I'm walking slowly through the dark grime of the world in which we live. I'm bowing my head, looking at the pavement below my feet, slimy and unreliable like our hearts. Dark and cracking like our smoke-filled lungs. Trembling and shifting like our unsure, frightened minds.

I don't bother to look up when the cars zoom past me. I hardly even make the effort to listen to them passing. I just stuff my hands in the pocket of my coat and bow my head. I think it might be raining. I think I can see water droplets dripping off of my hat. But then again, it's probably just fuel leaking from a shoddy jet.

I don't know where I am and I don't care.

I'm just tired. Tired of this city, tired of the underground, tired of being who I am. What I am.

Am I nothing more than a what? A thing? A mutation in my DNA made me a degenerate. Like that movie. I'm never going to rise up to the level that people always hoped of me. And I can do nothing about it.

But I'm tired of doing nothing about anything. Sure, I joined the underground, but was that really because I was angry at our oppressors? No, it was because it was convenient. I joined the underground out of necessity. I'm a degenerate and I'll never stop being a degenerate. And the underground just loves the degenerates. We're their demographic.

We're always nothing but a demographic.

The door swings open and in comes Damien. His smiling face has alleviated any worries I've ever had. The world is beautiful and I love absolutely everything in it.