APOSTATIC

"Begone. Gone.
For divinity has dispersed.
Now humanity's destiny is forged.
We are all labeled APOSTATIC."

God's a fucking joke.

You learn that pretty quick living under a sky full of pipes.

This planet never had fuel. No coal. No oil. Nothing worth burning. After that steam engines invention, the industrial revolution came, because some brilliant psycho discovered the human body produces more energy than any engine ever built.

After that?

Everything went to hell.

Steam towers, pressure boilers, turbine halls, gearworks big enough to swallow city blocks. Pipes running through buildings like veins. Dynamos humming day and night.

The rich call it progress. Yeah, no shit.

Down here we call it processing.

And it turns out - people are the fuel now. We burn REAL great.The government runs a nice polite system called Contribution. Families give something to keep the generators spinning - a limb, a kid, sometimes the whole damn household if their district falls behind quota.

Do it long enough and they Promote you.

That means they bolt you into a pressure rig and let the turbines chew your pulse into electricity.

Meanwhile the rich bastards float above us in their clean little sky-city pretending the world isn't powered by screaming.

Down here it's gangs, rust, meat grinders, cannibalism drugs and cult freaks chanting that the engines are holy punishment.

Dumbasses.

Name's Poppy Van Carter. That's what the records tell me. Mechanic. Smoker. I keep broken steam engines alive because if they stop, the whole rotten city drops out of the sky.

Funny thing is...

Apparently my body produces more power than any damn boiler they've got.

Which means everyone suddenly wants me.

Government.
Cult.
Even my half-sister Akira Steinhelm.

And I just wanted to fix engines and smoke in peace.

Instead I'm stuck in this rusted hellhole waiting to see how many nails do I have to drive into my neck to get out.

Welcome to APOSTATIC, BITCH