The idea of saving anything was folly, a life especially. No life had ever been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonge… - Hugh Howey

All our hope, the accomplishments of those before us, what the world can be like, that’s our Legacy.” Bernard’s lips broke into a smile. He waved his hand to continue. “And the bad things that can’t be stopped, the mistakes that got us here, that’s the past.

Daytime was a shift, each one endured like a quantum of life, all the short-term planning leading up to another bout of darkness, little thought given to stringing those days into something useful, some chain of valuable pearls. Just another day to survive.

He had wandered with innocence and naivete into this web, and now every move would wrap him tighter. Each lie would stick to the others, until one day he would find himself in a tight little cocoon, trapped and suffocating from the thousands of little fibs that living and working in that cursed swamp of a city seemed to require every man to ooze.