10 July 2088 5:45 a.m.

Key sat on the fortieth floor of Australia Square, still fuming at her little brother, Jay. Leaning against the window frame, with her backside on the moth-eaten carpet and her legs dangling out the place where a window had once been, she spat, watching the gob of saliva disappear into the darkness.

Far below, campfires dotted the streets of Sydney where the people fought back the chill in the morning air. The city centre had become the last refuge of the poor, the destitute and the lost.

Off to the east, Kings Cross shone brightly enough to bathe the low cloud cover in a lurid glow. Sometimes she’d scam for creds on the streets there, but it was no place for Jay. The words of her grandmother, Manna, came back to her, “Even a shit looks like chocolate from a distance, but once you tread in it, it’s all you can smell”.

Key couldn’t imagine what the city was like, back when the window had glass. People called it the ’48 Crash. Earthquakes and a tsunami, possibly a war, the only thing certain were the billions of dead. She’d only heard about it in rumours and stories, happening decades before her birth. This was the world she knew, living in the skeleton of old Sydney.

Things would be so much simpler if she didn’t have to look after her annoying little brother. Her needs were always put on the backburner because she had to deal with his special needs. She could usually handle it, but that night her patience ran out. She’d only been able to listen to so many hours of chatter about trains before losing her temper. It’d been an hour since she’d yelled at him to shut-the-frack-up and go back to bed.

Sometimes she just wanted to run away, but where could she go. Home, to Nimbin and Manna? What would her grandmother say about Key leaving Jay to fend for himself?

It wasn’t his fault. He was an Aspo. He didn’t know any better.

Key drew a deep breath and sighed.

Slowly she realised she’d not heard a sound from him since the argument and as that realisation dawned she felt her heart skip a beat. Jay didn’t fall asleep that easily and he was never that quiet. Not ever.

“Jay?” she called.

Pulling her legs back in, she climbed to her feet.

“Jay?” she called a little louder.

No answer.

Key hurried to the abandoned office that served as his bedroom, but all she found was his tattered grey blanket in a pile beside his beaten old mattress. Guilt washed away her residual anger. She should have checked on him.

“Jay,” she shouted as the panic rose and she rushed from room to room, frantically searching for him. In the foyer near the broken down lifts, she froze, seeing the door to the stairs propped open with a brick.

Oh, god, she thought. The train!

Throwing on her shoes, she bashed through the fire door and grabbed the hand rail as the door closed behind, plunging the stairwell into darkness. Although pitch black, the stairs were well known to her and she counted them in her head as she took them three at a time, her hand gliding over the railing for balance. She pounded in a downward spiral until, with her chest burning, she reached the ground floor.

Without stopping, she threw the door into the circular foyer open, hopped over the debris and shot out the vacant window. Her head full of terrible imaginings, she cut across the courtyard at the foot of the old skyscraper and bounded over a low wall where a long dead garden once grew.

The glow of the transients' fires lined the cluttered footpath along George Street, lighting the way. As soon as she had that light she began sprinting south, towards Town Hall. She knew exactly where he’d go.

Key ran the length of the shattered streetscape, passing empty buildings that had made up the ruined city of Sydney. Once filled with people living their lives, they’d become glass and concrete shells. The broken glass of the windows looked like savage teeth. She’d pondered what it was like hundreds of times, but all she could think about now was getting to Jay before he got himself in trouble.

The air was cold against her face as she dashed down the busted street, past the rusty car bodies and the shattered shop fronts, long ago looted of anything useful. Pushing on against the stitch in her side and the aching in her legs, she passed the fallen copper dome of the Queen Victoria Building. It looked like a green skull resting on a pile of burnt bones.

Key kept running, ignoring the fire in her lungs, focussed solely on finding Jay before he got into the tunnels. Finally she reached the sandstone steps of the old Town Hall. Vols hung out on the cathedral steps next door, sniffing petrol, paint or anything else they could scrounge from the corpse of the city. She saw a half a dozen Roaches, huddled around a burning bin, all rugged up in thick grey woollens that hid their faces and she darted across the road towards them.

Sliding to a halt a healthy distance from the group she shouted between panting breaths, “Did any of you see a kid come by here?”

One of them pointed down the lane without showing their face. Key didn’t wait around to say thank you. She ducked into the alley just in time to see Jay’s head and flashlight disappear into a manhole.

“Jay!” she yelled. “Get your arse back up here.”

By the time she got to the hole, he was out of her reach, still making his way down the rusty ladder which creaked and groaned under his weight. His torchlight revealed the long drop to the railway tunnel, fifteen or more metres below him.

“Jay, stop,” she demanded, kneeling on the edge and holding out her hand, and for a moment he did.

He shone the torch up at her, the beam of bright light blinding her for a second before he continued his descent.

“Get back up here, you little shit.”

The ladder groaned and heaved. In that second the image of him burned itself into her psyche, a broad grin manically plastered on his face in the torch light.

There was a loud metallic ring as the bolts broke, the ladder fell away and Jay went crashing to the tunnel floor below.

Key knelt with her hands on the edge of the manhole, mutely staring down at the circle of light at the bottom of that black pit. She couldn’t breathe, like all the oxygen had been sucked down the hole after her brother. He lay there, unmoving, the broken rusting ladder, lying bent over his twisted body.

At last Key screamed, “Jay!” but it was useless. There would be no reply.