Page 2 of The Hollowed

Tuition?

10 years of your life.

Four years of the Institute.

Four years of college in a subject of their choosing.

Two years of research in that field.

And that was just the minimum.

If you needed better housing, the price was another five years.

Grocery stipend? Six months.

Want or need the latest lab equipment? More time.

Time was the only currency that mattered anymore.

So, months quickly turned into years , and Luci was now approximately 22 years in debt.

Even then, it still beat the cost of public school.

The Department of Education went down a long time ago when the government figured out it was easier to control a society that was uneducated and easily scared. This happened before Luci was born as well. There were other institutions that provided free education of course, but you had to be gifted in some way, and they all required time as their form of currency.

Staying in those programs? That was another battle entirely.

Which was exactly why Luci was out in this freezing hellhole.

Danielle was missing.

Well perhaps that was an overexaggeration.

She hadn’t shown up for their morning shift at Sanctum Medical, where they both worked as medical researchers. And she wasn’t answering messages or picking up calls which was not like her at all.

Luci knew Danielle was smarter than to skip a shift and risk her contract.

Which led Luci to wrap up her work at the hospital as quickly as she could, throw on every thin, useless jacket she owned, and brave the cold.

A twenty-minute walk through New-Chicago shouldn’t be this miserable, but thanks to the government, extreme weather was just another thing to endure.

The politicians claimed it was out of their control. That the climate had changed too fast for them to do anything.

Bullshit.

If they had just listened, taken the earth’s warnings as truths instead of “opinions,” their citizens wouldn’t be living in a frozen wasteland in winter and a scorching inferno in summer.

But it didn’t matter. The past wasn’t going to change.

What could change, though, was the amount of debt Luci was willing to take on to avoid freezing her ass off.

Noah had warned her against taking out a loan for a plasma rail pass. Accidents happened too often for it to be worth the risk. But right now? With her fingers going numb and her nose burning from the cold?

She was really reconsidering.

Because, honestly — what was a few more months of debt on top of the years she already owed?

Luci considered that question carefully as she made her way through the maze that was her city, taking shortcuts and being careful not to bump into any pedestrians who looked particularly angry or disturbed. She was grateful when she finally caught sight of the soaring apartment building where her best friend lived. She didn’t even think twice when she drew closer and discovered a handful of police troops parked outside.