Chapter One
Through the forest with frost covered ground, lies ahead a horrific sound. Metal grinding to a forced stop with begging screams. My booted feet pad against the frozen earth, while I listen for more signs of their approach. There are others with me, trying their best to be quiet while I try to get them to safety. Right now, I feel like it’d be safer for them not to be anywhere near me. If we’re caught, they’ll likely be let go since they have nothing to offer them. I am the one they’re after.
Once the groaning metal has disappeared, I push everyone a little harder. The trees offer little shelter due to the unthawing of winter, their leaves still mostly shed. Due to this reason, we must be extra careful when hitting a thin patch of trees. The ground is almost black due to rotting dead leaves. All the animals have mostly gone into hibernation at this point, but there are a few around. The wind is very still, so it’ll be hard to pick up on their smell, which means it’ll also be hard to pick up my group as well.
After running for twenty minutes, I allow the small group of six to take a rest. Timmy, a boy of four who is covered in mud and leaves, pulls on my thick brown jacket. I give him a smile of acknowledgement, while my never resting eyes search the trees. “Can I have some water?”
I glance over to his aunt-the boy’s parents died two weeks earlier in a storm fire attack. Her short black hair is cut close to her face, but she does have the boys’ blue eyes. Currently, she is laying down on the ground with her hands over her head. Their canteen appears empty. I frown, she must have drunk it all last night. I hand him some of my water. “Drink it slowly,” I instruct, well aware how easy it is to guzzle it after a long run.
He takes some gratefully before running off to be with his aunt. We picked those two up two days ago and she has barely acknowledged the boy. It takes a lot getting used to being a parent, I guess, but she definitely doesn’t appear to be the maternal type. We’ll be at our destination in four hours, which means we’ll arrive by midafternoon. With a much needed miracle we can get there without any problems. I just want to know how the Elite got this close to my trail.
The Elite is an organization that has created an all-out war against anything that isn’t part of it. It started out as a rebellion against a corrupted nation. It was great for the first fifty or so years after it won the war. The Nation flourished and blossomed into a world leader in every category known to man. Diseases, cancers, famine, poverty, depression, birth defects, and every little horrible thing known in this human world had vanished. The air was clean as well as the water.
Soon, after the war was won, Nation-the organization-became global and launched a war on all remaining countries. That war only lasted five years before the now Elite soon ran the entire world, and united us under one entire nation. Since the Elite now controlled the entire globe, its benefits soon followed. Nearly extinct animal populations started rising. The earth was quickly cleaned and healed. There was literally not a care to be had in this newly created world.
Sounds like a perfect world, right? Wrong. In order to remove all biologically created defects, they took a sample of every citizen’s blood. If it a person’s blood was shown to be a carrier, or an increased carrier, of something biologically harmful they were immediately killed. All chemically known things to cause cancer were also banned. At the slightest hint of an individual being sick they were immediately quarantined, as well as their sector, to keep the illness from spreading. Due to all of this the human population dropped to nearly a third of what it had previously been.
With the remaining human population, we were all put into quadrants based off our personality, and assigned sectors based off our skills. If you were born into a sector your skill that was not needed or fit a quadrants specific requirement you were then moved and signed into a new one at the age of sixteen. Though, if we are overpopulated and the child doesn’t have good genes they’re sometimes killed. In order to also help with population control all genders are temporarily sterilized, regardless of their sexual preferences. Those who lived to eighty, which is ninety eight percent of them, were humanly euthanized.
This all went unnoticed for the first fifty years of their reign, due to overwhelming media control. Slowly, after each country was defeated in a war, the previous country that was defeated was being “cleansed.” They focused the media on the victory the Elite just had, plus the current waging wars. No one thought to look at the countries that were already taken over. In order to explain the absence of the previous population, they were counted as “casualties of war.” However, once everyone noticed this, it was too late since the Elite now had control of the world; plus all of its media.
Fifty more years have passed since then, the Elite has been in control for nearly a hundred years. Many were outraged by the genocide the Elite had created, but more celebrated it. Why? Because they were happy. There was nothing to kill them, nothing to hurt them. The earth was in much better shape as well, which meant it was safe to even breathe in some areas. They considered it a heavy, but well worth it, cost.
There is also another problem with it being a hundred years since Elite ruling began. No one remembers the years they weren’t there. Previous histories were not taught to children. Those who did remember, or were even there when it happened, had their memories wiped. Those who resisted having their memories removed, were killed. There’s no middle ground.
However, the Elite now have a crack in its perfect glass bubble. There were a few back then, who always resisted the Elite, even before it won its first ever war. They managed to hide and slowly grow when the Elite started assigning sectors. This meant there were vast amounts of land where no human was allowed to be, so it was never patrolled. As the Elite’s power grew, so did ours. Once the Elite detected our presence, nearly fifty years after it had won the war, they considered us a nuisance. Since our numbers didn’t register a threat to their statistics team, they left us alone. At least that’s what they want us to think. Since my last recon mission, I’ve figured out that we’re an experiment.
That’s what I’ve just learned and was on my way to report it when I’ve picked up these refugees. Even though the Elite is perfect in many people’s eyes, there are those who still cannot play by their rules and try to run. As punishment, the Elite bans them or tries to kill them, depending on whoever catches them and their mood. Some will strike out on their own and survive in a world where they’re not even slightly prepared. Most go on to find others that were banished and try to start a new town together. Some will try to find the rumored rebellion group and try to help or just join for survival. If the banished Elite civilians start doing too well, however, they are killed. That is what happened to all these refugees, their makeshift town was destroyed by the Elite.
I personally belong to neither of those choices and was raised outside of the Elite’s influence. My ancestors were part of the group that hid before the Elite’s rise of power. The group they help founded is called Freewill. Our core belief is that freewill is better than the Elite’s belief. The Elite believe that anything they can’t control either dies or is left alone to die. Wildlife falls into the left alone to die category but they’re flourishing. Since it’s helping the earth, they’ve been left alone however. Lucky them.
