2164
Worthless. That's what Ann always knew she was. It's what the Reds told her she was; a Sand Dropping; children born from women that were high up on Red Sand. If they were lucky, they'd die in infancy. Most would either end up as duct rats and the survival rate of those were low enough as it was.
Here she was; ten years old, starving, and in rags that were held together with stitches and faith. She was perpetually cold to the bone in one of the few ducts that were large enough to hold her in a dilapidated building in the heart of the one of the worst cities to live in, especially if you were an orphan.
Ann crawled to the edge to see the same scene that looped to her already desensitized eyes. They were the sounds of people screaming in agony as they were beaten by gangs, corrupt police, or worse. Ann wasn't stupid to think what was going on out there could never happen to her. It was only a matter of time. However, she'd fight it until she was dead. She curled herself into a ball as another current of warm air gave her a brief reprieve from the cold. It was a miracle the heating systems still worked.
Even in Old Los Angeles, winter was winter. Just because there wasn't any snow didn't mean you could freeze to death. If the constant turf wars, rape gangs, corrupt cops, and junkies of all persuasions didn't kill you; the humidity and the carbon monoxide canopy would. The small group of other Sand Droppings she stayed with often had to huddle together at night in one of the safe houses to keep each other warm. However, every year, there would always be one or two of them that would go to sleep and never wake up.
Ann sighed and sat against the rusting steel plate as she wondered how long the heat was to last this time. It was a pattern she had learned. Some buildings would have their heat restored just long enough for it to get comfortable, then it would die again, which would prevent the myriad of squatters from taking up residence in the buildings to stay there.
It was a cursed blessing, if nothing else. It prevented girls like her from being caught by the aforementioned gangs that prowled the streets. She remembered seeing a pair of men in their twenties catch a duct rat as it tried to swipe a bit of food from them. She couldn't bear to watch when they pulled out the needles, Hallex, and the Red Sand on the kid. She never did see that one again, but she could only hope that the girl they got was able to get out alive. If not, the she hoped it was quick. Their kind didn't last long in the open.
Too soon, the heat died and that was Ann's signal to leave. Pretty soon, the Fourteenth Street Bones would be descending on this building like a bunch of hungry vultures for anyone stupid enough to get caught. Unceremoniously, she landed on the floor, littered with garbage and made a mad dash to the exit. She would have to make sure the fewer people saw her, the better. It was difficult, since she was already taller than most girls her age. Lithe, sure, but that was due to the limited diet of partially eaten, partially decomposed, and stolen food she could barely subsist on. The Reds were infamously stingy with their stores and if you wanted to eat in the Reds, the fewer scruples you had the more you ate.
You also had to be bigger, stronger, and faster than the rest of the rabble. Sure, she was taller and was moderately fast, but there was always someone that could beat her. It was always the same thing. There would always be two kids that would either gang up on her or one would jump her, while the other would snatch the food she had found herself. It soon made the dark skinned orphan realize that even among the outcasts, she was an outcast.
She wondered if it was her darker skin and jet black hair. Her violet eyes, the only other distinguishing feature about her, were often marred by the filth she had to wade through. In order to make sure that her hair couldn't be pulled, she would often have to resort to using discarded implements to make sure it stayed short. In a morbid sense of practicality, the blades she used to cut her hair would also save her life in the off chance one of the other gangs caught up with her. A Twelfth Street Blue had learned the hard way and was since renamed 'Cyclops'.
That was one of the reasons why she stuck with the Tenth Street Reds. They were more 'methodical', and that was being generous. They claimed to be long term thinkers and it showed in unusual ways, as they made sure they could hold their own against the other gangs. However, like in any other gang, it was only a matter of whom you knew. She hated it. She hated them. However, she had no choice. It was either being their toady, or being tossed to the wolves. While they didn't abuse her, they made it clear that loyalty to the Reds was first and foremost and the consequences of disloyalty.
It turned children into animals for their perverse amusement to see children fighting each other for scraps of food they had no doubt gotten via dubious means. Even then, there was no guarantee that they would even get the food unless one was a full-fledged member of the gang.
She then heard the sound of a struggle in the alleyway to her left. She knew better than to leave well enough alone, however, she felt compelled to sneak down to the edge and peak around to see the source of the commotion.
