Chapter One

His footfalls slap in the hollowed-rock tunnel and the echo is loud. Too loud. The thrum of the big drills and hydraulic excavators is only a distant background hum here, and it doesn’t drown out the sound of their passage. It makes him uneasy.

This far underground the air is damp and thin and if he wasn’t wearing a mask, every breath would be coating his nostrils, throat and lungs with fine red powder. He keeps his eyes focused on the legs jogging ahead of him. Legs that just won’t quit; long and tapered, several miles at least of denim-clad perfection, topped by an ass you could bounce a nickel off. [Dean frowns in his sleep. That’s a male ass. Why is he dreaming about a male ass?]

A shout comes from behind them and they both speed up, zigging and zagging as the soft pop of silenced gun fire sounds, and chips of red rock ricochet off the tunnel walls, slicing and bruising. Damn it. He knew they were making too much noise.

They round the corner at speed and the denim legs stop. Jay… [Jay? Dean mutters in his sleep and rolls over. Who the hell is Jay?] Jay reaches up with his long arms and yanks the filter cover off the air duct in the tunnel’s ceiling. He hauls himself up into the duct space and Dean’s mouth waters at the sight of all those rippling muscles; all that power. [Dean’s mouth? Dean’s? That’s not…that’s… Dean tosses and whimpers in bed.]

“C’mon!” Jay says, his hand reaching down into the tunnel. Dean reaches up and…pain! Agonizing pain! His hand is a sudden mess of shattered bone and blood, with a hole clear though it.

“Mining Security! Put your hands where I can see them!”

Jay is sitting in the air duct, nursing a bloody hand. Dean realizes with a sense of wonder that the bullet shot clear through their joined hands

The mask covers Jay’s mouth and nose, and his face is in shadow. Dean wishes he could see what the other man looks like. Just one glimpse before… he turns his head and looks at the group of rapidly-approaching security officers.

“Go!” he hisses, holding his arms up in surrender and dropping to his knees. “Get out of here, Jay.”

Jay leans forward and Dean gets a glimpse of big, sorrowful eyes.

“No, Jen, [Jen? Who’s Jen?] I’m not leaving you! I—”

“DEAN!!!”

Dean blinks awake and stares up at Carmen. Her face is inches from his, nose wrinkled, and her dark hair is tumbling into his face. He swats it away. “What?”

Her face twists. “Who’s Jane?”

“Who?”

“Jane!”

“Who’s Jane?”

Carmen glares. “You were calling out her name in your sleep! Who is she, Dean?”

Dean runs a hand over his stubbled chin and licks at his lips. He’d been dreaming. Dreaming about…Dean frowns. It had seemed important. So real. There’d been him. And there’d been…another guy. Jay? Jay. They’d been…mining? On…Mars?

“Dean!”

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Jay. Not Jane. A guy I used to work with.”

Carmen frowns at him. “I don’t remember you talking about a Jay.”

Her tone is still deeply suspicious and Dean can’t even say he doesn’t understand why. The last couple of months, marital relations have been strained, to say the least. Dean remembers their High School days, when he was the power forward on the basketball team and she was the cheerleader who stood at the Apex of the pyramid. They’d fucked like bunnies in the back seat of his Dad’s Impala after every game and when they got married, straight out of High School (not that Dean had actually graduated), the honeymoon period had gone on for several years. Now? Now he can’t even get it up when they’re in bed together and Carmen is convinced he’s got a little somethin’ somethin’ on the side. It wouldn’t be the first time. He’s always had a roving eye, always liked the ladies just a little too much, and Dean remembers his affairs with Lisa, then Cassie and then Lisa again, all too well.

“Jay’s not important,” Dean says, although his gut tells him that’s a lie. “Just a guy I worked with a long time ago. It was just a stupid, random dream, Carmen.”

