The hourly news report cascaded down a gigantic screen in a graceful rain of white characters over the trademark blood-red background of the National News. Huon read from across the square, his face set against the chill blowing in from the harbour.

Farmers in the western provinces were still protesting the new fertiliser laws.

Localised storms had done damage in a few smaller cities in the north east, no deaths. Clean up would last for at least a week, experts said.

Xan-Jin had won the Digital Football Championship for the third year running.

The general death toll continued to climb. Health officials could still only guess how the disease was being spread.

International travel continued to be largely restricted.

Parliament still couldn't decide if it was constitutional to draft Survivors into service with the dying and the dead. The subcommittee meeting on the topic had been postponed until the following week.

Local news to follow. . .

The square was virtually empty. It was almost eleven at night and the streets shone from a light drizzle the moistened the coats of the few people still out, rushing along on last minute business.

Huon waited until the next cycle of news ceased falling before rolling his shoulders and walking on.

He'd spoken with a few others and they'd told him the same thing. Go. Go and see what it's like. If you can handle it, volunteer. Many of us do. If you can't, jam your local representative's encrip box with messages describing what it's like in the hospitals in such vivid detail that their stomachs turn.

Vivid detail.

The hairs on Huon's neck stood on end and his steps slowed. An invisible iron band slithered around his chest like a snake, constricting his breathing as if it were determined to crush all of the air from his lungs.

For a moment, he could smell the ashy heat from the incinerators and underneath it, the slimy, gut-churning reek of black bile.

A shiver racked his slender frame.

Did he really agree that volunteering was a good idea for him, for any of them? Was that his own mind or the minds of all the new friends he'd made in the last seven months as a Survivor. Friends who now comprised his entire world after his old ones had abandoned him.

No one was forcing him to volunteer. Not now. Not yet. Next week, when the subcommittee met again, then maybe. Next week. That was days and days and days from now. Or next month, or next year, or. . . no one knew. No one knew anything.

Survivors had no representatives in the Palace of State or behind the walls of The Fortress where the judges and legal theorists sat. In the text and holo-cast forums they'd all agreed that they had to band together, make sure they weren't drafted, their rights abused. That was more important than sensitising the public and sponsoring Survivor Meet days in schools and sports centres.

Volunteer. Volunteer before they all were forced, even the ones who couldn't cope with it.

But did that mean it had to be tonight?

Huon looked up at the grey patches of cold sea-fog drifting by, swaddling the tall, slim buildings that soared twenty, thirty, forty floors above his head, blocking and fuzzing out the light from thousands of windows. He'd always found that feature of the city beautiful. The soft, floating sea fog. He lived too far away from the harbour to ever have his own building enveloped, but down here, it was an exciting thing to watch.

He could just turn around, get back on the Red Line Transit and go home. It would be easy. Nobody but the security drones that silently criss-crossed the sky on endless patrol would ever know. He hadn't made an appointment, called ahead. He hadn't told anyone in the forums. He could just go home. Who but himself would know?

A blast of wind caught him by surprise. Huon ducked his face into the upturned collar of his coat, his eyes watering from the cold and swift wind-caused dryness. Another blast turned him sideways, fighting against the invisible pressure in an effort to keep going.

At the next intersection, Huon's gaze fell on rows of neon signs arching over the doors of taverns and noodle joints. A couple looked as if they still were open.

The glowing greens, pinks and blues of the neon signage were like gentle hands on his arm, pulling him towards them. Somewhere safe. Somewhere normal. His steps slowed, then stopped.

Just one beer. Just one, to settle his nerves. Then he'd go and volunteer. Then he would go for certain. Wouldn't he? Of course, he would. He had already come this far.

Outside one of the taverns, a hologram of a smiling geisha in a blue kimono moved her ghostly hand in a gesture of welcome towards its entrance. Huon slipped past her and went inside, the door of original wood creaking loudly.

The tavern was larger on the inside than it looked from the outside, and far more crowded. He felt every pair of eyes behind every full-face pleximask swivel towards him, follow him, as he made his way towards the bar where a tall, stocky bartender in an iridescent protective suit of light-weight Nanotex shook his head and held up a gloved hand to stop Huon from sitting down.

"Sorry, friend. No protective gear, no. . ." his voice trailed off. He'd spotted the insignia on Huon's coat, and his cordial stance shifted instantly into one of unease and wariness.

"Whatever you have on draft, please," Huon said quietly and seated himself on one of the empty stools, ignoring the raised hand that had already begun to sink. The bartender stared at him for a few seconds, taking in every detail of his clothing, face, hands, hair, before slowly reaching for a glass and placing it under a shiny beer tap.

A man two stools down silently rose and moved to sit at an empty table, taking his drink with him. A woman who'd been staring at Huon turned her back on him and continued a whispered conversation over her headset.

Huon stared at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He saw a chilled, worried-looking man in a black coat, trapped, squished, into the empty spaces between shiny, cheerful bottles of alcohol. Inappropriate. Abnormal. His eyes sought out the insignia he was required by law to wear on all of his outer clothing: a red Latin letter "S" in an upside down blue triangle.

