Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Two

The streets were crowded with people by the time I reached Fox Park. Actually, it could barely be described as a park since it consisted solely of a five-foot by five-foot-wide square of bright green grass and a single tree, a rare commodity in any urban area. The tree was surrounded by a protective marble barrier, meant to prevent people from getting too close to it. The sun shone down on the its leaves in reminiscence to a world that once existed. A world where green covered the land masses and metal had yet to be constructed into towering buildings to accommodate the human race. But now, things were different. It was hard to find places to plant anything when the entirety of the earth was attempting to hold the cement and metal cities that were overfilled with the extensive human population.

My older sister, Olivia, walked in step with me, her gray heels in contrast with my dark brown combat boots. We probably looked odd walking towards the large line of people waiting to be fitted with our difference in appearance. Me, with my hair that was so light it was practically white and warm brown eyes, her with dark auburn hair and blue eyes. Not even just physical appearance either, since she wore a tight green dress and I was wearing ripped jeans with a black tank top.

It was hard to tell we were even related.

"You have your ID, right?" Olivia asked, her hair flipping over her right shoulder as she turned her face towards me. I could tell she was nervous by the intense look in her eyes. I was nervous, too, but neither of us would ever mention it. We were walking into something unknown, and that was bound to create fear in both of us.

"Yea," I replied, once again checking my back pocket to make sure the identification card hadn't fallen out. My fingers found the hard, plastic surface and I let out the small breath I'd been holding in. If I'd lost my ID, I wouldn't have had a way to get back home. ID's were necessary for all kinds of transportation, and for entering any populated or important buildings, including school. Since I'd taken the subway here with Olivia, it would be necessary that I had my ID for the way back. The police here could be strict, and just not having your ID on you made them nervous. If I'd lost it and had gone to the subway just to find out it wasn't on me, it was likely they would've taken me into custody, to question me about where it was.

With crime on the rise, officers were stricter than they ever had been before. I couldn't remember the last time the world had actually been okay. They told us in school that land masses used to be split up into thousands of different pieces. These pieces were called countries. After the third World War, the leaders of all of these different countries decided they needed to find a solution to war itself, and that's how New Pangaea came about. They evaporated all borders, creating one gigantic state of New Pangaea. Of course, this didn't come without a cost. Many people hated the fact that they suddenly didn't belong to their countries that they so patriotically supported. And they also hated each other. Fighting broke out between different ethnicities, leading to a domino effect ending in massive crime rates. Rates that don't seem to be going down any time soon.

"Good....," Olivia replied, suddenly distracted by the formation of multiple lines going towards the entrance. I was short compared to Olivia, but I could still make out the different sets of doors, each with a range of numbers on it. Ages. They were splitting up the Animus fitting by age. It was obvious, since the rightmost lines seemed to have the smallest children, some holding the hands of their parents and some still being carried by relatives. I watched a pregnant woman rock a small baby back and forth and it hit me that that baby would never really remember what a world without Animuses would look like.

Then, I found the line for my age group. Large black font above the door formed two numbers with a hash mark between them. The first was thirteen and the second was eighteen. At sixteen, that was my destination. Olivia would only be a few lines down in the grouping for ages twenty-one to twenty-six since she was twenty-two.