“Hmm,” Carmen rolls onto her side and slides a hand down his torso and into his sleep pants. Dean still has a semi from the lust he’d felt staring at Jay’s ass, but it wilts when Carmen grips him hard. She huffs and lets him go, flouncing out of bed and heading for the bathroom. “I was gonna say, seeing as you’re up, how about some fun before you gotta head in to work.” She turns at the door and gives him a withering look. “Maybe you should get some of those pills? You know; the little blue ones that old men use when they can’t perform any more?”

And ain’t that just humiliating? Dean’s thirty years old for fuck’s sake.

The thing of it is, Dean likes being on the tools. His buddy Gordon couldn’t wait to be Leading Hand, actually likes dealing with work orders and time sheets and surveyors from City Hall. Dean likes the feel of a drill in his hand, likes to see a frame go up, see an apartment block come to life and know that he did that; created something important from scratch; something that people needed.

It’s not a particularly hot day; cloudy and overcast, but he’s worked up a sweat none-the-less. His checked flannel shirt—sleeves rolled up past his elbows—is stuck to his back and his hair is damp under his orange hardhat.

A hand falls onto his shoulder and Dean reacts without thinking. A blur of movement later Gordon is pinned to the corner post of the frame Dean had been building, with one of Dean’s hands around his neck and the drill wedged under his chin.

Gordon blinks. “Uh…Dean? What the hell, man?”

Dean lowers the drill and moves his hand. Gordon reaches up and dabs at the underside of his chin with his fingertips. He scowls at Dean when he sees the spot of blood on his finger. “Seriously,” he says, “what the fuck?”

Dean rubs at the back of his neck. “Sorry?” he ventures.

Gordon looks him up and down, assessing. “You know,” he says finally, “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but Carmen’s been on the phone to Kirsten a lot lately.”

“Hold the front page,” Dean says dryly, “our wives, who’ve been best friends since the fourth grade, have been gossiping on the phone. Go figure.”

Gordon sighs and shakes his head. “She’s worried about you, man. Says you ain’t been sleepin’. Says you’ve been having bad dreams,” Gordon looks away, his mouth a thin line and his cheeks flushed. He lowers his voice. “Says you don’t wanna touch her no more.”

Dean feels his own neck and face begin to flush.

“You ain’t cheatin’ on her again, are you?” Gordon says. “Because after that bullshit with Lisa…” He trails off and looks at Dean hard.

Dean stares down at his scuffed and dusty brown work boots. He’d been so convinced that Lisa’s kid had been his; had been gutted when the DNA results had come back to say that he wasn’t. He’d been even more gutted a couple of years later when his doctor had told him that the reason Carmen wasn’t getting pregnant was that he was shooting blanks.

“Dean?” Gordon says and Dean can hear the warning in his tone. He remembers the ass-whooping Gordon promised him if he cheated on Carmen again, and the last thing he wants to do is throw down with his best friend.

He lifts his head and meets Gordon’s eyes. “I’m not cheating on Carmen,” he says. “I swear on my mama’s grave.”

His mama died in a house fire when he was four and his daddy never got over it. Gordon knows Dean well enough to know this isn’t an oath he makes lightly.

Gordon holds his gaze and then nods. “Well alright then,” he slings an arm around Dean’s shoulders. “You work too hard, my man. You know what you need? You need a night out with the boys. I’ll call Brad and Dwayne and we’ll meet up after work for a beer at Kittens,” he waggles his eyebrows. “Nothin’ like a little tabletop dancing to get you in the mood, right Dean?”

Dean flashes him a big, bright, entirely insincere smile. “Right,” he says.

And he is right. Dean remembers countless happy, fun-filled evenings spent in strip clubs with the guys from his old basketball team. So why is his stomach sinking at the thought?

Dean volunteers to go up to the bar to get the next pitcher of beer. Brad, Dwayne and Gordon are all having a hard time peeling their eyes away from the three-breasted dancer who’s currently shaking her bootie on the stage.

