The railcar rumbled as it descended into the sewer levels of the fortress city, Aguiyi. The cramped railcar smelled strongly of bleach and grease. Hazard and Safety Commission workers filled the available seats, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, with even more of them in faded green coveralls standing in the aisle, hands clutched around a steel beam on the railcar’s ceiling. A dingy speaker somewhere in the car broadcast the mayor’s morning address. Elections were coming up, and many of the cleaners in the car were in heated political debate.
Obinna didn’t care.
His face was buried in a datapad, which he squinted into at the corner of the car. On its screen were questions he’d practiced a dozen times. The car shuddered as he clicked on ‘submit.’ Moments later, ‘PERFECT SCORE’ plastered over the screen in green text.
“Oh boy, you hot oh,” Chike said in his favoured pidgin, his head over Obinna’s shoulder.
“Bro I’ve done these questions like hundred times.” Obinna sighed, leaning against the metal seat. “Plus, it’s the free package. I can’t possibly afford the premium package.”
“Anyhow.” Chike slapped him roughly on the shoulder. “Nna, you hot!”
Obinna rolled his eyes but managed a small smile. The vote of confidence did a lot more for him than Chike realized. Obinna shut his eyes and let the mechanical rumbling of the railcar seep into his bones. He tried not to think of the cramped two-room unit he shared with his parents and two siblings on H-3, or their quiet disapproval. The money he was burning on exams to join the city’s Segun corps could be used for more useful things; electricity, water, food. It was common knowledge that H-1 jobs were a matter of who you knew, and not necessarily how many exams you wrote. Plus, people who lived in H-3 generally did not have the kind of free credits lying around to make such ‘connections.’
Deeper than the rumbling of the railcar, the almost-imperceptible vibrations of the city’s ancient reactor sent wavelengths of calm through Obinna’s anxious soul. Aguiyi used to be a war city—a mobile, state-of-the-art ecosystem dedicated only to destruction—capable of travelling over the Earth’s surface. But that was many, many decades ago. Those wars left behind a vast expanse of decimation and radiation, after which its architects and their descendants flew off to space. Obinna believed that if the people of Aguiyi still persisted despite all those odds—then it was also okay for him to dream.
He only got one chance anyway.
Red light flashed within the railcar seconds before it landed. HSC crew began to file out of its open doors into the dank sewer system. Obinna reached beneath his seat for his bag and box of cleaning materials, then slid his helmet over his head. Beside him, Chike flashed him a silly grin from within the smeared-over visor of his own helmet. He fist-bumped Obinna’s ungloved hand with his before ambling out with the other cleaners.
Outside the tiny railcar terminal, the sewer level expanded into an elaborate maze of mini-streets—the lowest level of the city’s towers. All the waste from the hubs ended up here, and no length of experience could keep the uneasiness from Obinna’s stomach whenever he heard turbulent rumbling within the thick steel pipes that ran along the walls and floors like vasculature. Guided by the lights on his helmet and the intermittent bulbs in the sewer, he made his way to his assigned sector.
Where he—with six others— stumbled upon the carcass of a rat.
The beast was about five feet in height, twice that in length. It was hard to believe these creatures were once tiny, insignificant rodents. Dark blood was splayed across the walls in a sickening mural. Thickened blood—not yet congealed— seeped out of bullet puncture holes on its side. Empty bullet casings from the Segun that took down the rat littered the sector. Some of the sewage pipes were burst, leaking effluence into the corridors. The bullet casings were about a quarter the length of Obinna’s arm. He thanked the Reactor that his mask kept most of the odour away as his breath fogged over his view.
I swear to the Reactor, I won’t do this job till I die.
He went to work.
It was barely noon when Obinna walked out of the exam hall—a school in H-2—feeling numb. He stared blankly at the artificial sky of the hub—fitted with large, flat fluorescent lamps. The hub was kept warm by powerful cooling vents and recyclers over the three- and four-storey blocks of multipurpose buildings that comprised H-2. Candidates walked out of the venue in groups, chattering about the questions.
All Obinna could think of were the traps he’d fallen for in the 150-question multiple-choice examination. Cool sweat formed over his forehead as he remembered the section on biology. A subject he thought he’d thoroughly mastered. Why in ratballs would anyone need to know about genetic mosaicism to gun down some rats?
