The words land low and cold in my stomach, worse than hunger, because hunger is simple. This isn’t.
I throw the rest of the strip away when I’m done, even though I should probably lick the grease off my fingers and wish for more. Then I go back to the building before evening, walking fast, shoulders tight, head down. No work. Almost no food. No good options left.
The notice flashes the second I step into my room.
PAYMENT DUE. FINAL WARNING.
I freeze just inside the door and stare at it. The letters blur for a second. I blink hard. Still there.
I sink onto the bed and press the heels of my hands against my eyes. I’m trying. God, I’m trying. Ever since the funerals. The debt. The clinic took what little we had and still let them die. There was no one left but me.
I’ve done everything I could. I’ve cleaned floors until my back ached. Sorted salvage until my fingers split. Taken every decent job I could get. But decent jobs don’t keep a woman like me afloat for long. Not here. Not alone. Not without a family. Not without somebody powerful enough to make the circling wolves back off.
My stomach twists again. I lower my hands and look around the room. The half-empty shelf. The weak heater. The thin blanket. The blinking red notice on the wall. Everything in here looks temporary. Fragile. One missed payment away from being gone.
I do the math because I always do the math. Two more days, maybe three. Maybe less. Less if I get sick. Less if prices go up again. Less if the landlord gets tired of waiting. Less if one of the men in this building decides a woman running out of choices is easier to trap.
That thought hits me so hard my chest locks. Not the fear of starving. I’ve already been starving. It’s the other fear. The real one. The fear of being cornered, of being pushed and pushed until one day I walk across the strip, open the wrong door, and tell myself it’s temporary. Just for a little while. Just enough to eat. Just enough to stay inside one more week. Just enough to survive.
My lungs pull in air too shallow. I force myself to breathe slower.
In. Out. Again.
“No,” I whisper into the room.
My voice sounds thin. Small. I clutch the blanket harder.
“No.”
No brothel. No pretending I chose it when hunger chose for me. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m still a virgin. Maybe that shouldn’t matter as much as it does right now, but it does. It matters because so much has already been taken from me piece by piece. Food. My safety. My family. The life I thought I’d have. I can’t stand the thought of this being taken too.
Somewhere down the hall, somebody laughs. A door slams. The heater rattles and coughs like it might die in the night. I sit there alone in the dim room with an empty shelf, a blinking rent warning, and a body that feels too tired to belong to someone my age.
Tomorrow I have to find something. Anything. Because if I don’t, Mars is going to decide for me.
Chapter 2
Keandra
The next morning is worse because now I know exactly how little I have left. Hunger is easier to bear when you still have something. A few scraps on the shelf. Some credits hidden away. Some small lie you can tell yourself for one more day. This morning, there is almost nothing left.
The grain meal is gone. The water recycler sputters when I turn it on, then makes a grinding sound that turns my stomach. I know that sound. It means it needs service soon. It means another thing I can’t pay for.
The rent notice glows red on the wall.
PAYMENT DUE. FINAL REVIEW PENDING.
I stare at it for a second too long. My stomach feels so empty it aches. Not just hunger now. A hollow, scraping pain. The kind that makes my body feel like it is starting to eat itself out of spite.
I shower fast, braid my hair, and pull on the same clothes I wore yesterday. The coat is still too thin and worn. The corridor is still too cold. Nothing has improved overnight. I don’t know why some stupid part of me keeps expecting that it might.
When I step outside, I make my face go blank. That matters here. Looking scared is bad. Looking weak is worse. The hall is crowded already. Shift workers leaving. Night workers coming back.
Mrs. Talan is at the end of the hall with both her kids wrapped around her legs while she argues with a building rep at her door.
“Please,” she says, voice cracking. “Just one more week.”
The rep doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t get rude. He just repeats policy in the same flat tone like he’s said it a hundred times already today and none of the endings ever change. I hear enough. If she doesn’t pay by evening, they lock her out. The words sit heavy in my chest all the way down the stairs.
