Zara wanted to get ahead in school. She wanted the cute guy. She wanted to win the game. Trouble was, everybody else had expensive brain implants, augmented muscles, and those pretty tailored bodies. She had none of those things. Of course, she work...
As Zara stood locked out of her dorm room, red welts popping all over her body, several students walked by in the hall.
"Zara, what's wrong?" one of them said.
"She's marked by Axion," another answered before Zara could respond. "She's been bad."
The speaker wore a beanie on top of his head—two large eyes mounted on long and skinny robotic tentacles, bouncing as the speaker walked by. Those eyes turned and leered at her.
"Wasn't she at the top of the class?"
Another, a tall girl, broke out in open laughter. The girl wore a string of large pearl-like devices over her school uniform like a necklace. As soon as she approached Zara, each pearl flashed red as they screamed out in a chorus of high and screechy cacophony, "diseased, sick, infected, hemorrhage...."
"She's been expelled. Now she can't even get into her room."
"How massless."
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Zara seethed as they hurried away, rushing to get to class. What would Axion do to her next? It was the massless one. She hated it.
She wanted to find Finn. She wanted to hold him again. She wanted to know he was okay. She wanted to stay at his place for a while and give birth at the underground generator with the human doctor who understood dark energy as he promised her. Unfortunately, her communication was cut off. She had no way of contacting him.
She lumbered along the hallway, trying to exit the dorm building before anyone else spotted the welts. Her back hurt and her feet ached and she had to pee badly now. That last one was a desperate and dire emergency.
"Zara?" Another figure pushed through the doors going in the opposite direction. She stopped, coming face-to-face with Medora. "What are you-"
"Medora, I'm glad I ran into you. Can you help me? My communication's been shut down. I can't reach my money. Can you call me a ride?"
Medora took in the bright red welds racing across Zara's figure. "What-"
Medora was the girl Zara once saved from Xavier, the girl who wouldn't move from her spot in the lineup for the game. She didn't return the favor, though. Instead, she backed away, hands up in front of her face as if to shield herself from Zara's disease, mouth dropping open. Then she rushed away. Because this was the community Axion created, a society built on competition, a place for winners, not those with the marks.
Zara watched her retreat, fuming.
She exited the dorm building and started the long and arduous trek towards Finn's place on foot. What other choice did she have?
The first leg of her journey led through downtown Atraville. The walkway was pristine, smoothed by stained polymer concrete, with benches spaced at regular intervals. All around her, the buildings rose to the sky—polished aluminum glass, supernatant stone, or gleaming graphene. When she looked up, it made her dizzy and nauseous, so she kept her head down towards her already aching feet.
