The ninth week found you driving a small military vehicle through ruined streets, its cargo bed loaded with looted food supplies. The engine coughed and sputtered, running on contaminated fuel, but it moved.
You navigated toward one of the city's gathering places for ordinary citizens, areas where survivors clustered together out of instinct rather than any rational plan for survival.
The vehicle rolled to a stop. You stepped out, and immediately the crowd's attention fixed on you.
Your large frame drew their eyes first. Then the double-edged axes strapped to your back, the fragmentation grenades hanging from your chest webbing like lethal ornaments, the laser rifles slung across your shoulders. You were armored, armed, clearly dangerous.
Thousands of ordinary people simply stared at you with lifeless, clouded eyes. No fear, no hope, no real emotion at all. They'd been ground down past the point where threats registered as meaningful.
You moved to the vehicle's cargo bed and began casually tossing food onto the ground. Loaves of bread landed in the dirt, some cracking open to reveal pale interiors. Military ration cans rolled across broken pavement, their metal surfaces catching weak sunlight.
Every eye tracked the falling food with predatory focus. Suddenly, those dead gazes showed life. Hunger was perhaps the last instinct these people retained.
"There's practically no food left in this sector," you announced, your voice carrying across the silent crowd. "The freshwater sources have been severely contaminated by chemical runoff from abandoned factories. Drinking it will kill you. Maybe not immediately, but you'll suffer tremendously before the end."
You blinked slowly, your expressionless gaze sweeping across faces that belonged to walking corpses. Skin stretched too tight over skull bones. Limbs showing clear definition of every tendon and vein. Bodies consuming themselves to stay marginally alive.
A small number retained enough rational thought to understand your words. Deep despair flickered in their clouded eyes as they processed the implications. They were already dead, just taking time to finish dying.
"Tell me something," you said, shifting your tone suddenly. A grin split your face, incongruous against the surrounding misery. "Have you ever eaten Grox meat? The firmness of that fresh protein, the aroma when fat renders and crisps... it's absolutely unforgettable."
You watched everyone present unconsciously work their mouths, jaws moving as if chewing phantom food. Tongues flicked across cracked lips. Adam's apples bobbed as they swallowed saliva their dehydrated bodies could barely produce.
"Have any of you ever been truly full?" you continued, pacing slowly before them. "While you've worked yourselves literally to death for these Tech-guild slave owners, has a single member of your family, a single friend, colleague, or relative, ever once eaten until their stomach was satisfied?"
You bent down, your armored knees creaking slightly, and picked up a loaf of bread from the ground. You held it delicately between your fingertips, applying just enough pressure to release the scent.
The slowly wafting aroma of baked grains permeated the entire space, absolutely captivating every nose in the crowd. You saw nostrils flare, heads lean forward unconsciously.
"Bread of this quality," you said casually, rotating the loaf so everyone could see its intact crust, "you've only seen maybe a handful of times in your entire lives, haven't you?"
The next moment, you threw the crumpled piece of bread at a young child standing near the front. The boy was delirious with hunger, swaying on stick-thin legs, barely conscious.
The child's eyes suddenly focused with laser intensity. He lunged at the bread while it was still airborne, moving with desperate speed that shouldn't have been possible given his obvious malnourishment.
He caught it mid-flight and immediately shoved the entire loaf into his mouth, refusing to share even as he choked. His eyes rolled back as his throat struggled to accommodate the mass, but his jaws kept working, grinding, forcing it down. Better to choke than let anyone take it.
"I can give you the food here," you announced loudly, drawing everyone's attention back to yourself. Your expression went blank, cold. You pulled a double-edged axe from your back and slammed it heavily into the ground, the blade biting deep into pavement. "But you cannot simply take it!"
The crowd had been surging forward, drawn by the promise of food. Your action stopped them like a physical wall. They hesitated, instinct for self-preservation still marginally functional despite everything.
"You can do basic math, right?" You gestured at the assembled mass. "Count how many people are here. Look at how much food sits on the ground. Even if each person gets only one bite, it won't be enough." You let that sink in. "And even if you don't starve today, what about tomorrow? What about three days from now? Five?"
Your eyes swept across the crowd, watching their blank expressions gradually shift as your words penetrated the fog of starvation and trauma.
"Once you've exhausted every scrap of visible food and drunk every drop of marginally clean water you can find, what happens then?" Your voice dropped lower, more intimate, forcing them to strain to hear. "Will you just starve to death? Or will you start eating each other? Because those are your only options at that point."
You let the silence stretch, watching comprehension dawn on the faces of those still capable of abstract thought.
"No one is coming to save you!" The words cracked like a whip. "Not the Tech-guild slave owners safe in their fortified enclaves. Not the off-world merchants who profited from your labor. Not even me, ultimately." You paused. "In the end, only you can save yourselves!"
You took a deep breath, filling your lungs, preparing.
