Probably should have mentioned this in the last chapter, but Sam, Dean, Castiel, Gabriel, Ruby, John, and Mary belong to Eric Kripke of Supernatural. This universe, repo men, Rotti, Luigi, Amber, Pavi, Zydrate, Graverobber, grave robbers, and Nathan belong to Terrence Zdunich, Darren Smith, and Darren Lynn Bousman of Repo! The Genetic Opera.

No one reviewed my first chapter! I don't know how anyone feels about it, but maybe since it was just a teaser, no one really knew how to feel about it. So hopefully this chapter will elicit a response from my devoted readers...


Sam slumped against the alley wall, eyes closed and breathing deeply. He wasn't sleeping even though he looked like it. That was the whole point, though.

He was curled up, trying to look as small as possible. This was easier said than done—at twenty, he'd reached an impressive height of seventy-six inches, and even though his life didn't allow him any time to exercise, save for running from the GeneCops, his shoulders were still broad and he cut a fairly impressive figure.

He heard the telltale click of a switchblade being flicked open somewhere off to his left and he kept his eyes closed, tensing imperceptibly. Then the blade was being pressed to his throat as a cruel, unusually high-pitched voice said, "Give me your money."

Sam opened his eyes. His would-be mugger was around five and a half feet tall, with dark, greasy hair and what looked like a week's worth of scruff on his face. Slowly, Sam got to his feet, sliding gingerly up the wall and holding his hands out to the side in a submissive pose. "Easy now. No one needs to get hurt," he said.

"Your money," the mugger said again, looking decidedly less sure of himself now that Sam had straightened up to his full height.

All at once, Sam's arm flew out, catching the other man's wrist, and he twisted until the switchblade fell from the mugger's hand and into Sam's other hand. He spun him around, pinning both the man's arms to his body and shoving the knife against his neck.

The other man began to hyperventilate. "Oh, my God, I'm sorry! Please don't kill me!" he gasped between panicked gasps.

"Calm down," Sam said lazily, freeing the other man's arms to pat down his pockets and fish out the coins he found. "I don't want your life. Just your cash."

"No, no, no, please! Please, don't—"

Not finding any more money in his pockets, Sam released the other man, sliding the blade closed and tucking it behind him, in the waistband of his dirty jeans. "You should have thought of that before you tried to rob me. I could have killed you." Physically, he could have, but he'd never killed anyone before in his life, and he wasn't sure he could actually do it unless his own life was at stake. "Be grateful I'm letting you live." He picked up his worn leather jacket and slid it over his shoulders. Casting a glance through the alley, he saw a few sets of curious eyes on him, but he was unconcerned with them. All the junkies were vaguely interested in everything, but willing to die for nothing—except another hit of Zydrate.

Speaking of which…

He shook his shoulder-length light-brown hair back and walked away from where the former mugger was now huddled on the alley street, whimpering. Near where the alley emptied into the street, next to a rust-flecked Dumpster, his usual dealer, a woman named Ruby, was standing, filing her nails. She, unlike most of the occupants of this alley, wasn't actually homeless. Dealers usually made enough off their black-market trade to afford a shitty apartment near to either the cemeteries or where they dealt. Only a few—most notably, the one who was simply known as "Graverobber," even though just about every dealer, unless they had connections in laboratories, robbed graves for their Zydrate—remained homeless by choice. Probably a smart choice, because when GeneCops cracked down, no matter how infrequently it happened, the homeless were the ones who got away the most easily.

"Hey, Sammy," Ruby said, not looking up as he approached. Only one person around here walked with that much purpose.

He tried not to flinch at the casual way she called him "Sammy." Only one person had ever been allowed to call him that, and he was dead now. It sounded too familiar, cut him too deep. "Ruby."

"The usual?" she asked, finally putting away her nail file.

"Yeah."

"Twenty-five."

"It was twenty only two days ago."

"Supply's running low. GeneCops are getting better about patrolling graveyards. You want it or not, Sammy?"

