He plopped himself into the stool beside the work table and it was then the old man noticed he had been there. 

“Oh, August!” The man exclaimed with excitement. He lifted his glasses up and onto the top of his mop of wispy white hair before he held up the contraption. “It’s called a smartphone! I don’t expect you to know but I got it to work, look!” He turned the screen towards August who frowned. 

“What’s it do?”

The old man made an appalled sound. “What does it do?! You use it to call others, play games, surf the internet! It was the greatest technology of the time.”
Still August frowned at him and the old man sighed. “Well, it was the greatest technology of its time.”

“If you use it to call others, kinda pointless if someone else doesn’t have one, yeah?”

The old man frowned. “Bah! Knowledge is wasted on you!” 

August chuckled and grinned as he spun halfway in the stool. Collin had been alive when the Infected had taken over. He remembered the way the world used to be. It was why he clung so desperately to all this “junk”. He refused to give up the past while everyone else seemed to move on. Things like phones and the internet were a thing of the past. Now the AI controlled every aspect of their lives and the chips implanted in them at birth connected them to the world around them far more than the internet could have. 

There was one reason he enjoyed working here and it wasn’t the shelves of junk. While he was tasked with manning the counter, there was a secondary reason he worked here. He slid off the stool and headed towards what appeared to be a simple wall with a metal shelving set in front of it. He began to move it, the feet squealing gently as he did so. From his place at the workbench, Collin side eyed him.

“Have you been taking your medicine?” he asked, his voice far more serious than it was before. 

That had August pausing in his movements. Medicine… right. In a world of Alphas, Betas and Omegas, the former sex was so rare that They coveted those they managed to find. If you were lucky enough to evade Them, there was “medicine” that suppressed what they were. August’s hand tightened on the metal shelving. He hated talking so openly about this, even in the backroom of the shop. 

“Of course.” he said, not turning to look at Collin as he finished moving the shelving unit. 

Collin put down his soldering iron and turned fully to look at him. “Your next shipment is there. Make sure you take it home with you. I don’t want it linked back to me, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, yeah, old man, I got it.” He told him, placing his hand on the exposed expanse of the wall. A small square appeared as he pressed onto the wall and he was able to push it aside, revealing a staircase that led down.

“I’m serious, August. Think of what would happen to you should you miss a single dose!”

August waved his hand as he descended the stairs. In this world where one always had to watch their back, August had to do so more than others. He was born one of the rare Alphas. The fact that he was still walking among humans was thanks to his mother who had lived in the slums. He didn’t know his father. When it came to farming days, when it was his day to donate blood, Collin always supplied him with someone else’s blood. He didn’t ask questions. Nor did the man who took his blood in silence and sent him on his way. There was far more to the old man then he let on and August wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. Whatever it was, he had kept him safe since he had presented. 

The stairs led down into a cool darkness. The first time he had presented, when his rut had become dangerous, Collin had locked him down here ‘for his own good’ he had told him. Since then, he had been taking the medicine the old man provided, keeping him from going into such an animal-like rage once again. 

He reached the bottom of the stairs. The AI wasn’t a part of the underground. In fact, August often wondered if They even knew the lower part of the city even existed. They were old and forgotten sewage pipes, an endless maze under the vast city where all kinds of things happened beneath Their gaze. He flicked a switch and flickering luminescent lights came alive washing the brick walls with a strange yellow/green glow. The floor was wet but that was nothing new. There was always a feeling of dampness in the Underground.

He paused by a cabinet and pulled out a thick band that he slid onto his wrist. Collin had made them. It hid his chip from the AI if it went in search of him. If there was something he had learned from the junk shop, it was that Collin could make anything.

Once he was sure it was properly secured, he headed down the tunnel. Having grown up in the slums and seen the darker side of the treatment of humans, he had created a sort of safe place for those who were trying to escape from Them for whatever reason. Refugees. He kept them here, in the Underground and made sure they got everything they needed to survive. Coming back out onto the surface would be a death sentence for them. The bands Collin had made adorned each of their wrists, hiding them from the AI who would always be on alert for runners. 

At the end of the tunnel, he turned left down another corridor where only one light still worked. Here, there was a door labeled ‘Boiler’ and it was here he pushed open the door to find a group of people staring at him in fear. It wasn’t until they saw it was him that they relaxed. One of the kids even ran up to him and wrapped their arms around his waist.