Chapter 1
The morning always lied.
If you stared at it long enough, it almost looked gentle, soft pale light slipping between the slats of my blinds, dust motes floating like lazy snow. If I didn’t move, if I didn’t breathe too hard, I could pretend the quiet was real. That somewhere outside my window, the world was still the way it had been when I was a child. Before uniforms. Before knives. Before the scar.
My alarm buzzed at 07:00 exactly. Not 6:59. Not 7:01. The Sovereign liked precision. It liked routines. People who moved on predictable tracks were easier to control.
I stared at the alarm for a few extra seconds, then finally reached out and shut it off. The room fell into silence again, and I let my hand rest there, fingers splayed over the old plastic clock as my pulse thudded against it.
Just five more minutes.
Not in bed. I didn’t trust myself with that. Five minutes turned into twenty, and then I was sprinting down the street, and sprinting drew attention, and attention drew guards.
So I gave myself five minutes here. Still. Awake. Facing the ceiling of my tiny apartment and pretending the world outside hadn’t already decided what my body was for.
I blinked up at the hairline cracks spidering through the plaster. They hadn’t been there when I first moved in four years ago. Or maybe they had and I just hadn’t learned to look up yet. Back then, I was fresh from the Selection, skin still healing, eyes still raw from crying I never seemed to remember doing.
Now the cracks twisted and curled like a map. Veins. Branches. Escape routes that went nowhere at all.
My gaze slid to the old photograph propped on my nightstand, wedged between my alarm clock and the chipped glass of water I’d forgotten to finish last night. The photo was worn, edges soft and curling from too much touching. My parents stood in the tiny kitchen of our old house, my mom leaning back against my dad, his arms around her waist. Her head tipped back in laughter. His nose pressed into her hair like he couldn’t get enough.
There was flour on her cheek. His shirt was half unbuttoned. No uniforms. No ID chips visible. No fear.
I swallowed, throat tight. When I was little, I used to sneak out of bed and sit at the top of the hallway steps, peeking down into that kitchen. They would turn on old music, some crackling playlist my father loved, and they would dance. Bare feet on linoleum. Hands gliding over familiar skin. Kissing like they had all the time in the world.
Like the future belonged to them.
I’d wrap my arms around my knees and watch, certain that one day I’d have that too. Someone who looked at me like I was the only thing in the room that mattered. Not an obligation. Not a number. Not a unit on a digital roster.
Just me.
“Stop it,” I muttered under my breath, dragging a hand over my face. “Not today.”
It was already today.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and planted my feet on the cold floor. The boards creaked under my weight, and the sound was oddly comforting. Imperfect. Human. This apartment was in one of the older buildings, spared the sleek, glass-and-steel remodeling the Sovereign favored because it wasn’t worth the investment. That was exactly why I’d asked for it when they’d allowed me to move out of the dormitory block.
I liked the way the walls remembered things.
I stood, stretching until my spine popped, then padded across the room. The chill in the air slipped under the hem of my sleep shirt, raising goosebumps along my thighs. The window clicked when I unlatched it and pushed it open. Morning air slid in, cool, slightly metallic, laced with the faint smell of exhaust, fried dough from the corner stand, and the harsh bite of sterilization agents the street-cleaning drones sprayed at dawn.
I leaned my forearms on the windowsill and looked down.
The street below was already stirring. Delivery trucks hummed along the curb, screens flickering on their sides with advertisements approved by the Sovereign, new tech, new chips, new pleasure houses, all framed by the same sleek emblem: a ring of silver circling an eye. People in muted colors moved along the sidewalks in steady streams, heads down, shoulders slightly hunched, as if the sky might reach down and touch them if they stood too straight.
The city sounded…busy. Alive. Laughter, distant. Voices blending together. The hiss of a bus. The clack of someone’s hard-soled shoes rushing across the crosswalk as the light blinked red.
If you didn’t look at the patrols, you could almost miss them.
Almost.
Two guards turned the corner like they owned the pavement, boots in perfect sync. Their uniforms were a sharp contrast to the soft morning light, dark gray, almost black, with the Sovereign emblem stitched over their hearts. Their visors were up right now, faces exposed to the mild spring air, but I knew the way those visors looked when they snapped down. How they erased the man underneath.
