Chapter One:
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“Katalina, your life is worth more than this.”
She frowned, looking at her late grandmother’s house. It sat in the pit of her stomach. Heavy and hard.
It manifested in her eyes as the blank stare of someone who was looking but not actually seeing. Focusing. Kat felt the lump grow and expand until it closed up her throat, making it hard to swallow or hold back the tears that sprang to her eyes.
I’m alone now.
She stood there looking at the rusty old structure with love, fear, and a little bit of uncertainty. The house and everything in it were hers now. Except it wasn’t, at least not anymore. She had sold it to the first buyer.
To Kat, it would always remain the possession of the dead woman she had taken care of for the past several years. The last member of her family that she loved had been reduced to a fond memory; a ghost that now took the form of a stone in her gut or the invisible hands that strangled her neck.
Kat clicked the button on her key-chip, nearly breaking the small device with the pressure from her thumb. The house shut down. The metal shutters folded over the windows, barred and blacked out, and the alarm system activated.
She hugged herself as her ears twitched. The humming sound of moving metal, a sturdy zip of electricity; the groan of rusted edges filled her ears.
Goodbye Grandma. I love you more than anything. My life will never be like yours, but I will make it count for something.
She pocketed the key-chip and picked up the single suitcase by her side.
The old house had been sold and today was the last day before the new residents moved in.
The now useless key-chip in her hand would be her only memento. Kat ran her finger over the bump of it in her pocket before rubbing the back of her hand across her cheeks and clearing her face.
She heard the rumble of a land-flyer settling on the house’s landing pad. Her relatives. Kat turned away from the memories with a rushed goodbye and enclosed herself in her own flyer, throwing her bag in the back, and shutting the door closed just as her uncle called out. Without looking up, she programmed in her destination when his fist pounded on the window next to her face.
“Katalina! Get out of the craft.”
“Sorry, can’t hear you,” she mumbled under her breath.
“You can’t do this!”
“Watch me.”
Her flyer shot into the air just as her uncle started screaming obscenities at her only to be drowned out by the rushing wind. With her destination locked in and autopilot enabled, Katalina, for the first time since she could remember, felt the heady rush of adrenaline sweep through her.
She leaned her head back against the seat and let the energy of it take over, losing herself into the mire of her thoughts and her racing heart.
She was headed for the largest interstellar port in New America with no goal in mind. Kat had no plans for the future beyond getting away from the stink of slow, moldering death and her extended family.
They had descended like vultures in the weeks before her grandmother’s death. At first, she had been delighted that they were there, that they wanted to help out, but when the will was read and everything was left to her, things changed.
Earth was no longer her home. She needed to get off its surface before she suffocated on her own grief
Whiplash and heartbreak.
Kat wasn’t naive to the seven deadly sins, nor was she unfamiliar with greed, but she had hoped she wasn’t related to anyone who would succumb to them.
Now that the house was sold, along with everything left inside it, she was finally taking her grandmother’s advice.
“You’ll leave this place, even if I have to force you to do it.”
The scenery sped by. The old world slowly vanished until high-rises and metal structures surrounded her. Kat looked at her bag and took a deep breath. The city opened up like a cracked egg: the guts were a giant space field, miles upon miles of heavily guarded flat ground, all of it surrounded by the metal barriers of commerce.
Huge ships could be seen, bigger than she remembered. The battleships and mining freighters couldn’t land here. Their girth was so massive, so giant, that it would disrupt Earth’s shields and crush the ground. Kat had seen pictures of them. She knew people could spend their entire lives living on one of those monsters.
