The Birthday Present

Life after the apocalypse is supposed to be simple.

World collapse is absolutely bad news. A disaster of the worst order, generated by the rise of engineered mutants who created an autocracy with the sole purpose of trampling on humans. Inevitably, the world is filled with so many injustices you lose track when counting them on your fingers. Humans are also said to be extinct. And mutants are supposedly oppressors, never victims. Oh, and mutants are never out to get each other, only humans. In short, there can be a lot of assumptions about the distant future.

The one thing that is certain, though, is that this bleak future world has a generous helping of social inequality. In a pair of novelettes, two girls (Lucy a human and Alyce a mutant) find themselves tangled up with the rich and famous of the millennium following ours. Lucy is a bubbly and reckless girl who befriends every boy she meets, and Alyce is patient and tolerant to an extreme. But Lucy has a little nefarious scheme up her sleeve and Alyce, it seems, does have a limit to her patience after someone tries to kill her simply for being related to someone else.

I mean, who wouldn't get annoyed by that?