Mercury || The Freaks || The Collapse

In disguises no one knows

Hides the face

Lies the snake

And the sun in my disgrace

Boiling heat

Summer stench

2045. Well, the people did it. They ignored every warning, every expert. Man's hubris led to its downfall and -in just a relatively short amount of time-, the planet lost the very thing holding it together. No, not reality TV or fast food. Not even the plethora of manmade, finely tuned entertainments to distract one from the mundane banality of modern life. It lost something far more important. Water.

Governments fell. People lost their minds. Civilisation as they knew it ground to a screeching, terrifying halt.

Of course, there was still water below the surface but the readily available surface water that was so relied upon? All gone. Rivers and lakes dried up. The seas became plains of salt. The corporations didn't spare a thought for the common man, hoarding their pipelines for themselves.

Life became hellish. Plenty chose to end their existences there and then, preferring to die by their own hands than the quick but ruthless end caused by dehydration.

Still, plenty others remained. Their lives became one long to and fro. Go out, find water, collect as much as possible, guard what you found, return back to whichever hole you found cool enough that your water won't evaporate within a few days.

Water became so precious, so sought after that it even replaced currency.

Humanity splintered into groups, fending for themselves with no one to guide them. The world became lawless, volatile.

Mercury and his older brother Banks grew up in that world, learned how to navigate it and -more importantly- learned how to survive. Keep to your own, trade when necessary, find your waterholes.

Until he just had to help someone escape a werm. Damn that conscience of his.