Selfishness was the worst of them and it was without a doubt immoral. And Charis Joba, had done a brilliant job of ticking each box with her excessive show of immorality. She’d stolen water to bring Luther on the voyage. She’d lied on the day of departure and said she’d been assigned to East river for filtration duty should anyone look for her once she was noticed missing. She cheated Denim Rays, the Rations Revenue Supervisor of her station, out of advanced ‘sweets’ by manipulating him into collecting his payment from her later while she selfishly stole three hundred food rations in addition to the fifty he’d promised her, right underneath his nose. She’d even stolen his vessel and managed to crash it only God knew where.

She’d done far more than these things in her twenty years on Disius 9, but these things she’d done in less than four cycles. Charis Joba was her parent’s worst nightmare, their only surviving relative and filled with oceans of immorality.

But morals could do nothing to save her now where she was, wherever she was. Even if she could have called for help, Denim would have been the only one who could have discreetly aided her. But she was certain she had turned herself into little more than his arch enemy by her actions.

Congressman Meekus Claudius did not tolerate failure, not from his underlings, not from the farmers, and certainly not from his own son. Denim would probably face worse punishment than Charis was sitting in the very moment his father, Meekus Claudius Rays, caught wind of how he’d been undermined by a farmer, lost rations and a ship, all in exchange for kisses and a some moments of closeness with a pretty face, payment he would never receive.

Charis shuddered. It may have been from the cold, wetness that was seeping into her bones, or from the damage she’d done a man who didn’t deserve it.

“I only wanted to go up.” She whispered, her voice bouncing off what she could only image where the walls of a well. The way her voice echoed as it funneled up and away from her, gave her that suspicion.

She’d only wanted to go up, out of Disius 9, into a better community. Where upward had been a desire, now it was no longer a choice. If she had any chance of surviving her fall, the only option she had left was to go up.

Grunting, she heaved herself to her feet and steadied herself to climb.