My eyes dropped automatically.
Muscle memory. A trained survival reflex that lived in my spine now. Head down. Don’t linger. Don’t challenge.
But the urge to look hovered under my skin, that tiny rebellious itch that never fully went away. Once, I hadn’t lowered my gaze. Once, I’d met a guard’s eyes full-on, fury burning so bright in my chest it turned into something reckless and sharp.
I could still taste that moment. The hot, acid-sweet spike of anger. The small crowd. The way his lip curled, slow and delighted, when he realized I wasn’t afraid of him.
I closed my eyes briefly and my arm tingled ghost-cold.
The scar was pale now, a thin jagged line along my forearm, but some mornings it still felt fresh. The way his knife had glinted as he drew it. The way the other guards hadn’t stepped in. The way the civilians had watched, eyes wide and silent, as if my pain was a cautionary broadcast they’d all seen before.
The way my mother had screamed.
“Look down, Kali.” Her voice echoed from memory, raw and terrified. “Please, just look down.”
I hadn’t. Not that day. And I’d paid for it in blood.
I rubbed my thumb along the seam of the window frame until the sting in my arm faded back to something dull and manageable. Then I shut the window, cutting off the sound of the morning rush.
Time to move.
I grabbed my towel and headed for the bathroom, flicking on the light. It buzzed to life, yellowish and unflattering. The mirror over the sink was just big enough to show my face and shoulders. I studied myself for a second.
Same narrow jaw. Same full mouth. Same eyes that always looked like they were holding back words they weren’t allowed to say.
Pretty enough to be Chosen.
Dumb enough, on paper, to be written off.
My mother had made sure of that.
I twisted the shower knob and waited until the water ran hot, steam curling up to fog the edges of the mirror. The shower stall was small, just enough space to turn without banging elbows against tile, but it was mine. No communal stalls. No eyes. No cameras in the corners disguised as sprinklers. I’d checked twice when I first moved in, running my fingers along every seam, tapping every fixture like a paranoid animal.
When I stepped under the water, the heat hit me in a rush, pounding against the tight knots in my shoulders. I braced my hands on the wall and let it wash over me, tilting my face up so the stream blurred everything into shapeless warmth.
This was the only place I let my mind wander.
Outside the shower, I needed control. I needed routines and neutral expressions and the right amount of compliance. Too much obedience made you invisible. Too little made you a problem. I’d already learned the cost of being a problem.
But here, wrapped in heat and steam, I let myself drift.
I thought of my parents again. My father’s hand on the small of my mother’s back as he led her into an impromptu twirl between the stove and the fridge. The way she’d squeal and swat at his chest when he bumped her into the counter, laughing. The music low, some old song about forever that I hadn’t understood at six but understood perfectly now.
Their love had been noisy. Messy. Full of little fights and apologies and kisses in doorways. They’d embarrass each other in public on purpose. They’d argue over nothing and then end up dancing again in the kitchen like the fight never happened.
They were married when the Sovereign took control. That had saved them from the Selection, at least. Married couples were allowed to stay together, as long as the women registered and complied up to forty. After that, your body was considered “spent,” and you could retire to a quiet, fenced-in life if you were lucky enough to get that far.
But I’d still watched it hollow them out.
I’d watched my mother straighten her shoulders and walk into those black cars when they came for her. Watched my father stand in the doorway, fists clenched so hard his knuckles went white, doing nothing because there was nothing to be done.
I wasn’t going to think about that.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my forehead to the tile. Water slid down my back, tracking along my spine.
I thought instead of something I’d never had.
Of hands on my waist, gentle. Of someone looking at me like their world tilted when I walked into a room. Of fingers tangled with mine under a table. Of kissing in a kitchen with music too loud, a body pressed against mine because they wanted me, not because I’d been scheduled.
I thought about what it would feel like for someone to choose me.
Not because I was on a roster. Not because my face had fit a category at eighteen. Not because my body was a service the Sovereign promised its elites.
But because they’d seen me. Heard me. Knew my stupid jokes and my stubborn streak and the way I couldn’t stand the sound of certain alarms. Knew the scar on my arm and the story behind it. Knew how angry I was, always, underneath the quiet.
