•sequel to glitched•
Two years after the destruction of the Machine (and in turn, the destruction of the world as we know it) humankind has adapted to survive- forming large gangs that were constantly at war with one another in the fight for food a...
"Who's next?" I shouted over the chaos, cracking my knuckles and staring down the crowd.
I could see their gazes flick towards the six foot tall man splayed on his back before me, coughing and groaning.
I raised an eyebrow. "No one? Than pay up!"
The people shuffled over, placing food in my sack. "Keep it coming!" Soon my sack had been filled.
I grinned. "Pleasure doing business with y'all- but I'm afraid I have to go,"
I sprinted out of the alleyway, down the makeshift shelters pieced together from bits of this and bits of that. I could hear distant screams- undoubtedly one of the gangs at war. But when was a gang not at war?
I slipped through a nearly invisible space between two buildings- running down the dark staircase, wrinkling my nose against the all too familiar stench of mold.
It was only a minute or so before I found myself in the underground chamber.
Children ran towards me and I laughed, ruffling the hair of a brown-eyed boy who looked up at me hopefully. "Mara! Mara, did you find food?"
"You bet I did, pumpkins," I smiled, handing out my earnings. The children took the food from me with wide smiles, each one of them murmuring a 'thank you'.
I swiveled my head- counting them. Kaylee, Jet, Farrah, Alicia, and Thomas. All here.
Relaxing, I reached into my pouch and took out an apple, biting into it. The juice hit my tongue and I sighed with pleasure. Good food was rare these days. Usually the best you could hope for was a packet of plain oats, and the occasional mushy near-expired fruit.
I polished off the apple, throwing the core to the corner and dusting off my hands, even though the presence of dirt on them was ever-constant.
"Okay children, time for bed,"
"Awww..." they whined simultaneously, yet crawled onto their ragged mattresses, pulling the tattered blankets over their shoulders. I walked by, gently kissing each of them on the tips of their noses. "Sleep tight, little ones."
After the great Shock that had destroyed all human inventions I had been left devastated and distraught. I had come so close to taking my own life at one point, for this was all my fault.
But than I had found a little girl in a street corner, crying out for help as she was attacked by wanna-be gangsters. I rescued her only to find that she was all alone in the world, her parents had been crushed by their home as it fell.
As I walked through the streets I found more and more of these children and took them under my wing, stealing and fighting to find them food and clean water. I had lost some of them, yes, to the dust sickness, and to pneumonia and raging fevers. I trained them to fight, as I had been trained, and some of the older ones even left; forming groups of their own, moving on to other cities.
It was true that we lived in a hell, that humanity had turned into some great, desperate beast, and that everyone was slowly being driven closer and closer to insanity- but I had to hold to what I had. And right now it was these children.
I pulled my own thin blanket around my shoulders, checking to make sure the door was locked before I let myself drift away into a deep sleep, plagued by horrific nightmares.
••• District_211 year 02 post great shock •••
Peter POV
"Really, kid, we've looked everywhere. Maybe it's time for you to accept the face your girlfriend is dead, probably killed in the Shock, or by a gang. After all, she's just a girl."
I clenched my jaw. "First off, she's not my girlfriend- and second, if you met her you would quickly eat your words."
The scrawny man before me let out a short laugh that smelled of cigarette smoke, fiddling with his knife. "Whatever you say, sonny. But it's time for you to pay up." He held out his hand expectantly.
"I don't think so," I said, calmly.
His eye twitched. "What did you say?"
"I. Don't. Think. So. Your job was to find Amara- seeing as she is not standing before me you have failed. And I don't pay failures."
"Than you will die, boy!" The man drunkenly leapt over the counter, his blade flying for my heart.
I whipped out my gun, firing without batting an eye.
He tumbled to the ground and I took his knife, tucking it into my belt before checking his pockets for any valuables. Nothing. "How did you even find alcohol?" I muttered, tanking a pair of long metal tongs and fishing the bullet from his body, washing away the gore in a nearby puddle.
I has to reuse the bullets, and even then I knew my pistol wouldn't last much longer. I twirled it around my fingers before slipping it into its holster, running a hand through my hair and exiting the sewers.
It was only midday but the sky was dark, filled with dust as it usually was. The autumn breeze whipped at my cheeks and I pulled the collar of my coat up, moving through what was left of the streets of District 211.
I didn't know why I had come back here, come back to the place where Amara and I had spent senior year together. Maybe some part of me hoped that she would have gone here, missing me as much as I missed her.
But what if the man had been right? What if she was dead?
After all, the last time I had seen her she was bloodied and bruised, green lightning crackling from her body as she screamed in pain... could even Amara survive the full force of the Machine?
I picked up a rock and threw it as far as I possibly could, hearing it crash against metal in the distance.
I couldn't give up on her. Because once I had I would have nothing else to fight for, nothing else to live for.
And I would simply end.
•••
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