Wildlings

1: Natural Selection

Everything Judit MaVae knew about survival, she learned in two science classes when she was fourteen, and a year trying not to die at Birchwood Security School.

That everything was this:

1. Life is survival of the fittest.

2. Survival of the fittest means you're constantly in a competition.

3. Competitions have winners and losers. Winners get money and respect, and people want to rub with them. Losers get their skulls smashed in for being goon little nyaffs with freakish orange hair.

Natural selection, the science teacher called it. The basics of all existence.

Not that Judit had learned much more—she'd barely listened, and besides, two weeks into term all that dag went down with Mum, and her world was torn to pieces.

But skit, coming to Birchwood sure taught her the rest.

Here's a tip for you: if you want to know how utterly cruel the world can be, try losing your only parent, getting kicked out of school, being dumped in a juvenile detention centre and then almost getting killed, all in the same day.

Then you'll see how brutal the survival of the fittest can be. When you've not shielded by parents and teachers and other people's money, it all becomes clear.

You fight, or you die.

Even if sometimes you feel like you can't fight. Even if being alone, everyone against you, gets so skitting exhausting you just want to curl up in a ball in the corner, give up, give up and grieve the nightmare your whole world has become.

Skit.

Judit shook her head. Skit skit skit. Don't you cry, Judit MaVae. I licit swear, if you cry...

She shifted her position on the arm of the dirty sofa, turning rapidly away from Dek so he wouldn't see her eyelids' panicked fluttering.

Luckily, Dek didn't look up. Slouched on the other end of the couch, his face lit in his screen's electronic glow, he didn't seem to notice Judit at all.

Lox was deep in her screen too, leaning over the edge of the bar, still cluttered with last night's dirty glasses. The gig room above Bar Silver was windowless and as dark as night, the three of them barely visible, even though it was a summer-bright morning outside.

Judit pulled out her own screen, her thumb tracing a familiar pattern.

Selfisite: no votes, no interactions

Showem: no likes

2gether: one upvote

Judit clicked on the upvote, but it was from Dreanna Creg who was a sad nyaff no-one, so it didn't count. She pressed her lips together and went back to Selfisite.

No votes.

Judit studied the photo she'd posted that morning, her stomach heavy. She'd thought she looked crude, pleased with her makeup for the Very Big Deal Bar Silver invite, and yet... nothing.

It's because they're all in class. No one has checked.

Who was she kidding? Her nose was fat. Her eyeliner was crooked. The blue hair was totally dumb. She should have dyed it white.

Laughable. You're a joke, you crank ugly bitch.

Judit deleted the picture, her strangled tears still stinging her eyes.

She scrolled down her feed. One photo. It didn't mean anything. Judit still had 582 followers on Selfisite, 478 fans on Showem, and 152 connections on 2gether—including Dek and Lox, right up there for anyone to see. With those stats she was way more popular now than she'd ever been back at Goldmay Academy.