“Tell me a story.”

“I don’t know any stories.”

“Everyone knows at least one story: tell me about yourself.”

“My story is depressing and you already know it.”

“I don’t know all of it. In fact, I’ll bet I know less than a fraction.”

“…”

“Come on, you said you trust me: tell me your story.”

“Alright, but it’s long. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“… Well?”

“I- don’t know where to start.”

“Tell me about the City.

“You’ve seen it, you know about it already.”

“Not like you’ve seen it. Tell me the things only you know, tell me what you hate and what you love, tell me about your city.”

“…”

“Please?”

“The city is built on the skeleton of an ancient place with towering structures, according to the legends. It’s an island, but we (the people who live there) aren’t supposed to know that. There are hundreds of tunnels and passageways flooded with water, so most people must have guessed. There is  a huge wall around the city, and none of the ruined buildings are tall enough to see over them. Stories float around speculating what is out there, but only a few of us know. And we only know because we…. Anyway.

Sometime 70ish years ago, the thing happened. Countries everywhere were at war, millions and billions of people just fighting nonstop, and then a group of (supposedly) intelligent people fired 12 weapons to temporarily drug all those people into sleeping, just to stop the fighting. Except it didn’t work and instead we got a global poisoning. Everyone had it, still has it in the City, but it was worse then. Do you know how it works?

We call it the Spoiling, the diseases we all breathe that rots you from the inside out, like spoiled fruit. After years and years, it gets to your brain, and you become a spreader, even more contagious than the air. You stumble around from the pain, carrying the Spoiling to everyone near you, and when other people get it from you, it takes hold of their brains faster too. When the Spoiling was new, all those years ago, it spread to people’s brains in a matter of days. No one knew what it was, but they figured out that contact with the Spoiled spread it even faster, so they built the wall around the city to keep to keep people safe, to separate the ones who are too far gone from the rest of us. It sort of works. Because of the wall, though, there is no wind and the air is dark with pollution. It is always a dusky red in the City.

They have air filtration now, for the rich and important, and the MedKnights can treat your symptoms if you can pay. For the rest of us poor idiots, though, we breathe the Spoiling and count our years. Every Spring there is a mandatory inspection, when the Knights check every City inhabitant to see if we are too infectious yet. There is a mark they put on your right hand if you fail the inspection, and then they throw you out of the City. Or kill you, I guess. They could just be killing them.

Right, so in the City, you have your failing health, and also no food. I don’t know how food gets to the City, but I know it is never enough. People pay a stupid amount to get real food, and the poorer of us just take pills that technically nourish you, but we still look gaunt. If you have no money, which is true for a lot of us, you steal pills and then grind them into dust, taking a little at a time to make them last longer. Everyone is constantly stealing or being mugged, at least in the lower city. Any sign of weakness and ten or more people will try and get your food pills. It’s a hard place to live.”

*

I rush through the main thoroughfare, looking like I have someplace to be. I don’t have someplace to be, but it would be weird if I was here without a destination. This road is empty of shops, homes, or rest points. It’s only features are turnings to other, smaller ways that lead to even smaller ways that eventually become populated with reasonable places to stop and linger. The thoroughfare is designed to help you get to your destination as quickly as possible, and it is filled with people on their way to and from Somewhere Important so I have to look like that to blend in. Blending in is really important to my survival.

That’s not quiet true. I am one of the Soiled, people who are slowly being overcome by the long-term effects of living in this shitty world without access to frequent medical assistance. That’s not quiet true either. Some people have a ridiculously strong immune system and are able to stay clean without medical help, but they are few and far between; a lot fewer and rarer than NatMed wants us to believe. They want us to believe that humanity is evolving, developing a natural immunity to all the toxins in the air. Ha.

Medical assistance is expensive, and only the people who genuinely have Somewhere Important to be can afford the required assistance, plus the air filtration systems (they don’t actually clean everything out of the air, but they clean enough that they can slow the Spoiling by 80%) to have a relatively natural life. Whatever that means.

I do not have any money, nor do I have Somewhere Important to get to, so what am I doing on the main thoroughfare, you ask? Procuring money. Or food. Or a coat. Whatever I can get. People are in such a rush here, you can get crushed trying to pick something up after you’ve dropped it, so most people just curse their loss and keep going. After all, they can replace whatever it was. I move through the crowd, causing people to drop what they are carrying. An elbow here, a sudden swerve here. I don’t pick it up: I’m not suicidal, I’m trying to survive, remember? About 40 steps behind me, though, a loose group of kids follow my dodges and shuffles and hopefully manage to grab what I’ve dropped without too many injuries. I don’t here any shouting or complaining (they are verbal when hurt) so I assume it is going well.

