“Let me tell you what I know about your dad, then you can tell me what you remember. We'll meet in the middle, no-one has to leave,” Danielle said.

  “Will there be any more food?” Sarah asked. She eyed the last few greasy smears of taste blob on her plate.

  “If you stay, we can pop to the shop after the curfew, get some real food.”

  Sarah nodded and shuffled further back into the corner of the sofa, her notebook at the ready.

  “Best get started, then.” Erica propped herself up next to her sister, but only after she retrieved the cushions from Danielle's armchair. She didn't quite know what kind of point she was making, but she hoped it seemed as petty to Danielle as it did to her.

  “Fifteen years ago, your parents worked for the government. Sebastian was Chief Science Advisor, a job that came with the Directorship of Trinity Park. Helena mostly worked as his assistant during that time. They got married, had a daughter – you, obviously. Four years later, she falls pregnant with her second child, which was about the time of the Windstadt Massacre.”

  “Well, it must have been someone else,” Erica said. “I don’t know where that is or what it is, but he wouldn’t have done it.”

  “It’s a small town, miles from here, across the water and in another country entirely.”

  “Was?” Sarah asked.

  “Someone contaminated the water with a nerve agent. There weren’t any survivors, or that’s at least what they said; it’s not like they let us travel there to look for ourselves. The official story is that he went rogue and had a town wiped off the map, which led to yet another war. Newspapers were given unrestricted access to victim photos and confidential reports with your father’s name all over them. Don’t ask for the details, I won’t tell you.”

  “It's all lies. He wouldn't have done anything like that! He couldn't,” Sarah protested. Her notes spiralled and wended their way through and around sketches of all sorts of things, really. Whatever popped into her mind, she’d draw it or jot it down as a distraction. She was running out of patience and paper in equal measure.

  “I know, sweetheart,” Erica said. “But we still need to hear it. And I suppose, Danielle, that was around the time we disappeared?”

  “It was exactly the time. Where did you go?”

  “I don't remember leaving this – what's a polite term for hellhole?”

  “Hellhole is fine. Where did you go?” Danielle repeated.

  “Mayflight. It's a beautiful village along the river.”

  “What river?”

  “I don't know, we don't have a name for it; there can't be that many rivers. After our mother, she, well, you know – after that, father left.”

  “Then your friends, who are animals, were taken and you followed?”

  “More or less, yes. I understand that things are a little different here. For a start, your rats are very rude. I mean, so are ours, but they'll at least make the time of day for you. Yours wouldn't even talk to us.”

  Danielle blinked, thought of absolutely nothing, then blinked again. If she’d held up a copy of that day’s newspaper, she’d have looked like a hostage on a videotape. “Animals can't talk,” she finally said. “At least not any I'm aware of.” She returned to being a hostage and thought about it a little longer. “I suppose some birds could, but they're gone. There was that one dog that could say sausages,” she said wistfully. “That's gone, too.”

  “What do you mean gone?”

  “Dead, gone, extinct; just part of a long list.”

  “How could you let that happen?” Sarah snapped her notebook shut and tossed it aside.

  “Pollution got the birds. You’ve seen the sky, it’s on fire – the atmosphere is slowly burning up. It took the bees, too. I'll let you work out where the dogs went.”

  “We didn't realise things were this bad. But we have animals where we come from, and the sky is blue and the night is black,” Erica said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Bad? Planet’s dying. The government says that's ridiculous, that it's enemy propaganda or some other drivel depending on what week it is – but I've spoken with people who make it their business to know these things. Thirty years, and that's being generous.”

  “Why aren't they doing anything?” Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes.

  Danielle thought about it, then she stopped thinking about it and found she quite liked it. Before she turned her brain off, she came to a conclusion. “Maybe they are doing something,” she said. “If everything you say is true-”

  ”-It is,” Erica interrupted.

  “Then they'd never miss the opportunity to exploit it. Clean water and blue skies, sure as hell they'd want it.”

  “Which is all the more reason to get our friends back. If something is going to happen, we need to be together when it does. The world is big enough and ugly enough to last one more day without us holding its hand. Will you help us or not?”