"I can tell you a simple fact!" you shouted with all your might at the ordinary people whose eyes were beginning to focus, to think. "The slave owners' armies are swimming in bread! Endless military rations! The water they use to wash their faces is cleaner than anything you've drunk in years!"
You watched the words land, watched anger begin to replace despair.
"Do you think this is reasonable?" Your voice rose higher. "Fair? On what possible grounds do they deserve full bellies while you starve?!"
"Why should they be comfortable, eating their fill and staying warm, while you die here unable to get a single piece of bread?!"
A smile played at your lips as you observed faces unconsciously twisting with rage. Anger was better than resignation. Anger could be weaponized.
"I won't preach grand revolutionary principles," you said, softening your tone slightly. "I won't demand you follow me to glorious deaths for abstract ideals. I'll just ask you one simple question: Do you want to eat until you're full? Do you want to taste meat? Do you want to drink clean, fresh water?"
You slowly raised both arms, spreading them wide like a prophet addressing faithful followers.
"Do you?!"
The crowd's atmosphere shifted from deathly silence to something electric, volatile.
"I want to! I dream about it!" The young child who'd nearly choked himself on bread suddenly raised a thin little hand, waving it frantically. His voice was raw but fierce. "I dream about food every night!"
"Even a little kid has the courage to tell the truth!" You pointed at the child, then swept your finger across the adult faces. "Don't you men and women want the same? Aren't you at least as brave as one small child?"
"I do! I want to eat meat!" A middle-aged woman suddenly burst into tears, stepping forward from the crowd.
She walked slowly through the silent, watching mass of people, every eye tracking her movement. She stopped directly before you, her weathered face streaked with tears cutting tracks through grime.
Then she bent down, picked up a military ration can, and clutched it tightly in her dry, cracked palm. Her knuckles went white with the intensity of her grip.
"I know what you're trying to do," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "But I don't care anymore. I'll go with you. I just want to eat meat." Her bloodshot eyes locked on yours with frightening intensity. "Even if it means dying right after I finish eating, I still want that meat."
"Ma'am, you can eat now," you said with a gentle smile, your tone shifting to something almost kind. "After you finish, please stand behind me."
The middle-aged woman's bloodshot eyes never left yours as she moved past you. She stopped just behind your shoulder and opened the military can with shaking hands. Her dirty, withered fingers carefully extracted a piece of synthetic protein. She stared at it for a long moment, as if unable to believe it was real, then placed it in her mouth with an expression of pure satisfaction. She chewed slowly, repeatedly, savoring every second.
Her action broke the dam.
Maybe her lead gave others courage. Maybe your words had finally penetrated deep enough. Whatever the reason, the effect was immediate.
Men, women, and children moved forward with eyes suddenly filled with desperate longing. They approached the scattered food like supplicants approaching an altar. Some picked up military cans and shared them immediately with family members. Others grabbed bread loaves and broke them apart, passing pieces to neighbors and strangers alike.
The sharing was remarkable. These people had nothing, yet they divided what little they received rather than hoarding. Starvation hadn't completely destroyed their humanity.
You watched as the food disappeared, consumed in minutes.
When the last crumb was gone, hundreds of people stood around you. They'd eaten. They'd crossed the threshold. They were yours now.
But a much larger group remained, those who'd received nothing, standing at the edges. They stared at you with longing expressions that bordered on worship.
"Don't worry!" Your voice boomed across the assembly. "The armies roaming inside and outside this city have plenty of supplies! Mountains of food! And if this city runs out, we take another one! And then another! We have the whole planet!"
You grabbed the double-edged axe embedded in the ground and wrenched it free. The blade came loose with a grinding sound.
You smiled as you surveyed the ordinary people around you, reading their expressions, gauging their readiness.
"Come with me! We won't starve! We'll take bread! We'll take canned food!"
The crowd began picking up your rhythm, their voices growing louder.
"Come with me! We won't starve! We'll take steak! We'll take fine wine!"
"Take bread! Take canned food! Take steak! Take fine wine!" The people who'd just filled their empty stomachs roared with bloodshot eyes, their hunger only amplified by that first taste of food after days of starvation.
The remaining people who hadn't yet received anything raised their arms and joined the chant with fanatical expressions. The roar grew deafening, hundreds of voices becoming one savage chorus.
This wasn't a revolution. This wasn't an organized uprising with political goals and strategic objectives.
You'd simply given these ordinary people, who were destined to die anyway, a reason to rise up in violent rebellion. Given them an enemy to strike at, a target for their rage, a final act of defiance before the end.
"Slave owners of Kiavahr!" you shouted over the mob's roar, grinning savagely. "Your hungry, working-class nightmare has arrived!"
The mob surged forward, following you toward the city's heart, toward the enemy, toward food and violence and the terrible freedom of having nothing left to lose.