Mission

Mission is a young porter of the silo. He hauls loads up and down the great spiral staircase for Dispatch. He was born to a farming family and left that life behind, a choice his father has not forgiven, and their visits are exercises in things unsaid. His mother is gone; he never knew her, and the terms of his own birth sit on him like a debt, for he carries no lottery number of his own. He hides rope scars on his neck and does not talk about how they got there. What lightness he has comes from his friends: fellow porters on the stairs, and Rodny, his oldest friend from their school days in the Nest, chosen for a coveted shadowing post in IT. Mission marks another birthday, sore, broke, and restless, with the nagging sense that the silo around him is wound tighter than anyone admits.