She probably realized that calling him "Sammy" made him more eager to buy, even if she didn't know why. He certainly wasn't going to tell her, either. But she exploited it. "Yeah," he muttered. He fished out all the money in his pockets. What he had plus what he'd just lifted off his would-be mugger totaled just over twenty-seven dollars. All his money in the world, and he was about to blow it on a hit of Zydrate. That thought gave him pause, until Ruby said in a singsong voice, "Sammy, I'm waiting."

He handed it over wordlessly and she grinned. From her bag, she pulled a glass vial, its contents glowing an unearthly but comforting blue. She pushed the vial into a special gun she'd withdrawn from a pocket and pulled Sam's arm toward her. "Here?" she asked, pressing the gun against his upper arm.

Sam nodded, biting his lip in anticipation.

She pulled the trigger, shooting the painkiller into his body. He hissed, his head falling back, and he stumbled backward until he slammed against the opposite wall and sank to the ground.

Zydrate was powerful and fast-acting, something that made it incredibly addictive. Street Zydrate was supposedly dangerous, but Sam knew better than to believe the GeneCo propaganda. They were the ones who ordered hits on patients who couldn't pay, after all. Still, any company that could create something as good as Zydrate couldn't be all bad.

It helped him forget Dean, after all, made the dull aching in his chest subside to nothing. It made the pain, both physically and emotionally, vanish into nothing. All he'd wanted for the last four years was to forget, not that he was alone, but that he'd ever known what happiness was.

Sam missed his brother. When he'd found that note Dean left him the morning after he died, a hole opened up in his chest. He knew his brother was gone. The last person in the world to care about him had given his life to keep him alive.

Sam didn't know what Dean had done just before he died, but whatever it was, a week later, he got a letter from GeneCo saying that the balance on his lungs was cancelled—in short, he was free from the horror of a repo man coming after him. He couldn't believe it, and for weeks, he waited for a knock to signal the arrival of the repo man. But the weeks faded into months, and he finally realized, a year after the fact, that he really was safe.

But it was meaningless. Dean was gone, and thanks to the trucks that roamed the streets at night, clearing up the corpses, Sam hadn't even been able to give him a proper burial next to their parents.

His thoughts faded into a pleasant buzzing, and the sensation of not being able to feel anything swept over him. He opened his eyes, knowing his pupils would be so dilated that his hazel irises would be a thin ring, and tried to focus on the alley around him. He couldn't keep his eyes open for more than a second or two at a time, and the whole world tilted around him.

Something further down the alley caught his eye, though, and he barely had time to register a set of golden-green eyes, long, slicked-back golden-blond hair, and an impish grin before he shut his eyes. When he opened them again, whoever it was who had been standing there had vanished.

He dismissed it. He couldn't care less. He was floating, drifting through nothing, a strange numbness flowing through him. This was why it was the preferred anesthetic for surgeries now. Since GeneCo patented it twenty years ago, it was first used during surgeries, and then it became the most-prescribed post-surgery painkiller as well. It was bliss.

He got his first taste of Zydrate just before his surgery when he was just nine years old, and the next thing he remembered was a day after the operation. They pumped him full of so much Zydrate in recovery that he ended up missing the rest of the year of school. But once the scars had healed, he remembered, distinctly, how easy it was to just stop taking Zydrate. Between the ages of ten and seventeen, he didn't take it once. It was only after Dean died that he remembered how Zydrate made him forget everything, and it made him long for that escape. Remembering Dean, remembering everything… that pain was too much. The loneliness from not having his brother anymore, the guilt from being the cause of his death—it all swirled around and around in his head, driving him nearly insane before he snapped, went down the street, and bought his first hit of street Zydrate.

He was hooked after that. He was able to control it—sort of—for the first two years or so, but around six months ago, he slipped completely. At that point, when faced with the choice of paying the rent and forced sobriety or being homeless and addicted, he made the choice that, even a year before, would have been unthinkable. After all, what did he care? The only cause he'd had to get up in the morning, the only person who had been worth the effort, was long gone.

He could look down on the junkies down the alley all he wanted, but deep down, he knew he was just like them. It was just one more thing Zydrate helped him to forget.


SO MUCH ANGST! I will angst, too, if no one lets me know how they like this story so far...