I call them the Scragamuffins, like ragamuffins except scragglier than that. I’m a horrible person, I know. It started out as just me poking fun at them for my own amusement, but then they started calling themselves that, and now they have this strange sense of identity as my Scragamuffins. I should probably have seen it coming. There are eight of them, all orphans, most of them too young to help. Tiph, Nige, and Raspy are the three oldest at 13, 12, and 12, so they are the ones backing me up today. They are insufferable little brats, but they may as well help me feed the others.

We have been collecting things for almost three hours, and it is nearly time to stop. If we keep going any longer, the security people are likely to notice via the cameras they use to watch the thoroughfare. I begin to make my way to the nearest side shoot and trust that the Muffins will follow me. They do. 20 minutes later, they reach me and we all walk away from the thoroughfare without speaking. There are microphones in more locations than there are cameras, so we defer any discussion until we get to the rattier parts of the city. Which might take a minute. Our endeavors have brought us almost to the heart of Capital City, and I can see the rising spires of the palace from here. That’s not so great, since surveillance is heavier here. I lead my little group down the first alley that isn’t a dead-end, and we begin the long journey back to our ‘home’.

Tiph lengthens her stride so she is walking beside me. It isn’t hard for her: she is taller than me already and my knee has begun to bother me. I am not limping yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I don’t try to outpace her. She glances at Nige and Raspy and looks like she wants to say something. I let her stew, because she is beginning to look like an adult, so she has to start learning how to assert herself like one. After a few minutes, she says (quietly) “we got a few cash cards: should we stop to buy food?”

I shake my head. In two weeks Examination season starts, and we will need the money to pay for bills of health. Even in the least governed parts of the city, you need to have a bill of health showing you are still healthy enough to live with the general population: no one will sell or buy from you without one. The air pollution gets in your system, and parts of you start to break down. The older you get, the worse it is, until eventually you become contagious with a viral form of the Spoiling that spreads from your breath. When that happens, NatMed ships you off to a colony for the Spoiled (or they kill you: they say they ship you off, but who really knows). Anyway, we will need as much cash as we can glean if we are going to pay for nine bills of health, and we don’t really have any other option.

Tiph knows all this, as do all the others. Unlike the others, she knows I must be nearing the end of my spoiling. She has been with me the longest, and has seen what happens to other people my age: any year now, I will go to get examined and I will fail the tests. They will ship me away (or kill me) straight from the testing zone, so that will be the last time the Muffins see me. Tiph also knows I have been slowly making sure she knows everything I do, and that the others know to follow her almost more than me. After my last testing, she will be all they have. She has been, in her own subversive way, trying to suggest that I skip the next examination.

“We all have to pay for the bills, Tiph,” I say. “You know there’s no other choice.”

Her face is frowny. She starts to say something else, and I make sure she sees me glance at a camera. It’s not safe to speak here. She shuts her mouth, but I know she’ll continue this conversation as soon as she gets the chance.

We are almost back to our home turf, 20 or so messy blocks from where we sack up. The boys recognize where we are and begin to pick on each other in a jovial way. Tiph squints at the way ahead of us. “Is that a body?” she asks, pointing. I look, but I really can’t see anything. (The spoiling affects all of us differently, and it has been taking my eyesight for years. I have a couple growing blind spots and I am almost blind in dim lighting. It sucks.) I squint, as if that will help, and I hobble closer. (Yes, I am limping now. Another joy of the spoiling: My left leg is going bad from the knee out.)

As we near it, I see that yes, it is a body. I bend down, and while it smells bad, it isn’t a dead sort of smell. I rummage around until I find an arm and follow it to a wrist. The limb is cold, but so am I and I need a pulse to tell if they are dead. I find it: they are alive. “Help me flip them over,” I say. The Muffins roll the body over and we see it is a young man, my age, or maybe a little older. He has red hair and is wearing some seriously stained clothes that look like they were farmer’s work clothes. He has a huge gash over his right eye, probably why he’s out here cold on the cobblestones. I groan internally.

I wish I could leave him here. I really do. But if I leave him here, I will be wondering if he made it for the rest of my life, and I don’t care about strangers enough to expend that sort of energy. Also, the three Muffins are watching me wide-eyed. “Help me get him on my back,” I say. I am going to have to carry this sorry bastard the rest of the way. They help me get him on me piggy-back style, and we tie him on with my sorry thin coat. We start off again, and I am moving even slower than before. I am not very big, strong for my size, but my leg is hating me. Nige and Raspy skip ahead and Tiph keeps pace with me, looking worried.

“Are you gonna make it carrying him like that?” She demands. Cheeky kid.

“I’ll make it,” I even manage not to pant. “I’m not going to be much help at grabbing dinner though: can you wrangle those two and manage it?” I know she can, but she needs to know it too. She nods, and rushes ahead to rally the boys. They head off to a side way that leads to a market, and I know they will steal dinner and not get caught. I focus on getting the rest of the way to our digs, the stranger heavy on my back.

A/n: I have so many almost-books I have been working on since I was little. This one is my favorite and has gone through so many revisions over the years to get here. Comment and tell me what you think!