He ended up in a third-floor bar, nursing a mug of beer.
The test to join the Segun corps was in two parts, and only candidates with a score of 70% or more in the first test were qualified to take the applied test. Which was a shame in his opinion, but gatekeeping was gatekeeping. It didn’t matter that he’d scrubbed the sewer smell from his skin with water he barely had, or that he’d put on his best clothes to look like he belonged. As long as he had the H-3 visa card around his neck, he would always be… below.
“Hey, I said, are you going to drink that?”
Obinna blinked in surprise. There was a woman beside him, not much older than he was. She was dressed in an official blouse under a leather jacket a few sizes too big. She pointed to his drink with ringed fingers, bespectacled eyes not fully focused.
“Bros, you’ve had that one beer for almost an hour. Let me help you with it.”
Her voice had a slight slur, but was clear. Obinna pulled his mug towards himself defensively. He was living like a Scrooge and he couldn’t possibly afford to go around buying drinks for pretty women in bars. And she was pretty. Under the bar’s incandescent light, her skin was so brown it practically glowed. She gave him a mischievous smile and her teeth were perfect pearls, with a gap between the two top incisors.
“Man, come on,” she said.
“Hanty, buy your own drink.”
“I haaave.” She threw her face to the counter dramatically. “But I’m out of cash.”
Obinna was suddenly awash with indignation. “Then maybe it’s time to leave? Don’t you have a job to get to or something?”
“I’m between jobs right now.”
“Ah, so you’re unemployed.”
She gave him a scathing look. “Because of beer, you’re insulting me? Why are you here then, drinking during the day, Mr I’m-not-sharing-my-beer?”
“My shift starts by six,” Obinna said. He took a leave for his HSC shift that morning, but he couldn’t afford to miss an entire day of labour. He needed to turn up at Processing. “I had to take an exam.”
“Oh. Oh. Segun corps?”
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly.
A look of remorse crossed her face briefly. “Ah. I guess you need that drink then. Barman!”
“Hey, what are you doing? I thought you were out of money?”
She gave him that disarming grin again and he eyed her suspiciously. The bartender sauntered towards their seats. The previously empty bar was beginning to fill up with patrons from the lunchtime rush. The girl waved enthusiastically to the bartender. “Nna, please can you get us two smaller cups, we want to share this beer.”
“What?”
She swung an arm over Obinna’s shoulder. The sudden rush of her perfume was such a stunning blow thathe forgot to protest. “My guy, we’re actually both going through a lot, and I don’t want us to drink alone.”
The bartender nodded and walked away, appearing moments later with two smaller mugs which he split Obinna’s beer into. The girl grinned and downed the cup in one gulp. Elation transformed her face and for a second, Obinna imagined sunrise. He shook his head furiously, as though to dispel the thoughts. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes, turned her head and offered him an apologetic look.
“I’m sorry?”
Obinna rolled his eyes and shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“My name is Chiamaka.” She offered him her hand. “And you?”
“Obinna.”
The Processing Hub sat above H-3, all machinery and moving parts. It gave H-3 below a constant background white noise that all the residents were used to. The floors were metal-plated, the hub itself made up of multi-levelled structures of forklifts and several engines. Processing was perpetually hot, rough and greasy. And not where Obinna wanted to be at any given time.
“My guy!” Chike said as Obinna hefted crates towards the loading lifts. “Na so the exam hard? You came in late.”
Obinna sniffed hard, placing the crate among a stack before tapping twice on the haul. From above, one of the crew in a faded yellow helmet and brown coveralls activated the lift and the platform began to move. The crates would be delivered to the central market hub that linked the Processing/H-3 tower with the H-1/H-2 tower.
“Nna eh, that exam. Hmm.” Obinna answered almost absently, thinking of the afternoon he spent with tipsy Chiamaka, who in fact, claimed she was not tipsy at all. She was an easy conversationalist, and despite his initial irritation over her drinking all of his beer, he had to admit to himself that he had a good time. Before long, he had forgotten all about the uncertainty he’d been feeling after the exam, immersed fully in the vibe of her humour and wit.
