She wasn’t anything special, just a runt off the street. Just another rat, by anyone else’s standard: she was another mouth to feed and another body to clothe and look after while the Sector breathed down your neck and the rains and smog choked the life out of you. They were right about all of that; just a kid who knew nothing and was abandoned for good reason.

            Sitting in the rubble of a Sector raid, with nothing but rags. A sorry sight. Yeah, she was nothing but trouble, but she was smiling then. Pointing at the sun, she was. Where it should have been, anyway, and without any way of knowing except for—

            “The sun talks to my heart, mister. That’s how I know where it is, even when I can’t feel it or see it. I can hear it, here, in my heart.”

            “It what?”

            “It speaks to me, listen.”