Raised in an orphanage in London, Sammy never had anything resembling a real home. He was one of dozens—another face in a line of children people would come to inspect before inevitably choosing someone else. Over time, he stopped expecting to be chosen at all.
School didn’t hold his interest. By sixteen, he’d already decided it wasn’t worth the effort. It wasn’t that he couldn’t keep up—he could—but the structure felt pointless, the rules arbitrary. So he left. No grand plan, no safety net. Just the quiet certainty that he’d manage.
At eighteen, the system pushed him out for good, and the streets took over where the orphanage left off. Sammy adapted quickly. Petty theft turned into small-time cons, which turned into smuggling jobs when he proved he could be trusted not to panic. He learned fast: confidence opened doors, charm kept them open, and looking like you belonged was often enough to make it true.
At nineteen, a smuggling job landed him a ticket to America. He carried drugs through an airport with nothing but nerve and a smile, talking his way past suspicion while others were caught. It wasn’t skill alone—it was luck. The kind that seemed to follow him everywhere.
In the years that followed, Sammy built a quiet reputation. He could get things done cleanly, without drawing attention. He moved stolen goods, lifted valuables, and slipped in and out of identities like changing jackets. He never stayed in one place too long, never used the same name twice if he could help it. “Lucky” became the name people used for him on the street—not because they liked him, but because he always seemed to come out ahead.
By the summer of 2002, Sammy was in New York City, working a high-paying con targeting a major museum—lined up to net him $50,000 for a single night’s work. He’d secured himself a penthouse suite at the The Plaza Hotel under a stolen identity, playing the part of someone who belonged there.
Then the flu hit.
The event he’d planned to rob was canceled. At first, it just seemed like bad timing—an inconvenience. So he stayed put, living off room service, riding out what he assumed was a temporary disruption. Days passed. Then the phones stopped being answered. The halls went quiet.
The smell came next.
By the time Sammy realized the scale of what had happened, the city was already dead—or close enough to it. Streets clogged with abandoned cars. Bodies left where they’d fallen. Silence where there should have been noise.
He didn’t stay.
Grabbing what he could carry, Sammy left the city behind, heading south with the same assumption he’d always relied on—that somewhere out there, things were still functioning. That he could land on his feet again, maybe even turn this into an opportunity.
But mile after mile, town after town, there was nothing. No people. No life. Just the quiet confirmation that whatever had happened hadn’t stopped at the city limits.
For the first time in his life, luck didn’t seem to have anywhere left to land.