“Say man,” Obinna said, “I actually met someone up at H-2.”
Chike raised his eyebrows in question. “An H-2 girl?”
“I’m not sure. I think she’s from H-2 though. She didn’t seem like she’s from Sepia Town.”
“Oh boy you gats dey sure oh. You know these our girls na? They’ll package wella, then chill in Two for Corps guys or Watchers to pick them up at the bars. Maybe even take them up to Ambode’s if they’re lucky. My guy, no dull oh.”
Obinna felt a prick of worry gnaw at his chest. “I mean, I don’t know man. I don’t think this girl’s like that. I can tell these things.”
Chike scoffed. “Didn’t your last girl get engaged while you guys were still dating?”
Waves of bad memories threatened to knock Obinna over. “Brotherrrr!”
Chike lifted his hands in mock surrender. Obinna shook his head as he lifted another crate. Chike was referring to Amina, the tall, dark beauty who had stolen his heart. He’d loved Amina desperately—too desperately, if he was being honest—but ultimately, families wanted to ascend the towers of Aguiyi. Obinna could understand that.
He’d begged her to give him a few more years, but she would have nothing of it. That conversation still lived rent-free in his head. The one where Amina looked him dead in the eyes and said to him, “Obinna, your dreams are unrealistic.”
It had been like a cold slap to his face. It rendered him speechless.
“And you’re being very selfish too,” she’d continued. “Well, the reason you can act so spoiled is because your parents bought out that unit from the Housing Commission. You don’t have to pay rent.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” he’d snapped. “You work in H-2 and earn a decent wage. You can support your folks for a while longer.”
She’d flung her hands up in annoyance. “And who’s going to support me?”
For the longest time after she dumped him, he would sit in his assigned sector in the sewers, ears plugged with his earphones, running probabilities about how differently those final days could have turned out. She had probably started seeing her husband by then—a cabbie from Two who’d found her a job at a bakery. It’d been a little over two years since. Her parents recently bought out their own housing unit from the HC, and word around her side of Sepia Town was that they planned to start a restaurant there.
I have dreams too, you know. If I can make it to the corps, I’m made.
Unrealistic dreams.
He once heard his father telling his drinking buddies that it was better Obinna had his delusions now, so he could wake up to face reality on time. And not end up like the dustheads in the street corners, stoned out of their mind half the time and the other half in withdrawal shakes, looking for who to rob for their next fix.
H-3 was where romantics went to die.
Obinna returned to his work in relative silence. He must have gotten carried away by Chiamaka. Either way, he needed to get his act together. He’d given himself five years at most, a bull-headed determination to join the corps. He wanted to ascend too, and that journey’s end was in sight. He had to make it, affirm his worth, or be stuck cleaning rat guts from the sewer walls for the rest of his life.
On the day of the results, Obinna took the train from Three to Two. The evening train started its route at H-3, picking up passengers along its track—Processing Hub for the factory workers, H-2 for the housekeepers, store helps and other Threes who did daily labour at H-2—before its return to its home terminal at Three. He was still in ugly green HSC coveralls, but he had no choice. The day had been hectic enough. The mayor had come down to the sewer levels to examine the structural weak points that rats took advantage of in infesting the city. Chike had snorted that it was only optics. The mayor’s opponent was leading him in the popularity polls.
Now, Obinna planned to reach the Defence Commission building, check his results and get back to the station in time for the train’s return trip.
Thankfully, the results were pasted on a bulletin board in front of the building. Obinna knew the offices themselves would be closed—since 4pm, even. There was a small crowd by the results—people who’d recently closed from work, mostly Twos. People were too focused on the results to inch away from him. Eight sheets of paper were pinned to the board. Obinna prayed to the Reactor. To God, Allah, whoever would listen.
Nerves made Obinna’s palms clammy as he began to search for his name. The world spun dangerously below his feet and the papers blurred into a distant swirl as he fought to focus. There were many names, and their scores were abysmal 40s or 50s. There was no order to the names either. He found his name and suddenly his lungs became too large for his chest.
Beside his name was 69.4.
Obinna thought he was going to pass out. He reached forward, finger on the row of text with his name. He traced it with fingers so unsteady, he was almost convulsing.