Someone who wanted all of that.
The fantasy ached, sharp in my chest. Because I knew better. We all did, girls my age who’d grown up in this system. We knew what the world thought of us now: assets, resources, bodies on a schedule.
Toys with expiration dates.
I turned my face away from the water and exhaled hard.
You don’t get that, I told myself. You get a roster. You get call-times. You get a clean apartment and regulated healthcare and a yearly inspection to make sure your “services” remain viable.
Love wasn’t in the contract.
Still, the fantasy clung to me like steam as I washed my hair, fingers working shampoo through dark strands on autopilot. Underneath the sound of the water, I could almost hear my parents’ music again. That same worn-out song about forever.
By the time I shut off the shower, the mirror was a white blur, all edges and reflection wiped away. For a second, I liked that. I liked not having to see myself. Just an outline. A suggestion.
Then the fan kicked on, humming as it sucked some of the steam from the room, and my face slowly reappeared.
I wrapped the towel around myself and stepped back into the bedroom. The air outside the bathroom felt colder now, a sharp contrast against my damp skin. Goosebumps rose again, and I rushed to my dresser, pulling out underwear, a black bra, my standard work clothes.
I stacked my lives in neat piles on the bed.
Bar shift: black jeans, snug but not painted on. Black tank top, neckline modest enough to pass, low enough to draw tips. Thin silver hoops, nothing too flashy. A worn leather bracelet that had once been my father’s.
Civilian errands: gray hoodie, hair tied back, worn sneakers.
Summons: The dress hanging on the back of my closet door.
My eyes lingered on that last one and bile tickled the back of my throat. The dress was mandatory. Knee-length, dark blue, with a neckline the Sovereign had deemed “appealing but controlled.” Every Chosen woman had one in her assigned color, tailored at eighteen and updated every few years to accommodate “maintenance of aesthetic appeal.”
Mine still fit. Of course it did. They made sure.
I looked away and pulled on my bar clothes instead.
The tank top settled over my torso, the fabric soft from too many washes. The jeans hugged my hips, familiar enough that I barely felt the squeeze. I toweled my hair until it was damp instead of dripping, then twisted it into a loose, messy bun at the nape of my neck, leaving a few strands around my face.
Lyric liked to tease me that I “accidentally” always looked like I’d just rolled out of someone’s bed. I think she meant it as a compliment.
I stepped back to the mirror and added a little eyeliner, a little mascara. Enough to make my eyes look bigger, my lashes longer. Enough to draw attention in a way that felt like mine, not theirs.
The scar on my arm peeked just below my sleeve. I stared at it for a moment, then reached for the thin silver bracelet on my nightstand and slid it over my wrist, letting it rest just above the jagged line. Not to hide it. Just to remind myself it was there on purpose.
A lesson. A warning. A promise I hoped one day I’d be brave enough to keep.
My comm-unit buzzed on the nightstand as I was slipping into my boots. I grabbed it, thumb swiping across the screen.
A notification lit up:
SOVEREIGN ORDER // SCHEDULE CONFIRMATION
No summons.
A small knot of tension between my shoulders loosened. No summons meant no car tonight. No car meant no mandatory “service.” I could work my bar shift, go home, and crawl into bed without having to shower twice in one day.
I exhaled slowly and opened the second message.
LYRIC:
u up or are u being dramatic and sleeping through 3 alarms again
A smile tugged at my mouth.
ME:
I am up, rude. One alarm. On time.
The typing bubble appeared almost immediately.
LYRIC:
proud of u, little rebel. bring ur ass. dad’s already bitching abt the sound system again
I glanced at the clock. I still had time, but only if I didn’t linger.
ME:
On my way. Tell him the system hates him personally.
LYRIC:
he already thinks that
A laughing emoji popped up, followed by another message.
LYRIC:
u good today?
That was the real question. We never said too much on the comms; everyone knew they could be monitored if someone decided to care enough. But we had our coded ways.
ME:
No summons. The morning’s pretending to be nice.
LYRIC:
lucky. see u soon, kal
I tucked the unit into my back pocket, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door.
The hallway outside my apartment was narrow, the carpet old and worn thin in the center from years of feet walking the same path. The cracked walls were painted a tired beige, the kind of color that tried and failed to pretend it wasn’t hiding stains.
