-Background: The story is set in the ‚Danger Days' world by MCR. This means that society is controlled by better Living Industries (BL/ind), who force their medication on everybody and oppress all resistance with violence. The Killjoys are four vigilantes who rebel against BL/ind with arms and murder. They live in the desert around Battery City.

The story is written from the POV of a ten-year-old girl living under the BL/ind system.

I.

Time had a way of adjusting to the circumstances.

At boring times, it would just stretch and linger whereas it seemed to pass in the blink of an eye at good times. Not that she'd had so much of those in the last months. Maybe, she reflected, it was not so much that time itself adjusted but that it was adjusted by the people who owned it. She had no doubt about the fact that someone owned time since literally everything belonged to the people from BL/ind.

This school, for example. Or her life.

Realizing her thoughts were drifting away from her instructor's voice, the girl sat up straight in an attempt to focus. She couldn't afford to get caught thinking about anything other than the social system of Batter City, which was what she'd been lectured about for over an hour.

Strange things had happened to pupils who had been detected not thinking what they were supposed to. There were rumors about a boy who'd been caught doodling during instructions and had disappeared for a few days afterwards, being all weird and numb as he returned. They said the drawing had shown himself laughing.

Her eyes flickered to the huge screen in the top left corner of the wall. It had come alive only once during all the time she'd been in this school. A voice had ordered one of her classmates to go see the school coordinator. It was quiet now, though.

The girls closed her eyes for an instant, suppressing the urge to sigh before forcing herself to concentrate on the instructor. She wondered why the owners of time had to be so cruel.

...

As she walked through the corridor an hour later, she felt as if her mind was wrapped in thick layers of dust. There was not a thing she remembered from the instructor's sermon, but she didn't care. As usually, there were only whispered conversations between the students. They were out drowned by a BL/ind computer voice babbling about the importance of a healthy life and the company's inventions to achieve it. The speech was supported by animations on the screens that were installed at every corner of the white walls. She walked past the animated BL/ind-TV-lady, not bothering to have a single look at her. All of this was perfectly normal; it had been the same every day she'd ever been at this school. And why wouldn't it?

She didn't fall for the lady's fake smile; it had been a long time since she'd seen a genuine smile on someone's face.

The girl started as a sudden, loud beep came from the speakers and the watch on her wrist at the same time. Everybody in the hall stopped and pulled their dose out of the box attached to their belt. Surprised about how she could have forgotten it was time for taking the medicine, she reached for her belt in order to take her own dose. For a short moment, she looked at the gray pill in her hand. It looked like exactly like every other pill she'd ever taken: round, flat, with the BL/ind symbol on it. The smiley face still gave her an uncomfortable feeling, though she'd known it for as long as she could remember. Maybe it was normal to feel weirded out when you're about to swallow a smiley face.

It took her only seconds to swallow the pill for she was so used to it. She could feel it slide down into her stomach then dissolve to deliver its contents into her blood circuit, and a well-known numbness began to spread in her body. After a few moments, all thoughts about time, unison and fake smiles were gone.

...

The sign on the door read 'Home I where the heart is'.

For most people, coming home meant entering their own little space where they were free to be themselves.

It did not for her.

She hadn't felt at home anywhere in this city for years. Perhaps her heart just wasn't in Battery City. Perhaps she had no heart at all, or perhaps it had been devoured by all the pills, because she has a faint memory of a time before taking a daily dose was obligatory. She might be mistaken, but their apartment had seemed a lot friendlier, more like a home then.

The girl opened the door and stepped into a narrow, white hall. It was completely empty except for two pairs of dark boots, both of them bigger than her own. So her parents were home. She didn't bother to call and tell them she was back, they wouldn't answer anyway. Leaving her boots in the hall, she went into the kitchen to grab an apple before heading for the living room. Her parents were sitting at the table, books in front of them. Neither one was reading, though. They were vacantly staring at the screen on the wall, their faces blank and expressionless. Of course, there was the usual BL/ind program flickering across the screen; the face of the news reporter was reflected in the lucent eyes of the couple. A shade of orange crawled across everything in the room as the sun finally began to disappear behind the horizon. The girl leaned in the doorway, resting her forehead against the cool fabric. She stood there, unnoticed, just looking at them until the last bit of sunlight had vanished.

Feeling nothing at all.