Looking at her does nothing to turn Dean on; she just makes him sad. She’s from Mars, the dancer, a descendent of the early Mars colonists. Maybe her ancestors were convicts who were transported to Mars for life to work in the mines. Maybe they were Corrections staff. Or maybe they were Free Settlers, lured out of Earth’s impoverished Lower District and up to Mars by cheap shuttle fares and the promise of free accommodation and a job for life. Of course, life wasn’t necessarily long in those early days. The fumes and the dust from the turbinium ore mines and inadequate ventilation in the Lower Domes often caused fatal illnesses and it triggered a lot of mutations—some more extreme than others—in the colony’s poorer residents.

And wow, where did he pick all that up from? Dean sure as Hell didn’t take Colonial History in High School. Maybe there’d been something on the Holovision recently? On the History Channel, maybe, or Universal Geographic? Cable HV is one of the luxuries Dean is prepared to pay for; Carmen loves to watch Lifestyles of the Upper District and he himself is a huge fan of Dr Sexy, M.D. Sometimes, late at night, when he’s feeling restless and trying to avoid going to bed with Carmen, Dean will channel hop. Maybe he fell asleep to some documentary about Mars one night? Or maybe one of the News stations gave a brief overview of Colonial history to help put the current Troubles into context?

Dean orders a pitcher of Coors and sits on a barstool with his back to the stage while the bartender pours it.

“Not your thing?” the bartender nods at the stage.

Dean shrugs.

“Is it the three tits that don’t trip your trigger?” the bartender asks, “or just the tits in general?”

Dean’s eyes widen. He should say it’s the mutation he doesn’t like, but after last night’s dream and the way his dick had responded to the sight of those long, male legs and rippling arm muscles, he just can’t get the words out. So he says, “What’s a girl from the Lower Domes doing on Earth anyway?”

The bartender puts the pitcher up on the bar and Dean swipes his i-band over the payscan.

“How long were you there?” the bartender asks.

Dean frowns. “How long was I where?”

“Mars.”

Dean laughs. “I’ve never been to Mars, man.”

The bartender inclines his head and regards Dean with a slight frown. “Huh,” he says. “It’s just…most Homeworlders would’ve just said ‘a girl from Mars’ or ‘from the Colonies’. Most Homeworlders wouldn’t know about the Dome hierarchies. Not unless they’d lived in the Colonies for a while.”

Dean stares at him. An uncomfortable prickle starts at the base of his skull and he runs a hand across the back of his neck. “I guess it’s something I picked up from the holo.”

Dean takes the pitcher back to the table and sits, nursing his beer and watching the smudged beer-ring on his coaster with more attention than the activity really warrants.

Gordon eventually notices that Dean is bored and uncomfortable. He scoots his chair toward Dean and leans in close. “Dude,” he says. “You wanna get outta here? Go over to The Bleachers instead?”

“God, yes,” Dean says fervently.

They leave Brad and Dwayne ogling Tittiana and head down the road to the Sports Bar. The holovision is screening Saturday’s Celtics vs Knicks game. Dean sniffs. Of course the Upper District gets their game on the holo. Still, the Bulls vs Bucks game is at least showing on one of the retro flatscreens. The Lower District games aren’t broadcast at all. Dean frowns. Come to think of it, he’s not sure they even have a Division any more.

Another one of the flatscreens is showing an old football game. Dean has no clue who’s playing and he doesn’t really understand the sport, but he’s impressed as hell by the stadium. He knows that America was a lot bigger before the Fifty Year Storm and the East Coast Tsunami, but still, he can’t quite get his head around having enough space to dedicate such a big portion of it to a sport. He’s heard rumors that they still have football stadiums in the Upper District, but Dean doesn’t put much stock in them. Of course, it’s not quite so crowded there; only a small portion of America’s 900 million people live in the Upper District, so maybe it’s true.

“So Dean,” Gordon slams a cold bottle of Coors onto the table in front Dean. “What’s goin’ on in that head of yours, man?”

