The wind blew through Elias' hair and for the first time in several days he felt fully rested. The dark circles under his eyes were now nearly gone, it's wondrous what a nights sleep can do. After he had checked that he was alive at 00:01 he had slept through the whole night without any nightmares. As he pulled his worn windbreaker higher over the ears and mouth he thought that it was weird that he felt relieved that he survived the first night but didn't care that much about that every night now was a fight for survival, a fight he could not win on his own.

As he stood at the speed rail station and waited for the clock to reach 08:00 the wind was now picking up and he shivered. The windbreaker did its thing but his black thorned and worn jeans did not offer that much of protection against the north wind rushing through the slums.

Elias had realized that morning that all his clothes were worn, thorn or he could not even to begin to guess the original color of the garment. Most of the clothes in the slums where like this, patched with so much fabric that only some highlighted features were of the original fabric. He shivered again and peered down the tracks in the direction the speed rail would come. It was 5 minutes left until departure. The only thing he saw where cold and empty metal tracks that went on for miles, he shivered again.

Elias turned his gaze to the skies instead and let out a sigh, how many more days would he be able to look at the clouds and guess their shapes. Admittedly, the clouds were always gray from the pollution from the factories but they still had shaped.

But he smiled when he remembered the study trip they had taken to the cultivating zone where the air had been clean and the clouds were white and healthy. And as he were one of the lucky ones to survive his 18th birthday without a soulmate, the system let him travel again so today he would be able to see those clouds again. He shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts.

“No idea to think about clouds and get my hopes up, I can still die tonight or the next” He whispered to himself as the speed rail came sliding into the platform.

The thing about speed rails are that the doors won't open if no one is getting off at the station, and Elias stood at an end station in the slums. And to open the doors you had to scan your bracelet that would determine that you had clearance to take that cart or class. So if you didn't understand where the door would be, and got denied entry you had little to no time to get to the right door.

As he took an empty seat he looked at the ticket information that was showing on his discom. A system-paid trip for a dying man. He swiped it away and sighed when he realized that he only could sit here until the rightful owner entered the train.

He gazed out through the windows and saw the barren and cold landscape that sometime before the wars had been full of green tall trees and lush forests. Elias could not understand why they even show this gloomy landscape, there were no real windows when the speed railed moved due to the speed the rail traveled in. There would just be specks and smears of colors as the speed rail swooshed down its tracks.

As a factory worker, Elias knew the basics of speed rails, that they traveled with the help of magnetism and not electricity as the pre-war trains did. Those trains could still be found but in museums now when they had a much faster speed rail.

He sighed and turned on the discom screen again in pursuit of something interesting to read about on social media. But as usual it was just about people's lives and soulmates, the normal ordinary stuff people wrote about. But he couldn't help scrolling through them just to realize that people's lives just continued even though he could have died.

The scenic view now changed to vast and blue oceans, it still looked cold and not that inviting at all. But it was the closest he had been to the oceans so he could not take his eyes off the view. Somethings you could not just read about to grasp the vastness, you had to see it for yourself. When the displays turned off and the normal windows where back he realized from the rich villa area that he had been sitting down for an hour. Elias had wished to jump off here and take a stroll between the colorful villas while basking in the summer rays. They even had that soft green grass he read about so many times, how did that even feel when you walked barefoot in it?

He fought the urge to just sneak off, as a citizen of the slums he did not have clearance to get of here. But he could just rush off when the brats open the doors for him and evade the guards long enough to feel that grass against his feet.

And being locked up for being an anti-system follower would not help him find his soulmate at all. They would bring down his parents to stare at him with horrified gazes as they realized that their son indirectly killed himself for a patch of green grass.

But there was that time a slum citizen had managed to find a bug in the speed rail system, maybe he could find something like that and be pardoned his terrorist act of walking barefoot in the rich central areas?

No, there had been many years since that and the bug hunters worked night and day to spot them before someone else did. Elias thought that the only bug left in the whole system where the unfixable bug that killed people.

Elias snapped out of his contemplation when he heard a group of teenage girls settling in the seats behind him. He hated himself for glancing at his bracelet even though he clearly heard them whispering about him. That would be so awkward that one of the girls whispering and snickering at him would turn out to be his soulmate.

“Oh, she's lovely!” he pictured his mother saying when he brought her home for the first time and then continue “Where did you meet?”

“Well, she sat behind me whispering about that dirty slum rat sitting in front of them” he would reply.

Elias did not even have to try making out the words they were whispering when one of the girls raised her nasal voice and exclaimed: “Seriously, why do we have to take the same cart as them stinking slum rats?”

This kind of slander was nothing new and the thing Elias hated the most was that they all said the same thing. Nothing new or creative, just the same thing over and over again. He tried ignoring the brats while looking at a map on his discom over the central area.

“They should have their own cart in the back, they bring that stinking pollution into all the carts they take.” Exclaimed another of the bitch brat trio. And Elias rolled his eyes and felt that they could just run before the speed rail instead if they wanted fresh air.

As the bitch brat trio continued to spew the same nonsense as they always do Elias just thought about them being in the slum. Having great hair and long nails, but starving and freezing while they worked long days in the factories. How long would they make it in the cold harsh north?

But when they started commenting about his “lazy mother” he grabbed his discom harder and felt a wave of raging anger boil up inside of him. He could take all the slander but when they talked about his parents he felt he could toss these queens of the rails.

But while he did some stupid breathing exercise to calm himself down he felt the discom vibrate and it let out a small ping. Someone had sent him a text and who would send him anything. All his friends had avoided him like he had a really bad smell about him when they realized that he would not find his soulmate before his 18th birthday. It was a text from one of his former friends and after he read it all he just stared at the words in disbelief. It said something about reaching an important milestone in his life now when he where 18 and that he should take care.

First, they abandon him when he needed the support in all the anxiety and now they seemed to care when he didn't die. Sure he could still die but the statistics showed that he had a 70% chance of surviving a year more.

As if they even knew what the hell he was going through now when they all found their soulmates before they hit 16 years old.

The bracelets should have been the saving grace of humankind focused on finding love and soulmates. But for the ones on the other side of the bug it only showed them how the bracelets made people smug and selfish, the thing that made the world break in the first place.

As the speed rail once again slowed down Elias look out the windows in shock, he had reached the city center of Stockholm. The bitch brat trio had already made their way to the doors as the speed rail came to a stop.

So as Elias queued behind them to scan his bracelet to get out the girls sneered at him and waved their hands in front of their perfect noses. He just gave them a grin and they look scared and scrambled away out the door.

Out in the platform he was stunned from the buzzing sound of many people in the same cramped space and the warm air hit against his face. It was much warmer here than in the north and he just stood there looking at all directions to orient himself.

With a sigh he pulled out the discom and opened the map, he had places to go and people to meet.