Chapter 1
The Janitor Who Didn’t Fit In

2055 smelled like sanitizer and failure.

Reggie Plaskett knew both intimately. By 9 a.m., he’d already mopped up three protein-flavored vomit piles and one “unsanctioned bowel release” near the automated pill dispensers. The VitaMush™ Center for Dietary Compliance — District 7 — ran smoother than most, which meant it only had to be hosed down twice daily instead of three. Reggie took pride in that. Sort of. Not enough to stand straighter, but enough to mutter “you’re welcome” under his breath as another dopamine-dazed Thin Skinner shuffled by in their glassy-eyed stupor.

He paused to scrape a clump of synthetic banana-flavored mush off the tread of his boot. Even now, nearly two decades after The Mandate, the stuff still found new ways to insult the senses. Technically edible. Legally required. Spiritually toxic.

He glanced around. No cameras in the back corridor — just an old analog bulletin board no one used anymore, its surface curling like the skin of a sunburnt man. That’s where he kept his stash: a single, laminated snapshot of a T-bone steak sizzling on cast iron, stolen from a banned 2020s cookbook he’d found in a condemned library. He didn’t know why he kept it. Some part of him wanted to believe it once meant something. Protein you had to chew. Fat that glistened. Heat that healed.

A siren blipped overhead, followed by a soft female voice piped through the intercom: “Good citizens report anomalies. Great citizens correct them. Report resistance. Be the solution.”

Reggie rolled his eyes and flicked his cleaning rag at the speaker. It was always “good” and “great” this, “solution” that. They never said free. They never said real. They never said enough.

He pulled out his flask — not the kind with booze. That was illegal. This was better: bone broth concentrate. Thick. Salty. Contraband. He took a small sip and felt his shoulders drop an inch, like his body had just remembered what it was to be human.

“RE-GIN-ALD PLASKETT,” a voice croaked from behind.

Reggie turned slowly. Supervisor Klautz stood there, holding his clipboard like it was the last relic of a civilization that still believed in paperwork. His body was rail-thin, but not in a healthy way. More like an unused puppet. Bones wrapped in skin, powered by pills.

“Yes, Supervisor?”

“You were seen loitering near an unmonitored zone for thirteen seconds. That violates Clean Pathway Protocol 4.2.” Klautz blinked rapidly, as if buffering.

Reggie nodded slowly, keeping his voice deadpan. “Understood. I’ll punish myself accordingly. Maybe clean an extra urinal.”

Klautz didn’t get the joke. They never did. The pill-fed didn’t process sarcasm well. Something about dopamine inhibitors and risk-aversion modifiers. Took the edge off everything, including humor.

“Please report to Behavior Alignment at your next cycle break. You’ll be issued a recalibration questionnaire and a supplemental booster.”

Reggie bit his lip to keep from laughing. “My favorite.”

Klautz spun on his heel and strode off, his orthopedic shoes squeaking like a funeral dirge. Reggie waited until he was gone, then pulled out the steak photo again.

“You and me, buddy,” he muttered. “One day.”

Back at his janitor’s closet — which, in the glorious year of 2055, was legally renamed a Sanitation Optimization Chamber — Reggie closed the door, locked it, and slid open the secret floor panel. A flicker of warm light blinked on. Beneath it, in a small box wrapped in foil-lined thermal paper, sat his prize: two boiled eggs. Real ones. Smuggled in by a guy who knew a guy with access to a forgotten rooftop coop on the outskirts of Sector Green.

He peeled one carefully, almost reverently. The smell hit him like a punch. Sulfur and salvation.

“You ever notice,” he said aloud to no one, “how everything they ban smells like something?”

He didn’t eat the egg immediately. He just held it, letting it remind his senses that life used to be vibrant, textured, unsanitized. Then — slowly — he bit in. The yolk was firm but creamy, a dense pop of nourishment that no VitaMush™ pouch could replicate, no matter how many nanofibers they claimed it had.

A tear welled in his eye, but he blamed the ammonia fumes.

Then came the knock.

Three short. Two long.

He froze. That wasn’t protocol. Not government, not maintenance, not even black market delivery.

Another knock. Same pattern.

