6.3

The social hangover and lack of proper sleep hit her hard the next day. Her small morning routine felt like a horribly long chore and the walk to the factories was even worse. She was completely drained mentally and physically, the desire to sleep getting worse by the minute. Every sound hit her like a brick and the artificial lights hurt her eyes. She’d slept, although it was a light night’s rest and she’d woken up drenched in cold sweat.
      Today was the first time she was thankful for the quietness of people arriving at the working sites. She heard a few people whispering a quick ‘good day’ and engaging in a bit of small talk, but overall, it was silent enough for her to not get overwhelmed immediately. The crowd on the other hand was becoming larger and more dense rapidly and she felt everything closing in on her as she moved into the mass even more. She felt her breathing becoming faster and the breaths itself shorter, and a tightness in her chest becoming more present. As quickly as she could, she hurried towards the changing rooms to get herself into the bottling hall where everything would be more quiet – except for the evergoing buzzing of the lights – and a lot more spacious.
      Cass waited patiently for the enforcers to bring her her baskets of pills and bottles. She saw more and more people arriving and taking place behind their assigned working bench, waiting just like her. Fully focussed on other people taking a seat, she had the scare of her life when the introductory tune for the morning prayer sounded. She covered her ears to block out the painfully sharp noises in the sound and the crackling of the speakers afterwards during the talk.
      “Why are you covering your ears, girl?” an enforcer suddenly asked her. Cass jumped a little and quickly pulled her hands from her ears.
      “I’m sorry, I appear to have a slight headache and the sharp noises and quality of the speakers hurt. I assure you that I could hear the prayer completely fine and was just trying to block out the painful sounds. I must’ve not drunk enough water yesterday due to an early night’s sleep and this is the result now. I apologize, please don’t report me,” she pleaded, lying through her teeth like she had learned.
      “Follow me.” Without saying another word, the enforcer turned around and walked towards a door next to the office people went into, never to be seen again at work again. The enforcer opened the door and Cass took a quick glance inside. It looked like a basic office with a few racks placed against the wall. Another enforcer was sitting behind the desk, with three more standing around it.
      “I need a dose of painkillers for this young lady. In an attempt to keep her body well-rested, she forgot to manage her intake of water properly yesterday and now she has a headache,” they told the others.
      “Painkillers are in the first box on the third shelf of the fourth rack. What a weird story though, could you please enlighten me more, young lady? Step inside and close the door behind you,” the seated enforcer said. Cass immediately obliged and stumbled inside.
      “My sincere apologies. I felt like my body could use a few more hours of rest yesterday after I picked up the slack of my co-workers the past few days. I only realised this after arriving back at my room when I was done working, so I wasn’t able to correct my liquid intake properly in advance to my other decision. I did not think it would cause any harm, but this morning proved the opposite clearly. I am fully capable of working, hard sounds just hurt right now,” Cass explained quickly, trying to sound as innocent as possible.
      The enforcer stared at her – or at least, Cass felt like she was being stared at. The helmet moved up and down slightly, checking Cass completely and assessing the credibility of her story along with her posture possibly. After a long silence, the enforcer finally spoke. “Apology accepted. I will have to make an annotation in your file, but it shouldn’t hurt your credit or status. It’s just procedures and you had good intentions.”
      “Thank you so much. I promise I will watch my body more carefully from now on.”
      The enforcer that had brought her in handed her a capsule. “Break it open and swallow the powder that’s inside. There’s water at your working station and we’ll make sure you have enough during the day to ensure your hydration level will go up again.”
      Cass cautiously opened the capsule and emptied it in her mouth. The taste was disgusting and the bitterness would surely linger, but she swallowed it without grimacing before thanking the enforcers again and leaving the room to run back to her table. Like a proper worker bee, she diligently bottled her anti-radiation pills, making sure she’d stay way ahead of her target of today to make up for her missed time and improper behaviour according to standards. And like the enforcer had promised, they’d check on her every once in a while to make sure she’d finish her bottle of water and bring her a new one.
      As she was putting another batch of her bottles away, she suddenly remembered the weird code she’d found on the bottom of hers. After checking if the coast was clear, she took her last batch and looked at the bottom of every bottle. Clear, clear, clear, clear with a small stain, clear – all of them were empty. She’d seen it though, there had definitely been a stamp with a cipher or a code on the bottom of her pill bottle. With two hours remaining, she started plotting her next course of action. She turned every bottle upside down before filling it to confirm there was no code on there. But by the end of the day, she’d seen no code or cipher or stamp of any kind on a bottle and had to stop her investigation in the factory.
      However, she had planned to go to the distribution office to get a new bottle and see if there’d be one on there. Maybe they stamped them in the office before handing them out now?