Dean picks up the bottle, wetting his fingers on the condensation dripping down its side.

“Just wondering if they really still have football stadiums in the Upper District,” he says with a shrug, before chugging back a mouthful of ice cold beer.

Gordon stares at him for a moment and then barks out a laugh. “You are somethin’ else, Winchester.”

Dean smiles at him, bright and empty. It’s his ‘move along folks, nothing to see here smile’, the one he uses to convince people that he’s nothing more than a pretty face. Dean remembers practicing it in front of the mirror, back when…he frowns…back when…the memory is hazy and when he reaches for it, a sudden, sharp headache has him losing his grip on the bottle and slapping a hand to his forehead.

“Dean?” Gordon’s cautious voice is distant and Dean has to bite down hard on his instinctive response, which is to snap that that’s not his name, because what the hell?

Some innate sense of self-preservation warns him to downplay things with Gordon.

“Brain freeze,” he says. “Man, that beer’s cold!”

Gordon laughs, but it sounds forced.

Dean turns his gaze to the holo just in time for play to stop for half time. The images freeze, and then fade, and a bedroom under a glass dome at the bottom of the ocean pops up. Outside the dome colorful fish swim around, and on the bed, a pasty, balding man lounges next to a young woman with long blonde hair and really big tits.

‘Do you dream of a vacation at the bottom of the ocean?’ A voice asks.

The bedroom and the colorful fish disappear and the balding man is now alone in a Lower District bedsit, surrounded by a pile of bills

‘...but you can't float the bill?’

The image fades and in its place, Elysium Mons appears, with a figure in a space suit climbing it.

‘Have you always wanted to climb the mountains of Mars...’

The mountain fades and the figure in the space suit becomes an old man staggering up a staircase.

‘...but now you're over the hill? Then come to Déjà Vu Incorporated...’

The staircase fades and a man in a white lab coat stands in an office, with the Déjà Vu logo emblazoned on the wall behind him.

‘...where you can buy the memory of your perfect vacation,’ the holo image says, ‘cheaper, safer, and better than the real thing. So don't let life pass you by. Call Déjà Vu. For the memory of a lifetime.’

Beside him, Gordon snorts. “Goddamn brain-butchers,” he says. “Now I know I ain’t the sharpest tool in the box, but ain’t no way I’d let those assholes mess about inside my melon,” he drums his fingers on the table in front of Dean and leans forward. “A guy on this one site I was at, years ago, went to them for some harem holiday, ended up lobotomized! Lobotomized!”

“No shit?” Dean says. He toys with the label on his beer bottle. “I was thinking maybe me and Carmen could take a Déjà Vu holiday. Maybe a Saturn Cruise?”

Gordon shakes his head vigorously. “No,” he says. “No, no, no, no, no. Bad idea, Dean. Bad idea. Do not go to Déjà Vu. Do not let those assholes mess with your head. Promise me, Dean. Promise me you won’t go!”

Dean presses the beer bottle against his lips and tips it back. He watches Gordon’s wide, intense eyes as he drinks and then he lowers the bottle and sighs. “Alright. Sheesh. I won’t go to Déjà Vu.”

Even as he says it, Dean knows it’s a lie.

Carmen is a nurse. She works rotating shifts. She’s on afternoon shift this week, which is by far Dean’s favorite shift because it means she’s gone by the time he gets home from work and when she gets back, a little before midnight, he can pretend to be asleep. It’s not that he doesn’t like his wife; she’s a pretty cool chick. She understands him, knows better than to try to feed him asparagus, respects his love of cheeseburgers and has good taste in both music and movies. He just…he doesn’t feel it any more. He remembers being attracted to her, but now…when he’s with her, the pressure to perform, to feel something he just doesn’t feel, to live up to those memories, is overwhelming and it’s just easier if he’s asleep (or at least pretending to be) when she comes to bed.

