Elena looked at him suspiciously but he just shrugged. He seems honest enough. I guess there's no harm in getting him registered. Elena convinced the customs officer to get him registered without any hassle. The Nazis in the city always treated her with respect and so it was easy to get him a pass. After that she led him to the coal mines where he was able to easily get a job because there always a vacancy there. It was the first time that Michael had explored the whole city and had realized how big it actually was. If you were too measure the surface area the city covered then it did not seem like much but Michael had realized that each mountain contained towns built layer upon layer with each of these naturally-occurring layers connected by roads. Each mountain was given a name based on how much close they were to the south of the city where Destroyed Denver was. The mountain on which they currently were was labelled Mountain C while the mountain to their north was labelled D. Each level on the mountain was given a number with the highest level being given the highest number. Michael noticed how different each level was from the other in terms of prosperity. The higher level you went to, the more developed and sophisticated it looked. The level at the top was where most of the Nazi commanders and richer people of the city lived while the lowest level was where the poor working class lived. Below the working-class people were the people of Destroyed Denver who were not considered to be part of the Peak City and lived illegally in identical conditions to the imprisoned Jews. Most of these people were black who lived down there to escape the ill-treatment of the Nazis.
Elena's clinic was on the third level of the mountain which meant it was in the town C3 while the mines were at the mountain face of the town of D2. Each mountain was connected by series of chair lifts whose cables created a web at the center. All these mountains were huddled around a central mountain which looked menacing with its sharp surface and formidable buildings. This was where the military base of the Peak City was and Michael shuddered when he looked at it.
There were watch towers at each town from where recons surveyed over the proceedings on the lookout for Soviet spies and escaped convicts. They were meant to keep the towns safe but in truth, they made the people feel very uncomfortable. Michael felt that if he made one wrong move, as trivial as throwing a wrapper to the ground, then the recon would gun him down.
Luckily for Michael, they ran into Cole who was exiting the mines and was happy to let him live in his cabin until Michael had earned enough so that he would be able to live on his own. Michael thanked Elena one last time and took his belongings, which only consisted of the jacket, borrowed clothes from Elena and a few preventative medicines, and moved on into Cole's cabin.
Michael had noticed how Elena had stopped at a jewelry vendor after a pendant at the front of the cart had caught her eye. She had asked the vendor the price and he had seen the expression of disappointment on her face knowing it was too expensive for her. The vendor had said that it would cost three hundred hitlers. That was the currency in the Nazi-occupied zones. They were officially called Reichsmarks but the people had informally named the notes hitlers, which had Hitler's face printed on it, and the coins eagles, because they had eagles notched into one side of them along with swastikas on the other side.
What if I buy the pendant for her? He thought as he walked beside the exhausted Cole. The weekly wage for working in the mines was only thirty hitlers of which a lot would have to be put into rent and food. Was it worth spending so much money on it? He didn't have to think about it twice. Of course, it was. Maybe after that she will start considering me a friend.
Michael was exhausted by the time he reached Cole's cabin. It was a very small place located in the town of D4 and contained only two rooms, a small living room, bathroom and kitchenette. Cole lived with his family which consisted of his wife and two boys aged nine and eight respectively. They sat down cross-legged for dinner on the moldy carpet in the living room. Michael could see Cole was very nervous for some reason. Has he not told her that I'm going to be staying with them? They exchanged some small talk with Cole introducing his wife to their new guest, joking about his first day at work and asking their sons how school had gone. After his son had told his mother that he gotten an A in the quiz, which had put her in a good mood, he decided to break the news to her.
"Hey, honey, I just wanted to tell you that uhh… Michael here will be staying with us for a few days." Michael watched his body shrink a bit, as if bracing himself for an explosion.
"What?" she asked a bit loudly then quietened her tone while glaring at her husband. She spoke in a quiet threatening tone. "But, honey, maybe you should have told me this sooner?"
"Oh, haha, must have slipped my mind," he said with a smile. "Looks like I seem to have caught the amnesia from you too eh? Haha," A nervous smile broke on Michael's face when he saw the desperate look on Cole's face. He had no idea how to act in the situation. The rest of the dinner was filled with an awkward silence which Cole desperately tried to break but failed miserably.
Michael was given a spot on the uncomfortable sofa in the living room and everyone settled in for the night. An hour passed and Michael was not able to sleep. He was nervous about his first day on the job tomorrow morning and also, could not stop thinking about his origins. Maybe he was from among those poor people living in the destroyed city below, the ones who lived there illegally. He probably had parents, perhaps even siblings, worrying about him and searching for him all around. He wondered what he would have been doing beyond the Perimeter when he had lost his memory. He wished he had looked around carefully for clues. Why didn't he have any injuries on his body? Even his hair had been perfectly kempt when he gained consciousness. It was very peculiar indeed.