I could hear them all around me; the screams of every person I had passed. I was running but my legs weren't taking me anywhere. I could hear the screams of the family that had been ripped from their home by the giant hand as I slipped over their pools of blood. At the end of the path was my brother. He waved to me with the bright smile he was known for; oblivious to his surroundings. "Caden!" I called out to him as I tried to run toward him, "Caden!" My running wasn't taking me closer and the distance only seemed to grow. I reached out my hand to him, but a massive face suddenly appeared behind him. I screamed in horror as a titan devoured my brother before my very eyes.

I woke up on the street with my head buried into my arms and my knees pulled up against me. My sobs were choked and muffled through my sleeves and my dirty face was streaked with tears. Even if my cries had been loud, I knew they would be ignored. I had to come back to my surroundings and realize exactly where I was. This town was in Wall Rose and was where all of the survivors and refugees from the Titan attack had been gathered. The term "gathered" actually meant "dumped and left to survive", as I had soon learned. We had been here for three days. With no work, no place to stay and nothing to eat, hundreds of people now sat in the streets. A crowd of adults were shouting at the Military Police with a fierce persistence, begging them for help and shelter they were unable to provide. Two grown men were wrestling over a blanket by a dumpster. The larger of the two snapped the other's neck and ran to leave the body in the street. A middle-aged man was roaming the corner with a glassy gaze as he chanted to himself and suddenly screamed about phantom hands reaching from the sky. No one looked towards him as all knew that he was just one of the few who had lost his mind.

As for me and the other children, we stuck to the shadows and hid. Our faces were expressionless and our gazes empty with the horrors we had witnessed and the loved ones we lost. There were many of us lined up along the walls of this darkened alleyway; staring off into space, sobbing or curled up limp against the corners. None of us spoke to one another. No one acknowledged a passerby or even looked up from their imaginary point of focus. Our souls were empty. The youth we had in us had been ripped away and left with walking husks in its place. We moved, but we were no longer alive.

I turned to examine the children who were around me more closely. We ranged in age from twelve to as young as two; the youngest was a small girl huddled up against her six year old brother. I whipped my head away with new tears forming in my eyes at the realization. A girl and her older brother, that was how it should have been. Though they were alone, at least they had managed to survive together. It was more than I had now.

I felt a dark emptiness having settled over me as I rocked slightly back and forth on my knees. I was alone; I had no one and had lost everything. My brother was dead and my father hadn't been on the ship. I had looked for him everywhere the second we had arrived in Wall Rose, but he hadn't been among the passengers. Even if they had somehow managed to survive the titans for a day, they wouldn't be alive for long. They were trapped in the walls with thousands of titans all around them who could scent humans and would stop at nothing until each person was devoured.

I jumped up and ran to retch in a nearby bucket; reimagining my brother being eaten over and over again and his blood pouring out into the streets. My legs shook weakly as I sank back down against the wall. The flashes of him wouldn't leave my mind and I was afraid to close my eyes for fear that they would worsen.

"Quickly! Hurry!" Three teenage boys with scruffy hair were shoving their way through a forming crowd in the clearing. More and more adults were filing in like haggard zombies with their clothes torn and hands raised. Somewhere among the noise I could hear a bell ringing and the shouts of commanding military police officers. They were handing out food, but I felt no will to get up and join the masses in waiting.

"Are you cutting me?" A gaunt-looking man yanked the collar of the thin-framed dark-haired man in front of him. His face was turned back into an expression of anger and disgust. "Get behind me, I was here first you pig!"

"Say that to me again!" The dark haired man launched himself in a frenzy of punches. The accuser fought back until both were tussling on the ground like feral animals. I had witnessed this scene nearly a dozen times since arriving and even now it barely regarded alarm.

"Get up you rats or you will be lucky to reach your next meal!" A uniformed officer stood over them with the barrel of his gun pointed first at the chest of one, then the other. I looked away and my attention drifted as the conflict continued. What was the point of all this? What was the point of anything anymore? I buried my head back into my arms and continued to fight my visions of horror and despair, drowning out all other noise. I didn't feel I could take any more of the pain and darkness that was now choking me and threatening to take me under.

As my fingers gripped through my hair, I suddenly felt a hand tap my shoulder. I slowly peered up through a curtain of my messy dark curls. Next to me there stood a boy with an outstretched hand, handing me a piece of bread. His clothes were torn and caked with dirt and his face was streaked with mud as well, but the one thing that stood out about him was his fiery hair that stuck out in all directions. I blinked in confusion as I realized the boy was the same one I had met a few days before, though now much dirtier in appearance. His face was grim and less alarmed than when I had encountered him in Shiganshina. When I didn't respond immediately to his presence, he offered the bread once again, pushing it further towards my reach.

