Feryn hopped up as her chair iced over.

Icing over was one of the many stimulants you could use. Alarm beds also used stimulants, and Feryn chose icing over on those too. There was also the choice of burn over, electric shock, pricks, or push. You could also set the chair to ding on your palmlight. But that was just embarrassing and old-school, not to mention ineffective. Feryn preferred icing over, because she believed it was the most healthy option out of the ones that were effective.

Feryn wished she could get her implant. Only one week left! A lot of things were considered an implant, actually, but there was one special one. The big implant. You could only get it when you were eighteen though. It worked like a palmlight, but it was inside your head, so it wasn't as old-fashioned and embarrassing to walk around with. it was pretty much considered a sign of adulthood and maturity because you got an eye implant too so you don't have to have everyone looking at your palmlight and seeing your business.

A palmlight was basically an implant in your hand that shone a light and worked as kind of a computer, and it also worked like the phones that people had back in the old days, the 21st century. Before the Great Chaos. 

Just thinking about the Great Chaos snapped Feryn back to reality. Realizing she had slowed down, she sped up to catch up with the hasty crowd.

Looking over to her right, out of a one way plastiglass  window, Feryn saw someone taking a jump on their hoverbike. Involuntarily, she winced as he landed soundlessly.

She longed for a hoverbike. But no, not until age 18. The "age of accountability". When you could get your implant. Palmlights sucked, since you had to hold your palm out every single time you wanted to see a holo-image. With the implant, your dings would come from inside your head, and your palmlight would be taken out and replaced with an eye implant so you could see things as if they were in your eye. Not a dumb holo-image. 

Checking around her, and seeing only plastimetal walls, Feryn dived out the window, righting herself 2 feet from the mancannon. Jumpers, people who did tricks on the mancannons for credits, basically arcade money in the form of points, flipped and pirouetted through the air above the mancannons. showoffs. 

Blue, white, and black plastimetal houses whooshed past in Feryn's vision as she flew through the air. She missed the fresh scents of the forest. Green-leaved canopies stretching high over your head, uncared-for trails, and the crisp smell of pine seemed to wash into Feryn's imagination. But it was only her imagination. Everything returned back to the chemically smells of the city.

But Feryn couldn't complain about her city, Selta. Selta was the smallest, least populous, and least polluted city in all of Creigh. Feryn had heard rumors that before the Great Chaos, in the 21st century, Creigh was called the United States, and Selta was New York. Some even said that the whole country had been ruled by one city, one government. That's where Feryn stopped trying to believe the rumors. No country could be ruled by one city. That was a ridiculous prospect. She even hesitated to believe the other rumors about the old location of what was now Selta and Creigh. 

Then the arcade caught her eye. It seemed to emanate  relaxation and fun. She could almost smell the too-clean smell of Vites and cleaner before she walked in. A familiar smell to Feryn, but sickening if you weren't used to it.

Feryn checked her palm-light, making sure no one saw her using it. She wouldn't be looked down upon as childish, not when her birthday was only in a week. One of her friends, Ivy, was having a birthday the day before Feryn's, but she was going to wait a day so they could go in together.

Her palmlight said she had one credit. She sighed. Not enough to make a request. She'd just have to wait an hour before someone got out. She'd never get a VR, which stood for virtual reality, a game that connected to your implant or palmlight and also required a sensi-suit, but was almost like real life. Pretty dang cool.

Sooner than she expected, someone burst out of a VR game, probably in a rush to go somewhere. She bolted over to take his place. This was a rare occasion, that you could get into a VR game without a request. She pulled the sensi-suit on over her synthfiber clothes. Immediately after walking into the turquoise motion-gel, she was in the game.

After a few minutes, Feryn realized she had somewhere to go. Just as the other player before her had done, she burst out of the cage in a rush.

Running