Tired or not, terrified or not, there are some instincts that make us all act the same. As it turned out, self-preservation qualified. Before I even consciously thought about it, I was driving my fist into my attacker’s knee.

  His eyes widened, and he let out a shout as his stance crumbled. He almost collapsed on top of me, but at that point, I was already rolling away.

  I didn’t quite pull off the maneuver. Just as I was about to get up, a foot kissed my midsection with a bit more force than was appropriate for a first date. I lost the air in my lungs. But even as I heaved for breath, I slipped my backpack off.

  I did that not a second too soon, giving me just enough time to shove the item between me and a knife. The weapon wasn’t that great. Its blade failed to do much damage to my backpack, but my attacker wasn’t deterred, raining down his second and third blow rapidly. Both were close enough to nick the skin on my fingers.

  With what breath I’d finally managed to gather, I roared at the top of my lungs, then pressed forward with all my meager weight. If I’d been fighting an adult on a steady diet and in good physical condition, my noodle frame wouldn’t have had a snowflake’s chance in hell of budging them.

  Fortunately for me, the asshole trying to kill me was just as underfed as I was, and his body was probably rotting away from a heady cocktail of drugs. When I applied all of my strength with desperation added on top, it was just enough to send him falling on his ass.

  I didn’t hesitate or try to get a bit of payback in. I ran right past him and to the stairs, taking two at a time as my muscles burned with newfound strength.

  The lowlife cursed and screamed something after me, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention. What I did hear was the thumping of his feet when he decided he wasn’t going to leave me alone.

  My momentum carried me to the next landing and, with only slightly unsteady steps, up the final flight of stairs that heralded my arrival home. Already I was fumbling for my key inside my pants pocket, the search hindering the speed of my movement.

  “I’m gonna fucking catch you, you fancy rat! I saw where you were! Coming here where honest people try to make a living with your fucking—”

  I cringed, and my feet all but glued themselves to the spot.

  This wasn’t a random mugging. He knew. He’d seen me. I wasn’t imagining someone following me, I was just too stupid to understand the signs.

  I spun on my heel and rushed forward with my backpack once again playing the part of a shield. The druggie clearly wasn’t expecting me to put up a fight, because he ate a face full of fabric just as he was rounding the top of the stairs.

  For a second, his body held, and then he was toppling over and banging down the steps in a flurry of curses and screams.

  I pursued, fresh desperation fueling me. Even if I escaped from the junkie and locked myself in my room, I’d only be delaying the inevitable. Now that he’d got it into his head that I had money, the druggie wasn’t just going to shrug and move onto some other, more convenient victim.

  He might even call in some friends to try and force the door.

  It’s me or him. I don’t want to die now. I can finally see again. I can’t die. I can’t die. I can’t die!

  He was disoriented and hurt, but I wasn’t in the best headspace, either. So, the second I drew close enough to reach a piece of him, I stomped. My foot came down on his ankle with all the rage I could muster, and I was rewarded by a surprisingly loud crack.

  The druggie screamed again, this time at the top of his lungs and in a voice so high-pitched it hurt my ears.

  I stomped again, and the sound choked off.

  I probably should have picked a slightly more crucial bit of body to stomp, because this time, his hateful eyes focused on me. He lunged with shocking speed, and then I had a line of agony shooting through my thigh.

  It was me that screamed this time, and when he went for another slash, I slammed my backpack into the knife with everything I had. I lost my grip a second later and the fabric sack went over the railing, but his knife must have gotten stuck in the fabric, because it went along for the ride.

  For just a brief moment, a jolt of relief and hope swept through me. No knife meant no more lines of burning agony carved into my skin. It meant a fighting chance! Or it did, for all of the two seconds it took for the asshole to tackle me.

  My head hit the stairs with a loud thud. I could swear I saw the stars stretching above us through the concrete, yet their beauty fled me when the asshole clocked me in the jaw.

  There was another crack, and my stunned ass stared as the man howled in pain and cradled his hand for a second, several fingers hanging limp. A part of me was present enough to analyze what had happened.

  His fingers broke. His ankle snapped too easy as well. Brittle bones. Probably off his rocker on Booster.

  Unfortunately, the same drug fueled him enough to snap his other fist into my nose. Then he slapped me with his broken hand, and soon I was covering my head and trying to curl into a ball as hit after hit rained down on me.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Even with adrenaline in my veins, I had no ability to strike back. My limbs felt like lead and strength had fled my frame. My head was spinning. I needed to throw up so badly that I couldn’t even think straight. There would be no smart strategies or final desperate plays that would get me out of trouble this time.

  I should have gone for my shooter. He fell down the stairs. I had all the time in the world. Why didn’t I go for my shooter?

  My dazed mind’s only contribution was throwing more and more critique at my past self’s actions, but that didn’t change reality. And it definitely didn’t change the fact that I was about to die.

  There was another crack, like a baseball bat hitting bone, and the sounds of violence briefly paused. They resumed a moment later, even more vigorously than before.

  It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize I was no longer the target of said violence, and that there was a voice chattering at me.

  “Kid? Kid? Come on, talk to me. Just look at me, at least. Need to know how bad you’ve got it.”

  I managed to force my eyes open. While I expected my vision to be bleary and unsteady from the beating I’d just taken, it was crystal clear instead. That was almost worse, since it forced my brain to process things at speeds it just wasn’t ready for.

  I threw up right then and there, and would have started to choke on my own spit if the guy hovering over me didn’t react quickly enough to pull me onto my side.