"Take it. You have to eat something, or are you just going to starve?" The boy questioned. I looked at him for a moment and then looked away in a sudden emptiness. I was not hungry and could not ever imagine being hungry again, nor did I feel like talking to another person. The boy furrowed his brow in response and then spoke again. His tone became more of a demand than a request, "Take it already!" I scrambled suddenly as he tossed the bread roughly down at me. I was forced to catch the small loaf as it rolled off my head and scattered crumbs everywhere.

"What do you want from me?! Leave me alone!" I faced him with a sudden snap, though unlike my tone, my expression clearly shown that of hurt, grief and pain. I had been through enough, why did he have to choose to bother me once more? Out of anyone that could have possibly survived, why did it have to be him that I recognized? It could've been so many other people...

"Is that what you really want, though?" The boy's brown eyes were masked with seriousness as he met my pained blue ones. A lump caught in my throat as I found myself staring at them, reminding me of my brother. They weren't as light nor were they glittering with humor, but I found myself wishing for Caden all the same. It felt like a half of me had been ripped a part; I wasn't the same without my brother. The strange boy continued to speak; "Leave me alone, leave me alone," he repeated in my tone with a sigh, both from this time and from when he had snuck up on me a few days ago. "Well, like it or not, you are going to be alone now. Your home is gone, there is no place for us here. I'm guessing you lost your family too," He tilted his head to one side but didn't seem all too sympathetic. It was more like he was merely stating facts.

I said nothing as I continued to look away with the bread in my hand. I focused my gaze on a single ant that was crawling through a crack in the wall. It scurried off across the wall, with no other ants behind it. That was me: I had escaped through the wall, but now there was no one to follow me. Was it even better out here than it was inside with the titans?

The boy seemed to take no notice of my silence and continued on as though I had been listening. "Well, you can either live alone for the rest of your life here on this street- assuming you don't die of starvation first- or you can come with me and survive," He took a second loaf of bread out of his jacket pocket and began to munch on it casually. For one who had been through the same situation as I had, he didn't seem as bothered. In fact, I wouldn't say he had phased much at all.

Dwelling on this thought, I looked around the street once more at the children who were gathered and curled up against the same wall I leaned against. They were like lifeless dolls, and I was suddenly struck by how helpless they- no, we- all looked. They were waiting; waiting for help, waiting for food, waiting for a solution, or possibly waiting for their parents to come back. I realized with a shock that no one was going to help them. No one was going to help me. I had my brother, but without him, what adult was going to take care of me or even notice me? The ones in the crowd were fighting each other over every little possession, too self-absorbed to care about the children who were waiting here in the alleyway. They were worried about themselves. The children would all wait, but for what? Would they die here waiting for help that would never come?

I suddenly remembered what the same boy had told me days ago. It didn't make sense to me then, but it began to echo through my head just now: "No one around here helps anyone but themselves. Have you even been paying attention; good people don't win, that's the hard truth! Get used to it."

I felt my heart sinking as I made a dark realization. He had been right; the good people hadn't won... My brother had died while allowing me to escape. No one here was going to risk their survival by giving up their food or possessions to another person, not even a child. These children would die because all of the good people were already dead. The survivors of Maria had won by thinking of themselves and putting their own safety first. No one had helped that old woman when she had fallen in the midst of the titans. If they had they would have more than likely been consumed.

Even me...

My heart suddenly wrenched with a mixture of guilt and horror. The faces, the screams; I hadn't helped any of the victims that I had passed by and instead had selfishly focused on my own life and of getting back to my brother. I had run, and I had never stopped. Not for the old woman, not for the child, not for anyone. I had run for my own life. I had let them die without even trying help. I hadn't been the hero, but yet I had fought hard to reach my brother. He had saved me, with the hopes that I would live instead.

"Make it worth something…"

I tried not to cry once more as I pictured the last time I saw his face. Even though he knew he was going to die, he had smiled somewhat, because he had saved me. I couldn't let him down.

Slowly I rose to my feet with the bread gripped in my hand. I turned to look at the red-haired boy, who was waiting ever-so-patiently while eating his loaf. He looked up only slightly curious as he pulled a burnt piece from the end and tossed it onto the ground.

"Ok. I'll come with you..." I answered him finally as my weary blue eyes clouded with my resolve.