspected it.
"I've been trying to think about that since I got here. I think," Cole continued, "If he's not bothering us, we just leave him."
Zach turned. "Leave him! Can you imagine the shit they'll do if they find out about this?" His attention turned back to the enforcer. "Besides, I can't tell if he's breathing or not, with all of his gear on."
"Look, we might not have a lot of time here, so I need to tell you something."
"Other than the fact that you killed an enforcer?"
Cole looked away. "Maybe two..."
"What?" Zach stood to confront Cole.
"It's not important right now, okay. I did what I had to do."
"Did that happen with your accident, too? I heard some rumors."
"No!" Cole stomped his foot. "They thought I did something, that's why they threw me in jail, but when they found out I didn't... well, that's why I'm here. They let me out."
"I don't really want to get involved in whatever it is that put you-"
"It's not about that." Cole inched forward as Zach's expression shifted from light and jovial to serious. "It's about what I learned in jail, and what I learned at my new part."
Zach crossed his arms and glanced at the enforcer.
"Look," Cole said, taking another step forward. "You're the only person I can trust. I need your help."
The two men remained in a staring contest while the clock above them ticked off 5 more seconds. Zach finally broke eye contact and sighed. "Fine." He looked at the clock. "You have 10 minutes."
Cole laughed. "I'll get there, but first I need to tell you about the repairman I met in jail. I was skeptical at first, as I'm sure you will be, but you have to hear me out. He told me a story about how he used to work on the top floor."
"A repairman who worked on the top floor in jail? What'd he do?"
"I don't know," Cole said. "But... his story stuck with me, okay? He worked up there and found out the main stack wasn't connected to anything. They weren't monitoring us, and maybe they never have been."
Zach squinted. "That can't be true. How do they find out about the accidents?"
"The enforcers," Cole replied. "Why do you think they're in our rooms all the time?"
"To make sure we keep shoveling."
"Right, and to report anything. Makes sense if they're not monitoring anything, right?" Cole insisted.
"I don't know man, kind of sounds like a stretch."
"Maybe, but it got me thinking. With everything that happened today between the lockdown, the gassing in town hall, the moving of barracks. There's something going on here, Zach. There's something else happening."
"Look, it has been weird around here lately, but what are you trying to say? You want to somehow turn this place upside down and get more answers? We've been through this Cole, we know as much as we possibly can."
"That's what I thought, but then I met Root and-"
"Root?"
"The repairman in jail. And he had seen some stuff, he had some interesting things to say." Cole sighed, he was losing Zach and the timer wasn't his friend. "I didn't even tell you about the assignment room, did I?"
Zach shook his head.
"There was nobody there, literally just me and one other person. It was bonkers."
Zach jolted backwards. "Nobody?" He asked. "As in, we don't have people to assign anymore?"
"I guess," Cole said. "I didn't know what to make of it, but have you ever heard of such a thing? Of course not, right? There are always hundreds of people getting assigned, going back as far as anyone can remember, right? I mean, it doesn't make sense by itself, but then you throw in everything else that happened today and everything root talked about, and you start to think, what is going on here, right?"
Zach nodded along. "The assignment thing is weird, I'll give you that."
The clock ticked down past 5 minutes and Cole knew he had to bring the argument home.
"And right before I came to the new barracks, I had run from my part. My new part. They demoted me back to level 1, Zach."
"Wait." Zach held up his hands. "You're on level 1? Shouldn't you be feeding your part somewhere?"
Cole smiled. "After all the shit they put me through, and everything I had heard, I decided not to. And you know what happened? Exactly nothing."
Zach reached for his own shovel leaning against the wall. He laughed. "Now I know you lost your mind. You aren't level 1. No way you missed so many feedings." He shook his head and walked over to the barrel of fuel. Cole couldn't stand to tell him what was in the fuel, what Root had revealed to him, so he saved that conversation for a later time.
"I'm telling you Zach, the world didn't end, nothing. Nobody even noticed. Hell, they still haven't noticed. I knocked out the enforcer down there, so he didn't get a chance to call it in. See, they don't even monitor it. They don't care what we're doing down here."
Zach raised his voice. "If that's true, why are we doing it?"
"That's what I need your help finding out."
"No way, man." Zach said, digging his shovel into the sludge of fuel. "Can't do it. Something's not right, if you even are telling me the truth."
"I am," Cole said and grabbed the shaft of Zach's shovel.
"Let go." Zach said, flexing his muscle and pulling it away from Cole.
Cole gripped tighter and pulled it back toward the fuel barrel. "I can show you," he said.
"No man. Let. Go." Zach tugged at the shovel again, but Cole refused to release it.
The two men tussled, each refusing to let go of the shovel. Cole wouldn't miss his only opportunity to show Zach the truth, so he kicked Zach's feet out from under him and Zach tumbled to the ground. Cole, with sole possession of the shovel now, knocked over the fuel barrel and tossed the shovel aside. He pinned Zach's hand to the ground with his knees and they both watched as the clock hit "00:00."