Chapter 2 — Whispers in the Walls
The city doesn't answer me. Not in words, anyway.
But sitting in that alley, forehead pressed to my knees, I feel it all around me—the slow drip of water down the walls, the mold chewing its way through brick, the low groan of steel beams settling in rotten foundations. Sane City doesn't talk; it breathes. Every sigh of wind carries ash and sickness. Every shadow feels thick enough to choke on.
Maybe I'm imagining it. Maybe the guilt makes me hear things. But sometimes it feels like the city leans closer, waiting for me to fall apart so it can swallow me whole.
I don't know if it wants me dead or alive.
---
I force my eyes open. The alley stretches narrow and crooked, hemmed in by buildings that sag toward each other like tired drunks. Rusted pipes weep brown streaks into puddles. The smell of mildew clings to the back of my throat.
It's quiet here, but not safe. There's no such thing as safe for me.
I wipe sweat and grime from my face with the back of my hand. My palms are scraped raw from the fall in the market, little cuts stinging as if they're already infected. I laugh under my breath at the irony. Me, the living plague, worrying about infection.
The laughter doesn't last. Nothing ever does.
---
When I was younger—before the city started calling me a monster—I thought powers meant hope. I thought we, the "gifted," were the answer to the world's slow decay.
We were supposed to be rare. Ten percent of people born with something extra. A spark. A gift. Some called us evolution's next step. Some said we were God's chosen. Others said we were cursed, the beginning of the end.
Both were right.
Every power carries a blessing. And every blessing drags a curse behind it like a corpse on a chain.
That truth shaped everything. It shaped the way people saw us. It shaped the way we saw ourselves.
The government calls us "Assets." Tools. Weapons. They train the ones with useful blessings, hide the curses, polish them into "heroes." Put them in uniforms, plaster their faces on billboards, tell the city these people will save them.
But the rest of us—the ones whose curses couldn't be hidden, couldn't be trained out, couldn't be controlled? They call us "Risks." Monsters. Hazards to be contained. Some of us get locked away. Others, like me, get hunted.
Mega Stone is one of their hammers. He's not just a hero. He's a weapon aimed squarely at people like me.
---
I press my hands against the wall, try to ground myself in the rough texture. But even that betrays me. The bricks feel damp, slimy, alive with mold. I swear I can hear the spores hissing faintly, multiplying under my touch.
My curse is everywhere. It seeps out whether I want it to or not. I could seal my lips, hold my breath until my lungs burned, and still, something would slip free. A cough. A rash. A slow fever that eats someone from the inside out.
That's why I don't stop running. Not because I'm afraid of Mega Stone. Not even because I want to live. But because staying anywhere too long means the sickness spreads.
And the truth is, the city doesn't need my help to rot. It's doing fine on its own.
---
I shift, listening for the heavy thunder of stone footsteps. Nothing. Only the distant coughs from the market I left behind, echoing like ghosts in the gray air. My stomach twists. Those people didn't deserve it. They were just trying to live. Trying to barter a meal, keep their kids alive one more day.
And I cut them down like grass, just to buy myself a few more minutes.
The worst part? I didn't even think about it. Not really. My body chose survival before my mind caught up. That's what terrifies me most—the way instinct always wins.
---
I close my eyes, try to breathe slow. The air tastes like wet metal.
Sometimes I think about the world before Sane City was like this. I was a kid when the towers still had lights in their windows. When the trains still ran, even if they screeched and sparked. When there were still schools. I remember classrooms filled with both kinds of kids—gifted and normal—sitting side by side. For a while, people believed we could live together.
But every blessing hid a curse, and curses don't stay quiet forever.
The healer who turned into a graveyard of scars. The fire-breather who froze everyone he touched. The boy who drowned in the sky because his body stopped eating.
And me.
The whispers spread. Parents pulled their children from classes with kids like me. Neighborhoods put up fences. Heroes—government-trained, shiny-suited, blessed but contained—started patrolling the streets.
Then came the first real outbreak. Not mine. Another like me. A boy whose breath spread spores that melted lungs. He killed half his block before they brought him down. The city burned the bodies in the street. After that, we were no longer kids. No longer neighbors. We were "Risks."
That was the day Sane City started dying. It just took years for the bones to show.
---
My breath shudders. My chest aches like it always does after I let loose a cloud. The sickness takes from me, too. People think it's easy, that I just breathe death and walk away. They don't see how it eats me inside out. Every time I unleash it, I feel weaker, like I've given a part of myself away.
Maybe that's the only reason I'm still alive. Maybe the city wants me to waste away slowly instead of burning out quick.
I tilt my head back against the wall, stare up at the sliver of sky between leaning rooftops. Gray, like a bruise. It's always gray. I can't remember the last time I saw blue.
---
A sound breaks the silence. Not the heavy stomp of stone—lighter, closer. Scurrying.
I tense, every nerve sparking. Rats pour from a crack in the wall, their bodies thin, fur patchy, eyes glinting. They move in jerks, coughing squeaks rattling from their throats. My stomach knots.
I didn't even notice. My power seeped into them while I sat here. Their bodies already breaking down, lungs drowning. They scatter past me, some collapsing mid-sprint.
I bury my face in my hands.
It never stops. It never will.
---
Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolls. Not a church bell—there are no churches left here. This one means something else. A warning. The city's way of saying: stay inside, the plague is near.
I don't know if they mean me or the sickness that grows in every dark corner of this place. Maybe both.
My head swims. I can't stay here. The longer I linger, the more the walls sweat sickness. The more the rats die. The more I rot what little is left.
I push myself to my feet, knees trembling. The alley tilts around me, like the city is deciding whether to let me leave or pin me here forever.
I whisper to the bricks, like they might care: "Just a little longer. That's all I need."
The walls drip. The city breathes. No answer.
But I swear, as I stagger deeper into the alley's shadow, I feel Sane City smiling.