“Peh! Tastes like shit.” I spat out the chicken I just took a bite of. The sour taste told me it was already bad. But this was life. Sometimes you got something good, sometimes you didn't. This was just how it was in the slums. You foraged through the trash dumped here from the upper floors for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It wasn't a free-for-all, though. Order was maintained by the guards who worked for the dump. Each single person received two bags. Families would get one bag per child and one per adult. If you were lucky, you got something to eat for the day; if not, then you were going to go hungry, or you would need to buy something from a street vendor.

But you needed to have money. Credits were hard to come by as there was not much work. For people like me, as a girl, you could either marry someone who made a few credits a day and live an okay life, or you could sell yourself. I, for one, did not like either since I really did not like people all that much to begin with.

I sighed and pushed the bag of trash to the side before pulling the second one over. After rummaging through it for a while, I frowned slightly. It was another dud, well, food-wise anyway. There were a few things I could sell to the parts shop, though. This was another way to earn a few credits. If you were lucky, you could find some computer chips or other parts that the parts shop would take, and you could get a few credits from that.

“I was actually hoping for some chicken. Roach skewers didn’t taste all that good.” I let out another long, drawn-out sigh. I really couldn’t help it. I knew I would never get to rise up and go to the second level, where work was more abundant. Jobs in the slums were fought over viciously. Hell, there was even a fighting ring where people went to make money to feed themselves or their families.

Rampant crime was a daily thing here as well. But for someone like me who grew up in this cesspool of a place without any parents, I am pretty good at not getting caught. After all, I was almost kidnapped multiple times. After a while, you learn a thing or two, and since then, I have been working on my own fighting style that is fitted to me.

I dunked my hands in the bucket of water next to me and dried them on my pants. Only then did I tie up the two bags I got. After that, I walked to the edge of the roof that overlooked the alley below and dropped them down. I liked to keep a clean house, after all. The only good thing about living in the slums was that there was never any rain or cold. We barely got to see the sun. Only for about two hours a day did the sun shine down on this sector of the slums.

From the books I have gathered from the trash, I have learned a lot about the upper sections of the city and the world that once was. Earth never used to be what it was now, where humans could only live in tiered cities. They used to live in the open air spread out all over the land. But now… if you so much as step foot outside the city, you are likely to die due to the toxic landscape. One of the books documented a massive war that used a new kind of bomb that turned the world into a no man’s zone. Only certain areas were still livable, which the cities were built upon. Each city was on a large set of wheels and could move when needed. This was because the safety zone where the clean air was, the pocket that this city used to allow its citizens to breathe, moved every few days about twenty years after the city was built. At least, that was what the book said.

While the slums were built over these very wheels, we could not even get a job maintaining them. That was because the training to do so could only be learned from tier two and above. The city itself, named Last Stand City, is one of a few that I know about. The strange thing about this pocket of air was that it went in a loop. So, the city was moving in a loop, never changing for a second.

“Life sucks…” I let out another sigh. I just couldn’t help it. The idea of my life never changing, being stuck in a never-ending cycle of digging through trash every day, was not the kind of life I ever wanted to live. But while I do hope one day I might be able to rise up somehow and enter the second level, at this time, I see no light. I never let my dreams and aspirations take over reality.

[But what is reality?]

A voice suddenly entered my head, making me look around. But my rooftop is the same, a horribly made shed I call home, stationed near an electric pole. The small rooftop was kept quite clean, thanks to my daily routine. The one place no one dares to live since it is near the outer rim close to the barrier wall. But to me, it was the only place I could call home. And right now, it was completely devoid of people except for myself. Which means...

“I seem to be going insane…”