Chapter 2
Keandra
The next morning is worse because now I know exactly how little I have left. Hunger is easier to bear when you still have something. A few scraps on the shelf. Some credits hidden away. Some small lie you can tell yourself for one more day. This morning, there is almost nothing left.
The grain meal is gone. The water recycler sputters when I turn it on, then makes a grinding sound that turns my stomach. I know that sound. It means it needs service soon. It means another thing I can’t pay for.
The rent notice glows red on the wall.
PAYMENT DUE. FINAL REVIEW PENDING.
I stare at it for a second too long. My stomach feels so empty it aches. Not just hunger now. A hollow, scraping pain. The kind that makes my body feel like it is starting to eat itself out of spite.
I shower fast, braid my hair, and pull on the same clothes I wore yesterday. The coat is still too thin and worn. The corridor is still too cold. Nothing has improved overnight. I don’t know why some stupid part of me keeps expecting that it might.
When I step outside, I make my face go blank. That matters here. Looking scared is bad. Looking weak is worse. The hall is crowded already. Shift workers leaving. Night workers coming back.
Mrs. Talan is at the end of the hall with both her kids wrapped around her legs while she argues with a building rep at her door.
“Please,” she says, voice cracking. “Just one more week.”
The rep doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t get rude.
He just repeats policy in the same flat tone like he’s said it a hundred times already today and none of the endings ever change.
I hear enough. If she doesn’t pay by evening, they lock her out.
The words sit heavy in my chest all the way down the stairs.
Outside, the district is waking under that dirty red-gold light Mars always throws over everything.
It makes the walls look rusted. Every poor block seems to be one bad day away from collapsing into the dust. Delivery carts hum past. Steam spills from food stalls I can’t afford.
Public display screens flash work postings, debt alerts, ad loops, and security warnings in bright, ugly colors.
Above all of it is the dome haze and that same feeling this whole planet runs on the same three things. Labor. Heat. Desperation.
I go first to the laundry compound. Sometimes they need extra hands when shipments run high. I wait in line. Step up. Open my mouth.
The woman at intake barely lets me finish before she shakes her head.
“Full. Try next week.”
Next week. I don’t even know if I’ll still have a room next week.
I leave and try a warehouse. Then a cleaning station. Then a protein processing line that smells so foul it sears the inside of my nose before I even make it through the doors. Everywhere is the same. No openings. Not enough hours. Temporary only. Try another district.
I’m coming back out of the processing line when one of the supervisors follows me.
I hear him before I turn. His steps are heavy.
He thinks he knows how this will go. He’s broad through the middle, thick-necked, clean in that way men are when they don’t do the hard work themselves.
He smiles at me like we’re sharing something private.
“You need work?” he asks.
My mouth firms. I already know from his tone he’s not talking about being on the payroll.
“I asked inside,” I say.
“Inside is full.”
His eyes move down my body and back up. Slow. Comfortable. Like he already knows what kind of woman I am.
“But there are other ways to be useful.”
My shoulders go hard.
“No.”
He shrugs. Still smiling.
“You’re too proud for your block, girl. Pride gets expensive.”
I walk away before he can say more, but I can feel his eyes on my back. I feel it all the way down the street.
By midday my legs hurt. My head feels woozy. The smell of frying oil from the food strip hits me so hard my stomach clenches, and I have to stop for a second just to breathe through it.
I check my wrist tag. Count the credits once.
Then again. The number is still tiny. If I buy food, I fall shorter on rent.
If I save it, I might not have enough strength tomorrow to keep going.
It’s a stupid choice. A cruel one. The kind poor people get all the time.
Pick which problem gets to hurt you first.
In the end, I buy the cheapest cup of broth I can find and stand by a heating vent while I drink it. It tastes like salt, old metal, and something fatty that probably came from a vat, not an animal. I don’t care. It’s hot. It gives my body something to grab onto for a few minutes.
A group of women passes in fitted clothes and painted mouths, laughing too loudly. For a second I almost think girls. But no. Women. Some younger than me. Some older.
One catches me looking. She gives me a tired little smile. The same look Marai gave me yesterday. The same look that says every woman in this district gets close enough to danger to feel it.
I drop my eyes and finish the broth. I think about going back to my room, but it’s too early. Going back now feels like giving up. Like admitting the day is done and I lost again.
So I head toward the upper walkways near the trade square where private families sometimes post domestic work.
The difference hits the second I get there.
Cleaner lights. Cleaner walls. Better security.
People with better coats and shoes. Even the voices sound different here.
Lower. Like people who are used to being heard don’t have to speak as loud.
The children have fuller, rounder faces.
That part gets to me more than anything.
I stand at the posting board, and shame crawls under my skin so quietly I almost don’t notice it at first. Live-in child care.
Companion wanted for elderly father. Sewing contract, references required.
House cleaner, bonded applicants only. Bonded.
Sponsored. Referenced. Backed by people who matter.