Dean dumps his hardhat on the hallstand, before unlacing his steel-toed boots and putting them up on the shoe rack. He wanders into the kitchen and opens the fridge. The leftovers from last night’s Bolognese sauce are sitting in a pot on the middle shelf; just enough for him to finish off for his supper. He tears a beer from a cardboard six pack and goes to open it with his ring before realising that he’s not wearing a ring and…come to think on it, he doesn’t remember ever having worn one. Dean frowns. So why had that movement been so instinctive? Dean chases after memories that just won’t come to him and gets a sharp, splitting headache for his troubles. He gives up with a sigh and heads for the living room, plopping down onto the sofa and putting his feet up on the coffee table with defiant relish. Carmen hates him putting his feet up on the coffee table.

“Activation code 494,” Dean says. Nothing happens. He frowns at the holo stage and tries again, but the holovision still doesn’t activate.

When Dean eventually tracks down the instruction booklet—half an hour later—he finds the activation code written in Carmen’s loopy scrawl on the first page of the troubleshooting section. The code is 147. Huh. Dean frowns. What the hell? All of a sudden 147 is the only holo activation code he can remember using and Dean takes his feet off the table, puts his beer down onto it and cradles his head in his hands. Why had that other number seemed so familiar? Why had it been the number on the tip of his tongue, dragged from his subconscious when he wasn’t really thinking about it? Maybe Gordon’s right. Maybe he’s working too hard. Maybe he should think seriously about taking a vacation.

“Activation code 147” The holovision springs into a very close approximation of life and Dean picks up his beer and leans back. Of course there’s nothing on worth watching at this time of day: Spaceport Security is showing some dumb kid from the Lower District getting picked up for drug trafficking by psychics; mutants, of course, because all psychics are. Dean shakes his head and drains his beer.

“Idiot,” he mutters. Because, really, you’d have to be completely insane to try slipping anything past the psychics. And it’s not like everyone doesn’t know they work spaceport security. The kid has a sob story, of course; a dying mom and three little sisters, and the offer of one hundred credits and a free trip on a Saturn cruiser had been sufficient lure to have him taking the risk. The whole thing leaves a sour taste in Dean’s mouth and his skin itches with the desire to do something. Not that he can. After all, what can a High School drop out with a GED and a give’em hell attitude do for anyone?

Spaceport Security fades out and a woman in a bright pink ski suit skis to a stop next to a flock of penguins.

‘Would you like to ski Antarctica...’ says the voiceover.

The scene fades and the woman is now in an office, surrounded by paperwork and employees all demanding decisions.

‘...but you're snowed under with work?’

Dean rolls his eyes. “Goddamn annoying Déjà Vu commercials.”

He uses the opportunity for a bathroom break and when he gets back an earnest Spaceport Security Officer is explaining directly to the camera that psychic shielding masks aren’t anything like as common as the movies make out, and that they certainly don’t explode like you sometimes see in movies.

“They could,” Dean mutters, “if they were made from Semtex. And they’d be undetectable if the Semtex was manufactured without a tagging agent.”

Dean frowns. What’s with all the random facts that he wasn’t aware he even knew just popping into his head? Still, plastic explosives are used in demolitions. Plenty of people who work on building sites know about them. This is hardly a startling, unexplainable revelation. And things exploding? Totally awesome. He probably bent the ear of a demolitions guy on a building site some lunchtime, that’s how he knows about Semtex.

Dean tells himself that everything is fine and goes to heat up his supper.

The man is a silhouette against a curved expanse of glass. Beyond the glass, the terrain is red and rocky, but Dean barely has eyes for it. The man is leaning up against the glass, looking out, and he’s tall; taller than Dean. His messy brown hair is shoulder-length and his legs…Dear God…his legs go on forever. And that ass? Dean could stare at it all day and not get bored.

“Do you really think we can do it, Jen?” the man says, voice husky.

“I know we can,” Dean hears his own voice reply.