‘OBINNA EGEONU – 71.8 – PASS.’
He didn’t realize he was screaming until he heard his own voice, raw and strained. Abashed, he slinked out of the crowd, his body abuzz with euphoria. His heart hammered against his breastbone. He didn’t notice the girl in the leather jacket who had fallen in step with him until many moments after.
“Boyyy you should pay more attention to your surroundings.”
Obinna started. He had to stop meeting Chiamaka like this. His lips parted in a sudden grin. “I passed!”
She smirked in return. “I heard.” Embarrassment warmed his cheeks but he kept his cool. “Congrats Obinna.” Her smile was bright and he found it surprisingly warm. “And I’m really sorry about the other day.”
Despite himself, he said, “What part? Doubting me or drinking my beer?”
“Doubting you. But mostly for your drink, if I’m being honest.”
Obinna scoffed, but he couldn’t hide the smile that followed.
“Sooooooooo, how are you celebrating?” She nudged him in the side. He suddenly remembered that he had to catch the train. Then, like a gut punch, he remembered he was still in his work clothes, and they were standing so close together. Chiamaka was shorter than he was, wearing a floral blouse over pleated skirts and utility boots. And she smelled divine. He smelled like… well, damp sweat and antiseptic.
Ratguts!
“Uhh…” Obinna broke into cold sweat. He remembered what Chike told him about the women on H-2 and glanced over to her chest where she would have her visa card slung over a lanyard on her neck. Hers was hidden within one of the jacket’s inner pockets. “I-I don’t know… I need to get to the station?”
“Oh, that’s right. Forgive me,” she said, rueful. “Text me when next you’re in Two? Drinks on me this time around.”
Obinna gave her a curious glance. “Really?”
“What’s that look on your face, eh, Obinna?” She placed her hand akimbo and cocked her head to one side. “That better not be disbelief. Here. That’s my dropbox add. Don’t miss your train!”
He nearly missed his train.
“You’re saying that all this happened while you were in your cleaner uniform?” Chike’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “In H-2?”
Obinna nodded furiously. “It was like she’d developed cataracts or something, man.”
“Nna, the girl must really like you be that oh,” Chike said, taking a sip of his plate of pepper soup. They were both under Obinna’s mother’s food canopy. The smell of deeply seasoned meat filled the air, mixed with the smell of gin, beer, e-cig smoke and sweat from workers who were looking for a place to spend their wages. There were several canopies along the narrow street serving pepper soup in their own capacity. Obinna was helping his mother work the night crowd.
“She might just be one of these upper tower girls that are looking for a thrill.”
“And that’s a bad thing because…?”
“I don’t think I’m in that kind of headspace.” Obinna sighed. “I have so many things on my plate. I’m not sure romance is what I need right now.”
Chike shook his head. “Nwanne, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re a young man, and Aguiyi is a big city.”
Somewhere down the street, the speakers that delivered the mayor’s address every morning had been repurposed, now filling the ambience with old-timey tunes. The overhead lights in the district were dimmed to an almost blue-tinged fluorescence. Night light. Not like they were ever bright to begin with. At high noon, the brightest H-3 could get was a dusky yellow, equivalent to H-2’s dawn lights. Hence its colloquial name, Sepia Town. A monochromatic habitat of steel and carbon-alloy.
Small pop-up shops crowded the narrow streets like plaque in a blood vessel. Tattoo parlours, dance clubs and bars flashed neon signs, while coloured string lights danced over wares on display. These were the sights. The best time to get a dust high was at night, on rollerblades, as the jagged lights left trails of afterimages in the vision, bright like phosphenes trapped within the skull.
Then were the smells—thick odours of sweat on skin, and grease-and-rust, and piss-and-refuse on steel-plated streets. Blood sometimes, in narrower alleys, from gang clashes or loan sharks collecting their dues. Dustheads also had their own smell: musty, after lying in a pool of their own waste for days, not dead yet. Buzzing flies, meat markets, radiation scrubbing booths that didn’t quite work, smog hanging in the air like a perpetual curtain. The recyclers still worked, at least, or else all the Threes would have met the Reactor ages ago.
