CHAPTER 1
Aya
The net slipped through my calloused fingers again, water splashing against my legs as I stumbled on the rocky shoreline. Dawn had barely broken over Tankor Colony, but I'd already been ankle-deep in the frigid waters for two hours.
"Damn it," I muttered, retrieving the heavy mesh before the current could steal it away. My shoulders ached from the repeated casting motion, muscles burning beneath sun-browned skin.
Another meager haul. Five spiny crustaceans thrashed in the net as barely enough to trade for half a meal at the colony market. I tossed them into my collection bucket, where they joined a dozen similarly pathetic specimens.
"Morning looking any better for you, Aya?" Tomas called from twenty yards down the shore, his own net dripping disappointingly.
"What do you think?" I shouted back, gesturing at my pitiful bucket.
The great sea, once teeming with life, now barely sustained our struggling colony. Too many people. Too little food. The story of Tankor since before I was born.
I cast again, feeling the familiar weight of the net leaving my hands, watching it spread across the water's surface before sinking. The rhythm was mindless enough to let my thoughts wander where they often did to parents I'd never known.
Had my mother fished these same shores? Had my father held her close on stormy nights like the ones in the romance novels I traded precious rations to read? The old novels came from lands far away, written in the time before the shift, but humans who were free of the monsters that now treaded and ruled Terra. The avalanche that took them happened when I was barely a year old, too young to remember anything but the coldness of the orphanage that followed.
"Daydreaming again, sea rat?" Jora's voice cut through my thoughts, sharp as the spines on the crustaceans.
I rolled my eyes. "Some of us think about more than just surviving, Jora."
"Thinking won't fill your belly," she said, proudly displaying her bucket, at least triple my haul. "Or keep Administrator Voss off your back about colony contributions."
I didn't dignify that with a response, just pulled my net back in with more force than necessary. The water splashed up, soaking my already damp tunic. Great.
The morning dragged on with the sun climbing higher, beating down on my back as my collection grew painfully slowly. By midday, when most fishers headed in with their catches, I'd barely gathered enough to meet the minimum quota.
"Last call!" shouted the weighmaster from his station on the pier. "Bring 'em in for counting!"
My feet dragged through the shallow water as I trudged toward the weathered wooden structure. The bucket felt heavier than it should have for what little it contained.
"Aya Fletcher," the weighmaster said, barely glancing up as I approached. "Let's see what you've got."
He tipped my bucket onto his scale with the crustaceans clicking their pincers in protest. The needle barely moved.
"Sixteen pounds," he announced, making a note in his ledger. "That's five under minimum."
I swallowed hard. "The waters are thin today. Everyone's?—"
"Not everyone," he interrupted, nodding toward Jora who was walking away with a smile and a full ration card. "Fifth time this month you've missed quota, Fletcher."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't feed the colony." He stamped my ration card with a red mark. "That's partial rations for three days."
My stomach twisted at the thought. I was already too thin, my clothes hanging loose on my frame. But arguing would only make things worse.
"Yes, sir," I said, pocketing the marked card.
As I walked away from the pier, my mind drifted to the dreams that kept me going on days like this. Dreams of warmth and comfort. Of belonging to someone. Dreams of a different life far from the endless struggle of Tankor Colony.
"All unmarried women report to the community hall!" A voice boomed through the colony's rusty speaker system. "Mandatory meeting with Administrator Voss. Immediately!"
Around me, fishers paused in their work, exchanging confused glances.
"What now?" muttered a woman nearby, setting down her net-mending tools.
