**CURRENTLY A FEATURED STORY**
highest ranking: #11 in Science fiction
❝true happiness is only achieved without freedom.
There is a girl who wakes to a world that she was supposed to protect. Instead, she fights it.
There is a man who is cursed wit...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
prologue
❨ ᵃᶰᶰᵒ ²¹⁴⁷ ❩
THERE IS A boy, and he is impeccably drawn to the sound of life.
He stands in the doorway of his home, both hands curled around the straps of his schoolbag as he watches life simply happen before him, as he listens to the gentle whirr of hovercars as they pass by. When he gets older, he decides, he'll have one of those: one just as sleek, as quiet, as beautiful. His distasteful gaze flits over to the black one resting in the driveway. But, he tells himself, not the same colour as his father. Never the same as his father.
The city that rises in sharp peaks on the horizon is a composition of ugly metal buildings, half-rusted where the rain has clung to their worn, uneven facades before evaporating. But they- he- lives in the richer suburb of New London, and everything here is pretty and glass and clean. The cars make no noise; all run on self-sustaining electric power, none of the buildings are rustred, no people carry knives or other sorts of weapons, save for those who are permitted to do so. Those, he knows he can trust. And yet there are some people here whom he knows he can't trust.
There's been a rumour going on that the infection is spreading, that the wars, numerous and led by politicians who preach peace, are coming to New London, and that nothing is truly safe anymore. He can pride himself in front of his classmates for knowing such things, because his father works with important people, in the government, and he can snoop at the top of the stairs after dinner and know things that the others can't even imagine.
The only real truth, however, is that none of his friends know what it all means. Neither does he. Of course he doesn't understand it- why should he?
"Darling, what are you doing?" The sound of high heels clattering against the flat, tiled floor of their house buzzes in the back of the boy's head. He knows who it is. It's his mother, of course, but right now, he's infatuated by the live city and the cars before him, and he doesn't want to leave. "Sweetheart?" She kneels down in front of him, and as he allows his gaze to drift from the hovercars to focus on her face, he notices the slight glimmer of the nano-glass facemask she's put on to protect her face from radiation and infection, and to stop her from inhaling the bad air.
She takes his hands. "What are you doing?" She repeats. He can see the soft glint of orange sunlight in the nano-glass as it bends and twists itself to move with her face as a second skin.
"I'm going to school," he says flatly and pulls his hands away, his little fingers curling tightly around the straps of his schoolbag.
"Sweetheart, it's a Saturday. There's no school on Saturday." She notices the lack of surprise as she speaks to him.
