Spoiler! :
Tuesday: 4:45 A.M.
The alarm sounded. It was the usual Tuesday - my clean uniform was on its hook, Carra Lorner dressing into hers. Unfortunately she didn’t share my discretion for modesty. Well, that was an understatement, as you’ll find out later. The way our uniforms work is that every other day a new one gets there; size doesn’t have any relation to the one that ends up on your hook. There are girls ones and boys ones, but other than that it’s basically one-size-fits-all. This wasn’t really true, but the people who put it on the hook seemed to think it was. As usual, I crept awkwardly into the farthest corner of our 8-by-8 cell and used the thin and hole-infested sheet to cover me while I changed. This day’s generic gray jumpsuit was clearly intended for a woman about six feet tall with the muscle-mass of a linebacker, but at least it wasn’t too small. I saw that Carra’s was, which wasn’t unusual, and I wondered a little if those sex-deprived meatheads had nothing better to do than to ensure that she always got one. She sure got ones that were too small an awful lot. To make up for it, she rolled the legs into capris and unzipped the top until I could see the crease of her chest. It was gag-worthy, although fair enough I’d had to resort to the same measures once or twice. But at least I didn’t flaunt it. I wasn’t exactly gorgeous anyway, so it’s not like I had all the guys staring. She looked perfectly comfortable with her wardrobe arrangement.
“Well, well, well, look who’s alive,” Carra said glumly as she turned to stare at me. Her face formed a perfect pout. “Poo. I was hoping I’d have this roomy little place all to myself. Adara, you never cease to disappoint me.”
“Sorry my existence is such a burden, but getting rid of me will be a little harder than that,” I said bitterly.
“Figured. Some people just don’t know when they‘re not wanted in this world…of course, you’ll know that after Judgment, won’t you?”
This was why I wanted to kill her. Tear out every golden strand of hair, pluck off each perfect eyelash, claw off every inch of false angelic skin and expose her demonic red and black interior. Judgment, no matter who you were in the Block, was not something you joked about. That’s the day the Chairman and board decide what to do with you. If you’ve been “reformed,” you’re drafted into the army or given some other special apprenticeship or task. If you’re an obedient but less desirable specimen, you might be used for experimentation in the labs. If you’re like me, it’s the chopping block. Along with anyone else that they classify under unfixable, criminal, rebellious, demented…you get the idea. But I’ve already told you, that didn’t matter. What was life worth? I was condemned behind brick and bars anyway, alone in the world, and fighting in the war would be fighting against my own people. I couldn’t understand the Parygium Order or sympathize with them; they were fighting the peaceful and unprotected. I hated them. And if my death was the only way to support that spite, it was what I’d do. But for Carra to so easily wave it in front of my face was disheartening, not to mention cruel.
Carra obviously had a different road mapped out, and that was the role of conceiver. In my opinion, it was disgusting. They sold people, mostly the women, that they considered “genetically sound,” more bluntly as whores, to have children. They were treated however the buyer pleased, whether that was spoiled or abused, and used to bring up a healthy human population as the population of the world around them rapidly decreased. I would’ve sympathized with Carra if she didn’t seem to be completely willing about it.
But there’s really not time to go loathing someone in the Block. It was about time for our oversized escorts to come and bring us to our assignment board for the day, yet before this could happen Mercen’s voice cackled through the static-cluttered speakers. “Attention, everyone, we will be having an assembly in the dining hall. This is mandatory for all people on the premises.” There was a final screeching sound of a mic’s receiver, and then it was off.
“Well, beats Obedience and Military Courses,” Carra decided with a shrug. I agreed, even though I shot her a glare and rolled my eyes anyway. I already knew what this would be about, though. The boy I’d seen in the medic center. They’d be defending their inability to wipe out or capture him in the first place, yet finding a way to use it to squander our spirits at the same time.