  “Easy does it. Easy. Damn, harder to tell if you’ve got a concussion with those eyes of yours… Just breathe, kid.”

  I tried really hard to do what he was telling me, but it still took me several long moments of sputtering and awkwardly brushing sick off my lips before I got anywhere near a normal breathing rhythm.

  When he noticed I was mostly back to cognizant, my savior pulled me up to a sitting position, fingers already poking at bruises that were starting to form. One of my saviors, I corrected myself, because I realized that the sounds of violence were coming from a scowling red-headed woman who was wholeheartedly kicking the life out of my attacker.

  “Attack kids, why dontcha? In my fucking building you asshole? IN MY BUILDING?” Her violence was glorious. The druggie was pretty much dead at that point. I really shouldn’t have been blushing at the sight of her, but there we were.

  “Jeez, kid, you’re really out of it,” the third member of their little party drawled, and my eyes fell on a man casually leaning against the wall and watching me with a smirk. “Don’t let Mela see you looking at her like that. It’s fifty-fifty on what she’d do about it, and, eh, not sure you’d enjoy even the ‘good’ ending of that scenario.”

  “Fuck you talking about Lurch?” Mela, I presumed, glowered at her friend as she finally stepped away from the twitching druggie. The man was a corpse at that point, and that made me giggle for some fucked up reason.

  “Can you two shut up? I think he might have a concussion,” the man helping me snapped, and I sent him the brightest smile I could.

  He was by far the oldest of the group, somewhere in his late thirties to the early twenties of the other two. His hair was speckled with gray that really stood out against the dark browns. He was looking at me with far too much concern for a complete stranger.

  “I’m fine!” I declared, still feeling woozy and off and like a part of my brain was just not working right.

  “Sure you are. Whatcha got you smiling so much?” Mela demanded. Strolling forward, she elbowed the older guy out of her way and grabbed my chin to tilt my head up. “Huh. Neat eyes.”

  “Thanks? They’re new!” I said brightly, then immediately felt my stomach curdle and a jolt of awareness slam back into me. What was I saying? What was I doing? Who even were they?

  My eyes swept over them one more time, and now that I was back into a more clear frame of mind, I picked up a rather crucial detail. All of them were wearing identical black biker jackets with the same mascot.

  A cute, purple kitten.

  The curdling dread simultaneously got worse and better. The Kittens weren’t like the Reapers, or even the Goliaths. They were an actually influential gang, and they held sway over a good third of the slums and were always vying for more.

  The name was a misnomer, and only came about because one of their rivals tried to insult them. As the legends went, once they’d beaten the offender half to death and tore out his entrails and hung him from them, the gang leader was so amused that they took on the moniker willingly.

  The story was probably exaggerated, but everyone agreed the previous name of Red Lions fit them better, considering how often they ended up covered in blood.

  The funny thing was, most civilians preferred them to just about any other gang. They wouldn’t bother people for no reason. They might occasionally step in to prevent a crime if they were personally against what was happening. They also didn’t care overmuch if you ‘casually’ joined one of the smaller gangs due to pressure or for protection.

  So long as you didn’t cross them or try to fuck with their authority, the Kittens didn’t much care about you.

  Mela scoffed, then gave me a wide grin that showed off far too many teeth. Credit where it was due, they were in surprisingly good condition. So, probably not a druggie then. “Whatcha freeze up for, kid? Like what you see?”

  “Um…”

  “Heh. Course you do. Too bad you’re a little too young for me. Fourteen? Thirteen?”

  “I’m sixteen!” I squawked out of outrage, then blushed scarlet when she shot me a disbelieving look.

  “Geesh, ya need to eat a bit more then. You sure don’t look it. Still too young, though! We got some standards round here. Well, some of us do.” She shot a venomous look to the guy leaning against the wall, but he just rolled his eyes.

  It was then that I found my tongue again, and remembered something I likely shouldn’t delay.

  “Thank you. Really. Thank you for saving my life,” I rushed to say, earning myself another crooked grin.

  That was good. Smiles were good. Reminding them they saved me was good. They were less likely to take my life, if just to avoid wasting their own effort.

  “We sure did save your ass, huh? You owe the Kittens a favor now. Do remember that,” Mela all but purred, then drew away from me and stretched like the animal the gang was named after. “Well, let’s clean out. Might want to drag that asshole out as well. Don’t wanna stink this place up more.”

  “Like it could get any worse. No idea why you insist on living away from the HQ. The boss offered to let you stay,” the cool wall-lean guy complained, but he grabbed one of the druggie’s legs and started dragging him down the stairs.

  I don’t know what prompted me to do what I did next, but I shouted after them, and then rushed to justify it. “Wait! What are your names? I need to know who saved me, right?”

  I got several odd looks, but eventually the wall guy spoke up.

  “Name’s Lurch. That’s Mela. The old guy’s Mighty Mike. We’ll call in that favor eventually kid, so try not to croak,” he shot in parting, then continued dragging off the corpse.

  “Oh get off it, the favor’s mine, I saved his ass!” Mela groused.

  She started to follow him, then bent down for a second. When she rose into view again, she was holding my backpack. To my shock, she actually threw it at me and I fumbled the catch, letting it slam into my face.

  “Heh. Get better at that! Also, hey, look, you got a knife out of this!” she cheerfully declared, then dropped a grimy knife onto the steps next to me.

  I just stared at the disgusting, crusty weapon in disbelief as they walked off.