The door to the holoroom opened. THX ignored it.

“THX?”

“No… later…”

“But…”

He pulled tighter together, knees under chin.

She stood at the door and stared at him for a long empty moment With every thud of the nightsticks she winced. Slowly, she closed the door.

Her name—in the style of the underground society—was LUH 3417. She was twenty years old, slim and very lovely except for a barely noticeable small red “S” branded on her left cheek. Her shaved head gave her face a child-like, innocent appearance.

She stood in the little hallway outside the holoroom, under the flat glareless light of the overhead panels, wearing the standard white pajamas that everyone wore. It was a good apartment, three functional immaculate white rooms. And the holoroom. Down on the lowest level of the city, closest to the warmth of the Earth’s core, safe and protected.

Protected from what? LUH wondered.

With a worried frown she walked the four steps from the holoroom’s door to the sanitary. It was a gleaming chrome cubbyhole, with showerstall, depilatory mask, sink and medicine cabinet.

She stood in front of the cabinet, staring into its mirror. She didn’t notice her expressive eyes, or the curve of her cheek. Only the “S.” It was quite small now. Baby-sized. Will they give me another one when I turn twenty-one?

She opened the medicine cabinet, then hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” asked a male observer’s voice.

Impulsively, she took the bottle of pills that THX had used a few minutes earlier. “Never mind,” she said to the unseen observer. “I’ll… I’ll replace these later.” She slammed, the cabinet door shut.

She shook out a fistful of pills, put them to her lips, and held her hand frozen there for a frightening instant. Then she reached down and tossed the pills into the toilet. She shook the whole bottle’s contents into the toilet and flushed all the pills down.