I have none of that. No sponsor. No family name worth saying out loud. No one who can vouch for me beyond the poor block I’m trying not to drown in.
I write my information under one listing anyway, because not trying feels worse somehow, even when I already know by the way the clerk glances at my coat that no one is going to call.
By late afternoon I’m heading home through a side lane because the main strip is too crowded. That’s my mistake.
I hear the footsteps first. Two men. Not close enough yet to cause a scene. Not far enough away for me to pretend it means nothing. My shoulders tighten. I keep walking. Faster.
One of them laughs under his breath.
“Pretty thing,” one calls.
I don’t answer.
“Don’t act deaf.”
I cut right at the next corner, aiming for a busier lane, but one of them speeds up enough to step partly into my path. He’s smiling. There’s nothing nice in it.
“You looking for work?” he asks.
My mouth goes dry.
“Move.”
His eyes flick to my chest, then to my arm. He’s checking for any sign I’m protected. There isn’t one.
“I could help you out,” he says.
The second one comes up behind him. Not touching me. Not yet.
“You got that hungry look.”
My pulse slams hard enough to make my hands shake. I jerk sideways before the first one can block me in, and I move fast toward the lit-up main lane. Toward people and noise.
The men don’t follow once I hit the crowd. One of them laughs again. Then the first one calls after me.
“Won’t be so picky much longer.”
I don’t stop walking until my lungs burn. By the time I reach my building, I’m shaking. Cold, fear, and fury all tangled together ugly enough to make me feel sick.
I hate that they saw it. I hate that they were probably right about the look on me.
I hate that every day this city strips one more layer off me and leaves me standing there trying to act like I still have choices.
Like I still have dignity. As if both of those things haven’t already started wearing thin.
The building rep is waiting near the entry corridor. He isn’t cruel. That almost makes it worse. He just looks tired. Efficient. Like this is one more task on a list and I am not the first woman this week to stand in front of him with bad news written all over her face.
“Keandra Valein?” he asks.
I nod.
He taps his screen and sends something to my wall unit.
“You are under a final review. Payment must be received by eighteen hundred tomorrow, or your room will be subject to reclaim.”
My throat tightens so fast it hurts.
“I need more time.”
“I don’t have more time to give.”
“Just two more days.”
His face doesn’t change.
“If there was room for flexibility, I would tell you.”
I want to beg. I hate that I want to beg. I hate him for making me stand here and not beg too, because I can see from his face that it wouldn’t matter anyway.
In the end I swallow it down and say, “Understood.”
He leaves. I stand there for another second in the corridor, feeling the last bit of solid ground under me shift.
Inside my room, the red on the notice looks brighter.
RECLAIM REVIEW PENDING.
I sit on my bed and press both hands over my mouth hard enough to hurt. My whole body feels thin. Too light. Too used up.
I think about the men in the alley. The supervisor outside the processing line. The women in the doorway. Mrs. Talan begging not to have her children put out. Hunger. Rent.
I sit there for a long time.
Then someone knocks once and pushes the door open before I answer.
Marai.
She steps inside holding a folded bag that smells faintly of spice and yeast.
“Got extra flatbread from a client who changed his order,” she says. “Take it before I eat it myself.”
I just stare at her.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” She drops it beside me on the bed. “You look like if you miss one more meal, you’ll pass out in the hall.”
My hand closes around the warm bag before my pride can stop it. The smell hits me so hard my eyes sting.
“Thank you.”
Marai leans against the wall and watches me tear off a piece too fast. I shove it in my mouth and almost choke on it. My body wants to inhale it. I force myself to chew it instead of swallowing it whole.
“You need a contract,” she says after a minute. “A real one. Something off-world if you can get it.”
I swallow.
“Off-world.”
“There’s a program posting in the market.” She shrugs. “I saw it this morning. Alien matches. Some kind of marriage placement.”
An ugly laugh slips out of me.
“That sounds insane.”
Marai doesn’t smile.
“So does starving here.”
The room goes quiet. I tear off another piece of bread and look down at it. Marriage to an alien male. Off-world. The words feel ridiculous in my head. Too strange. Too far away. Like something meant for other women. Women with better choices than me.
“I’m not saying to do it,” Marai says, softer now. “I’m saying go take a look and see what it is about.”
After she leaves, the room feels too quiet. I eat every crumb. Then lick the salt from my fingers because wasting any of it feels almost sinful.
I look at the red notice on the wall. Then the dim ceiling. Then nothing. Alien marriage. Off-world. It sounds insane. But so does standing in an alley while strange men decide how hungry I look. So does waiting to be locked out of my room.
By the time I lie down, still fully dressed because the room is too cold and my mind won’t let me sleep anyway, I’ve gone over the same thought enough times that it doesn’t feel impossible anymore. Not likely. Not safe. But possible.
Tomorrow I’ll go look at the posting. Not because I want adventure. Because Mars is starting to feel like a trap with no doors left open.