I am Cordelia Keeper. This is a faithful account of the new world.

It is the third day of Arnos; the beginning of the warming season, where our grey skies slowly fill with the heavy, cloying repressed air of summer. We no longer see the sun. Its effects are the only sign it still exists.

I am sitting on the roof of the Wiley building in the West Quarter.

Evening is approaching. Evening meal will be served and we will gather around the radio to listen to the looping recording that has been a stalwart since before I was born. We listen for continuity, we listen hoping for change and also dreading it. One day it will change and we will be safe again or it will be gone and we will have lost another part of ourselves.

My Grandfather was the keeper of the Radio Station in the early days of the Smog. After They arrived. He protected the airwaves and ensured the survival of many factions during the first waves of the attack. The Station fell during the Second Wave. Those that were left set the loop. It has played ever since. People say there is a monument to the fallen in Central, but we are forbidden to travel there.

My parents were the keepers of the old Library, when the smog spread, they secured as many of the volumes as they could. Many thought it a waste, reading being a luxury in the Quarters, but my father fought beyond his limits to cling to the knowledge of the past. He returned again and again until he was infected. It took him five days to die. I held his hand.

That was ten years ago and I am now the keeper of the new library. I live among the stacks, cataloguing and watching the smog approach. Soon we will have to move again but for now we are safe and I can read.

Joffrey is my assistant. He was my father’s assistant and best friend. He raised me once my parents died and cared for the library until I was old enough. His son Dante is our fixer. He was taken when at ten to be trained in the East quarter. He returned two years ago to help keep the library standing.

He found this notebook hidden behind one of the stacks yesterday and gave it to me. Paper is rare and notebooks have not been made since The Smog. This is the first account of life in the West Quarter. It may not be a document of Warriors but it is mine and I intend to write it.

It is a way to say ‘We were here’ and this is how we survived picking at the skeleton of a city we never knew.