  When Danielle Ostler woke up that morning, she had done so to a torrent of missed messages and a full answering machine tape. She worked through them over the last of the cereal and the last of the coffee that had used the last of the milk that she’d used the last of her wages to buy. She’d worked her day out down to the exact look of incredulity she'd have on her face when Corelious started his bullshittery, and the exact follow-up question she'd hit him in the fat head with. What she hadn't planned for was a small girl asking her to commit insurrection. What she especially hadn't planned for was her saying, “Okay, just let me make some calls. This is going to take a while. Get some rest, we'll leave early.”

  “Yes, right after breakfast,” Sarah said. If she was going to do the dangerous, stupid things required of her, she was going to need to eat.

  “If you get up extra early, I'll buy you breakfast. World is going to hell, but I know a place that still makes good coffee and serves real food.” She looked longingly at the coffee-stained cup on the table, then turned towards the empty pan of chomp slime on the kitchen counter and shuddered.

  ***

  Night came and went, though that fact would have escaped casual observation. The sky was stained a burnt orange that never really seemed to diminish in intensity regardless of what time of day it was. For the rich, outdoor lights existed as a throwback to darker, yet at the same time, ironically lighter, times. Many of them hadn't functioned for years – the ones that did long since had their bulbs stolen and put to much better use by the less well off. For the majority of residents that dwelled far below the concrete boa, a single bulb was a lifeline and people knew its worth. The sisters stood under one such bulb that adorned the front entrance of the building, at a time of day that would make anyone look at their watch twice and then complain loudly to all the people that weren’t awake at that time. The half-light of the flickering bulb scarcely illuminated their faces for more than a second at a time, but that was all the residents could afford between them.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Danielle pulled the car to the front of the building, the emissions from the antiquated engine somehow managed to make the absolute darkness even more impenetrable and cloistering. The headlights glimmered in the darkness like the eyes of a long-extinct house pet. If you weren't paying attention, you might miss them; this was, overall, a terrible trait for headlights to possess.

  Danielle cranked the window down using the pliers. “Come on, get in,” she said. Sarah squeaked in both shock and a general sense of amazement that such a large hunk of rusted metal could sneak up on anything. Erica giggled, then steered her sister in the direction of Danielle's voice, first feeling for the door, then for the handle itself. She let her sister into the back seat, then blindly fondled her way around the car to the passenger side.

  “Don't those go any brighter?” she asked as she struggled to heft the door closed behind her.

  “Only if you're willing to pay for new ones when they burn out. It's only five or six miles to the edge from here, then we can get up on the boa,” Danielle said.

  “Breakfast,” Sarah said from the back seat. It wasn't a question, it was never a question. She wrestled with her seat-belt, it wrestled back and quickly pinned her left arm to the seat. She accepted its surrender.

  “The quickest way to breakfast is the boa. The diner is only a couple of miles away in an actual sense, but it's safer to break dark and come back in closer to it.”

  “I'd be willing to eat almost anything,” Sarah said. She tried to bite through her seat-belt in between words.

  “Won't have to. They serve digestible food and great coffee. They even have a bulb out front!” Danielle tempered her excitement over the bulb with how depressing it was to get excited over a bulb.

  “And after breakfast. Where do we go, then?” Erica asked.

  “Excellent question. Nowhere. We're meeting someone there in a few hours time, so eat slowly or we'll get kicked out for taking up space.”

  “We could just order more.”

  “Shut up.”

  ***

  As the car crept closer to the burnt-orange and the light slowly inched its way up the bonnet, the sickly, jaundiced glow filled Danielle with an overwhelming desire to turn around and crawl back into the darkness, which in itself filled her with an overwhelming desire to rush back into the light. She pulled the sunshade down and kept driving out of stubbornness and hunger. Almost as soon as they wound their way up to the boa, Danielle signalled and turned down an off-ramp and back into the ever-dark.

  “Okay, but how will we find it?” Erica asked. Her question was answered by the warm neon glow that drifted around the corner and illuminated the street like pools of moonlight. “Never mind, then. They must serve really good coffee.”

  “Amongst other things.”

  “What kind of things?” Sarah asked.

  “It's a black market. Medicine, mainly.”

  “And you're okay with this?” Erica asked.

