Above the Neon Veil

The sky bruised purple, heavy with rain that would never fall. From here, atop Tower 27’s last living patch of green, Tessa could almost forget the writhing city below—its arteries pulsing red and blue, its oxygen synthesized and rationed by the hour. But she could not forget herself, or the eyes that waited for her command.

Her son was already nestled between the spindly stalks of hydro-grown corn. “They’re late,” he murmured, not looking up from the book in his lap. It was battered on the edges; children’s fingerprints worn into the page corners—a remnant from Old Earth: The Hunger Games (Hunger Games Trilogy, Book 1).

Tessa sat beside him, knees aching in protest. “This garden is safer than any corridor down there.” She tried to sound certain. She was not certain.

He traced a line under Katniss’s name and closed the cover. “I like how she thinks about her sister all the time.”

Tessa smiled—soft as a bruise. “She reminds me of you.”

The meeting was set for midnight. The others would come cloaked in shadow and code words, faces half-lit by city glow. But now it was only mother and son, suspended between sky and steel. She drew him close.

He thumbed through another passage. “‘Sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.’”

“You believe that?”

He shrugged. “I think you’re more equipped than most.”

How easily children saw through armor.

A tremor in the hydro-grid lights signaled a visitor. Lian appeared—her lieutenant—fingers stained with soil and secrets. She pressed a data slip into Tessa’s palm: three names scrawled in broken code, one circled in red.

“Someone leaked our plan to Sector Command,” Lian whispered. “Only four knew.”

Tessa’s heart thudded like boots on concrete. She gripped the book for steadiness; its familiar weight anchored her—a story of rebellion echoing through time.

“Go,” she said quietly to her son. He obeyed without protest, sliding behind a row of tomatoes cultivated for resistance against cosmic dust.

Lian’s voice trembled: “You have to choose who stays.”

That night, as storms flickered on distant domes and algae fans hummed lullabies below, Tessa read aloud from The Hunger Games to steady her hands. The words felt ancient but alive; she let Katniss’s uncertainty breathe through her own.

When the council gathered—four shadows against hydroponic green—Tessa weighed each face against their loyalty and their fear. Her son perched above them all on an irrigation pipe, legs dangling.

“I know we have a traitor,” Tessa began, voice catching on memory as much as dread. “But I know something else too: stories hold us together. If any of you remember why we’re here—why we grow food in air poisoned by ambition—it’s because someone once believed rebellion was worth sacrifice.”

She set The Hunger Games between them all—a silent sentinel.

For a moment no one spoke; even Lian kept her eyes lowered.

Later, after choices were made—one member banished gently but firmly—her son came to sit beside her again. He thumbed open the book to a page where Katniss volunteers for Prim.

“Would you do that? For me?” he asked quietly.

Tessa pressed his hand; he was still so small despite his wisdom. “Every time.”

When he slept curled beneath a blanket of tomato vines, Tessa remained awake until dawn washed neon into pale hope across the sky gardens. She touched the cover of that battered book once more—not just for herself now but for all those who watched from below for signs of courage in their appointed leader.

From somewhere in the city’s belly came the slow bloom of revolution: quiet at first as roots in soil, then unstoppable as hunger.