Those we left behind... (unfinished)

Prologue

Prologue - CPT-ONE

I remember when I was just a young girl living in the vaults beneath our ancestor's land, I was always the lonely shy skitter kid that nobody knew; I blended in, my mother home-schooled me with books to learn how to spell and read; . Growing up I was always fascinated by the spacecraft that people used to see above ground, my ancestors rode them through voids to distant places, that's where they worked and played, my mother used to talk about a white marble in the sky, that changed every night, the place where men, women and children went for leisure, and fun. She talked about the Red marble that the ancients wanted to turn green, but that went wrong. My mother used to say that our generations had many wars but the reason we stay down here is to protect us from what lives up there, she always signaled with a hand pointing upwards. I had nightmares every night about the secret group of assassins that took children away from the slums and transported them deep into the depths of the cave systems. I should know these nightmares because I was one of the children taken away by the Secrets...

It was a dark day, we assumed as it was always dark in the caverns; we never had any idea what time it was, people used to have these things called clocks but because of the amount of time we had populated and thrived time was soon forgotten, my mother and I lived on the outskirts of our shanty town. We drew water from a nearby lake, for food we bred and ate bats, sometimes fish; but there were over two thousand people in the colony to feed, several viruses attacked our colony a few years back; many were infant deaths. Some had talked about rebelling against the secret group near the mines, I delivered fish cakes to several of the rebellion's leaders; it was always exciting seeing them with only a torch and old TV box calculating the best routes to enter the base, I was always too young to understand the actual plots they thought about but none the less I was always excited. That's when I was grabbed, the day I was walking alone back to mother; she was sitting on the porch reading her favourite mystery novel from the ancients; I walked onwards and was caught from behind...

I started to scream but the men in black cupped a foul-smelling rag over my mouth and I lost conciseness, black swirls ebbed around me as the colour was drained and turned into pinpoints of tiny colours, I remember this almost as if it were yesterday; the vivid dream was turned on into a brilliant flash of blinding white light and a black hole of nothing slowly grew bigger out the corner of my eye, I was scared and thrilled for the feeling of anxiety and pain grew deep in my frail body. Then it changed... beyond me stood my mother, I was scared, she didn't move and I reached out to touch her, just before a high pitched whine filled my ears and I squirmed as my hand started to melt into nothing, and the dream screamed at me, it tore my mind apart, the feeling ruptured through my body as I woke up...

The dream was lucid, as I rubbed my swollen, puffy eyes; they stun and burned. I looked up and saw the white ceiling, to my left and right; long white bare walls revealing nothing. I sat on a bed, a real bed, I was shocked, I wanted to jump on that bed and hold it close but the sheets were stiff and almost like plastic; next to me a small table plus a glass (clean) of water once again (clean). I can remember only so much from my time in their room, (as I recall) it smelt of cleaning fluid and a long hallway had led me to a shiny metal door. It felt like a whole new world to me, I walked down the long hallway making my way to the door, this was when I noticed my clothes were gone save for a gown of white; reaching out my frail arm made contact with the cold, firm knob of a metal doorknob...

"And so you say this is how "we" grabbed you without alerting your own family?"

I looked at the man, he had woken me from my past; my recall of the events I nodded at him, he smoked more from his cigarette; ashes fell to the table, I answered...

"Yes and you did kidnap me, anyway I suppose it would not matter after all it was never our fault before the sheltering, my mother told me stories of the day she nearly died; she lived in Sydney..."

I stopped, observing the man with his tablet, typing words down whilst smoking, his greying hair licked out from above a clean yet wrinkled face with wearied skin. He spoke once more;

"Pardon me for my rudeness but if we are making a recount of the people still here on Earth we must have their stories to teach our future generations..."

I screwed my face up; "Ours! Ours! You mean your generations, I'm not even going to see our new and improved generations because our idiotic ancient nations destroyed our world; you people don't even know the meaning of the word ours, we should all be blown to shit for uttering that useless word..."

The man sat shocked, I felt sorry for him; he knew that I was upset and yet I knew too, it was entirely my fault, my decision and my life I had put up for to achieve my freedom and yet I wasn't leaving this hellhole of Earth.

"I'm sorry, It's just I don't feel the need to use ours and we's when all I get is nothing and yours..."

The interviewer sighed and grabbed my hand; "We know this is a difficult decision of ours, sorry! "I" know this is a difficult position! But I can't help but write down your story for the world, the future world anyway. If it means anything you will be respected by future generations to come; a new age Joan of Arc; leading us to victory ya know..."

I looked into his cold blue eyes and understood exactly what he was saying, I could have almost cried then and there; looking back on it I could have been in tears but I stood strong and continued with what I had to say...

"My mother lived in Sydney, a city in a country called Australia, I think? Anyways she was in her 20's and it must have been in the last years of the war, she talked about all these floods and global sea level rise (boring stuff) but they were always like disaster stories to me, then she told me about the day it all unfolded; you see Sydney in the 22nd century was bustling and a huge multicultural center and so they built this shanty town beneath the city and nicknamed it the colony. Then the day the explosions happened one of the first explosions was in Washington D.C, the capital of um... I forgot the country but then this other country (I forgot it's name too) began attacking them along with Asia I think it was, now Australia was neutral but of course the bad air was going to spread to us (and it did) so my mother took her mother Anne down to the shanty town along with a few people. Much of Australia was in chaos at this point, my mother talked about riots and terror attacks but she was never there, anyways my mother lived there for three years when she decides to go up-top and when she did she saw Sydney in devastation; dead bodies everywhere..."

I stopped and tears fell slowly down my cheeks, the interviewer offered tissues (which I took), and then I continued;

"Dead bodies of children, adults and anyone, she found out later that radiation had done it and that's when she saw other mutants. She never told me about mutants but she did ask others to help her block the entrance so none could get in, she used to say how people had colonized some type of white planet or "moon" as she called it?"

The interviewer stopped and talked;

"Yes, we did colonize an artificial satellite, the base is still up there though; it was mostly for mining..."

I cut in abruptly; "And a red planet you turned green..."

He spoke again; "Yes, Mars we called it; but that was a complete failure and was the main reason for the um... "explosions" as you called them..."

I nodded, there was no point learning about the past but to focus on the future, all I was doing was retelling the past so that people could understand (not learn) but understand why and how they were sent away. From what I saw my story was long from over...

END OF CHAPTER ONE