  “You have no idea what it's like, none at all. If you're not an abundantly rich dickhead or you don't pour all of your savings into an insurance plan that has a hundred ways of invalidating itself, you're going to die. It's not always affordable, but at least it's achievable. Morals are for the middle-class – the poor have no use for them and the rich have no place for them. It's also the only place under the burnt-sky that won't ask for your ID.”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “Would going to prison forever be a problem?”

  “I suspect just a bit, yes.”

  The car rattled around the corner, a trail of grease and rust in its wake. Danielle allowed herself the brief luxury of putting her headlights on low-beam to find a parking space. The coffee wasn't usually enough to bring anyone to this part of town at this time of morning but her. The market operated at all times of day and night – it made no difference. The law tended to stay clear of the ever-dark for all the obvious reasons. It wasn’t hard for her to find a spot by the building, near a dumpster she'd have otherwise introduced herself to had she not adjusted her lights.

  “We've got half-an-hour to kill until they arrive, so just enjoy your breakfast. And let me do the talking.”

  “Fine, but who are they?” Erica asked.

  “I don't actually know, and won't until they show up.”

  “Seems pretty stupid to me,” Sarah said. She freed herself from the tyranny of the seat-belt and flexed her hand to restore the feeling to her numbed fingers.

  “Your face seems pretty stupid.” Danielle stuck her tongue out for the benefit of just herself, really – it’s not like anyone could see it. “Just eat your food and keep your ears open.”

  They basked in the radiant glow of the neon sign as they walked towards the door. The sign said Debbie’s, give or take a couple of missing letters, but most people knew it as the Blackout. Danielle strode across the checker-pattern floor, a trail of mud and gravel left behind her. The woman mopping it turned and shot her a withering look.

  “You're a mucky bitch, Danni.”

  “If it wasn't for mucky bitches, you'd be out of a job, Carol. How's the kids?”

  Carol was in her early forties, but for the last twenty years, her face had defaulted to mid-fifties. “Adorable pains in the arse. Speaking of, you never told me you had kids.”

  “I don't, but would you believe it's incredibly complicated?”

  “I never had you down for complicated.” Carol mopped up her sarcasm and shoved the mop back into the bucket. “What can I get you?”

  “Three all-day breakfasts and a very large pot of coffee.”

  “Plonk yourself down at a table, love, I'll bring it over.”

  Danielle walked over to her usual booth – it was by the window, but the view was non-existent. The diner was one of the oldest buildings left in the neighbourhood, and structurally it showed. The ceiling was missing several tiles, which ironically made it less of a fire hazard, even with wiring that bordered on runic. It didn’t need an electrician as much as it needed a necromancer with a toolbox. The floor was cracked and uneven, like crazy paving that had been committed to an asylum. Only the booths that were in use were lit, which made it a challenge of dexterity and memory to get around. She drunkenly weaved a critical path to the booth. Sarah followed her meandering route because it seemed both fun and made her feel like a chess piece. Erica disdained such behaviour and promptly fell over.

  “Could have bloody told me,” she said.

  “Your sister made it just fine.”

  “That's a common theme.” Erica took a circuitous route to the booth and clung to the side of the room for dear life. She slid into the seat opposite Danielle. “If you don’t know this person, how did you find them?”

  “By burning every bridge in the city.”

  Carol approached the table with their order, the plates balanced in her hand and along her arm in a way that suggested physics had gone for a smoke break. A large pot of coffee sloshed around in her right hand. She counted squares as she went, along a path that consisted of sharp angles and sudden stops until she finally reached the table and dropped off her cargo. Carol slipped back into the darkness to a chorus of thank youse and retraced her steps at an impressive pace. Each plate contained one small portion of mushroom protein disguised as scrambled egg, three slices of bacon that looked suspiciously like mushroom protein, and two sausages that had unashamedly been made by rolling up a strip of bacon and burning it slightly.

  “Basically,” Danielle said. She crammed a whole sausage into her mouth. “If this person is a just a crank – we're screwed.”

  “That's a new one. Don't think I've ever been called a crank before,” said the man in the next booth over. “Usually something that rhymes, though.” The man slipped out of the booth and casually sat down beside her. He set his mug next to hers and helped himself to some coffee. “Hello. Let's talk.”