Nina crossed the ruins cape of the factories, industrial areas that had been levelled on that historical day before the CCD took over. Shattered concrete buildings flanked the lips of craters; ruptured metal sheeting and snapped pipes poked from the pavement dust. Unrecognizable pieces of burnt machinery scattered the ground.
That was where the gangs lived, the pale-skinned, dark-haired ones with their funny costumes and colorful tattoos. Nina wondered if the tats were badges or marks of rank. They, lean and ragged—like her, she supposed—haunted the trash slopes, scavenging what they could from the rubble, though unlike the gangs, she drew the line at feeding off the rich; to scrounge and steal was not only wrong but dangerous.
There was a stagnant, rotten smell to the place and sickness lingered. Hundreds like her family, mostly poor or the dispossessed from the outer areas, had made their place temporary home. But her parents never thought to ask any for help. Everyone in their family was on their own.
Nina, like many of the locals, avoided the shelters, for though they offered food and medical help, they also represented authority and prejudice. The CCD controlled most refugees brutally.
She saw others prowling the ruins. Adults mostly, a few children, all thin and dark with filth, their clothes wretched and torn. Some stared at her as she passed; some ignored her. None spoke.
She passed a store block where parts of the windows were actually intact and she saw her own reflection. It shocked her. A straggly, pale thing with dirty clothes and sunken eyes looked back at her. She’d expected to see the bright-eyed, cocky girl with flashy hair and snarky smile.
Seeing the leaness of her own face, she realized how hungry she was. She’d been blocking the feeling. Her empty belly knotted and ached with such sudden fury she dropped to the ground for a moment, sitting on a rubble stack until the pain eased enough for her to stand without cramps or wooziness.
She took the pills from her shoulder-slung pack and took a single, precious tablet from the bottle. Half full, it was the last of a box of vitamin bottles she’d recovered from the pharmacy attached to the Guardian complex. She dreamed of their food. There was a banquet fit for kings secured down there in the cafeterias. But you had to pay. She was sure these vitamins were the main reason she’d kept herself and her family disease free for the last month.
She slid down the rubble and moved towards the compound. Above, looking across the ruined landscape and half a mile away, lay the fenced and razor-wired facility of the monumental hospital. She’d been to a few times and had stood in the glass hall of the main lobby, now newly renovated, watching the snooty people move to-and-fro from platforms. Her parents had run a vendor-stall there, and she’d also been volunteering as a part of the Guardian's dispensary team for a few months.
The Guardian had awed her, even as she worked. It seemed to her a doorway to anywhere. If she’d had the money, she’d have jumped a train south to the tropical inland of Italy, to the greek archipelago, maybe even to Istanbul where, so they said, it was possible to buy a route to anywhere, including off-continent to the Americas… America had always seemed to her a way out. A possible future. A promise.
She knew it was up to her now. Her sister Rena was sullen and quiet, and she ran with this gang most of the time. Rena had been running with the wrong crowds and known a boy or two from school who’d been gang-inducted, but she’d never been properly blooded into any gang to speak of… and Nina wasn’t sure what to do.
The one thing Nina Siwak had always known, ever since her childhood friend had died of stab wounds in an unlit, dirty sewer many years ago, was that gang life was dumb and pointless and short. She’d make her own way in life, be her own mistress, or get nowhere at all.
That was where the gangs lived, the pale-skinned, dark-haired ones with their funny costumes and colorful tattoos. Nina wondered if the tats were badges or marks of rank. They, lean and ragged—like her, she supposed—haunted the trash slopes, scavenging what they could from the rubble, though unlike the gangs, she drew the line at feeding off the rich; to scrounge and steal was not only wrong but dangerous.
There was a stagnant, rotten smell to the place and sickness lingered. Hundreds like her family, mostly poor or the dispossessed from the outer areas, had made their place temporary home. But her parents never thought to ask any for help. Everyone in their family was on their own.
Nina, like many of the locals, avoided the shelters, for though they offered food and medical help, they also represented authority and prejudice. The CCD controlled most refugees brutally.
She saw others prowling the ruins. Adults mostly, a few children, all thin and dark with filth, their clothes wretched and torn. Some stared at her as she passed; some ignored her. None spoke.
She passed a store block where parts of the windows were actually intact and she saw her own reflection. It shocked her. A straggly, pale thing with dirty clothes and sunken eyes looked back at her. She’d expected to see the bright-eyed, cocky girl with flashy hair and snarky smile.
Seeing the leaness of her own face, she realized how hungry she was. She’d been blocking the feeling. Her empty belly knotted and ached with such sudden fury she dropped to the ground for a moment, sitting on a rubble stack until the pain eased enough for her to stand without cramps or wooziness.
She took the pills from her shoulder-slung pack and took a single, precious tablet from the bottle. Half full, it was the last of a box of vitamin bottles she’d recovered from the pharmacy attached to the Guardian complex. She dreamed of their food. There was a banquet fit for kings secured down there in the cafeterias. But you had to pay. She was sure these vitamins were the main reason she’d kept herself and her family disease free for the last month.
She slid down the rubble and moved towards the compound. Above, looking across the ruined landscape and half a mile away, lay the fenced and razor-wired facility of the monumental hospital. She’d been to a few times and had stood in the glass hall of the main lobby, now newly renovated, watching the snooty people move to-and-fro from platforms. Her parents had run a vendor-stall there, and she’d also been volunteering as a part of the Guardian's dispensary team for a few months.
The Guardian had awed her, even as she worked. It seemed to her a doorway to anywhere. If she’d had the money, she’d have jumped a train south to the tropical inland of Italy, to the greek archipelago, maybe even to Istanbul where, so they said, it was possible to buy a route to anywhere, including off-continent to the Americas… America had always seemed to her a way out. A possible future. A promise.
She knew it was up to her now. Her sister Rena was sullen and quiet, and she ran with this gang most of the time. Rena had been running with the wrong crowds and known a boy or two from school who’d been gang-inducted, but she’d never been properly blooded into any gang to speak of… and Nina wasn’t sure what to do.
The one thing Nina Siwak had always known, ever since her childhood friend had died of stab wounds in an unlit, dirty sewer many years ago, was that gang life was dumb and pointless and short. She’d make her own way in life, be her own mistress, or get nowhere at all.
Nina