"Please, no," a girl in a hood wheezed helplessly as she tried to retrieve a small worthless trinket from what appeared to be two boys, no older than she was. She also appeared to have extreme difficultly moving and it was not just from one of the boys holding his foot on her back. The shape of her body gave Ann the impression that she was no doubt one of the deformed kids you would see once in a while. They never lasted long. Ann couldn't see much of her face, but it was clear that she could barely function on her own and it, no doubt, made her an easy target amongst the animals that littered the streets.
"No, freak! It's ours now," the taller of the two said as he kept the small piece of metal and pondered how much he'd get from the Reds after he turned it in to one of the leaders. The chances of any of the rare deformed kids holding anything of worth was between slim and none. If any of them ever survived, it was because everyone else thought them plagued and were often shunned and they would inevitably starve to death.
"Think we should take her with us? Maybe they'll give us something for her. Put her in a freakshow or something," the other boy said as he searched through the girl's singular sack for any other valuables.
Ann found her breath coming in fast, but quiet enough that the two boys didn't hear her. The sound of the girl's sobs brought a snarl to her face as the urge to violence grew in leaps and bounds. While she wasn't some kind of marine, she knew how to fight enough to beat someone within an inch of their life. Most 'civilized' people would have balked at the sight of a ten year old girl being capable of such a thing, but then again, they didn't have to endure the hell she did.
Ann saw herself in the same position that poor girl was in. Quietly, she picked up a small, but solid piece of pipe from a nearby trashcan. She only had one chance at this, and if she failed, she'd no doubt be in a similar position as the other girl or worse.
Both boys' backs were turned to her and they seemed to be either busy tormenting the deformed girl or fruitlessly searching her bag.
"Oh, hey!" the boy looting the girl's things said, "food! I knew we picked right!" he said as he pulled out a candy bar and a small bag of rice, no doubt a gift from the Our Lady of Perpetual Vigilance, the only real neutral ground as far as the gangs were concerned. While most people in OLA held no real belief in providence, the fact that this small group of volunteers kept it going was proof enough that there was something out there.
Ann knew she had to move now and the instant when both boys were enraptured with the sight of food, she struck. The boy who had his foot on the girl tumbled over when the pipe hit the back of his head and before the smaller boy could gasp, she turned on him and swung once more. He had his arm up to soften the blow somewhat, but bruises he would not doubt keep from this experience would remind him, provided he lived long enough.
Again and again, Ann swung the pipe and hit the boy. He screamed in pain and called for help, but no one would hear. That was the harsh reality of kids like them. With each collision, the snarl on Ann's face grew more and more pronounced as all the anger she had felt bubbled up in a geyser of violence.
"You're hurting him!" Ann heard the girl say between sobs. Incredulous, she stopped beating the boy, whirled on the girl she had just saved, and gaped.
"Wh… what?!" Ann said as she ignored the boy crawling away from the scene to leave his 'buddy' at Ann's mercy. If you got caught unaware, you paid for it, more often than not, with your life. No one would ever come back for you. It was a fact everyone on the streets were aware of.
The deformed girl looked up to her, the visible part of her face red with tears and swollen, "you were hitting him."
Ann felt the anger rise again as she asked with a frown, "So?"
The smaller girl wheezed loudly as her breath came back, "you didn't need to do that." The way she said it told Ann that the girl had difficulties breathing and it was normal for her. When she tried to stand up, it looked like it would take a lot of time and more effort than it would for a normal person.
Ann couldn't put her finger on it, but seeing the poor girl struggle to even stand made the rage she felt a moment before vanish. She let go of the pipe and reached down to help her stand up and retrieve her scant belongings.
"We should get him out of here," she croaked, in regard to the unconscious boy at their feet. Her statement brought back the shock in Ann's face.
"What? After what he did to you?" The law of the city was the law of the jungle. There was no law. Only survival.
The girl only looked to her with her good eye and said weakly, "he was hungry. Like we are."
Ann didn't know why, but the way she said it and the gaze the girl had with her good eye seemed to expose something inside that she didn't know existed. She looked down, as though she felt ashamed of what she had done. She began to sniff and felt her lip quiver a bit.
What Ann didn't expect was the crippled girl reached out and embraced her waist with an arm as lean and malnourished as her own. That aside, she seemed lively enough to brace both of them.
Ann looked down to her new companion, who smiled, despite the difficulty with the many tumors on her face, and said hoarsely, "I'm Nora Shepard. Pleased to meet you."