Chapter 1 – Crunch Time
Blue POV.
They call me Blue.
Not because I have blue eyes. I don’t. My eyes are black.
Not because each of the men I killed turned blue after death. They didn’t. They simply looked … dead.
They named me ‘Blue’ because, I suspect, they couldn’t come up with a better name. I have no name. I don’t remember if I ever had a name.
I am an orphan. Born to human parents. Lost them when I was still an infant. Lost them to the system that hunts down and punishes pure-blood humans, and kills them on the Supremo’s whims.
They say I am the youngest human kid to have been imprisoned. The youngest ever. Probably because I am also the deadliest ever.
I had thirteen kills to my name even before I turned into a teen. Not my fault, though. Circumstances made me do it.
At least, that’s what I told the judge when he sentenced me to a lifetime behind bars. It’s a pity my excuse didn’t influence him or his decision even the slightest. It’s a tragedy I was cuffed and shackled throughout my trial and sentencing.
Else, that judge might have become my fourteenth kill.
That’s right. Killing comes naturally to me. The prison guards say I am a natural-born killer. The warden says I am the most feral “beast” he has seen in his lifetime.
It’s okay to be called a ‘beast’ in this city. Every resident here is a humanoid: pre-programed and remote-controlled. Safe. Never out of order.
I am all flesh and blood. And so, I’ve always been out of order.
The only reason I am still alive is because of the Supremo’s benevolence. Supremo Silas. He renamed the entire city after himself, and the country, too.
Silas is the Supremo of the humanoids in Silas City. Nobody remembers the original names of our country and our city. Remembering is forbidden, punishable by death.
Obedience is the only way to stay alive.
But that’s not the real reason behind my continued survival. The Supremo was generous to me, as he had been to six others. They were all human kids like me. All girls — felons, wild, and deadly.
The seven of us were incarcerated in the same prison, “Hell’s Furnace”. We were all young, and grew up together inside the prison, though in separate cells.
In isolation.
The warden said he would never get a good night’s sleep if all seven of us were to be kept together in a single cell. He had doubts if any of us would survive after the first night if kept together. He feared we would kill each other even before sunrise.
He called it ‘human instinct’.
He was wrong.
For one, we never got to see the sun. Not even once since sentencing. Two, we were all alike — the seven of us — human orphans, teens, and natural killers. We wouldn’t have hurt each other if asked to share the same cell.
We would have come up with a plan to kill the humanoid guards and escape.
There was no escaping “Hell’s Furnace”, though. It was impossible. It was built a hundred feet below the ground, with an intricate labyrinth of air ducts providing much needed oxygen from above the surface.
Moreover, we were kept in shackles all the time. And were forced to wear a muzzle-like mask on our faces except during mealtime.
It was a necessary precaution. Some of us, myself included, had killed a few men with our teeth. Our bites were worse than knife stabbings, we were told. There was a possibility of surviving a knife attack, but none if bitten by one of the deadly seven.
We were the reason sharp teeth were banned in the nation. Having sharp teeth is now a Class A felony. The entire population of humanoids is issued blunt, wooden teeth by the State.
And every set of state-issued teeth is monitored and accounted for by the administration.
The most interesting day of our imprisonment was the day they named us. They couldn’t come up with sweet, girly names for the “vicious beasts” that we were.
So, they named us after the colors of the rainbow.
Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red — those became our names from that day on. Easy to remember, and somewhat feminine … I guess.
I was assigned the name “Blue.”
All seven of us were kept alive on Supremo Silas’ orders. He needed us alive, though behind bars. He had plans for us, we were told.
Plans that would be revealed the day each one of us turned eighteen.
I am the youngest. My turn came last. The other six were taken out of the prison on their respective eighteenth birthdays, one by one, and shifted to a separate facility no one knew about.
I once overheard the warden whisper to his deputy about that facility. It was worse than death, he said. No mortal could come out alive from that place.
But I know I can.
I know the other six can make it, too.
Because we are not ordinary mortals. We were born to survive. We survive to kill.
I turn eighteen today. And I am going to join my six friends in that mythical ‘facility’, wherever the hell it is.
I am Blue. I am happy with my name. Not because I like having a name. But because I belong to a family of seven.
And I am going to be reunited with my family today.