The sounds. The ever-persistent grinding sounds of the Processing Hub a level above H-3. The noise of old trams and trolleys and markets and people yelling—angrily, happily—singing, surviving. Obinna’s mother was yelling his name now, pulling him away from Chike’s table to attend to others.
In its own way, Sepia Town was beautiful, but Obinna knew deep down that he was a bird trapped in a cage. He wanted to be free of the cramped walls and artificial climate. He wanted to get his visa card approved and see the real sky on H-1. Feel the sun on his face. His family had gone on an excursion to H-1 before, but he was far too young to remember anything besides the fire in the vast blue sky. Sometimes, he dreamed of sunrise in the monochrome city.
That night, lying above his two snoring brothers in the tiny room that they shared, Obinna sent his first message to Chiamaka.
Several things about Chiamaka took Obinna by surprise. First of all, she was from H-1. She wasn’t just anyone from H-1 either, but her mother was the mayor’s opponent in the coming elections. She also worked in the Hazard and Safety Commission, but as a doctor.
That’s so many ranks above cleaner, I don’t even know where to begin.
When they’d first met and she told him that she was between jobs, she’d meant that she had paused her HSC work for some time to help her mother with the elections. According to her, she was used to people deferring to her, and it came as a shock when he refused her his drink.
Let the poor breathe, no? Besides, I hardly pay attention to politics.
Her oversized jacket used to belong to her father. He was a member of the Watchers Guild—Aguiyi police—and had passed away due to illness the previous year. That day at the bar was the anniversary of his death, and she’d just wanted to forget about his absence, if only for a few hours.
Her favourite place in the city was the H-1 Green Hub because of the Flower District. She also had a fake visa card she used to visit Sepia Town whenever she wanted to hit the ‘real’ clubs.
I don’t think that kind of info will help your mother’s campaign.
Obinna told her of his dream to leave H-3. To join the Segun corps and protect the city from infestation from rats and other mutated ratballs that roamed the Earth. He told her that he hadn’t told anybody in his family how the first test went. Obinna believed that he did not want to give them any sort of ammunition to use against him in some future berating. But maybe, deep down, he was worried about giving them hope. No matter how they showed it, everyone on the Aguiyi wanted a chance to ascend.
Deep down, he was afraid of putting everything on the line, just like he had, and failing all the same.
[And if you somehow don’t make it?]
He stared at the message on his datapad for the longest time before eventually replying.
I can’t afford to.
[I know… but the slots are SEVERELY limited, and highly competitive. Do you have a contingency plan?]
No.
He didn’t.
He would spend the rest of his life on Three.
[I could talk to my mum. See if there’s an opening in the Farms.]
Obinna wasn’t looking for handouts. He wanted to make it on his own merit. Maybe that way he could actually believe he was good enough to ask Chiamaka to be his girlfriend. Maybe take her to dinner somewhere nice like Ambode’s, and not just their random meetups in-between his shifts, sharing fried yams or watermelons from vendors on Two, on her dime.
[Knockknock, still there?]
He tossed the datapad aside. Who was he kidding? It was only a matter of time before the novelty wore off and reality set in, and it would be like Amina all over again. For the first time in a long time, Obinna felt very tired.
The applied test was to take place on H-1.
Obinna glanced at Chiamaka’s dropbox, a bunch of unanswered messages glaring accusingly at him.
[So what, you’re just going to ignore me? How mature Obinna]
[I’m just trying to help. Get over yourself. Besides, it was only a suggestion]
[Fine, suit yourself.]
Two weeks had passed since then. There was no way she would deign to send him a good luck message after he’d ghosted her.
Ratguts, Obinna. Focus.
There was no direct train to H-1 from H-3. At H-2, the Watchers spent a quarter of an hour verifying his exam credentials. To Obinna’s surprise, the Watcher wished him good luck before he walked into the railcar. With his stomach in knots, he strapped into a bench and waited. The railcar rumbled into life, nothing like the ones on Three. He held onto his harness as gravity slipped for a bit in their ascent, and then there was only the silent thrum of the engines.
H-1 was a dream.
The station was made of glass walls. The air smelled floral, like the air fresheners sometimes used in the Commission offices. Everything was clean and shiny, even the people. A feeling of smallness threatened to twist his guts into further knots but he fought it down.
