The city was organized in a way the stray town wasn't and the plain definitely wasn't. Clean streets. Cars moving in deliberate directions. Buildings that had apparently never heard of the catastrophe and were not going to be informed about it now.
This wasn't the capital. This was the city of the rich. The other kind of inside.
I was sitting with Sherry at the back of the bus when School Central appeared through the window.
The gates were beautiful in the specific way of things built by people who had decided that aesthetics were not optional. The bus stopped in a parking lot full of cars.
People here drive cars, I noted. To school. Nobody walks.
A man in a green reflector jacket was waiting for us with the clipboard energy of someone who had done this orientation before and had a system. We got out.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[259 female ability users detected. 55 male ability users.]
I read it twice. Two hundred and fifty nine.