I locked my door, then checked it twice, another habit that had become ritual. Then I headed down the stairs, boots thudding softly on each step. On the second floor landing, Mrs. Hargreeve from 2B was coaxing her ancient dog down the last few stairs, murmuring encouragement. She gave me a tight smile as I passed.
“Morning, Kalista,” she said, voice soft.
“Morning,” I replied, managing a small smile back.
Her eyes flicked automatically to my exposed forearm. They always did, even if she didn’t mean to. A flash of pity. A flash of fear. I pretended I didn’t notice.
Outside, the city swallowed me whole.
The street was busier now. Workers in gray and navy filed toward the transit stops, comm-units in their hands, ID chips flashing faintly under the skin of their wrists when they passed scanning posts. Drones hummed overhead, dark ovals against the pale morning sky. The Sovereign emblem glowed from massive holo-screens on building sides, reminding everyone who held the leash.
ORDER IS SAFETY.
ORDER IS FREEDOM.
THE SOVEREIGN SEES YOU.
The slogans cycled in crisp white letters over serene, carefully curated images, smiling families in clean apartments, children in immaculate school uniforms, women shaking hands with elites in tailored suits. None of the women in those images wore scars. Or dark blue dresses.
I pulled my bag higher on my shoulder and stepped into the flow of the crowd.
Everyone moved the same way: eyes mostly forward, glancing down at the ground or up at the lights just often enough to avoid collisions. There was talking, but it was low and quick, the kind of conversation that could flip into silence mid-sentence if a patrol walked by.
Vendors lined the sidewalks where the Sovereign allowed them, cart owners selling coffee, fried dough twists, synthetic meat skewers. The smells mingled in the air, coffee bittersweet, sugar cloying, grease thick. A man a few steps ahead of me bought a twist and bit into it, flakes scattering down the front of his coat like soft snow.
For a moment, the mess of it made something in me ache. Imperfect. Human.
A pair of guards turned onto our street, and the ripple moved through the crowd instantly. Spines straightened. Voices fell. Heads tilted just slightly downward. Everyone’s pace adjusted, not enough to be obvious, but enough to shift.
I felt my own head dip before I even thought about it, gaze dropping to the worn concrete at my feet. The old urge burned in my chest again, lift your head, look at them, make them see you as more than a shape in the crowd.
My fingers brushed against the bracelet on my wrist. The scar underneath twinged.
Not today.
I kept my eyes low, watching boots instead of faces, counting steps. One, two, three, four, five, breathe. One, two, three, four, five, breathe. The cadence was dull and familiar, like marching.
The guards passed. I felt the weight of their gaze slide over me and then away, uninterested. Just another Chosen in bar clothes heading to her shift. Not worth stopping. Not today.
When they were gone, the street exhaled as one. Conversations resumed at a slightly higher volume. A kid on the corner laughed too loud and his mother shushed him, glancing in the direction the guards had gone, face tight.
I kept walking.
Lyric’s bar, well, her father’s bar, but no one ever thought of it as his first, sat on a corner two blocks from the main transit hub. The sign above the door used to say THE TURNING POINT in bright, neon-red letters, but only “TURNI POI ” still lit. The rest had burned out and never been replaced, whether out of neglect or quiet rebellion, I still wasn’t sure.
It was one of the few places in the city where people still tried to feel normal. Or at least pretend to. After work shifts, men and women came here to drink, to talk, to flirt carefully if they were brave or stupid, to forget for a few hours that the Sovereign could pull any of us into a black car if it wanted.
For the Chosen, it was one of the only jobs that felt like it still belonged to us, even if it didn’t really. We were assigned, sure. We were watched, sometimes. We reported earnings. But behind the bar, with music playing and glasses clinking and Lyric’s loud, unfiltered laugh cutting through the noise, I could almost trick myself into thinking we’d chosen this.
Almost.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The bar smelled like old wood, spilled beer, cleaning solution, and lemon peel from the drinks Lyric liked to make just a little too fancy for the neighborhood. The lights were half on, giving everything a dim, early-morning haze. Chairs were still flipped upside down on tables at the far end, waiting to be set down for the evening rush.