It was a rare occasion to have all of us pooled together, but they herded every last prisoner into a big group as we slowly made our way into the dining hall. There was a ripple of voices running through the crowd, and for once the henchmen didn’t seem to really care. So I decided to find the closest thing to a friend I had - remember 90395? Probably not; remembering numbers is virtually impossible. But this was the nine-year-old girl who had suffered the whippings with me for not keeping pace in the Military Courses training. The one with the bad cough. I’d known her almost the entire time we’d been here, and she’d always been coughing. She said it was some sort of condition that they wouldn’t treat here. Her real name was Molly, but I was the only one to call her that. In return, she was virtually the only one to call me Adara. Except for Carra, but she doesn’t count.
“What’s going on?” Molly said wonderingly, her wide butterfly-blue eyes flitting around as we continued to wander down the passages. “Do you think we’re all--” she was cut short by a fit of coughing, but I knew what she was asking.
“No, I doubt we’re all in trouble. I think it’s because of the boy they found the other day.”
Now she was curious. Molly’s expression brightened a little, a rare event in the Block even for someone as pleasant as her. “They found someone?”
I nodded. “Apparently. Someone from a place called Thritrova.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Neither have I,” I replied in all honesty. Of course, schooling had become a difficult thing after the war broke out, and that had been when I was four. The fighting hadn’t been too terrible until about a year ago, but we’d been working harder on learning how to scrape out a living more than we had on education like math and geography. In Amaea, where I’d lived, things were tough for anyone who wasn’t supporting the Order. Amaea had been a bustling city, a beautiful place, and a gem for either side of the war to take stronghold of. I shook my head, realizing that this world of my memory was replaced with the carnage of war.
Finally we’d all been corralled into the same place, one of the only places in the building (other than the Judgment Room) with a high vaulted ceiling. Words rebounded and flew around the high ceiling like bats, so pretty soon everyone had tuned their voices down into a soft murmur. When Mercen took his place at the head of the room on a temporary platform, it turned into silence. Death Himself couldn’t have quieted a room so fast. Mercen gave a crocodilian grin, waved a hand, and began to speak. No sign of the new boy anywhere. “Hello, children. I am grieved that I must inconvenience your instructors by postponing your first classes, but I’m afraid that it could not be helped. You see, I have a much more important lesson for you all. Swindle, Ward, if you may?”
In came two large henchmen, in their arms the struggling boy. One held his tangled and sweat-soaked hair while the other hoisted him by a rope that ran around his chest. He was dressed in the same gray jumpsuit as the rest of us, and yet it was different. The single thing that made it stand apart was the black stripe that ran along the chest.
“This, children, is Samson Freeman. Through a series of circumstances, he has slipped into the shadows and into hiding. We will show you what we do to cowards.”
The henchmen forced Samson to his knees, and Mercen circled him like a hawk. The boy’s deep brown eyes looked up with indignation, but he didn’t speak. From his pocket, Mercen took a small remote with only one button. Suddenly, the stripe down the boy’s chest seared with electrical pulses, volts of blue energy shooting from it. His jaw clenched, and I saw the scream he was holding behind gritted teeth. Even I could feel the waves of power and force, and by the look on Molly’s face I could tell that she did too. I clutched her shoulder, even then knowing it’d offered no comfort for her or me. By the time the last sparks had dissipated, the boy was shivering, panting and sobbing.
“Act like dogs, children, and you get a shock collar as well. Run away, and your fate will be worse. See, kids, this is war. We don‘t play games here. Hide-and-seek won‘t be tolerated, so if you get any ideas…game over.”
Another single spark zipped along the suit’s black line, this time sending Samson to the floor. It took painfully long moments for him to return to his original kneeling position. We all watched as the boy’s battered face looked up at us, and that was when I saw his fear. He was looking out at the sea of all of us, taking us all in, and seemed to try to comprehend what was happening here. Then he saw me. He looked surprised, and it took me a second to remember how I‘d acted back at the medic ward. He’d probably thought I was insane back then - maybe even still now - but he also seemed to be understanding. He likely feared what was to happen next, feared realizing what’s probably happened to all his siblings and friends. But of all his fears, he looked most afraid of the number of people that were watching him as he fell, and he crippled within himself. Swindle and Ward took him away in the same fashion they’d brought him in, but the new kid - Samson Freeman - didn’t struggle the way he had upon entering the room. Head slung, the battle was over.
He’d fallen to join us, as they always did.
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