The man sighs and half turns. His face is backlit by red-dust diffused sunlight and the way he’s leaning against the glass reminds Dean of the way the hookers in Venusville display themselves in their red-lit windows. It’s that, Dean decides that has his dick hardening in his pants. Not the way the man looks at him, not his strong jaw, not his wide, high cheekbones, not his catlike, multi-colored eyes which are looking at Dean with such love and desire. Not any of that. [Dean twitches in his sleep, his eyelids moving rapidly.] Dean moves toward the man as if pulled by gravity. He gets right up in his personal space and then fists his hands in the man’s shirt and pulls him forward. The man comes willingly and Dean’s lips crash into his, kissing hard and desperate. Their tongues duel and they share spit and it’s messy and dirty and so Goddamn hot that Dean needs friction on his dick right-the-hell-now. He grinds against the man and finds him hard and every bit as desperate. The man moans into his mouth and then pulls his lips away, panting hard as he continues to rut frantically against Dean. “Need you, Jen,” he says. “Need you to slide in and fuck me hard right now. Need to feel you inside me. Wanna feel it for days, I—”

Dean rockets awake, his slapped cheek stinging, and he has Carmen pinned before he’s properly awake.

“Get off me,” Carmen says, her pupils large with fear.

Dean gets off her and sits up. His boxers are sticky.

Carmen sits up slowly. “You’re disgusting,” she says, pulling their green-patterned quilt up to her chin and shivering. “We haven’t had sex for six weeks,” a single tear rolls down her cheek. “And you’re rubbing one out in your sleep.”

Dean feels the flush of shame from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t know I was doing it. I was asleep.”

“You were dreaming,” Carmen’s tone is flat and accusing.

“I don’t remember,” Dean lies. He slips out of bed and snags a clean pair of boxers on his way to the bathroom. He cleans up with toilet paper and then sits on the john with his head in his hands and tries to control his breathing. Okay. So. He’s dreaming about a guy. It’s turning him on. He thinks about the dream he just had, about where things were heading in that dream, and his cock starts to get interested again. He thinks about Carmen, lying in their bed in a silk-and-lace pink nightie, and the interest flags. So. He’s…he’s. Fuck.

Carmen is still awake when he gets back to the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed with his back to her and his head, once again, in his hands. He feels the bed dip and hears shuffling and then Carmen presses against his back, a hand on his shoulder.

“Talk to me, Dean,” she says. “I like to think I know you pretty well, but lately? Lately you’re just not yourself.”

Dean licks at his lips and then runs a hand over his mouth. He glances at their wedding photo—bright smiles and misted edges in a fat silver frame—and then bows his head and closes his eyes briefly before straightening and turning and pulling Carmen around to sit next to him.

“I’ve been having these dreams,” he says.

Carmen’s eyes flit searchingly across his face. “About what?”

Dean bites at his bottom lip. “A guy.”

Carmen frowns. “And what do you and this guy do in your dreams?”

Dean lowers his head again. He rubs at the back of his neck and then glances up at Carmen, his expression sheepish.

Carmen stares at him, her brows furrowed and eyes confused. And then they widen and her mouth twitches. “Omigod!” she says. “Really? Really?”

She doesn’t seem upset, just very amused, so Dean ventures a self-deprecating smile.

“So,” Carmen purses her lips. “Is this…are you…coming out to me, Dean Winchester?”

“No,” he says immediately. He frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

Carmen grins. And then she throws her head back and laughs, full-bodied and deep.

“Go to sleep, Dean. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

And Dean does sleep. Better than he has in weeks.

Carmen is frying bacon and eggs when Dean edges into the kitchen.

“God that smells good,” he says and Carmen smiles.

“Sit down,” she says. “You’ve got time to eat before you head into work.”

Dean slides onto a white plastic dining chair and activates the flatscreen in the kitchen. “Activate Newsfeed,” he says.

