“I can’t believe it’s so bright out today,” Risa remarked to herself as she strolled down the streets of what had once been a city. She was attempting to be cheerful despite the situation, which was very bad at the moment.
Risa had lived in this city for almost her whole life now, but the last six months had been the worst. Both her parents had been killed and she’d been separated from her brother and her friends. Sometimes she wondered if they were still alive, and what they were doing, but most of the time she was kept busy enough to not have time to think about it.
The reason that she had enough time to think about the sun on such an occasion was that she had been sent on an errand. The section master in her area who had decided that she was useful enough to keep around had decided that today she should be saved from the task of finishing the garden cleanup and head out to get some more soap.
Though she was relieved to not be cleaning up the dead tomato and corn plants, the special treatment had her worried more than the normal constant worry about her brother and her friends. She remembered when the armies had first come to her town.
She had been home from school for a weekend visit and they had heard the news of the approaching invasion on the television. Almost before they had time to react, the electricity and the air conditioner had gone out and the doors had been burst down by a group of men in black outfits with helmets and guns.
After that they had been lead with a group of about five hundred others that lived near them to a large open area (most likely a parking lot). With tales of Hitler’s concentration camps running through Risa’s mind, they had been divided into three groups of people. One group was to be moved elsewhere, one group was to stay, and the third group – well, they hadn’t been so lucky.
Risa’s parents had been moved to the third group. She and her brother had cried together, the first time she could remember having seen her fifteen-year old brother cry in front of her in quite a while. They hadn’t been told what the third group was, but they were smart enough to figure it out.
At first Risa and her brother Scott had been both put in the second group, but, as the men were going through the lines of people (checking to make sure no one had switched lines), one of them had caught her eye.
“You stay here,” he had said, and moved her to a different line. To afraid to protest, Risa had simply complied. The result was that she had stayed in her hometown rather than being moved with her brother. She hadn’t seen him since.
Since then, the man who had moved her (his name was Giovanni) had given her some other special treatment. Though she was grateful, of course, his attitude on a whole gave her a creepy feeling. If she had been a more adventurous person, she would have used this to her advantage, but she wasn’t. So she just accepted the special treatment with silence. There was nothing more to do.
Some of the people had already taken the easy way out of the compound by taking their own lives. Others had tried to escape. The result was that the civilians had been under greater security since then, and weren’t allowed to be alone with anything that might facilitate suicide or escape.
Risa didn’t believe she had the courage to try to escape either way. So she simply did what she was told and didn’t give up hope even though that was more difficult than simply surviving.
She turned around a corner and looked up to see where she was walking, as she had no desire to collide with anything. The sky was clear, which accounted for the bright sun. But suddenly she spotted a flash of light in the southern sky.
‘Lightning?’ she wondered. ‘But there aren’t even any clouds.’
Risa glanced around at the people that were on the street. There were a few civilians, and several soldiers walking around making sure that no one did anything stupid. None appeared to notice the lightning in the sky.
‘Maybe it was just my imagination,’ she thought to herself. But then she saw the flash of light again.
“Hey! Move along, now,” one of the soldiers shouted to her. Risa tore her attention away from the sky and nodded, moving along complacently.
‘If Marie were here,’ Risa couldn’t help thinking, and almost laughed at the thought. ‘I wonder where she is now…’
‘Hmmm… This is interesting. She’s alive, after all? I can sense enough to feel that, but I can’t tell where she is and I can’t communicate.
‘The sun…the sun is so bright…I’d forgotten how bright it could be…’ ‘I guess I should keep walking. There’s nothing else to do… Just walk until I find some people and then see if they can help me…’
"Marie, we’ve reviewed your proposal,” Mr. Witherspoon observed. Marie nodded.
“It seems to be a good idea,” a younger woman spoke up. Marie dragged her eyes away from Mr. Witherspoon’s chrome dome.
“You really think so?” she asked, trying to hide her nervousness. She wasn’t very good at speaking in front of large audiences, especially when she had to be formal. She always ended up feeling awkward.
‘Kali could have done this better,’ she found herself thinking. ‘Or Riana or even Risa. Actually probably not Riana or Risa, they’d be as scared as I am. But Kali could have. Anyone but me.’
“We’ve decided that we should start the program in late December,” Mr. Witherspoon continued, once again interrupting her thoughts with the shine of his head.
“That’s great,” Marie replied.