Reggie slid the floor panel back into place, wiped his face, and opened the door halfway.

A woman stood there in a charcoal-gray hoodie. Her eyes were clear. Alarmingly so.

“You dropped this,” she said, holding up the laminated steak photo.

Reggie’s heart thumped. “That was… in my closet.”

“Was it?” She smiled faintly. “Or was it a signal?”

“A signal for what?”

“For something your body already knows. For fire. For strength. For rebellion.”

Reggie narrowed his eyes. “You lost me.”

She glanced around, then stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “Name’s Ki. I’m with a group called The Burners.”

Reggie backed up instinctively. “That sounds… like something that gets people disappeared.”

“It is,” Ki said calmly. “If we’re lucky.”

Reggie crossed his arms. “I’m just a janitor. I clean up other people’s delusions. That’s all.”

She leaned in. “That’s where revolutions start, Reginald. In the corners. Among the leftovers. In the people who still know how to feel disgust.”

Silence. The only sound was the faint hum of the central nutrient line pulsing through the walls.

“Why me?” he finally asked.

Ki reached into her hoodie and pulled out a small, round badge. It was burned at the edges, but the symbol was unmistakable: a roaring fire inside the outline of a human body.

“Because you’re still hungry.”

She turned to leave.

“Wait,” Reggie said. “What do you actually do?”

Ki paused, grinned, and said just three words:

“We dance, janitor.”

And then she vanished down the corridor, leaving behind a faint scent of sweat, salt, and something else Reggie couldn’t quite name.

Hope. Maybe.

He shut the door. Opened the foil again. Bit into the second egg.

And for the first time in years, he didn’t feel alone.

Chapter 2
The Mush Messiah

At precisely 12:00 p.m., every public screen in District 7 flickered to life, hijacking all approved entertainment cycles and mental wellness feeds. Reggie was polishing a handprint off the chrome-plated Compliance Monument in the lobby — a statue of a gender-neutral humanoid kneeling before a bowl of VitaMush™ — when the interruption hit.

The screen showed a thin man in a white tunic trimmed with corporate lavender. He wore the serene expression of a hospice nurse, but the dead eyes of someone who hadn’t chewed food since the Neural Satiety Act of 2041.

“Blessings, citizens,” the man intoned. “I am Dr. Kellan Vert, Lead Director of Nutritional Harmony and Founder of the VitaMush™ Mindful Movement.”

A cheer erupted from the speakers. Synthetic, pre-recorded, and chemically engineered to trigger microdoses of dopamine in compliant brains. It didn’t trigger Reggie.

“In these trying times,” Vert continued, “we must double down on unity. Remember, our strength is not in force — but in surrender. Surrender to science. Surrender to structure. Surrender to softness.”

Reggie made a fart noise with his mouth.

Vert went on, eyes twinkling with tranquilized fervor. “Thanks to the newest flavor enhancement — ‘Birthday Cake Basil’ — you’ll never have to choose between joy and nourishment again. And as always, thanks to our daily pharmaceutical infusions, your minds remain clear, your bodies calm, and your lives long.”

“Yeah, long and limp,” Reggie muttered. He stole a glance at Klautz, who stood nearby like a soulless obelisk, staring at the screen with a faint smile that made Reggie’s spine itch.

Then Vert held up a single pre-portioned tube of VitaMush™. “This is our holy grail. This is how we win. Together, we mush.”

Reggie dry-heaved just loud enough for a toddler to hear. The child looked up from his digital pacifier — a feeding tube mounted to a screen — and blinked. The mother, rail-thin and emotionally blank, didn’t even notice.

Reggie turned back to the monument, scrubbed a little harder. Inside his chest, something simmered.

Not rage. Not yet. Something older. Like an organ waking up.

By 3:00 p.m., Reggie was back in the Sanitation Optimization Chamber, staring at the steak photo like it was a lost lover. He knew he should burn it. Or swallow it. Or at least hide it better. But he couldn’t. It was the only color in his world besides that damn lavender stripe on every government jumpsuit.

The knock came again.

Three short. Two long.

He unlocked the door. This time, it wasn’t Ki.

It was a boy — couldn’t have been more than twelve — wearing cargo pants, a hoodie, and a smug grin far too evolved for his age.

