He shuffled down the bed, pushing the blankets off, making the frame shake. Milija turned over, nuzzling into a bolster, her brown hair falling over her face. Zidarov swung his legs over the foot, grabbed a robe from its peg on the wall and pulled the plasweave fabric around his night-tunic. He stood, then padded heavily from the chamber and into the hallway beyond, closing the door behind him carefully.

It was still quiet. The ground traffic outside made the air thrum, just as it did at all hours, night and day, but you zoned that out after a while. He walked down a narrow hallway, passing picts of Milija and Naxi stuck against flaking plaster walls. They needed to repaint those walls – they hadn’t been done since they’d been assigned the hab-unit and moved in, years ago, just after Naxi had been born. Just needed to find the time.

He reached the refec-chamber, and flicked a lumen on with a finger gesture. The sodium tubes flickered into life, exposing battered food-prep surfaces, a row of storage boxes, a plastek table with four stools. He activated the caffeine box and it gurgled and clattered. He opened a store and pulled out two carb-bars. One was plain, the other flavoured with fructose syrup. He put both in the heater and flicked the timer for ten seconds. He retrieved a mug of hot caffeine from the box, took out a plate and placed the carb-bars on it.

He went over to the table and sat down on one of the stools. He took a sip of caffeine, slurping against the heat. He activated the vid-projector set into the far wall, the one that he’d installed himself, the one that only worked half the time and that Milija kept asking him to replace.

Its old-style curved lens shimmered jerkily into life, casting a white-yellow light over the dark room.

‘…Sub-District Commissioner for Hygiene Ertile Vom, visiting district facility U-Fifty-Six yesterday, congratulates the workers on their improved output during the up-season. She observes that this shows the benefit of recent revisions to the quota targets, and underlines the wisdom of…’

Sub-District Commissioner for Hygiene Ertile Vom looked well fed. Zidarov watched her waddle down the production lines, her outline blurry on the phosphor-bead screen. So, output at the manufactoria was up again. Always seemed to be going up, year-on-year. A miracle of efficiency, they must be by now.

Zidarov let the projector prattle on, and chewed his carb-bars. The caffeine was treacly like unrefined promethium. He felt it slip warmly through his body, jerking it awake. The carb-bars were good. Good enough. As long as he didn’t think too closely on how they were made.

He stretched, rolling his shoulders in turn, trying to loosen muscles that never seemed to properly unclench. The old scar across his chest pulled a little – always a reminder, a twitch or a tweak to let him know it was still there.