Love needs a reason. If we're lucky, we have more than one. Either way, we get to choose what our reasons are. We have to decide if those reasons are good enough, secure enough, safe enough to stay. More often than not, I had to question whether my reasons were good enough.

I loved a city, Mock City, a city of impossible circumstances. It was a world of mayhem. No one could say for sure how they wound up in a place like that. People were pulled from across space and dropped into that hell of a concrete jungle. I was young when I fell into Mock City. By the time I was 12, I couldn't remember my home planet. Some people saw it as a gift. To lack the memory of something lost, while others clung to lives they would never see again.

Mock City was the only place I knew. It raised me, it taught me, it beat me. It wasn't a place for weakness or a small personality. At times it was cruel, but I stayed.

There was no way to leave.

Even if I could, where would I go? I had to love that city; my life depended on it. But something clicked one day.

I wasn't alone.

There were countless other lives, and like me, they deserved better. They deserved safety. They deserved freedom. We deserved a life worth living. If I couldn't escape, then I had to do something to make things better.