Every in Between

They killed my mother. You are everything I ever wished for, she said before they put her to sleep. That's how I got my name: Every. I am no one special. I'm just the one who knows they lied.

My city is just like every other city: derelict, decaying, enclosed by a great, gray dome. It is managed by a faceless authority and strictly controlled. We are born, live, and die inside its walls, safe from the vast nothing outside. War, they say, destroyed everything except the cities, and we are not to question why. Those of us who do question them run away—if we can—except there's nowhere for us to go. For three long years I survived on the empty streets and back alleys of my city, searching for, but never finding, an exit. And then, one day it happened.

I got out and you won't believe what I found.