“You’ll have to get all the parent’s and guardian’s permissions before you take them outside of course,” the other woman continued, and Marie nodded.
“I’ll make up permission slips right away,” she replied. “Thanks a lot.”
The bald man nodded, and Marie hurried out of the Council room. Once she was in the hallway she breathed a sigh of relief and leaned up against the wall.
‘I can’t believe it! I actually did it! Myself!’ she thought to herself. Then she burst out laughing. ‘Oh, but Mr. Witherspoon is so funny looking.’
Still giggling, she headed down the hall back to her room. There she would be able to laugh without anyone thinking she was insane.
She passed down the hallway and rode the elevator down to Underfloor Two, where most of the living quarters were located. She passed Riana’s offices, but decided not to bother her. Most likely she wasn’t in, anyway.
When she reached the small room that she slept in, she collapsed in a fit of laughter on the bed. “I can’t believe it! I actually did it!”
‘Good, you’re safe, too. At least I know you’re all okay. You’re all I have to turn to now. I just hope I can manage to find you.’
Risa walked back to the small building that had been her home for the past five and a half months. She carried a bag in her arms that contained a large package of bars of soap, some hair shampoo, and some cleaning materials. She had a feeling they’d be doing a bit of cleaning now that the work was done.
The “city” she had called her home for most of her life had been transformed into a Compound. Compound 4-7A, to be exact. Risa didn’t know what the numbers meant. She wasn’t sure if there was another Compound that had once been a city or town that was now called Compound 4-7B, or if there was a Compound 4-8, or 5-7. But it didn’t really matter. The only reason that she knew that was that on all the boxes of supplies shipped in, Compound 4-7A was written.
There was a thick concrete wall surrounding Compound 4-7A now that made escape nearly impossible. Risa had heard of dozens of people who had tried and failed. She wasn’t certain of what happened to those who tried, and she wasn’t certain if anyone had ever succeeded. It didn’t really interest her, because she had no desire to try to climb over the wall.
The building she lived in was one like many other buildings in her city. The large fancy skyscrapers and tall buildings and fancy Victorian style houses had been destroyed to make hundreds of small concrete plain and boring buildings like the one she lived in now. Her building was in Section 22 and Giovanni was the Section Master, which meant that he was in charge of anything and everything inside Section 22, which covered about a mile. There were at least 40 sections, some of which were outside what had been the original city.
For the first two months of the Compound’s existence, Risa and most of the other citizens had been forced to work on building the fifteen foot wall that surrounded the Compound. But now she worked in one of the small buildings on the outskirts of the Compound, near the ever-looming wall. It served as a constant reminder that, no matter how free they might feel, they weren’t.
Now Risa worked and lived with about fifty other people. They lived in the long low concrete building and they worked on the gardens. Though Risa had liked flowers and some plants, agriculture was most definitely not her occupation of choice. It was tolerable, however. More tolerable than those who worked at more physical labor. It wasn’t a hard assignment, and it didn’t require too much effort.
When she returned to the building that she now called home, Risa noted that most of the workers were not working. Instead they were standing in lines. Most of them were leaning on garden tools and trying to look as though they were the slightest bit interested in their jobs.
‘Oh, no!’ Risa muttered and cursed under her breath. ‘An inspection.’ She hated inspections. The workers had to stand at attention as though they were in the military and have a few doctors and other military higher-ups stare at them and decide if they should be moved or not. Usually they were once a month, but it had only been two weeks since the last one.
Quickly, Risa hurried into the gardens carrying her package, and looked around for Giovanni. He caught her eye and motioned for her to stay still and not move. Obediently she nodded and stayed where she was. Thankfully, soap and cleaning supplies would not be damaged by lack of storage.
From her vantage point on the outskirts of the garden, Risa could see that this was no ordinary inspection. There were no guards except for those that were normally around Section 22. And there were only two people. She wasn’t certain if they were doctors.
One was a woman, which struck her as rather odd. She had short, dark hair and eyes that were almost violet. She seemed to have a sad look to her, and Risa wondered about that. She dressed in a dark pair of pants and a dark shirt that was buttoned down the front. The hems of both the shirt and pants were gold. She wore shiny patent leather boots.
Next to her was a tall, thin man. His hair was similar to the woman’s but that was where the similarities seemed to end. His eyes were a bright green that seemed to flash in the light. He wore a plain blue shirt with gold trim and a pair of bright red pants that almost made Risa’s eyes hurt. His boots were a plain and simple brown, and he wore a cap of a similar material on his head. Unlike the woman’s sad demeanor, he seemed to have an arrogant air. He laughed several times at the civilians, and his laugh sent chills up and down Risa’s spine. She shivered.
