2081 – Texas Ruins
Sylvia stopped counting the days the year when she lost her mother. That was the year she realized hope was a lie the living told themselves so they wouldn't slit their own throats.
She was twenty-three now. Her body was the only currency that had ever held value in her life.
The world had ended slowly. First the wars in 2035—countries eating countries, borders dissolving into ash. Then the nukes in 2040. After that, the sky stayed gray and the ground stopped giving. Drought baked Texas into bone. Cannibalism stopped being a rumor and started being supper by 2045.
By then, Sylvia was already broken in.
Her mother had died first. Not from the bombs. Not from the famine. From the men.
Sylvia was seven when she watched her mother leave their shelter for the last time. A thin woman with hollow cheeks and desperate eyes, she had sold her body every night for a single piece of bread. One piece. That was the price. That was what a human life was worth in the new world.
She came back with half a piece once. The man had been rough. He had taken what he wanted and thrown her out before paying in full. Her mother had crawled home bleeding, clutching the half-bread like a holy relic.
Her father had beaten her for it. Then he had taken the bread. Then he had eaten it while her mother bled on the floor.
Three days later, her mother was dead. Not from the wounds. From hunger. Because without her body to sell, she had nothing left to trade.
Sylvia didn't cry at the funeral. There was no funeral. Just her father dragging the body to the fire pit.
She was eight when she smelled her mother cooking.
She was nine when she understood.
And she was ten when her father looked at her with the same hungry eyes he had given her mother.
"You're old enough now," he said. "You've got her face. Her shape."
Sylvia didn't run. There was nowhere to run.
Her father forced her to sell her body the moment she started to understand what that meant. The first time, she cried so hard she couldn't breathe. The man—a camp trader with yellow teeth and cold hands—had held her down and told her to be quiet. When she wouldn't stop, he had covered her mouth with his palm.
Afterward, he gave her father two pieces of bread.
Her father ate one. He gave Sylvia the other.
"See?" he said, chewing. "You're worth more than your mother already."
That was the year Sylvia learned the first rule of survival: Your body is not yours. It belongs to whoever can feed it.
Age thirteen.
She had been sold seventy-three times by then. She knew because she counted. Counting was the only thing that kept her mind from floating away entirely. Seventy-three men. Seventy-three pieces of bread. Seventy-three times she had closed her eyes and gone somewhere else.
Some of the men were kind. Not many. But some.
One of them—a thin man with a scar across his throat who called himself Leo—used to bring her scraps of old comics. Torn pages. Broken chapters. He couldn't read well, but he remembered stories from before the bombs. Harry Potter. The boy who lived. The wizard school with moving stairs.
"He had a hard life too," Leo said once, wiping himself off on her blanket. "But he made it. He found people who fought for him."
Sylvia had nodded. She didn't believe him. No one fought for anyone in this world.
Another man—a young one, barely eighteen, with eyes that still had some light in them—told her about Marvel. Metal men and green giants and a man with a shield who never gave up.
"He's strong," the boy said, almost crying as he held her. "He doesn't break."
Sylvia had wanted to laugh. Everyone breaks. She had seen her mother break. She had seen herself break, a hundred times, a thousand times, in ways that didn't show on the outside.
But she listened. She remembered the stories. Harry Potter. Tony Stark. Captain America. Wolverine. They became her lullabies. Her escape from hunger.
When the men finished, she would lie in the dark and imagine she was somewhere else. A castle. A tower. A world where people didn't eat each other.
It was stupid. She knew it was stupid.
But it kept her alive.
Age sixteen.
Her father was killed in a fight over her.
Not a noble fight. Not a father protecting his daughter. A fight over pricing.
The usual rate was one piece of bread. That was the standard. That was what Sylvia's body had been worth for six years. But that day, a customer had offered half a piece. Half. For the same body. The same service.
Her father had argued. The customer had argued back. Words became shoves. Shoves became punches. The customer pulled a knife.
Her father bled out in the dirt while Sylvia watched.
She felt nothing.
That night, she ate the half-bread. Then she walked away from the camp and never looked back.
Age twenty-three. Present.
Sylvia had survived seven more years on her own. She had been sold hundreds of times. She had learned to smile like she meant it. To touch like she wanted it.
The camp she lived in now had forty people once. Now maybe twelve. Strong men kept the weak alive just long enough to trade or eat. Women like Sylvia—young, still shaped like a person—lay down for a biscuit, a sip of water, a promise not to be tonight's meal.
She didn't hate it anymore. Hate was for people who had choices.
That night, the other camp came.
No warning. Just gunfire and torches. Sylvia ran—three steps before a hand grabbed her hair. She went limp. She'd learned that first: limp bodies bruise less, fight less, get eaten later.
They took the food. They took the young women. They left the rest for the coyotes.
Sylvia had learned new names she'd forget. New smells. New ways to tilt her hips so it ended faster. She got a morsel every two or three days. The others—the ones who cried, who fought, who still had something human left inside—they died first.
First the bed. Then the pot.
Sylvia stayed alive by being useful. By smiling when she wanted to vomit. By telling herself this isn't you, this is the body, the body is a tool. She thought about Hogwarts. About Harry Potter. About the metal man who could fly.
Then the food ran out.
She tried to run that night. Stupid. Desperate. A man twice her size caught her by the ankle. She didn't scream. Screaming wasted energy.
They dragged her back to the fire.
They used her for two days. Three men, then five, then seven. She stopped counting after the first night. She made sure they were satisfied. She made sure they laughed. She made sure no one looked at her and thought meat before they thought woman.
But hunger doesn't care about smiles.
The first bite came from behind. Teeth into her left shoulder. She screamed then—not from pain, but from the cold math in her head. If they start eating me, I can't service them. If I can't service them, I'm dead.
"Please," she said, even as blood ran down her arm. "I'll do anything. Just don't—I'll be better—I'll—"
The man who bit her didn't answer. He was already chewing.
Another man grabbed her leg. Another her arm. She felt teeth on her ribs, her thigh, her fingers. They came over her like hungry wolves, and Sylvia realized with a strange, distant clarity that she had finally reached the bottom.
There was no further down to go.
She died in the dirt, under a gray sky, with half her flesh torn from her bones. Her last thought wasn't anger. It wasn't God.
It was: I don't want to stop surviving. Why?
Then the darkness took her.