Bounded

Prologue: A Tragic End and a Hopeful Beginning

December 2450

The woman sadly turned away as the heavy, steel doors of Rica closed and locked. She lined up with the rest of the women and her daughter, waiting to be sorted onto their floors. As they waited in line the woman's daughter paced impatiently, a question pondering in the child's mind. Often the child would get like this; curious and impatient.

The child's bright, blue eyes looked up at her mother, who had the same fair skin, blonde hair, and mysterious, blue eyes. "Mom," said the child, pulling on the hem of her mother's shirt.

The mother looked down at the child's inquiring eyes. "Not now, honey." The child opened her mouth to protest, but kept silent, knowing her mother was distressed at the moment.

The mother turned around to look at the doors that had locked. She had left her whole past behind those doors and almost everything she loved. She knew the question her child was going to ask, "Where is dad?" She heard the soft words, even though everything was silent around her. It was just her imagination. Ever since the war started the mother seemed to have lost it. Often mumbling to herself or hearing voices when no one was around.

While waiting in line, the mother thought she saw a glimpse of her son, but the woman immediately turned the other way. She knew it was impossible. She had said goodbye to him a long time ago. She remembered finding him on the side of the cracked road, near an alley. She remembered his closed eyes, where she could no longer see the bright green that was once so full of energy and light. His hands were curled up into fists, as is he was fighting pain. She held his head in her lap and slowly rocked back and forth, tears spilling out onto his ash blonde hair.

Her husband came running over carrying their daughter. Of course, the child was too young to understand what was going on, but she looked at her twin brother with awe, for she had never seen a dead body before.

"Bubby," said the child.

"Yes, that's Bubby," the mother replied, trying to contain herself for her daughter.

A bomb exploded about two hundred feet off into the distance. The mother knew that their time was up. She could no longer mourn the loss and say goodbye to her son. She would have to move on. With a strangled cry that the mother tried to suppress, she kissed her son on the head and ran with the last of her family, turning around one last time to find that her son had become a pale blur. The memory faded as the woman and her child move up in line. The woman moved her daughter closer, afraid of losing the only family she had left. She heard the word again, "Where is dad?" It sounded like her daughter, but the voice was too far off, sounding like a whisper. At the thought, she pulled her daughter as close as she could, smelling the dirt from carelessly running away from the people that used to be their enemies.

"Where is dad?" the woman heard again. This time it sounded desperate.

The woman didn't know where her husband had gone, but she knew he was dead. All she could think of were the tears and the pain of watching him run off into the distance, and the conversation and last words that she would be left to remember until she took her final breath.

"I can't go in that building." Her husband said "My whole life has been here and soon it will all be gone. I'm staying here were we belong, even if it kills me."

"What about your daughter?" The woman said. "She needs you and I can't do this on my own. I have lost everything just as well as you have."

"I can't. I'm so sorry." He pulled his wife in for a kiss and a hug, but she resisted. He moved towards his daughter, who was asleep in her mothers arms, and gave her a kiss on her little, blonde head.

"Don't, please," the woman begged.

He backed away. "I hope one day you realize what you are leaving behind. And that all of this isn't worth it."

"So, what we are we supposed to do just die out there when we have a chance to live?" Each word that came out trembled as she realized that her husband would be dead in a few hours, and he was okay with that. What about what they had right now, a wife and a child that were still alive and healthy. Everything that was out there didn't matter, it was basically rubble and ash now.

"If what took thousands of years to create mattered to you, you would?"

"It created a war," the woman spat, bitterly.

"And everything that you have in there will create one too. Just because you are safe there now, doesn't mean future generations will be too. Power and confinement will one day be too much. We would be better out there, dying getting what we deserve, instead of running away from the mess that we created." He shook his head, slightly, and the look on his face changed from certainty to doubt. He was scared. "You all are cowards. You are hiding from the truth, but you can only hide for so long. The truth only hurts when you want to believe a lie."

Hatred flowed through her veins as she realized what her husband was doing to her and their daughter. Tears streamed down he pale face, transparent and clear. She couldn't do this on her own, but that was the only choice he was leaving her. A thought occurred to her, why hadn't he asked her to come with him. She would have said no, and maybe he already knew that.

She looked at her husband, waiting for him to be rational, and say, "I don't know what I was saying. I would never leave you." Instead, she watched her husband take of his mask and opened the heavy door. An alarm went off and all guards ran towards the noise, to see what was going on. The woman saw her husband run as fast as he could, while the guards decided whether to go after him. But as she knew they would, they decided to let him go, with the words, "He won't make it very far. Its not worth the danger for us."The woman got one last glimpse and whispered the words, "I love you," before they shut the door again. She wasn't sure he felt the same way, and another part of her didn't even know if she meant those words after processing what he did.

The woman and her daughter stepped to the front of the line. A guard, sitting there in black and white asked, "Last name?"

The woman hesitated a moment, taking one last chance to look back at the doors that had locked. For a minute the woman foolishly waited for her husband and son to walk through, but the guard cleared his voice and the woman turned back around. It might not be bad here, she thought. It's a chance to start over.

The woman then looked at her daughter. She had to do this for her. She had to stay strong. She took a deep breath, "Lane," the women said, knowing those words were the end of her past and the start of a different future, where ever it lead her to.

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