Outside, the sun was bright in the sky—a dazzling jewel even behind the climate shields that domed the city. A billboard close to the station had Chiamaka’s mother’s face on it as a part of her campaign. Obinna reached into his bag and took out his datapad and opened Chiamaka’s dropbox.
I’m in H-1. I’m sorry. Can we talk?
He hesitated after sending the message. He needed to take a proper step towards her. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and opened the voice message option.
Obinna had gone over his apology several times in his head. He knew that he hadn’t tried to communicate with Chiamaka. He’d just shut her out. She’d offered to help him and instead, he let the small part of himself take over—the one his family saw, the one he rejected every day he studied for the corps. The one that made him see himself as less-than because he was born in Sepia Town. Obinna was chafed by his pride—a useless, faux-righteous indignation that he would rather mop rat guts all his life than receive help from someone upper-tower.
He stood there on the street, datapad in both hands, whispering these apologies without caring about the people around him.
When he was finally done, he took his eyes away from his datapad and focused on the task at hand.
The applied test.
It was to be held at the Segun corps’ barracks—an imposing, monolithic dome of black glass. Inside the dome were hangars for the inactive Single Entity Gun Units—Seguns— which were really remnants from the ancient wars. The mecha itself was an arthropod-like machine. It stood at about eight feet tall, with a cockpit and a gun-based weapon system.
Only one hurdle left.
Obinna joined the queue of examination candidates.
By the end of the exam, Obinna was drenched in sweat. He drank greedily from the water offered to the candidates at the venue. He didn’t have any strong feelings about the applied test per se. It was more of a test of physicality and machine handling, if anything, and he’d had a lifetime of practice at Processing. He’d done his best, and by the Reactor he hoped it was enough.
Obinna checked his datapad. Chike had sent him a good-luck text. And also—his heart suddenly did a flip. Chiamaka had replied to his text too. The message contained a location marked on a map of H-1.
The Green Hub.
The Green Hub was filled with domes of greenhouses. Each dome was constructed of fine glass panels with individual climate regulation systems. Within each dome was a canopy of green, flora and wildlife, glistening under the tropical sunlight.
In the flower district, Obinna stopped by a florist’s shop and nearly broke his bank buying a rose.
It was redundant, he knew, buying a flower in a flower district. But there was something exotic about the rose, he thought, cradling it in his hands. Chiamaka was seated on a park bench under a copse of trees. She was surrounded by rows of sculpted flower bushes, their sweet fragrance mellow in the cool wind.
He sat beside her. Their worlds were different, but somehow, they had collided. Somehow, there they were, in that moment—only a boy in starched shirts and a bespectacled girl in a leather jacket.
“This guy—” Chiamaka started.
“I’m sorry,” Obinna said. “I’ve been an idiot, and I’m sorry.” He held the rose between them, tension building like a drawstring between them.
“You need to get your self-esteem looked at.”
“I will.”
Her expression remained impassive, but she took the flower, bringing it to her nostrils and inhaling deeply. Obinna let out a breath he had no idea he’d been holding and turned his gaze to the brilliant blue sky. Chiamaka nudged him in his ribs, and he chuckled. A paper bag filled with akara and fried yams glazed with sauce dropped onto his laps.
“Here. You didn’t have breakfast, did you?”
Obinna’s stomach rumbled and Chiamaka smiled at last. A thousand different emotions rushed within Obinna in that moment, and he leaned towards that smile, taking her lips in his as delicately as the petals of the flower in her hand. She gasped—but only in surprise—before leaning into him too.
Several hours later they would still be seated on that bench, watching the sun dip into the faraway horizon.
A week later, Obinna received a message from the Defence Commission.
Uchechukwu Nwaka is an Igbo medical student at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His works have appeared in Clarkesworld, PodCastle, Escape Pod, Fusion Fragment, FIYAH, Omenana, and Brittlepaper, among others, and some of his works have been nominated for the Utopia and BSFA Awards. He is the winner of the Locus Award for Best Novelette in 2024. When he’s not writing short fiction or working on his new novella series, he can be found reading manga, streaming TV shows, playing amateur volleyball, or trying to catch up with his endless schoolwork.
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