Chapter 305
Before.
Miles ached. He ached in a way he hadn't since the BUDS physical conditioning phase on the endless beaches, palling around with meatheads, blistering under the Coronado sun, enduring brutal, draining tasks intended for one purpose, and one alone.
Give the fuck up.
He hadn't then, and he wouldn't now. That was what he told himself after the proctor assigned the task of ferrying soul orbs. On its face, it was a rather simple form of torture in the form of labor. Pedestrian. Nothing he couldn't handle. Miles was ordered to sift through the small mountain of orbs at the landing station. All he was told was that the red orbs were irrecoverable and had to be carried by hand up a long stairway to the obliteration platform, little more than a wide square pillar with a metal indent in the center that acted as a scale. The corrupted orbs were small but dense, spread out amongst their lighter, uncorrupted brethren, naturally sinking to the bottom of any pile they were in. The powers that be were even kind enough to grant him a bucket.
But the simplicity of the task and granting of tools was where the kindness ended, and the cruelty began. His "work area" was little more than a section of Bastille wall emerging from the dark blue waters of an endless ocean. The nights were cold, damp, and brutal, while the days were windy and bathed in sweltering sunlight. There was no shelter. And while he was free to work at his own pace, a floating hourglass in the faraway distance constantly drained sand. It was half full now. Not that much time had passed. As far as Miles could tell, he'd only been here about two days.
It was an early mistake that cost nearly a quarter of the timer. He'd loaded his pail with approximately twenty orbs—around two-hundred pounds—and began the long ascent up the stairway. The weight was no problem. In his mind he was taking it easy, taking on the sort of burden he could have easily carried even before the system. But there were two factors he didn't account for that he probably should have. The round, thin, metallic handle, and the way the wind grew unnaturally unpredictable towards the top of the summit. He'd been less than five steps away from the scale when the thin handle's slow bite suddenly grew insufferable just as his foot hit a wet patch. Miles stumbled, nearly losing his footing completely and halting himself moments before tumbling ass over teakettle off the side. A few corrupted orbs tumbled out of the pail, plunging into the ocean below, their glow disappearing almost instantly. He righted the bucket, releasing the handle for only a moment when it toppled with a gust of wind, sending a cascade of red orbs down the stairs and over the side.
That was the third factor. The one he couldn't really blame himself for. Because the pail was the first thing he'd checked. It appeared fully metal. The handle was solid, unlikely to break. And when he'd filled it with a few orbs and sat it flush, it had remained upright. Only, the insidious part was that the bottom did have flex. Not a lot. With a few orbs, the difference was barely perceptible. But with more—say twenty, for instance—the bottom rounded out and became convex. Meaning he could load the pail with as many orbs as he wanted.
But he could never set it down until those orbs reached their destination.
Now, he panted after a successful trip, bucket tossed to the side and overturned. Small boats helmed by shadowy figures occasionally arrived, unceremoniously dumping cargo that consisted entirely of orbs onto the loading platform, undoing any potential sorting in advance he could manage.