The Engineers built the bunker to keep us safe and to shelter us.

Their work is perfection.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 1, Verse 2

The brownish muck and waste at my feet stank of decay and rot—strong enough to make me gag.

I grit my teeth to hold back the bile rising in my throat, seized the shovel, and began to fill my battered wheelbarrow. The stuff had to go to the compost heaps first thing in the morning. Frankie, my boss, would skin me alive if I wasn't done with it by breakfast.

A squelching noise made me stop. It came from above, from the dark maw where the chute entered our cavern's rocky ceiling. I took a step back and looked up, squinting my eyes against the glare of the lamps.

Another hunk of waste emerged, slid down, toppled, and smacked into the mound at the bottom of the chute—with a splash, spraying me with smelly, piss-colored droplets.

I sighed and raised the shovel to continue, but I froze as I beheld something yellow—an unusual color in all the shades of brown. Whatever it was, only a small part of it showed through the muck. Rounded, with golden, smooth skin—maybe a piece of vegetable. I held my breath against the smell as I got closer and pulled it out. When I recognized it, I gasped in surprise.

An apple!

As I wiped it on my pants, part of it yielded, soft and mushy, but the rest felt firm and invited my bite. It must have been years since I last had tasted such fruit, yet the memory of its sweet juice struck me like a hammer and made my mouth water. I suppressed the urge to gobble it down on the spot. I would share it with the old craner—he needed the food more than I did.

Wondering where he was, I glanced up at the ceiling, many meters above. The crisscrossing tracks of the crane between the bright lamps were hard to see, but then I discovered the grapple hanging over the mounds of compost at the cavern's remote, lower end.

I heaped two more shovels of muck on my wheelbarrow. Then I seized its handles, struggling to hold on to the apple at the same time. The compost piles were close to the crane's current position. So I could empty the barrow there, and then I'd climb up to the cabin and have lunch with the craner.

Praying to the Manuals that no one would see me with the fruit, I hurried down the path to the mounds.

I welcomed the ripe and earthy smell when I finally reached them. They stood higher than me, overdue for harvesting. Pumpkins and rhubarb grew on the compost, their broad, fat leaves green and fleshy.

A pair of buttocks rose between them. They were fleshy too—but not green.

I froze, watching the buttocks as they moved in a regular rhythm, accompanied by heavy panting and someone moaning. Flabbergasted, I stopped in my tracks and let go of the wheelbarrow, which hit the ground with a clang.

The buttocks stopped their thrusting.

The backside's owner rose to his knees, hastily pulling up his pants. He looked at me, his mouth open.

Frankie, my boss.

At his side, the leaves rustled, and a woman's head came into view. I knew her long, black hair, its dark texture untouched by the light of the lamps.

Jasmine, my girlfriend.

Or—by the look of the scene here—not my girlfriend. Not anymore.

Biting back a curse, I just stared at her.

She got up and tugged at her skirt, pulling it down and straightening it over her long, dark legs. Her gaze was on the ground.

She wouldn't even look at me. Maybe, it was better that way—I lacked the words that needed to be said now.

Words somewhere between pain, disbelief, and anger.

"Hey, Timmy." Frankie grinned and strutted onto the path. His grin turned into a frown as he pointed at my wheelbarrow. "What the hell is this? It's almost breakfast time! Move your black ass."

I hated him calling me Timmy, and he knew it. And—as I had just had the pleasure to verify—his ass was just as dark as mine. But all of that paled beside the act I had interrupted.

Ignoring Frankie, I stared at Jasmine, still struggling for something to say. Anything. Yet nothing came. She was as beautiful as ever, with her hair covering one of her coaly eyes.

Had Frankie forced her?

"Are you okay?" I asked. "Did he..." I gestured at Frankie.

She shook her head, then she pushed the strand away and looked at me. "Tim, I..." She hesitated. "I'm sorry, but... you and I... this was—"

Frankie interrupted her. "No need to apologize to Timmy. And..." He looked at me. "This is none of your business, but let me tell you that she was the one who started this." His smirk grew wider. "But anyway, you have work to do. Being the foreman's son doesn't excuse you from that. Oh, and as we're talking about work, your dad should better get that swamp fixed." He directed his thumb at the lower end of the cavern, where one of the swamps was dug out for cleaning. "He and the craner have utterly failed to—"

He looked down at my hands, and his speech stalled as his eyes lit up. "Oh, is that what I think it is?"

"It's for the craner." Glowering at him, I held the apple close to my chest. Pain and disbelief were gone now, all burned in a hot flame of anger.

"The craner?" He glanced up towards the ceiling and then back at me. "Why? He doesn't need much food, sitting in his cabin day and night. The man doesn't even walk." He laughed.

I hated the disdain in his voice. "The craner can't walk. And the Manuals say that we must care for those who cannot care for themselves."

Not that I expected Frankie to know the quote. It was one of the less popular ones.

He strode up to me while a smirk widened his mustache. "That may be. But I'm sure Jasmine would love to have some fruit. She must be hungry... after all the exercise."

Jasmine put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm okay, Frankie. Leave it be."

He shrugged her off. "Jasmine, this isn't about you. It's about the proper order of things. About who's the one on top." He guffawed as he stepped closer to me, reaching out for the fruit.

I clenched my free hand into a fist and swung it at his face. Before my knuckles could make contact with the sparse stubble on his chin, his arm came up, and he blocked the blow.

The smile on his face was gone.

He stood a head taller than I, was two years older, and his sleeveless, brown shirt perfectly displayed the bulging muscles packed onto his arms. Daily exercise had made him stronger than anyone else down here. And he knew it. His dream was to join the guards one day and to leave this shithole for the upper cavern. I didn't stand a chance against him.

On top of that, he was my boss even though he had the brain of a maggot.

Without taking his eyes from me, he moved two fingers to his lips and whistled twice. The short, sharp signals echoed from the ceiling and the walls.

I knew what they meant. They were Frankie's call for Carp, his buddy, who probably was hiding somewhere in the compost heaps smoking herbs. The guy was as stout, hard, and stupid as a rock but always willing to do the dirty work for his friend.

Unless he was stoned from smoking weed.

Swallowing my rage, I eyed Jasmine. Her gaze was on the ground, avoiding mine.

I took up the wheelbarrow and brushed past Frankie. Waiting for Carp to arrive wasn't the wisest course of action.

"Hey, Timmy," Frankie shouted. "You stop there right now!"

"Please, Frankie, let him go," Jasmine said.

Ignoring the big bully and the treacherous chick, I turned into the ravine between two of the compost mounds.

"Timmy!" Anger resounded in Frankie's call, but one of the mounds and the plants choking it were between us now.

I abandoned the wheelbarrow beside a stand of spades and ran further along the track. It twisted its way through hillocks of rotting garbage, each one at least twice my height. At an intersection ahead, a path branched off towards the village and the safety of my father's cottage.

But before I could reach it, a compact figure emerged from behind one of the mounds and stopped at the crossing, blocking my way.

Carp, called by Frankie's whistling. And he didn't look stoned at all.

I froze.

"Hey, didn't you hear me, Timmy boy?" Frankie called.

I turned towards the voice. Frankie was closing in on me from behind, a spade raised in his hands.

I was trapped between tool-armed Frankie at my back and dumb Carp ahead.

Scaling the mounds of ripening compost was strictly forbidden. Only the wild rabbits were allowed to climb them. The law was as ancient as the Engineers.

And Frankie wasn't the forgiving kind.

He swung his spade against my head, and the lights went out.