We All Fall Down: Gravity Shattered

By V.R. Friesen

"I live in a city where gravity don't work right and stories will eat you alive."

 

Zanna doesn't think she needs friends; she doesn't need anybody. She's been taking care of herself and her younger sister just fine her whole life. But when their neglectful, alcoholic mother dies, they are truly on their own. Zanna's only option is to venture into the treacherous gravity zones and seek out the feral kid packs that roam the broken, abandoned city.

 

Sweet, sunshiny Neverwhen is the first person, besides her sister, that Zanna has let herself care about in a long time. Neverwhen's friend Grammar, on the other hand, is annoying, arrogant, stubborn, and bossy, and he and Zanna butt heads at once. But when Neverwhen goes missing, they must unite to find her.

 

To do so, Zanna will have to face feelings she'd rather ignore and trust a boy she'd rather push away. Surviving might be easy, but making friends, not so much.

 

We All Fall Down is a short story which takes place before Book 1 of the Gravity Shattered series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: V.R. Friesen
• Release date: Jul 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781777406288

V.R. Friesen

V.R. Friesen has been writing stories since shortly after she learned the alphabet. She grew up on the beautiful East Coast of Canada and now lives on the equally beautiful (but in a different way) West Coast, in Vancouver, BC, with one of her many siblings and a cat. She can usually be found drinking chai lattes, cheering on her favourite basketball team, or reading voraciously in science fiction, fantasy, young adult and dystopian fiction. Gravity Shattered is her first series.

Book preview

We All Fall Down

WE ALL FALL DOWN

A GRAVITY ZONES STORY

V. R. FRIESEN

Dimmare Press

CONTENTS

We All Fall Down

What to read next?

Also by V. R. Friesen

About the Author

This is a work of fiction. The characters and events are the products of the author’s imagination and are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblances to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Dimmare Press, 2022

© 2022, V.R. Friesen. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Bukovero

Editing by Caroline Kaiser

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-7774062-8-8 (e-book)

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WE ALL FALL DOWN

Ilive in a city where gravity don’t work right and stories will eat you alive.

I tell the younglings that gravity’s an invisible magnet inside the ground to stop you from falling into the sky. After the Shattering, that magnet got broken and scattered round in the air. So now, if you ain’t careful, you could fall any which way, not just down. The downies built a giant wall to keep us survivors inside the city. Maybe they’re afraid our broken magnets will escape. Maybe it’s us zoners they don’t like, but we never did nothing to them, so I dunno.

It’s a funny kind of city, I guess. Nobody in downieland’s gotta think about falling the way us zoners do. And all the buildings are empty and broken with lotsa bits and pieces floating round in the air ’cause of those invisible gravity magnets. Mom said the city used to be full of people before the Shattering, so many you couldn’t walk a whole minute without seeing somebody. Every single building had people inside it—not just one family but dozens.

When I tell the younglings that, they laugh. Now there’s just a lot of bones left.

I was born right after the Shattering, so I don’t remember the early years, but everyone