Page 1 of The Hollowed

Prologue

Lucilla

December 3rd, 2103

The winter winds of New-Chicago didn’t whisper or wail.

They attacked.

Icy and unforgiving, they slammed through Lucilla Castillo as she trudged through the buzzing streets of a city that was anything but new.

Despite the rebrand, there had never been anything all that great about New-Chicago. That name had simply been slapped on during the so-called “Great Transition”. Back then, the government had proudly announced that the city of Chicago would be the first major metropolis in North America to be completely run by artificial intelligence.

Spoiler Alert: That plan went to shit quickly.

Personally, Luci couldn’t remember the city being anything but a rotting pile of junk, but at only twenty-three, it wasn’t like she’d experienced much. Besides, by the time she had been born, there were already more crises than anyone could possibly keep track of.

Her textbooks often explained that it had started as a housing crisis. There were too many bodies and not enough rooms, so naturally they started building vertically.

Which is exactly why Luci could only catch a glimpse of the murky sky above if she tilted her head straight back. Even then, all she could really see was the chemically laced fog.

When the government had figured out that ground level real estate wasn’t the only thing they could monetize, they took to the sky, stacking massive apartment complexes on top of grocery stores and hospitals. You name it, someone lived above it.

Genius? Not quite.

What they failed to consider was that humans are petri dishes for bacteria, and bacteria thrives in warm, enclosed spaces. Pack a thousand families that can’t afford proper healthcare or a nutritious, immune boosting diet into 600-square-foot apartments, and what do you get, class?

Disease.

And lots of it.

Followed by epidemics. And when those little hotspots of infection turn into global pandemics, well...that’s when things started to get really interesting.

Artificial intelligence was supposed to save the city and make life easier, but it turns out, algorithms aren’t great at finding cures. And humans? They’re only so fast.

So people died.

A lotof people died.

Luci’s parents did during an outbreak of Marrow Rot. It was an airborne disease. And once the bacteria entered your system, its cells eroded your bone marrow quickly, making your skeletal system collapse, which led to a quick but painful death.

Luci and her older brother, Noah, were spared. Some might call it luck, but losing both your parents at a young age never feels lucky. The one saving grace had been that Noah had just turned eighteen, and the government signed over Luci’s parentalrights quicker than Noah could ask for them. But at his age and with barely any savings or a job for that matter, Noah could only afford to cram them into a 600-square-foot apartment.

Do you know what it’s like to share 600 square feet with your older sibling?

Not many do, but Luci’s best friend does.

By the time Luci and Danielle were teenagers, they’d gone through their fair share of troubles.

For Luci, life back then had consisted of staring at Noah’s shift schedule taped onto the fridge and doing homework at the kitchen table while Noah turned her pages. He’d taught her to keep lists, fix what could be fixed, and to always do the right thing.

Love, in their house, was practical.

Danielle’s life had been similar. She had an older sister who had held three jobs to keep their shoebox apartment that was often home to a rotating cast of cousins and friends. Danielle and her sister made space for everyone including stray cats and Luci on bad nights.

Luci and Danielle both studied hard and pretended not to notice when the lights flickered due to a late bill. It was either that or lose their placement at Prometheus and therefore, their future.

The Institute was free but there was a catch.