Speranţă
The City Where You Have to Pay for Oxygen
In Speranţă, a dystopian city dominated by megacorporations and covered in toxic fog, life is kept within a dome, controlled with an iron fist. For most of the inhabitants, oxygen comes at a price, and freedom is an unattainable luxury.
In Speranţă, some young people are born with powers strong enough to become celebrated heroes; others are thrown into the battlefield with no special training, only the price of survival. They are forced to fight against... whatever is on the other side of the dome.
Carlisle, with her sharp tongue, quick wit, and a burning desire to cause destruction, is not one of those prodigious heroines. But maybe she doesn’t need to be. As the city sinks further into darkness, Carlisle finds herself forced to sink along with it.
How do villains come to be? Ask anyone, and you'll hear a different answer. But the truth is, everyone has the impulse to become something dark; where the patience to suffer in silence ends, the desire for revenge begins.
“Oww, don’t tell me I hurt your feelings?” – the straight, perfect smile played on her lips, mocking, even though she was the one lying on the ground. “If that’s the best you can do, I don’t even want to see the worst.” – As she tried to lift her upper body, the second blow came straight to her ribs, pushing her back against the dirty ground once more.
She would have to add that event to the list of “stupid and potentially suicidal things” she had already done.
The foot pressing her into the ground remained firm on her back, preventing her lungs from fully expanding. He – whose name she would have to strain to remember – said something, a whisper lost in the wind, because all she could hear was her own heartbeat as she threw a mocking smile at the bastard.
