The slums of Trinoss, a dying world nestled in a forgotten orbit, made Ganrok look like paradise.
Here, the air stank of burnt chemical waste and bile. The ground oozed a greyish-black sludge that clung to skin like disease. The streets were narrow, suffocating veins between rusting buildings and crumbling towers—monuments to a world that had long given up.
People here weren't living.
They were decaying.
Kaela sat in a shadow-drenched alley, her back slumped against a rusted container leaking engine fluid, her breath shallow. The sun above was little more than a bloated red smear in the sky, half-hidden by toxic clouds and metallic ash. She hadn't moved in hours.
Her eyes stared forward, but they didn't see.
Glazed, hollow, lost.
Each breath was a struggle—her ribcage constricted as if wrapped in barbed wire. Her limbs twitched now and then, spasming involuntarily. Her muscles rejected movement. Her body, modified and twisted by years of experimentation, pulsed with low-level pain every second of every minute. Every step she took earlier had felt like her bones were grinding glass.
She wasn't even sure she was real anymore.
The neural lattices stood out under her skin—dark, branching lines of pale blue and violent red, like roots strangling their host. Her body glowed faintly, unnaturally, as if something was trying to crawl its way out.
Her own nerves replaced, was she even human anymore?
Someone passed. Then another.
People noticed her—yes. But not with kindness. Not even pity.
They spat on her.
"You don't belong here, freak."
"Disgustin' thing."
"Shoulda died wherever the hell you crawled from."
One man—eyes sunk deep into his skull, flesh clinging to bone—kicked over a rusted can full of the dark grey liquid at her. It splattered down her chest. The stench soaked in.
She didn't react.
Not to the filth.
Not to the curses.
Not even when a child threw a rusted screw at her head and ran.
Her fingers curled slightly, scraping against the gritty pavement. Her knuckles were bloodied from an earlier stumble. She had no money. No comm. No weapon. No food. No identity.
And no voice left to scream with.
The worst part?
This wasn't the worst she'd ever felt.
The lab had been worse.
The lab had stripped her down, neuron by neuron, emotion by emotion, until even fear had burned away. Until pain became the only constant.
They broke her until there was nothing to rebuild.
Then they told her to fight.
To kill.
To smile.
Her lips cracked as she tried to breathe through them. Blood traced down her chin. Her stomach cramped again—dry heaves. Nothing came up. She hadn't eaten in three days.
An older hybrid woman approached—one of the many outcasts here. Her face was tattooed with crude cult marks, and her arms bore mutations she couldn't hide. Her eyes scanned Kaela.
And then… she turned away.
Even here, among the unwanted, Kaela was beneath them.
Less than an animal.
A mistake.
A reminder of what happened when science played god and forgot how to care.
She tried to stand once.
Her legs buckled.
She fell—hard. Her head hit the container. Her vision swam. She lay there, unmoving, the shadows folding over her like a blanket.
And yet... in all that silence, something inside her refused to die.
It was faint. Small.
But it was there.
A single, whispering truth: you are not done.
Even as her body screamed, even as the world rejected her, even as her mind fractured under the weight of everything she'd lost—Kaela's fingers twitched again.
One breath.
Then another.
She didn't know how long she lay there. Time bled into itself—seconds, minutes, hours. Her thoughts were mud. Her heartbeat a slow drum in a broken cathedral.
The sun dipped lower, staining the alley in bruised purples and sickly oranges.
Footsteps approached.
Not hurried. Not afraid.
Just… deliberate.
Kaela didn't bother opening her eyes.
More insults?
Another kick?
She'd stopped caring three breaths ago.
But the footsteps slowed. Stopped. Then… shifted. Someone crouched beside her.
She tensed, instinctively pulling in, expecting pain.
Instead—
A soft sound. A crinkle.
Then something warm pressed into her hands.
Bread. Still warm.
Not synthetic. Not rationed. Real bread. A rare thing on this broken world.
She blinked, confused. Forced her aching eyes open.
The face staring back was young. Maybe ten? A hybrid child. Skinny, dirty, mismatched eyes glowing faintly in the dusk—one metallic blue, one amber-flecked green. Her wild curls were tangled, and her ears were slightly too long for a human.
She wasn't smiling.
But she wasn't scared either.
"I saw you fall," the girl said, voice small but clear. "You looked… heavy."
Kaela stared at her. Tried to speak. Failed.
The girl tilted her head, curious but not pitying. She glanced over her shoulder, then pulled something else from her pouch—an old, half-cracked water canteen.
"Drink. Bread goes down better with water."
Kaela took the canteen with shaking hands. Managed a sip. It tasted like heaven and rust. She didn't care.
"Why?" Kaela croaked. It was the first word she'd said in days.
The girl shrugged. "Everyone here's broken. You're just more obvious."
A pause.
"…But you didn't cry when they threw stuff at you. Or beg. That's different."
Kaela stared at the bread, at her trembling fingers.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Don't got one," the girl replied. "But the others call me Twitch."
Kaela coughed a laugh—a dry, cracked sound.
Twitch tilted her head again. "You got one?"
"Kaela."
The girl nodded once. "Kaela's better."
A silence passed between them. Gentle. Not uncomfortable.
Then Twitch stood. "They'll come looking soon. Adults don't like helping—it's a weakness here."
She hesitated… then dropped something else in Kaela's lap. A small knife. Dull, but clean.
"For next time," she whispered. "In case someone's mean and you're too tired to run."
Kaela clutched it.
Before she could thank her, the girl darted off into the shadows, vanishing like a spark into the wind.
Kaela stared at the knife. Then the bread. Then the sky.
The stars were coming out now. Dim at first. But there.
She wiped her mouth. Sat up slowly. Every muscle screamed. But she moved.
Not because she wanted to.
Because someone believed she still could.