Run Omega Run (Shaker City #2)

Chapter 1 | Heather

Heather

T he city still bore its scars.

Two years after the earthquake had split it open, they still glared like open wounds.

Whole skyscrapers leaned against each other like drunks, their glass teeth shattered and spilling shards across the cracked asphalt, because no one cared enough to remove them.

Roads were stitched together with makeshift patches, every step uncertain.

Construction crews hammered and drilled every day, their sounds the city’s new heartbeat.

But beneath the scaffolding and dust, ruin still clung.

The orphanage stood like a stubborn survivor in the middle of it all.

Three stories of mismatched brick and sagging roof tiles, its walls a patchwork of salvaged stone.

Rain leaked through no matter how many times I’d sealed the cracks.

Whole rooms had been condemned after the quake; children slept two to a bed, curled together like orphaned puppies.

I’d grown up here. Now it was mine to keep standing, even if it meant holding up the walls with my bare hands.

The kitchen smelled faintly of porridge, although the pot on the stove threatened to boil over.

I stirred it anyway, with a grip that turned my knuckles bone-white, the wooden spoon scraping against the bottom of the dented pot like fingernails on slate.

My eyes kept drifting to the crack that crawled up the wall behind the stove.

It was a jagged scar that started thin as a hair near the baseboard and widened to the width of my thumb by the time it reached the ceiling.

That crack spread a little more each month, like the wall was slowly coming apart at the seams. Just like everything else in this place.

The porridge bubbled, thick and gray, stretched with water until it was more suggestion than substance. It was enough for seven small bowls if I were careful. Enough to quiet the hunger for a few hours at least.

"Miss Heather?" Manny appeared in the doorway, his five-year-old frame too thin for his patched sweater, shadows carved deep semi-circles beneath his eyes, like someone had pressed their thumbs there. "Is breakfast ready?"

The tightness in my chest pulled tighter, but I forced warmth into my voice the way I'd learned to force smiles. "Almost, sweetheart. Go tell the others to wash their hands."

He nodded and scampered away, his bare feet slapping against the cold stone floor.

I listened to his voice echoing down the hall, "Breakfast!

Miss Heather says, wash your hands!" and a familiar ache settled behind my ribs.

They trusted me to take care of them. All of them.

And some days I wasn't sure I knew how. I’d watched my mom, but I knew I still had a lot to learn.

I was only twenty-four, but already felt like I was aging way too fast.

The children filed into the kitchen like a brigade of basset hounds.

Loubie Lou came first, clutching her one-eared stuffed rabbit against her chest with the fierce devotion only a three-year-old could muster.

The rabbit had been white once, maybe, but now it was the color of old dishwater, its remaining ear hanging by a few stubborn threads.

She wouldn't go anywhere without it—wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't even use the bathroom unless Bunny came too.

Behind her came Tomas rubbing his eyes. He had joined us eight months ago and rarely spoke. I often wondered if he’d ever speak again. He was so young, but came to us covered in blood and dust after the earthquake. No one ever came to claim him.

Manny began dragging his cracked toy truck along the floor, the wheels wobbling like jelly.

The paint had chipped away to reveal rust underneath, and the truck bed was held together with string and hope, but he'd found it in the rubble after the earthquake and claimed it as his own.

It made a sound like grinding bones when he pulled it, but he never seemed to notice.

Susie stomped in with her wild red hair sticking up in every direction, her lips stained strawberry from the lip balm she'd somehow managed to keep despite having nothing else.

She was fourteen and convinced she knew everything about everything, which meant she spent most of her time rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath.

But she helped with the little ones when she thought no one was looking, and her heart was bigger than her attitude, even if she'd die before admitting it.

The others followed, Dylan with his stutter and his careful way of moving, as if he was afraid of taking up too much space; Denson with his comic books, and Macey, who shied away from others and didn't speak to anyone except me and my mom.

Each of them carried their invisible wounds alongside whatever treasures they'd managed to hold on to.

I ladled the porridge into mismatched chipped bowls. The portions looked pathetically small, but I made my voice bright, anyway. "Look what Bobby brought us yesterday... real milk for the porridge, and there's even a bit of honey left."

Bobby had indeed come by with his delivery of groceries that were too close to expiring for the store to sell but still good enough for us.

Day-old bread, bruised apples, milk that was two days from its sell-by date.

He never said much, just unloaded the boxes from his ancient trolley, with his bushy eyebrows drawn together in concentration, but those donations kept us fed when the cupboards ran bare.

"Is there enough?" Macey whispered, the first words she'd spoken all week.

"There's plenty," I lied smoothly, settling into my chair with my own half-portion. "Bobby says he'll bring more tomorrow."

The kitchen filled with the quiet sounds of eating.

Spoons scraped against bowls, and the occasional slurp from Loubie Lou, who hadn't quite mastered the art of proper porridge consumption.

For a moment, it felt almost normal. Almost like a real family gathered around a real table, sharing a real meal instead of scraping by on scraps and hope.

Then the coughing started.

It ripped through the hallway like an animal dying—wet, guttural, desperate.

My mom’s lungs were tearing themselves apart from the inside.

