Verde

Chapter 15: Levana Tate

     "She couldn't have brought us here. I can't believe she did something like this." No one really cared if Alison heard them or not. It was her fault, and they wanter her to know it.

     Since the incident in the street hours ago, Chase hadn't left Cassidy's side. Now they were sitting with Dan and Elle. The ground was so disgusting, it really didn't matter how they sat, they were still covered in filth and grime.

     "I can't be here," Dan muttered. "I can't be back here again!" He looked up at the three others as the weight of what he had said settled in on them.

     One life in a place like this was bad enough - especially at the age of five - but to be brought back, just when you'd though you had escaped, must have been torture. 

     Cassidy had never thought about if before, but every Verde was equal on Quarantine. Between the Verdes and the Infected, there were distinct differences, but within the facility itself, everyone was the same. There was no discrimination and no classes. Cassidy had always thought of it as being brought down, lowered. But that had only been because her family was well-off before the Pulse. Dan was a different story.

     He had been raised up from the slums, only to be brought crashing back down when he finally had a decent view.

     "This is worse than the Neighborhoods." Chase said quietly. He was looking at Dan, not with sympathy, but just with pain and shock.

     "We can't stay. We can't." Cassidy hated what this place - Skid Row - was doing to Dan. It was unfair, and absolutely stupid of Alison to make a decision like this.

     "Dan, are you okay?" Elle put her hand on Dan's shoulder.

     He had drawn his knees to his chest, and was leaning his forehead on them.

     "Skid Row used to be a normal district. That was three hundred years ago." Dan began to spout facts. "Slowly, the population of homeless people began to climb, and Skid Row became a distinct district, known for its poverty. In the two-thousand-forties, the situation got better. The homeless were cared for. Poverty was stricken out of the country as a whole - but you know happiness can't last for long," his voice turned bitter, and it scared Cassidy. Dan never talked like that. "The population of the unsheltered began to rise again. And when the Pulse came in to play, it became a breeding ground for the virus - more and more people gravitated to this district, but more and more people were stamped with a deadly disease. Now Skid Row isn't even a city, it isn't even a district. It's just a living  hell - and even the living part is kind of questionable."

     There was a muffled shuffling, and when Cassidy looked up, it was mostly from her subconsciousness registering and investigating the sound. Alison stood there, shivering in her bare skin.

     "Where did your coat go?" Cassidy asked. She was done with ostracizing Alison. No one deserved cruelty - no one at all.

     "I gave it to that man," she didn't have to specify which man.

     Suddenly tears were streaming down Cassidy's face again. They were warm, leaving trails of fire as they rolled down her cheeks in the chilly California air.

     "We should go," Alison said quietly.

     Cassidy's tears came harder, and she started to stand up. Of course they were leaving. This wasn't real - it was just a test. Alison wouldn't make them stay on Skid Row. She would never do something like that.

     "But we can't," Alison stopped Cassidy cold.

     "What do you mean?" Elle, Dan, and Chase snapped at almost the same exact time.