Julian slid the brass pass-through wicket open on the scissor-gate.
Cold rain lashed through the iron lattice. Outside the cage, Sammy Chen was still on his knees on the wet granite curb, his chest heaving, his fingers digging into the cold joints of the stone.
Julian reached through the narrow wicket and clasped the eighteen-year-old’s hands in his own. Sammy’s fingers were scraped and raw from hauling crates of canned goods, his knuckles bandaged with white medical tape from St. Jude’s.
“Get up, Sammy,” Julian said gently. “Union presidents don’t kneel on the pavement.”
Sammy pulled himself up, using the elevator frame to steady his shivering legs. “Julian... you can’t just leave us up here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Julian said. “I’m assigning you the hardest post in the district.”
Julian reached inside the lapel of his blue clerk jacket. He pulled out his secondary brass identification badge -- the heavy, stamped pin of the Night Clerks’ Union, engraved with the crossed grease-pencil insignia of Local Number 04.
He took a red China-marker from his sleeve and drew a clean, single horizontal line through the word STEWARD. Above it, in crisp block letters, he wrote: ACTING PRESIDENT -- SURFACE DIVISION.