“Don’t you see?” the man was saying to Giovanni. “None of these will work. They don’t have the level of electricity that we will need to perform our tasks.”
“I’m sorry sir,” Giovanni replied. “I wish I could have been of more help.”
“I don’t understand it,” the woman spoke up. “We got such a strong reading from this place.”
“Perhaps the readings were wrong, Juliana,” the man told her. “It could be that the machinery is malfunctioning.”
Juliana frowned but said nothing. She didn’t agree with him, Risa could tell, but for some reason or another she didn’t voice her opinion.
Suddenly the man turned towards Risa. “Who’s that?” he asked. Risa gulped and wished herself invisible.
‘Why did he have to notice me?’ she thought to herself.
“Oh that’s Risa,” Giovanni replied. He looked at the clipboard he held. “Number eight seven dash four three one.”
“Eight seven dash four three one,” the man repeated. He took a few steps towards Risa. “Where was she during inspections?”
“Picking up soap for me,” Giovanni replied, and Risa was glad she didn’t have to speak. She was so afraid she wasn’t certain she could have spoken aloud.
The man was about to say something, but Juliana spoke up. “Maybe it was she that gave us the reading,” she said in a low voice.
“Maybe,” her companion replied. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small black box with a red antenna. It reminded Risa of a television remote control. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he recited unsympathetically and held the box in front of Risa. He frowned and punched a few buttons. Then he frowned again and punched a few more. He lifted the box into the air and frowned some more. Then he lowered it down to waist level and punched some more.
“This is odd,” he finally said after much frowning and punching of buttons.
“What is it?” Juliana asked. The man showed the black box to her. She frowned and took it from him. Then she repeated his frowning, moving, and punching buttons ritual. “She’ll do,” she replied finally, passing the box back to the man.
“Are you certain?” he asked. “I’ve never seen readings like this before.”
“She’s not the same as the last one, but she’ll do,” Juliana replied.
The man sighed. “Alright then. She’ll come with us.”
“Her?” Giovanni spoke up suddenly. “You can’t take her. She’s important here.”
The man reached into his other back pocket and removed his wallet. He opened it and flashed some identification. “My name is Julian Randolph,” he told the man in a snotty voice. “As you can see, my sister and I have authorization from Compound Chief Zalet to carry out our orders. Which are to find someone who matches the readings we have been given. Citizen number…” he paused and glanced at Giovanni’s clipboard momentarily. “Eight seven dash four three one fits into those parameters. To defy us would be to defy not only the Compound Chief but also the Emperor. Would you like to defy the Emperor, Section Chief Giovanni?” His voice was slightly condescending as he recited Giovanni’s titles.
“Uh, no,” Giovanni stammered, somewhat overwhelmed and insulted all at the same time. “Do what you wish. I suspect you’ll take her now?”
“Yes,” Julian replied. He turned to his sister. “Have her pack up everything as soon as possible. I want to be able to leave in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, Juliana. No more.”
“Yes, Julian,” his sister replied. She stepped forwards. Giovanni took the soap packages from Risa and left the garden. “Come with me.”
Numbly, Risa followed Juliana back towards the compound so she could gather the few belongings she owned. She’d gotten away from Giovanni for the time being, but was she merely going from the frying pan into the fire?
‘Julian? Juliana? They’re still alive? Oh, my. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Well, at least I know Juliana will be nice to her. I just wonder…what will they do to her? Strange readings? I wonder what’s so strange about Risa?’
It was nighttime by now, and her feet were getting tired. Sleep was a good idea, but at the same time it wasn’t. She needed to sleep, of course, but nighttime was dangerous. Reluctantly she began to pick up some twigs and sticks. She’d need a fire if she was going to spend the night in the woods.
‘If she’s with the Julians she won’t have much chance of freedom,’ she realized, thinking as she worked. ‘Juliana’s somewhat on the side of the people, but Julian is working for the Emperor, even though their total purpose is just for supposed “scientific” research. Scientific? Ha! What they did to me was not for research. But Julian was careless with me. That’s how I escaped. He won’t make the same mistake twice.’
‘There’s got to be something I can do to help,’she thought. She set the sticks into a pile, and got to work making a fire so that she could sleep.
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