“You Reggie?” the boy asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Name’s Dex. Ki sent me.”

Reggie eyed the kid. “What, she got child labor now?”

Dex stepped inside and closed the door. “Nah. I’m just small. And fast. And people don’t ask questions when you’re young and twitchy.”

He wasn’t wrong. Reggie had seen a dozen delivery drones short-circuit trying to identify kids with hormone blockers still active in their systems.

Dex tossed a small package onto the utility bench. Reggie unwrapped it.

Jerky.

Not soy-jerky. Not lab-grown strips glued together with cricket paste.

Real. Dried. Meat.

He smelled it. Salty. Gamey. Familiar. Dangerous.

“I could die just from sniffing this,” Reggie said.

“Only if you’re caught,” Dex said. “Or if you’ve been on SynthFiber for too long. Then your gut biome might implode.”

Reggie raised a brow. “Comforting.”

“You're welcome.” Dex grinned. “You’re in, by the way.”

“In what?”

“The Burners.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.”

“Doesn’t matter. Ki says intention counts. You want in. You just haven’t moved yet.”

Reggie leaned back on his mop handle. “And what happens if I say no?”

Dex shrugged. “Nothing. You stay here. You clean up puke. You die slow.”

Reggie stared at the jerky in his hand. It looked like a message. A dare.

“You guys really think you can fix all this?”

Dex laughed. “No. But we can burn it down.”

He tossed something else onto the bench — a crude wristband made from braided fibers and metal shavings. A flame was etched into its face.

“When you’re ready,” he said. “Put this on. We’ll find you.”

Reggie watched him disappear through the vent shaft like a caffeine-powered raccoon. The room felt heavy again. Sterile. Predictable.

He sat on the edge of the bench and chewed a piece of jerky.

It didn’t taste like rebellion.

It tasted like truth.

That night, Reggie walked home through the bio-light corridors of Sector 9, past row after row of nutrient dispensers glowing blue and pink like neon utopias. Citizens — Thin Skinners — sat on benches, sucking their daily allotment of flavored slurry while mind-feeds played above their heads. Most were alone. All were hollow.

He passed a street preacher shouting into a microphone about the “Gospel of Gut Flora.”

“The Lord gave us microbiomes!” the man cried. “And you’ve poisoned yours! Repent! Repent before the fermentation collapses!”

Two compliance officers tased him without breaking stride.

Reggie kept walking.

When he got to his unit — Tower 34, Pod 2C — the biometric scanner paused longer than usual. His stress levels were above protocol. A warning light blinked yellow.

“User emotional signature elevated,” said the door AI. “Recommendation: Mental Health Slurry Pack 6B, flavor: Chocolate Paxil.”

“Override,” Reggie muttered.

“State override authorization.”

“Go to hell.”

The door opened.

Inside, the room was barely large enough to sneeze in. Bed, chair, hydration tube, mental pacifier screen. No fridge. No stove. No air.

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his reflection in the black screen.

“You want in. You just haven’t moved yet.”

He reached into his pocket. Pulled out the wristband.

And for the first time in fifteen years, Reggie Plaskett put something on without being told.

Chapter 3
Compliance and Consequence

By morning, the wristband was gone.

Not stolen. Not confiscated. Just… gone. Reggie woke up with a faint burn on his wrist where the fibers had been — like it had seared its welcome, then vanished into vapor. He wasn’t sure if it had been real. The jerky still sat in his pocket, though, so either he was hallucinating more vividly than usual, or someone out there really was watching.

He didn’t like either option.

“Good morning, Reginald,” chirped the unit AI, projecting a blue hologram of a smiling gender-neutral face with aggressively perfect teeth. “Your heart rate suggests mild anxiety. Would you like a comfort slurry?”

“No,” Reggie muttered, rubbing his temples.

“Understood. Initiating aroma therapy: vanilla lavender.”

A hidden port hissed. Reggie gagged.

He dressed slower than usual, letting the sour taste of last night’s truths coat his mouth. His muscles ached — not from work, but from the absence of use. He realized with a faint pang that he hadn’t done a single deep squat in… months? Years?

Just mop, dump, repeat.

