You learn to see the world as it is when nobody ever lies to you out of love." – Nasir D'Marion
The Gut didn't have a sunrise.
Not really.
It had light leaks. Faded rays of filtered ultraviolet from broken sky panels, too distant to warm your skin and too dirty to grow anything. The air stank of iron oxide and decaying plastic. Rain, when it came, left chemical streaks on your clothes. Once, Nas watched a bird fly overhead — maybe the only one left in Sector 12 — and it fell mid-glide. No one bothered to touch the body. Even the stray dogs walked around it.
Sector 12 had a name once — some corporate outpost before the split. But after the riots, the world stopped pretending the bottom mattered. People just called it The Gut. Because that's what it was. The intestine of a broken city. Processing waste. Forgotten, but still connected.
Nasir had never known anywhere else.
He'd been born here — or dumped here. The records were shredded in the 3rd Registry Fire. All they had on file was his number: N-0-7-Beta. Some joked that meant "nonviable asset."
He hated that name. The number. The label. It made him feel like spare parts.
Then one night, when the power failed again and most of the kids curled into themselves for warmth, Nas scavenged the reading archive Elias had quietly let him access — data slates filled with corrupted text, fragments of the old world.
In one half-burned novel, written in an age when people still believed in justice and heroes, he found a name. The character was quiet, calculating, forgotten. Not strong — but necessary. Someone who didn't scream to be heard, but was always watching. Always learning.
Nasir.
He read it aloud once. Let it sit on his tongue like a secret. Something about it felt right. Like it fit. He didn't know why. Maybe because the character survived without being seen. Maybe because no one expected him to matter, and that made it easier when he did.
That was the night he stopped being Beta.
He wrote it on the inside of his coat: Nasir.
Not for anyone else. Just for him.
Over time, in the margins of his notes, in the backends of hacked files, he shortened it:
Nas.
And it stuck.
The state facility didn't raise kids. It warehoused them. Tall bunk halls with flickering ceiling lights and vents that hummed like dying lungs. Nights were loud — snoring, whimpering, fights over ration bars or salvageable shoes. Most kids formed packs. Nas didn't.
He slept in the crawlspace above the hygiene trench. Nobody went up there because it stank. But it was safe. Private.
Clean wasn't something you could afford anyway.
The first time Nas saw someone die, he didn't understand what was happening.
A girl named Lanya had stopped breathing in the night. When they shook her, she wouldn't move. The staff didn't panic. They just came in, scanned her chip, and zipped her into a black bag like she was luggage.
Nas sat on his bunk, gripping the sheet so hard it tore.
When the door closed, he turned his face to the wall and cried quietly. Not loud. Not wailing. Just these small, angry tears he couldn't stop. He didn't even know why. He hadn't spoken more than a few words to her.
But she was there.
And now she wasn't.
Not everyone was a threat.
Some of the smaller kids followed him around. Not all the time. Just enough. They hovered nearby when he moved through the facility. Stuck close when the guards got twitchy. They knew — somehow — that he saw more than he said.
Nas didn't shoo them off.
Sometimes, if he had extra, he'd drop a sealed packet of food near the lower bunks. Quietly. No one ever saw him do it, but he always checked later to see if it had been taken.
He told himself it was tactical. Quiet kids drew less attention. Less noise meant fewer problems.
But that wasn't the full truth.
The first person Nas had ever looked up to — really looked up to — was Cainelas.
Everyone called him Caine.
Caine was four years older, with sharp eyes, a lazy half-smile, and the kind of calm that made even the meaner guards keep their distance. He wasn't just older. He was good at things — at not being noticed when he didn't want to be, at making friends when it suited him, and at keeping those friends from turning into enemies.
Nas met him when he was six — the youngest in the bunkline at the time. He'd barely spoken to anyone in weeks. Then one day, while he was squatting behind a rusted food chute trying to fix a damaged slate screen, a shadow fell across him.
"You know that's useless, right?" Caine said, arms folded.
Nas looked up, startled. He didn't answer.
Caine crouched down and watched in silence for a few seconds.
"You're not bad with your hands. You just don't know what you're fixing."
He tossed a broken microcell onto the floor. "Use that instead. That one's dead."
Nas said nothing, but he picked it up. Caine stood and walked away without another word.
That night, the slate worked.
From then on, Caine showed up in quiet ways.
He taught Nas how to slip through the side gates without triggering motion sensors. How to hide small metal tools in the folds of old jacket linings. How to stand behind someone without being seen.
Sometimes Caine called him "Shadow."
Sometimes "Little Rat."
Never cruelly. Always with a grin.
And when guards passed too close or fights broke out near Nas's corner, it was Caine who subtly shifted the danger away. A word here, a gesture there.
To Nas, Caine wasn't just clever. He was proof that you could be in the gutter and still not be swallowed by it.
Then came the fight.
A boy about his size cornered him near the waste chute. Skinny, wild-eyed, desperate. He held a bent fork — the sharp kind they handed out with rations.
"Give it," the boy said, nodding at the food cube in Nas's hand. Nas didn't move. Just stood frozen, pulse loud in his ears.
The boy lunged.
Nas turned to run but slipped. He hit the ground hard, ribs jarring. The boy landed on top of him, fork flashing down. It scraped his side — a shallow cut, but sharp. Panic surged.
He screamed, grabbed the boy's wrist, tried to twist it away. They rolled. The boy grunted, raised the fork again. Nas didn't think — just reacted.
He bit the boy's hand.
Hard.
The boy shrieked. Nas tasted blood. Something snapped under his teeth — maybe the thumb joint, maybe something else.
The boy yanked back, but lost balance. His head slammed the edge of a broken pipe behind them. A sharp, ugly sound. He slumped sideways and didn't move.
Nas sat there, chest heaving. Hands shaking. Blood on his lip.
"Get up," he whispered. "Get up."
The boy didn't.
He crawled forward and nudged him. Nothing.
For a moment, all the noise in the Gut seemed to vanish — like someone had hit mute on the world.
Then Nas ran.
He didn't know how far. Just somewhere dark, where no one would see. He curled into himself behind a rusted drum and let the shaking take over.
And there, for the second time in his life, he cried.
Not because he was hurt.
Not even because he was scared.
But because he hadn't meant to kill him.
Because he hadn't thought he could.
And now he knew.