Lyric stood behind the bar, hip propped against a stool, tapping something into the ancient touch-screen register with a frown. Her hair was a bright, defiant red today, piled on top of her head in a messy knot that had at least three pencils stuck through it.
“Look who actually showed up on time,” she called when she saw me, lips curving. “Alert the Sovereign. Kalista discovered punctuality.”
“I’ve always been punctual,” I protested, letting the door swing shut behind me. “You’re just chronically early. There’s a difference.”
She snorted. “Mhm. Keep telling yourself that, Kali.”
She said my nickname like it was a joke and a hug at the same time. It always made something in my chest loosen.
I walked behind the bar and dropped my bag on the shelf under the counter. “How bad is your dad’s war with the sound system today?”
“Dire.” Lyric swiveled the register screen so I could see it. “He was in here at dawn because the speakers glitched during last call last night and cut off his ‘classic playlist’ mid-chorus. You know, the one that’s older than both of us and makes everyone drink faster just so they have something to do besides listen.”
I winced. “Tragedy.”
“He said, and I quote ‘this infernal piece of government-approved garbage knows I’m trying to play real music and is punishing me for it.’”
“Honestly, he might be right.” I reached for a bar rag and started wiping down the counter out of habit. “You tried turning it off and back on again?”
Lyric widened her eyes. “Absolutely not. That would make too much sense. No, he just yelled at it for twenty minutes and threatened to throw it into the street. Then he claimed he was late for supply pickup and left me with it.”
I laughed, the sound bursting out before I could stop it. It sounded…normal. Like any two girls complaining about a boss.
Lyric’s smile softened as she watched me. “There she is,” she said. “My girl with the real laugh. I was worried you were going to bring the scary quiet again this morning.”
“I don’t bring it on purpose,” I muttered, though I knew what she meant. Some mornings, the world sat heavy on my chest and refused to move. Those were my scary quiet days, as Lyric called them, when even she couldn’t pry more than a handful of words out of me.
“Yeah, I know.” She nudged my shoulder with hers. “Still. I prefer the version of you who makes fun of my dad.”
“Everyone prefers the version of anyone who makes fun of your dad,” I said. “It’s a universal truth.”
She grinned. “Blasphemy. I’ll have you know he’s a local treasure.”
“A local menace,” I corrected.
“Both can be true.”
We fell into our usual opening routine. Lyric started un-flipping chairs and checking bottles. I wiped the mirrors, then polished glassware until it shone faintly in the half-light. The sound system flickered ominously once, earning it a dark look from Lyric, but then settled.
“How’s your dad?” I asked after a few minutes, carefully casual.
She shrugged, still facing the liquor shelf. “Same. Grumpy. Loud. Convinced the Sovereign is personally out to get him because they make him fill out twice as many forms now to order real sugar instead of synth.”
“So, thriving,” I said.
“Basically.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “He’s been talking, though.”
I paused, drying cloth frozen on the rim of a glass. “About what?”
“About you.”
My stomach dipped. “What about me?”
“Relax.” Her expression softened, losing the teasing edge. “Good things. He says you’re ‘solid hands’ and that the regulars like you. And that you don’t flinch when he yells about inventory, which he claims is a sign of ‘true backbone.’”
I snorted. “Or damage.”
“Same thing these days,” Lyric said quietly.
She wasn’t Chosen. She’d played dumb just like I had, but her face hadn’t triggered whatever aesthetic requirement the Selection officers were looking for that year. Or maybe her father had called in a favor. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she’d turned eighteen and gone home, not to a sterile medical center with bright lights and cold hands and forms she hadn’t been allowed to read fully.
She’d kept her womb and her choices.
She’d chosen this bar and this life with her father, even if the Sovereign still hovered over them like a shadow.
Sometimes, when she was drunk enough and the bar was empty, she’d grab my hands and spin me around the floor, humming snippets of old songs her father played when he thought no one was listening. For a few minutes, we’d pretend we were just two girls dancing in a free world.
Sometimes, I let myself pretend harder than I should.
“I told him if he doesn’t start giving you a cut of the tips off the top, I’m poisoning his coffee,” Lyric said now, reaching for another bottle.
“Please don’t,” I said. “I like his coffee.”
