For the first time in Nadine life, she was scared. She was scared that she would eventually be found by her father, who generally had been more absent from her life than her mother. Neither of her parents were constantly around, so she grew up in such a way that she might as well had not have had parents. Her family could have afforded a care giver, if they were so inclined, but they had not even considered it till Nadine was much older, and her anti-authoritarian personality had already been shaped. This made her, paradoxically, avoid things that would get her into better shape when she lived at the boarding school for months, such as playing soccer.

From time to time, her childhood sweet heart Brittney would occasionally come visit her on the weekends. But Nadine had drifted away from her faster than romantic couple split between New York and Paris. The last times they spent together, Nadine was much less talkative than she used to be. She spent time learning the Ruby programming language, and learning how to build web pages on the net: she could build a web page, find a free web host, among other skill sets. Yet found arranging her life to meet the demands of other people something that she could not imagine.

When she would try to interact, she could not mentally take it: the very interaction with people with even mildly confrontational personalities would make her unable to process anything that that person wanted to say to her. And thus after a point Brittney gave up talking to her, preferring to spend time holding hands with her, staring deeply into Nadine's eyes. And hoping that someday they would never grow apart. Nadine assured her that she would always been there if she needed anything. But Brittney saw something about Nadine that deeply unnerved her.

The way that Nadine would gently bite upon Brittney's neck, and caress her under the glow of the buzzing L.E.D. light. While others there age were just now growing out of reading good night novels, Nadine had never even been told a lullaby. Brittney had to memorize one from her earliest childhood memories, just to get Nadine to sleep. Thus when Nadine disappeared, despite growing apart, she took it as somewhat of a shock.

It was Brittney, and not Nadine's father, that reached out her hand to keep Nadine from falling from the floating sky city. But Nadine slipped out of her hands. Nadine, feeling betrayed, passed out on the way down. It could have been argued she was already a dead man, her life fading out like distant star ship, traveling at super luminal velocity. Everything she had ever known becoming black.

When she woke up, the room was dark. Her new right arm and new right leg she couldn't feel, below the glow of the few lights that were still lit in that hospital three years ago. She remembered the drugs she took, and the absence of a storybook. It was as if she had fallen into a deep sleep called Purgatory.

She couldn't wake up.

Nadine was a hunk of metal and flesh. Lonely hallways made the experience more isolating. There was a random odor that smelled like death. A muted color sky revealed a seemingly endless array of flying cars flying at light speed, way up into the floating city. Yet below, where Malcolm carried Nadine, it was comparably closer to a dumpster than something remotely habitable. Malcolm avoided the best he could from dropping her, in order to keep her from being infected by her wounds. Since the Nadine arrived, just a few minutes ago that felt like eternity, she had been heaving and now was trying to mouth something. Her voice barely a whisper.

Nadine knelt her ear as if to listen to a dead woman walking, though she wasn't walking now. But the effort to do so was futile.

Ellen never could get used to living in the basement of her father's flat, yet it was better than living out on the streets. Her father would always tell her that she lived a relatively comfortable lifestyle, something she grew to accept despite this obviously being false. Her mother had died when she was very young, a situation all to common in this district. She never knew exactly the circumstances behind it, accept that very rarely would her father even be willing to discuss the matter. Instead he'd always lock her down in the basement, and hide the key even from himself. Compounded by his tendency to become drunk. Dinner would often be late, and she would get scraps by comparison of what her father got. If this was comfortable living, then she could scarcely imagine the life outside.

Her father would always paddle her for grades other parents would consider their child being an ace student, though that was during the times when he was awake, or at the very least, not watching television. She knew when he was asleep, when she could do anything she wanted in the living room, even flip him off. And he wouldn't notice, being lost in a dream world generated by his own stupor. Stupor was only a few syllables different from stupid, though the difference between the two became even subtler the harder she tried to convince him to sell his classic car to secure a lifestyle they once had, back when they lived in the floating city. But nowadays she has come to accept this new life. Schools here were nothing like the ones in the floating district, though she gave the excuse that this was better than nothing at all. But increasingly, she found she preferred having nothing at all.

Even if it meant getting a taste for the real world. A world below the muted sky, covered by the clouds of global warming. It was better than living this lie, that wasn't much better than the ones her friends led, of the few that she still maintained. She had previously tried living with her sister, but Yoellen called their father to come pick Ellen up. The next week she found out her big sis hung herself. She was now without even the scarcity of siblings, she had nobody else but herself.

She remembered when she locked her father out.

"Ellen. Ellen. Will you let me in!?" He slammed the front door with his fist. "I want to talk to you about your report cards." She walked slowly, decided whether or not to let him or, or to call the police. But in this district, it seemed almost as if there were no cops at all. Nothing like the floating city.

"Yes daddy, right away!"