Each convulsion had grown more violent this past month, her body jack-knifing with the force of it, veins bulging at her temples.

This morning I'd found her handkerchief stuffed under the mattress, not white anymore but crimson-soaked, as though she'd coughed up pieces of herself when I wasn't there to witness her crumbling.

Every spoon froze mid-air. Seven pairs of eyes turned to me, waiting for my reaction, waiting for me to tell them it was okay, that everything was fine, that the woman who'd taken them in and loved them wasn't slowly drowning in her own body.

I felt my face arrange itself into a smile that probably looked more like a grimace. "Eat up everyone. Don't let it get cold."

But the spell was broken. The careful illusion of normalcy cracked like the wall behind the stove, and suddenly the porridge tasted like ash in my mouth. Dylan pushed his bowl away, his appetite gone. Susie stared at her spoon like it held answers to questions she was afraid to ask.

Another bout of coughing echoed down the hall, followed by a silence that felt heavier than the sound itself. I stood up so quickly my chair scraped against the floor, the noise sharp enough to make little Loubie Lou jump.

"I'll be right back," I said, my voice too bright, too cheerful. "Finish breakfast."

I slipped out of the kitchen before any of them could respond, before they could see the cracks forming in my carefully constructed facade. In the hallway, I pressed my back against the cool stone wall and closed my eyes, letting myself have exactly three seconds to fall apart.

One. The orphanage was falling down around us.

Two. We had no money for medicine.

Three. I was failing everyone who counted on me.

Then I opened my eyes, straightened my shoulders, and walked toward my mom's room.

As I entered, the smell hit me as soon as I cracked open the door.

Lavender sachets were doing their best to mask the sour tang of sickness, like perfume sprayed over rotting fruit.

The sachets hung from the bedposts, little purple bundles that Susie had sewn from scraps of fabric, but they couldn't hide the truth that lived in the air itself.

Weak sunlight filtered through the thin curtains, casting everything in a pale, underwater glow.

The room felt smaller each time I entered, as if the walls were slowly closing in, or maybe it was just that my mom seemed to shrink a little more each day, dwarfed by bedding that had once fit her properly.

She'd been formidable once... tall and straight-backed, with hands that could calm a crying baby or fix a broken toy with equal skill.

The woman who'd taken in every lost child who found their way to our door.

Who'd built this place into something that felt like home instead of just another institution.

Now she looked like a bird with broken wings, her hair limp and colorless against the pillow, each breath shallow and careful, as if breathing itself had become work.

"Mom?" I whispered, settling onto the edge of the mattress. The springs creaked under me, a sound that seemed too loud in the hushed room.

Her eyes fluttered open. They were still sharp, still the same warm brown that had comforted me through nightmares and scraped knees and the terrible day when I'd realized that most of the world saw me as nothing more than a womb with legs. It was part of the joys of being an Omega, being seen only as a slave to men’s whims.

"Heather." Her voice was paper-thin but still held traces of the strength I remembered. "How are the children?"

"They're fine," I said, reaching for the water glass on her nightstand. "I'll make you some tea in a minute. The breakfast went well, everyone ate, and Bobby brought milk yesterday."

She smiled, and for a moment I could see the woman she used to be. "That Bobby. Never says much, but he has a good heart."

I nodded, adjusting her pillows even though they didn't need adjusting. Anything to keep my hands busy, to keep from looking too directly at how fragile she'd become. "The doctor said those injections he prescribed would help with the pain. Maybe we should—"

"No." The word came out sharp enough to cut. "Absolutely not."

"But Mom, if they could help you feel better—"

"Heather, look at me." She struggled to sit up straighter, and I had to resist the urge to help her. She'd always been too proud for her own good. "How much do those injections cost?"

I stared down at my hands, shame burning in my chest like acid. "It doesn't matter—"

"How much?"

"Fifty dollars each," I whispered.

"Fifty dollars." She let out a bitter laugh that turned into a cough. "Do you know what fifty dollars could buy for the children? New shoes for Denson. His toes are coming through the ends of his sneakers. A proper winter coat for Macey. Books that aren't falling apart at the seams."

She was right, of course. She was always right about these things. But that didn't make it easier to swallow. "I just want to help you feel better."

"You want to know what would make me feel better?" Her hand found mine, fingers trembling but grip surprisingly strong. "Knowing that when I'm no longer able to open my eyes, you won't waste money trying to keep a dying woman comfortable while children go without what they need."

The words hit me like a slap. "Don't talk like that."

"Promise me, Heather." Her eyes locked onto mine, and I saw the steel that had kept this place running for twenty years. "Promise me you won't throw money away on me when they need it more."

I wanted to argue, to fight, to scream that she was worth every penny we had and more. But the children's faces floated through my mind... Loubie Lou with her whole life ahead of her, Manny with his broken toy and mute past, all of them counting on me to make the right choices.

"I promise I will try," I whispered, the words tasting like ashes.

She squeezed my hand once, then let go. I leaned down to kiss her forehead, her skin papery and cool under my lips, and tried to memorize the moment.

How many more times would I get to do this?

How many more conversations, how many more shared glances were left before I lost her to this disease?

I sighed, feigned a smile and watched her settle back into a dreamless sleep.