Brokensystems Stories

At age 16 everything is normal. At age 16 everything changes. • • • • Spencer Shell has just turned 16. She is now forced into the Pure System to be tested and trained. Spencer is far from alone. All her friends come with her and even her enemies. In the system Spencer can see her friends changing. Following orders, being polite, never talking back, but Spencer doesn't see why they're doing that. Until she finds out. Horrified Spencer has to keep this new information to herself or she is dead. Spencer tries to blend in but it's not working out for her. Can Spencer hid her secret form the Prurience? Can she save her friends in time? Or will she be taken by the void? • • • In life and love. In poor and in wealth. The system is pure And so is your health.

I stood there, watching life and death blur together in a room full of silence. Four girls, cutting into their own arms like it was just another day. Their blood fresh, sharp, raw - and nobody around them noticing. Their mother, a shadow of a woman, moving through the world like she's already dead. Eyes vacant, slow steps, a heart seemingly frozen by numbness. At one point, I said, "I know that's your baby," and she smiled - a small, broken smile showing the gaps where her teeth used to be. For a second I saw she cared. I told her, "Keep your daughter close. This is urgent." She looked like a ghost, like a nurse who's seen too much, like she'd forgotten how to feel. And I felt the weight of the system failing, the adults failing, the world failing them. There I was, drowning in the depth of my own anxiety and depression, standing as the only lifeline I could offer. I've never seen anything like it - kids showing their cuts like trophies, like normal, like nobody cares. A young girl hugged me like I was hope itself. Another told me her friend overdosed, and it shook me to the core. This is a story of pain and raw reality. Of a world that ignores its own children. Of survival in silence. Of seeing things no one else can see. Brace yourself. Feel it. Every drop of it.