Suppressed

Red

Heavy breathing. The cries of many babies echoing throughout the room. The stench of sweat dancing through the air in this crisp white room.

Many white hospital beds precisely lined up along the wall as breeders panted and pushed. Every other minute a new cry of a baby was heard.

The first cry of the day. Good. The second. Good. The third. Terrifying. A man in an all black suit looked up from his clipboard of generic names for males that he has been looking at for the past year.

He knew something was wrong with this one. The cry sounded different than the others. He hasn't hear this type of cry in years. This is a rare sight. It seems like time had stopped. The cleanly shaved man ran over to bed 19 and looked at the child the breeder was holding.

It was a girl.

The first girl in over 13 years. There is no protocol for this. The protocol was diminished 12 years ago when we thought this was over with. All of the breeders in this town have been genetically manipulated to breed only males. But the treatment was never full proof. They hadn't perfected it.

With all the commotion over the man's mind could correctly think. He looked at the woman with sweat clinging to the female like a second skin. Clothes worn for so long that they have never been taken off or exchanged.

"Please, don't kill her like the rest of them." She whispered looking at the man in the black suit with wide eyes.

"Breeder #567 I can assure you that we don't kill any of the rejects in this facility. She will be treated fairly and fed perfectly just like all of our breeders are." The man said with a forced smile. The breeder and the robotic man both knew that what he muttered was a lie.

"You and I both know that is complete and utter bullshit," the breeder said through clenched teeth that hadn't been brushed since the beginning of this torture, "this child, who I have named Adette, will be sent into the system. Into a building with no walls, windows, or smiles. She will be fed few morsels of what you all call food a day and be punished until they understand that our kind is not welcome here. Then when they turn 16 they become breeders like all of us," the breeder snaps as she motions with her right arm that she can barely hold up, "and have children for their whole life unless they are lucky enough to die in childbirth."

After her speech about this town's system she had to catch her breath, having not talked that much in many years. "So I ask of you, please, just this once, take her in. Please just make her feel the love that we have been deprived of. Hide her in your home but still make her feel like she belongs. That is all I ask of you."

The breeder noticed a change in the suited mans eyes. He now looked less calm and collected then ever. He thought of the worse thing that could happen if he took this child, Adette in, and all he could think of was death.

He knew he was going to die any ways. He wanted a change. He had been assigned in the breeding facility by the royals for 247 days. He had been counting.

He was the only man in this facility. He can handle all the breeders because all of them are too malnourished and poorly fed that they will never be able to fight against the system. Everyday a voice inside his head told him that he could make a change. That he knew, deep down, that none of this was right.

He knew that this government was corrupted. A government where every women turned into a breeder, and every man given two male children to care for. Then as the men's sons grew older they would be given a job and forced to pursue it, no matter your feelings towards it.

In many cases the sons never looked like the father assigned to them. The boys are taken to a facility in the north circle, far away from the breeding facility in the South Circle. The boys are taught manners, language, and leadership. The total opposite of what the breeders are taught.

The government has been this way since the man in the suit could remember. There has always been a King, and every King has a prince. The royals don't get the privilege of two heirs to the throne only one, and when the king dies, the prince becomes king, and is given a child to teach and help grow.

The man in the suit never liked the system. He always wanted a way out, or a way to change it.

He believed that Adette was the answer.