Fits and Starts

The Drowned City

Claire studied the wanted poster carefully. The surveillance photo was grainy and her face had been shadowed, but the composite was a little too accurate. She knew that it was only a matter of time before someone recognized her, and then she'd be done for.

She sighed. The bitter rage that had fueled her for so long was giving way to hopelessness and despair. It had been five years since her lover had been taken. She hadn't even known that Jacob was helping the rebels, but that hadn't stopped the police from taking her in for intense questioning after his arrest.

She stroked the scars on her cheek. The "questioning" had left her body covered with such reminders. The facial scarring marked her as an outcast; someone who had once fallen under suspicion and could therefore never be trusted. She'd been a kindergarten teacher before, but now she was forced to exist on the outskirts of society, begging and stealing and sleeping in the old subway tunnels with the rest of the exiles.

Her rage had first focused on Jacob for making her complicit in his crimes simply for loving him. She'd always been so careful to follow the law to the letter. She'd been taught to respect the laws and the government that passed them, and she'd passed the same lessons to her students as well. The government, after all, had kept them safe from the toxic water that flooded three quarters of the city and protected them from the mutants that lived beyond the sea wall.

She'd never questioned the benevolence of her government until she'd been on the recieving end of its cruelty; just as she'd never doubted her place in society until everyone she knew turned away from her. As her eyes opened, her rage turned to the government.

Citizens of  Sanctuary City lived under constant surveillance. Laws prohibited anti-goverment speech or protest. Marriage and reproduction required expensive permits. Criminals were dealt with harshly, with public executions being commonplace for thieves, murderers and rapists. Political dissidents like Jacob were taken into custody and never heard from again.

Claire could hardly believe she'd ever blindly followed her leaders and believed them good. All around her, normal, honest people went about their day to day lives believing that they were safe and secure thanks to their government. She'd been one of them just five, short years ago.

The surveillance photo on the poster was taken when she'd defaced a billboard filled with propaganda. It was a stupid guesture; her vandalism was completely erased in just a few hours, and now she was facing certain death when they caught her. She had no doubt that she would be caught, and soon. She'd tried to make a difference, to open the eyes of everyone that she could, but it was too little. Her death would be meaningless and painful, and no one would even remember that she had lived at all.

She drifted aimlessly through the city as night fell. The good, law-abiding citizens hurried home before curfew, but she had no home to go to. She could scurry

back to the subway tunnels like a rat, but hopelessness weighed heavily on her, so she continued walking.

Signs warned citizens away from the outer edge of the city, creating a half-mile wide ring of dead zone between the city's populace and the sea wall that kept the contaminated water at bay. She'd only ever seen photographs of the sea wall and the drowned city beyond. It had always seemed hauntingly beautiful to her, and she decided she might as well see it for herself before she died.

She made her way through the no-man's land at the edge of the city like a shadow. The buildings here bore the scars of the war and the unmistakeable signs of abandonment. No lights shone from the broken windows, and plant life was slowly filling in the cracks and crevices. Rats and stray cats and dogs roamed freely, fighting for scraps of food.