“You like my coffee,” she corrected. “He just steals it and claims it’s his recipe.”
“That does sound right.”
She smirked. “Anyway, I’m working on him. He listens to me eventually. He just takes the long scenic route there.”
“Stubborn men taking scenic routes. Shocking,” I said dryly.
Lyric glanced at me then, really looked at me, her eyes tracing my face in that way she did when she was trying to decide if she should push. “Hey,” she said softly. “No summons tonight, right?”
I shook my head. “Not on the board yet.”
“Good.” She blew out a breath, shoulders relaxing. “Then we’re getting you properly tipsy after close. And we’re dancing. Kitchen rules.”
Kitchen rules: no talking about the Sovereign. No talking about scars or schedules or Selection stories. Only music, movement, and whatever cheap liquor we hadn’t sold that night.
“You just want an excuse to make me drink that awful cherry vodka again,” I said.
She gasped. “First of all, disrespect. Second of all, it’s not awful, it’s festive.”
“It tastes like cough syrup and regret.”
“You love it.”
I didn’t. But I loved the way she said we. The way she included me in future plans as if the Sovereign couldn’t pluck me out of this bar at any moment and reroute my night.
As if I had a promise to look forward to that wasn’t printed on government paper.
It was a small, stupid thing. But it was mine.
“Fine,” I said. “Kitchen rules. But I’m picking the music this time.”
Lyric’s eyes lit up. “Deal.”
We finished setting up as the morning shifted toward afternoon. Light from the front windows cast long bars across the floor, stripes of brightness broken by the shadow of the door and the rows of barstools. I flipped the “closed” sign to “open” at the exact minute we were permitted to. Another rule: no serving before the Sovereign said so.
At first, only a trickle of people came in. A pair of workers from the factory down the block, still in their gray jumpsuits, checking their comms between sips of synth beer. A woman in a navy blazer who always ordered a single shot of whiskey, drank half of it, and left the rest untouched on the table.
Lyric handled the register and most of the orders. I floated between tables and bar, dropping off drinks, wiping spills, offering the same neutral smile I’d perfected over the last four years.
Friendly, but not inviting.
Warm, but not flirtatious.
Present, but not interesting.
It was a careful balance. Too cold, and tips suffered. Too charming, and the wrong kind of attention followed you home. The Sovereign already had full access to my body on any given night; I wasn’t handing out extra keys.
Around midday, the bar grew louder. Someone fed credits into the music system, and a government-approved playlist kicked in, all soft-tempo tracks with inoffensive lyrics about perseverance and unity. Lyric rolled her eyes and muttered something unrepeatable about taste levels.
My feet began to ache. My wrists smelled faintly of citrus from the garnishes. My hair frizzed around my face in the humid air. Ordinary irritations. Ordinary human complaints. For a while, that was all I let myself feel.
It was safer that way.
Because underneath the motions of my day, the wiping, the pouring, the smiling, the dodging, something else simmered.
It was in the way my gaze snagged on the holo-screens whenever they flashed a Sovereign announcement. In the way my shoulders tensed when patrols passed the windows, even though they rarely came inside. In the way I caught glimpses of other Chosen women on the street, their eyes like mine: tired, sharp, hungry for something they’d been told they had no right to want.
Connection.
Choice.
A life that wasn’t scheduled.
I carried the memory of my parents’ kitchen like a secret flame. I shielded it with the flat of my hand, nurturing it in the smallest moments, in the steam of my shower, in the scrape of old wood under my boots, in Lyric’s chipped-laugh and her father’s grumbled curses at the sound system.
It felt ridiculous, sometimes, clinging to something as fragile as the idea of love in a world that treated bodies like commodities.
But it was the only part of me they hadn’t taken.
And somewhere, deep under the routines and the scars and the neat stacks of clothing on my bed, a quiet thought stirred:
This isn’t forever.
Something has to break.
I didn’t know that the thing that would break would walk into this bar in a matter of days.
I didn’t know that when he did, the careful balance of my whole life would tilt. That the Sovereign’s clean, perfect systems would start to glitch the moment his eyes found mine.
For now, I just poured drinks, smiled at strangers, and let Lyric bump my hip with hers behind the bar, both of us pretending we weren’t waiting for something we didn’t have words for yet.