When his grandfather had been a boy, the only person who wore a red S on his chest had been a comic book hero with the ability to fly.

Huon remembered Grandfather setting him on his knee and showing him the very old drawings and some of the equally old films about the handsome hero, telling him the S stood for Superman, for super powers and super strength. He was the saviour of an entire city, not unlike the one they lived in. How wonderful was that? What a lucky city to have a super hero of their very own!

None of the other children at Huon's school had ever heard of Superman and they'd laughed at him, but Grandfather said it was impossible. The whole world knew Superman!

That had been over thirty years ago now and Huon knew Superman to be long forgotten, existing only for social historians and in the memories of old men like his Grandfather. The S on his own chest didn't stand for super powers, or super strength. It stood for Survivor. For someone who shouldn't exist. But did. For someone the government didn't know what to do with and the Health Board couldn't explain.

Why did a very few people survive when so many didn't? What made him such an exception? There was nothing exceptional about him. He was a music teacher. He liked to read. He did his Wellbeing Exercises in the public parks on the days he was scheduled for. He sent small gift packages to his mother on her name day. Why him? Better men and women, healthier, smarter, than himself had died within hours in excruciating agony.

He knew that agony, still. He'd been treated in the underground concrete tunnels of Hospital 5 in the outlying district where he lived after stumbling into Emergency feverish and hallucinating.

He'd been strapped on a gurney, given the medication and a Tender Bot had lanced the swellings on his arms, legs and chest, painfully draining out the black, watery bile with a sterilised mechanical vacuum. Then he'd been abandoned to die like all the others in the long, long corridor that lead to the morgue and the incinerator beyond.

Except he hadn't.

Only he and a seven-year-old girl called Luan Chi who had been admitted at roughly the same time had survived the critical first twenty-four hour period. Together, they were moved upstairs into a potential survivors' ward, their fevers peaking and troughing, the swellings on their skin turning into hard, greenish-black scabs that itched and burned as fire-red spots appeared in rings around them.

He remembered very little of that time, except for the sharp sting of disinfecting fluid, the constant reek of sweltering rot and bile overlaid with a strange sweet scent, and the sound of Luan Chi singing a long and convoluted song about rabbits wearing hats, the lyrics of which he could make no sense of.

Once their fevers dwindled, they'd been moved into a small survivors' ward. They'd lived long enough for the disease to burn itself out and die, a doctor with a beeping device on his wrist told them. They were out of danger, immune and no longer contagious. Human Tenders patted their hands and gave them vitamin-enriched water to drink.

During the following days, the scabs fell off, a few of the deepest leaving scars behind, and after a week, both he and Luan Chi were released.

Two of the nine percent to survive.

Luan Chi's parents had hardly been able to speak through their tears when their little girl was returned to them. Huon had felt like crying, too. But there had been no tears for him. He had no family in the province and the friends contacted by the survivors' ward had refused to pick him up, fearing for their own health.

A temporary Survivor badge was pinned to the sky-blue hospital shirt he'd been given and he had stumbled his way to the nearest Red Line Transit station, alone, weak and unsteady on his legs.

The people on the platform had given him a wide berth, despite their protective gear and gloves. Inside the train, people had stood up, leaving six or seven seats in all directions from him empty.

It had been his first taste of the ostracising that he would come to know so well, only he hadn't known that at the time. He'd thought it was because he was pale, weak and not wearing protective gear.

But I can't infect you, he'd wanted to tell them, pointing to his badge, at the red S in the blue upside down triangle, See? I survived. Right here. You can't get the disease from me. I'm completely safe, please believe me! Please!

But it had been too much effort to convince so many averted eyes. It still was.

The buzz of conversation and the soft tide of Driftmusic from the tavern's speakers rolled through the bar and made Huon feel like a wrung-out cloth hung up to dry.

He drank his beer when it came, the bartender carefully pushing it towards him with two fingers. No one spoke to Huon and he spoke to no one as he drank, hand clenched around the glass, memories cycling through his mind.

When he finished, he forced himself to get up and leave, to go back out in the cold and continue on his way, feeling the other guests breath a collective sigh of relief as the door closed behind his back.

A few blocks on, Central Hospital 3 loomed in front of him. He gazed at its beautiful, high-reflective glass walls with the curving, lush plant pattern taken from the traditional medicine garden motifs etched into them. The opulent design was clearly intended to symbolise healing, balance and serene beauty.

Go to where the government officials, the rich, the important are treated in your city. Volunteer there. That's the most visible place. That's the place it will do the most good --for all of us. Show them we are cooperating. We can't let ourselves be drafted. We can't.

Huon stared at the entrance. He'd arrived. He'd come this far, but he could go back, forget about the whole thing.

He had a choice.

He still did have a choice.

Huon's fingers found their way to the insignia on his coat, and he ran them over the raised embroidery for a few moments.

S.

Survivor. Sick. Shame. Seldom. Superman.

Then Huon squared his shoulders, lowered his chin and strode towards the bright lights of the hospital gateway to volunteer for the night.

In the name of the nine percent.