I had two days. Maybe less. I had no way of knowing how much time had already passed since the smugglers left. No way to track the hours except the slow crawl of exhaustion pressing into my bones.
But I knew this—if I didn't act now, I'd die down here.
My body felt like lead. Every movement was slower than it should have been, every thought felt like it was dragging itself out of mud. Dehydration. Hunger was bad, but thirst would kill me first.
I ran my tongue over my cracked lips. Dry. My throat clenched around nothing.
I needed water.
But there was no water.
I glanced at the ground. And then I thought of the things I'd seen.
Not in some corporate war zone. Not in some post-collapse wasteland. Right in the middle of Crystal City.
The forgotten corners of the underpasses, where people slipped through the cracks and never climbed back up. The ones that had been swallowed by the city's neon rot.
