Season 02 - Episode 04

‘acceptance and belonging’

Ko wakes early and needs to pee.

He stands stiffly then picks his way across the room, stepping carefully over the carpet of sleeping, snoring men. With infinite care, he opens the door and slips outside, crossing the corridor to enter the derelict room opposite.

Once inside, Ko quickly strips from the waist up and unbinds his breasts which are aching from being strapped flat for so long. He massages them gingerly, ignoring the bruising and approaches the tumbledown washspace. He squats over the half ruined toilet, hovering an inch above the filthy seat then sighs with relief as he reruns the dizzying last few days.

The immediate aftermath of The Collapse had been total chaos. It had seemed as if everyone in The Levels was in the corridors at once, all pushing in different directions, screaming and crying and shoving and fighting.

Ko had managed to grab a few of his neighbour Wa's belongings, including his identity papers and a pair of gloves, before the EnFo's manhandled him outside, apparently for his own protection. Then they had sealed the door behind them and sent him on his way.

The door to his own room was already sealed and with it his fate. Ko the box pusher, Ko the woman, was dead, fallen to her death in The Collapse. He was now Wa, just another man without a room, looking for somewhere to go.

He spent the rest of the day walking aimlessly. When he'd finally stopped to rest he had found himself in The Fourth, a sector he'd never been in before. He had fallen asleep right there, sat on the floor in a doorway.

When he'd woken it had been in the shadow of a group of men. Bald, one-eyed men. In that first moment he had feared for his life until he realised they were trying to recruit him. With nowhere else to go, Ko had introduced himself as Wa and agreed to go with them.

He found that The Disciples of the Beast were an entirely male cult who had taken over most of the sector. In their rooms, Ko had found other, two eyed new recruits like himself. Those who had been through the ceremony that took their left eye, welcomed them.

Happy to pitch in and work hard, Ko had found himself quickly accepted as a man amongst men, a brother amongst brothers. Despite everything else happening around him, Ko found the longed for feeling of acceptance and belonging overwhelming.

Ko tidies himself up and gingerly rebinds his breasts. By the time he returns to the main room, most of his brothers are up, crowding around the vidscreen.

“Hey, Wa!” his new leader, Vo calls to him. “Come and look at this.”

The rolling news has been covering The Collapse non-stop but now the coverage has changed. Grainy, night-vision security camera footage is being played on a loop while the serious sounding presenter speaks over it.

“...in this incredible footage just released by GovCo, we see the cultist responsible for The Collapse, now known as The Enemy, cutting away the superstructure from the base of The Scapes in The Sixth...”

The video shows a skeletal woman in shabby clothes using a laser cutter to remove a section of handrail from a metal staircase.

“The video cuts off here,” the presenter continues as the footage skips back to the start. “As other members of the cult sabotaged the camera network. What we do know however, is that over the next few hours this woman, now in custody, methodically removed several tons of vital support material before fleeing just in time to escape The Collapse she caused...”

“Well that's it then,” says Vo to the room. “If a cult was behind The Collapse then that's just the excuse GovCo need to come after us all.”

“It's war then,” says one of the brothers. “Finally.”

“Well if they want The Fourth,” says Vo. “They'll have to prise it from our cold, dead hands! Yeah?!”

“Yeah!” roars the room.

The Disciples of the Beast, Ko included, begin to chant and stamp their feet, slapping each other on the back and howling at the ceiling.

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