The air in Sector7 tasted like rust and regret. Not that I'd know what regret tasted like, exactly.
I was too busy trying to survive. Rain, black and gritty, dripped from the cavern ceiling, splattering onto the corrugated iron roof of my shack. It barely kept the worst of the toxins out.
Outside, the skeletal remains of skyscrapers clawed at the perpetual twilight, monuments to a world that choked itself.
My stomach growled, a familiar ache. I checked my nutrient paste reserves – three globs left. Enough for maybe a day and a half. Not enough to keep the shakes away. Not enough to think straight.
Time to hunt.
I hefted my rusty pipe, its edges sharpened with scavenged glass shards. A pathetic weapon, but it was all I had. Nobody down here in the Undercity had anything better unless they were already selling. And selling meant killing.
The rules were simple, brutal, and unspoken: kill, harvest, sell. Organs were the currency. A kidney could buy you a week of paste. A liver, two. A heart? Well, a heart could buy you a shot at getting topside, at escaping this festering pit. But hearts were rare. People held onto those.
The tunnels were a maze of shadows and dripping pipes. I moved silently, my boots splashing in the grime.
Every corner held a potential killer, a desperate soul clinging to life by the fingernails of violence. I saw a flicker of movement ahead, heard the soft rasp of breathing.
I pressed myself against the wall, my heart hammering against my ribs. Peeking around the corner, I saw him. A scrawny kid, no older than fifteen, fiddling with a broken water purifier. He looked weak, vulnerable. Easy prey.
Guilt gnawed at me. I knew what it was like to be that kid, scavenging for scraps, terrified of the dark. But the guilt didn't fill my stomach. The guilt wouldn't stop the shakes.
I stepped out.
The kid jumped, eyes wide with fear. He fumbled for a rusty length of rebar, his hands trembling. "Please," he croaked, "I don't want any trouble."
"Neither do I," I said, my voice raspy. "Just trying to survive."
He stared at me, understanding dawning in his eyes. He knew the rules. He knew what came next.
We circled each other, a grim dance of desperation. He swung the rebar, clumsy and slow. I dodged, the pipe connecting with his ribs. He gasped, clutching his side. I didn't want to hurt him. But I needed his organs.
The fight was short and brutal. I landed a blow to his head, and he went down hard. I stood over him, my breath ragged, the pipe dripping crimson. The guilt was stronger now, a bitter taste in my mouth.
But the paste was more important. Survival was more important.
I took what I needed, the metallic scent of blood thick in the air. The work was quick, efficient. I'd done it too many times. I left the body, a husk stripped of its value, for the rats and the recyclers.
The market was a cacophony of hawkers and haggling. The Organ Brokers, fat and oily, sat behind reinforced steel counters, their eyes cold and calculating. I approached one, laying my bounty on the counter.
He examined the organs with a practiced eye. "Grade C," he grunted. "Toxins present. Reduced price."
I argued, but it was useless. They always cheated you. In the end, I walked away with enough credits for two weeks of paste. Not much, but enough to live.
I returned to my shack, the black rain still falling. I ate my paste, the sickly sweet flavor doing little to ease the emptiness inside. As I drifted off to sleep, I saw the kid's face in my dreams. His fear. His desperation.
That's when I realized something. The Brokers weren't paying us in credits. They were paying us in paste. They controlled the food. They controlled our lives. They were the ones who were truly surviving, feasting on our misery, growing fat on our desperation.
And they were the ones we were killing for.
The next morning, I did something I hadn't done in years. I left my shack without my weapon. I walked towards the market, the air thick with the stench of decay and despair. This time, I wasn't going to sell.
I was going to buy.
I found the Broker I usually dealt with, the one with the greasiest hair and the coldest eyes. I approached his counter, a strange calm washing over me.
"I want to buy a heart," I said, my voice clear and steady.
He smirked. "You think you can afford a heart?"
"I can," I said. "I have something you want more."
I reached into my coat and pulled out a small, tarnished silver locket. It was the only thing I had left from before, from a time when the sky was blue and the air was clean. A time before the killing.
His eyes widened. He recognized it. It was the Broker's locket. It belong to his wife, before they were attacked and got killed, years ago.
That time, there was no killing.
But a new partnership between you and the broker. Because you let go of everything but the lessons you learned in the process.
Because now, the two of you are going to kill together.