Oracle

I

The door to my cell opens, and I know I am doomed.

Not me, I think. It shouldn't have worked on me.

I was fifteen when whispers of the Implant started crawling their way through the masses. Even then, when little was known about it, when most were still sceptical, there was deference in the way they spoke of it.

Revolutionary.

Unprecedented.

Technology taken to a brilliant, terrible level.

Nobody knew precisely what the Implant entailed, but it was a harbinger of change, of hope, so they revered it nonetheless. There were rumours it would trigger the start of a modern era, reshape reality as we knew it, save the world.

They should have feared the unknown.

Instead, they worshipped it.

Over the years, as tidbits of information they deemed fit for the public seeped through the crowds, airborne like viruses, we discovered the Implant had but one great flaw.

It would only work on those younger than twenty.

The outrage that caused spread like wildfire. Fertility had rapidly declined in the past four decades, one of the many consequences of the environmental collapse, so the majority of the population was much older than that. Those fortunate enough to have children rejoiced, however, more so when the rumour that they would be entitled to financial compensation should their offspring join the Implantation Program cropped up.

Enough families volunteered that, for a couple of months, they didn't even have to disclose that receiving the Implant would be mandatory.

Down the street from us, a single mother who had given her five-year-old son up still sat on her porch every morning and evening, waiting.

A year had passed since his departure.

The first teenager was taken from our neighbourhood the day before I fled.

Helen had wanted to come with, but I'd been adamant that she stay. She wouldn't have it. As my older sister, she'd been looking after me for so long that it was ingrained in her. However, she was twenty-five—nothing would happen to her as long as she didn't break the law.

Harbouring anyone under the age of twenty had been declared illegal merely three days ago.

I promised her that, as soon as my birthday passed, I'd return home.

Helen was as stubborn as I was. Her packed bags were by the front door the night I sneaked out.

Leaving a note felt as if I was admitting I wasn't coming back, so I didn't do it.

I should have.

As I made my way across the country, aiming for the northern border, I bore witness to things that convinced me the admiration with which they'd spoken about the Implant had flourished on a bed of lies.

They took even the illest of them.

They took even the infants from their mothers' arms.

Children cried at the top of their lungs and parents clung to them, begging to be spared, begging for lenience, but they never listened. Fists and knives and regular arms had no effect on their silver suits. They usually travelled in pairs—one of them escorted the seized child to the tank-like van they came in, while the other kept the parents at bay.

More often than not, the horrifying ritual came to an abrupt end, marked by gunshots.

The silence they left in their wake was deafening.