The wall beside the kitchen table bursts into color, a handsome bearded man striding through a spaceport, the high windows on either side of him revealing a hazy red sky.

‘…if the rebel attacks continue, Governor Morgan says that Martian Security will have no choice but to shut down the Pyramid Mine—’

“Activate beach scene,” Carmen says sharply.

The wall beside the kitchen table becomes a calming blue sea lapping at white sandy shores that are lined with palm trees.

“Hey!” Dean says. “I was watching that!”

“Yeah,” Carmen rolls her eyes. “No wonder you’re so stressed out that you’re doubting your sexual orientation. Whatever problems they’re having with the rebels, Governor Morgan will sort it out. He always does,” she puts a plate of bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and grilled tomato in front of him. “Eat your breakfast; relax; stop stressing about the state of galactic politics and,” she leans down and kisses him on the cheek, “remember that I love you, no matter how crazy you get.” She straightens up, ruffles his hair and then yawns. “I’m going back to bed. Can you wait up for me tonight? I might be able to get off a little early, get Kirsten to cover for me.”

Dean smiles and nods and says sure. He’s not surprised that she’s in denial about what he told her last night. Truth be told, he’s kind of in denial himself. If he really was into dick, you’d think he would’ve noticed a little sooner. He was jacking off pretty regularly from the age of twelve and he lost his virginity at fourteen and as far back as he can remember it’s always been big soft breasts that turned him on the most. Suddenly waking up one day at thirty years of age and deciding long legs and a masculine chest turns you on more? Yeah, he’s not surprised his wife doesn’t believe him. Dean puts the news back on with a sigh.

Gordon’s piercing whistle interrupts the white-noise buzz of Dean’s drill, and Dean downs tools with a grin, adjusting his hardhat and wiping a dusty hand across his sweaty brow before heading over to where his buddy has half a dozen pizza boxes and four cans of soda resting on top of a pallet of steel beams. Dwayne and Brad join them from the other side of the site and they sit and eat, chatting amiably about nothing, until Dean says, “D’you think Morgan’ll really close the Pyramid Mine?”

There’s a moment of silence and then Brad shrugs. “Politics, man. I don’t really give a shit.”

“You’ll give a shit if we start having brownouts again,” Dean says. “They’ve been havin’ em in the Lower District ever since Morgan reduced the Mine’s output. If he stops production altogether, how long do you think it’ll be until the Middle District’s affected too?”

Dean’s workmates look decidedly uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Dwayne mutters after a moment. “Well maybe those fuckin’ rebel scum should pull their heads outta their asses. They got it better up there in their fancy Domes than folks’ve got it in the Lower District. Maybe they should just be grateful and shut the fuck up.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah? When were you on Mars, douchebag?”

“When were you?” Gordon interjects, his eyes cold.

Dean rolls his eyes. “I ain’t never been on Mars,” he says. “And neither has Dwayne,” he hesitates, not quite sure how to put into words the feeling of wrongness that he feels in his gut. “Just seems to me that Morgan’s got a helluva a lot of power,” he says slowly, “controlling all the turbinium ore. Maybe we oughta be worried.”

“You sound like a rebel sympathizer,” Brad says sharply and Dean realizes that he’s on dangerous ground.

He helps himself to a slice of pizza and then grins, wide-eyed and innocent. “Hey,” he says, “we get blackouts and Carmen won’t be able to watch Lifestyles of the Upper District. And let me tell you man,” he points the slice at Brad for emphasis. “There are no words for how unbearable my life will become if she doesn’t get to watch her show. I’m not a rebel sympathiser. I’m totally motivated by self-interest.”

The guys all laugh and the tension eases, but Dean notices that Gordon keeps a close eye on him for the rest of the day and what the hell is up with that? Dean’s starting to think that maybe he’s getting a little paranoid. Maybe he really does need a holiday. Maybe he’ll stop by Déjà Vu after work and pick up a brochure.

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