By 7:05 a.m., he was back in the lobby of the VitaMush™ Center for Dietary Compliance. The floor sparkled. The statue gleamed. Everything was clean — superficially. But Reggie could smell the rot now. The sour decay beneath the scent of sanitizer. It wasn’t the building. It was the people.

They didn’t walk anymore. They glided. They hovered, not with tech, but with apathy. Every gesture was half-baked, softened by pharmaceuticals. Even Klautz, who once barked orders like a man pretending to be alive, now barely flinched when a toddler collapsed in the hallway from Neural Slurry Fatigue.

Reggie bent to help the kid up. No one else moved.

The boy blinked at him, lips smeared with redberry-calcium mush.

“You’re not like them,” he whispered.

Reggie didn’t answer. He just helped the boy to his feet, handed him the mush tube, and watched him disappear into the compliant blur of bodies.

At exactly 10:22 a.m., Reggie was summoned.

A soft blue dot blinked on his wrist — right where the band had been.

“Sanitation Officer Plaskett, please report to Compliance Review Room 17B,” said a smooth voice through the overheads. “This is not optional.”

Reggie wiped his hands on his jumpsuit and walked. Slowly. Deliberately. He passed the usual checkpoints — retina scan, breath test, mood strip. Everything green.

When he entered Room 17B, he found something new.

Two chairs. One table. And a man who wasn’t smiling.

“Sit down, Reginald,” the man said. No title. No soothing tone. Just a plain voice with real gravity.

Reggie sat.

The man was built like someone who used to do manual labor but hadn’t in years. His eyes were sharp, though, and that made Reggie uncomfortable.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the man asked.

“Bad attitude? Low mop morale?”

“Cute.” The man slid a tablet across the table. On it: security footage. Reggie. Holding the steak photo.

He flinched.

The man tapped the screen again. Footage of Reggie in his closet. Then: static. Then nothing.

Reggie looked up. “That cut out.”

“Yes. That’s the problem.”

“Isn’t that… a malfunction?”

“It’s a pattern.”

The man leaned forward. “Three sanitation chambers in District 7 have experienced camera blackouts in the last six weeks. All connected to minor personnel — janitors, street scrubbers, maintenance techs. All now missing.”

Reggie stayed silent.

“We found this in a storm drain last week.” The man dropped something onto the table. A burnt fiber bracelet. Identical to the one Reggie had worn.

His stomach dropped.

“We don’t care if you’re curious, Reginald. We care if you become useful.”

Reggie frowned. “Useful to who?”

The man didn’t answer. He just slid over a small vial — clear, unmarked, sealed with a government tamper tab.

“What’s that?”

“A test.”

“For what?”

“For loyalty.”

Reggie picked it up. It was lighter than it looked. No label. Just liquid.

“You want me to drink this?”

“No. I want to see if you’ll drink it.”

Reggie set it down. “I don’t take random pills. That’s kind of the whole point.”

The man smiled. First time. It wasn’t warm.

“We’ll be watching.”

Back in the hallway, Reggie walked like he’d just been kicked in the soul.

Everything looked the same. Felt the same. But now it all glowed with menace. Every corner felt rigged. Every door a trap.

He went back to the closet.

The jerky was gone.

In its place sat a single note, printed in red ink on paper that felt too textured to be real.

Trust no mouths. Trust only muscle.

Underneath, scribbled in different handwriting:

We saw you say no. Good. Now move.

Reggie folded the note and slipped it into his sock.

Then he opened the utility drawer and pulled out his mop.

Not the standard one. His real one. Reinforced handle. Steel core. He called it Bertha.

If they were going to watch, they could watch him clean.

Really clean.

That night, something changed.

He stayed late, claiming a biohazard spill on Level 3 that needed a full scrub. No one questioned it. No one ever questioned mops. That was the genius of it.

He worked fast. Hard. Poured sweat into every swing.

By midnight, he had cleaned a corridor so thoroughly it practically sparkled with defiance.

Then, on the back of a disused wall panel, he etched something with a utility blade.

Small. Crude. Hidden behind a vent grate.

But it was there.

His first move.

The next morning, it was gone.

In its place, carved deeper:

BURN ON.