I should never have come here. The city is the Beta stronghold. A massive, sprawling metropolis built on the ruins of a city that thrived in ancient days. But it’s the citadel that extends deep into the ground that makes this place so terrifying. The prison and temple is where the extermination of alphas and omegas happens daily, the massacre of our designation is bleeding beneath our feet. Beta City grew from nothing when the Great Ravage Virus was toppling the modern world.
That virus became a world-ending event that turned our world from its peaceful existence into one where the Beta’s rule is complete, and simply being born alpha or omega is a death sentence.
If I can just find out what happened to my family, I can leave. I will leave. The questions have plagued me for five long years, and staying away has become impossible. Their faces come to me in dreams, begging me to find them, whispering that it’s my fault, pleading for help.
“Look over there!” one shouts. Those masks scare me. They could be your neighbour, your friend, your family. No one would ever know.
I press against the wall, have they found me? No, they are heading in a different direction. My relief is short-lived.
They spread out, and from the other end of the market, I hear another shout.
“Seriously?” I mutter, frustrated by both their incompetence and the fact they have managed to accidentally corner me.
I’m trapped in this city; they know I’m here. I can’t hide for long. My time is vanishing quicker that I would have imagined possible. If they set the Warden on my path, I’m lost. He will hunt me down relentlessly, just like he’s done to so many others of my kind.
My frantic thoughts whirl, and my stomach churns. I realise I’m digging my nails into my palm and try to relax, but the feeling of impending doom will not go away.
I slip back into the shadows and spin, running down the street, darting down alleys, and losing myself with each turn that I make. The streets are maze-like walls, some made of canvas and wood, others of splintered glass and concrete. There’s no beauty in the architecture of this city, it's just crafted together with little or no skill.
The light of day is stolen, leaving me in the cooling and lonely night, alone like I’ve been for the last five years. I thought…I don’t know what I thought, that maybe my mother might be alive, that the whispers in my dreams were real.
Even knowing it was a trap, I still had to come. I needed to know for certain. No one has seen her for five years, and I’ve looked everywhere. Everywhere but here and the Culling Ground.
She’s more than likely dead.
I rub at my eyes with my palm, trying not to let that morbid thought take hold and pull me under.
“You just need sleep and a meal. That’s all. Get back to normal and be right as rain. Then you can keep looking.”
Talking to myself has become a nasty habit of mine over the last few years, but I’ve spent way too much time alone, without a single voice to break the silence.
I crouch in a doorway, wrapping my arms around my legs and staring at the broken concrete that’s been patched with dirt. The city is put together with scraps from a world that died a long time ago, and it shows. Everywhere you look, the failing and falling technology of our ancestors is crumbling to dust and ruin, leaving us with this world that scarcely remembers its golden days of enlightenment.
I reach out and finger the rusted remains of a sign that’s been bolted into the concrete. They had so much potential, the things I’ve seen that belonged to them, and they ruined it. They blew it. And now we all struggle just to eat, and people hunt people.
The world is lost.
I stand up and wrap my arms around myself. I’d rather be walking; at least that way, I have a better chance of staying warm.
The sound of male betas murmuring gets louder as I walk. Then the crackle and glow of a fire in one of the buildings gives me clues as to where they are hiding. I skirt around them, not wanting to borrow trouble. I look up at the sky, but it’s thick with clouds, like it always is.
My mother said there were stars and a moon up there, but I’ve never seen them. All I’ve seen is thick grey clouds, an oppressive blanket of danger that seems to me like it’s weighing heavier on all of us.
What would the stars look like? Do the gods live up there? Do they even exist anymore?
A snap of something in front of me has me leaning into the shadows, my shoulders stiff as I watch to see what’s going to emerge. I count theseconds, and then I see a small group of people, and as they get closer, I realise they are teenagers. They are wearing rags, and their feet have no shoes. Four boys and a tiny girl, though as they move closer, I can see she’s not so little. Perhaps lingering on the cusp of turning from girl to young woman. She’s just built small, delicate.
An omega.
As she approaches, I hesitate, catching the drifting floral perfume in the air. Every omega has a distinctive scent that identifies them and draws in alphas. I wonder if they are already responding to her. Images I’ve tried to forget slam into my brain, leaving the taste of bile on my tongue.
I push back my cowl, my hair falling around my face, gleaming pale in the reflected light of their candles.
“Girl,” I hiss, carefully not looking at the males.
She stops, looking at me with hostility that fades into curiosity. The boys grumble and hold up weapons they scavenged.
I take a step closer to her and crouch down so I look less threatening. I hold out my hands to show I have no weapons.
