Chapter 1
All of her life, Anitra had known two things. 1) Going outside of Refugee City was strictly forbidden, and 2) Mars wasn't really her home.
But as she stared out of the round window in her bedroom and into the artificial lights that made up the landscape of Refugee City, she realized that she didn't understand why the red planet wasn't her home. She had lived in the same small two-bedroom apartment with her parents and older brother since she was born, and had grown up looking out over the city and the empty red desert of Mars just outside of the dome that surrounded the city. Her grandparents had told her about Earth, how wonderful and open and vast it was when they lived there, and they had even told her of the invasion.
Fifty years ago, in the year 3000, the red storm of Jupiter disappeared, revealing an alien race. Although some people had been excited, the sudden appearance of a new race in the Milky Way Galaxy had concerned the majority of humanity. The fears were seemingly quelled when the race--calling themselves the Jupitians--wanted to meet with leaders of the human race with the intention of securing diplomatic relations.
This peace, however, was not meant to last.
The moment the Jupitians arrived on Earth, they killed every single world leader and their families, and declared war upon the human race. To show how serious their claim of war was, the Jupitians shot a powerful weapon at Earth's moon, destroying it and causing a terrible climate change on the Earth. The resulting storm caused mass chaos and deaths worldwide before the military realized that fighting back was doing no good for anyone, and made a deal with the Jupitians to relocate a select amount of people to Mars. Part of this agreement required that the evacuated humans never return to Earth, and that the humans remaining on Earth were to become little more than toys for the Jupitians to entertain themselves with when they became bored.
Anitra's grandparents and her then-three month old mother were among the lucky ones to win the lottery to be evacuated to Mars. Thirty years after their resettlement, she was born, and grew up in one of the high-rise apartment building built for the refugees from Earth. And as she grew up looking out of her bedroom window, she saw the development and growth of Refugee City into the metropolis it was today. ("It reminds me of how New York used to look," her grandmother once said to her.)
"Anitra," a male voice came from behind her in a rather irritated tone, "get away from the window and close the curtain. I'm trying to sleep."
Sighing, she backed away from the window and pulled the small black curtain closed in front of it. Although she could see with the room's overhead light on, it was just so plain with the curtain closed.
Anitra faced her bed, across the room from where her older brother, Connor was lying down underneath the covers of his bed. His half of the room had nothing on the walls, revealing the cream color beneath the posters and pictures that decorated Anitra's side. This was due to do the fact that Connor was moving out in three days, across the city to a place that was closer to the mineral mine where he had worked since he turned twenty.
She sighed as she slid underneath the fluffy down comforter laying across her bed. Looking out of the window to the red planet's surface was always her way to calm her nerves, and her nerves needed calming tonight.
Three weeks ago, Anitra had finally graduated from a mandatory higher education school and taken what most simply called the career test. This test determined what job a person was the be given within Refugee City; most were left with mine or road work jobs, while anyone scoring highly could find themselves to be a scientist helping to find a new planet for their race to move to, or those scoring low were left to join the military (aka: The Human Militia). The militia was an undesirable position amongst the first generation of refugees simply for the fact that the soldiers within it worked to find a way to take back the Earth from the Jupitians regardless of the agreement that was made for humans to never return.
Regardless of her score and the coming protest she knew would come from her parents and grandmother, this is the position that she had always wanted. She wanted to help regain the Earth, even though it was considered a lowly position.
Anitra released a long sigh meant to attempt to calm herself as she drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow morning she would know what opportunity she would be giving up to do what she had always dreamed of doing.
