Offer accepted. Confirmation received. Contract review advancing to the next stage. Travel notice pending.
For a moment, I can only stare. Then the room feels different. Just as small. Just as cold. Just as poor. But not endless anymore.
I lower the tablet slowly into my lap and let out a breath I think I have been holding for five years. Tomorrow, everything will begin to change.
Chapter 5
Keandra
Iwake before the room’s light cycle shifts, the same as always. For one strange, disorienting second, I forget what I did last night. Then reality settles back in. The red notice is still on the wall. The heater still rattles. The air still smells faintly of dust and metal. My stomach still aches. Nothing in the room looks or feels different.
My wrist tag chimes. I jerk upright so fast the blanket knots around my legs. Another chime follows, then another. My heart starts pounding.
For one horrifying second, I think something has already gone wrong. The contract was revoked. I signed something wrong. Someone changed their mind during the night and now I am right back where I started, only crueler this time because I let myself believe it was real.
My fingers shake as I open the display.
Transfer received. Relocation advance deposited. Travel preparation notice is active. Report to the Tigris liaison office by fourteen hundred.
Below it, the credit balance stares back at me. My breath stalls in my lungs. I The number on my wrist tag makes my stomach twist in disbelief. have never seen that much money attached to my name in my life. Not when my parents were still alive. Not after they died. Not even in the small, brief stretch after the inheritance they left me dropped into my account and I thought maybe, if I was careful enough, I could make it last.
This is not wealth. Not to people in the higher sectors. But to me, it looks enormous. It looks impossible. It looks like food and medicine and heat and rent and not having to count every mouthful before I swallow it. I stare until my vision blurs. It is real. That is the first thought that fully settles into my body. Real. Not a dream. Not a trick. Not some polished lie meant to bait desperate women. Real.
A sound comes out of me before I can stop it. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sob. Something thin and rough in between.
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes and breathe through the sting building there. Five years. Five years of scraping and stretching and praying that one more day of effort might somehow drag me out of the hole. And now, in one quiet morning, the weight on my chest loosens just enough for me to finally understand how heavy it has been.
My stomach twists hard, reminding me I’m still hungry. This time, when I look back at the balance on my wrist tag, hunger doesn’t come with panic. It comes with choices.
I throw on my coat and leave the building so fast I forget to braid my hair.
The market strip is only just opening. Shutters rolling up. Stall screens lighting. Steam rising from cooking units. Delivery carts humming down the lane.
The same place that looked gray and cruel yesterday feels strange under my feet now. Unreal. Like I’m walking through the shell of a life I already started stepping out of.
I go straight to the nearest hot food stall and almost stumble when I reach the counter, I'm so used to scanning for the cheapest thing that it takes me a second to understand I don’t have to today.
The vendor looks bored.
“What do you want?”
I swallow hard. The menu glows in bright rows. Egg wraps. Grain cakes. Protein strips. Sweet bread. Hot tea. Real fruit cups flown in from greenhouse sectors. I can’t remember the last time I had fruit. My eyes catch on it and stay there.
“Two egg wraps,” I say, then change it in the same breath because the old fear still moves faster than the new relief. “No. One. And tea.”
The vendor gives me a bored look.
“That all?”
I stare at the menu again. The number on my wrist tag feels almost unreal.
“And the fruit cup.”
When the food comes, wrapped and steaming, I carry it to the edge of the strip and sit on a low metal barrier near a service pipe.
I open the wrap carefully. The smell hits me so hard my stomach clenches. Eggs. Spice. Melted fat. Warm bread. My first bite almost undoes me. It is too hot and too rich and too much all at once. I have to lower it and blink hard a few times before I trust myself to keep eating without crying in the middle of the market.
I eat everything. Every bite. Every smear of sauce. Every piece of fruit, sweet and cold and so fresh it almost hurts my tongue. I drink the tea slowly, feeling the warmth slide down into my belly, and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel full enough to sit still without pain.
