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one . . . the act of hope ( october 12, 2149 — mount weather )
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CULLEN HAD SPENT her entire life living underneath the ground. In a bottomless pit, located near the Blue Ridge Mountains in a place Earth once called the eastern United States of America, was Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center. They were told it was built almost two hundred years ago, ninety-three years before the Nuclear Apocalypse that killed Earth's population, as a military underground bunker and missile silo launch facility — this, was Cullen's home. The only home she had ever known; tucked underneath the ground, to never feel the touch of sunlight, or breathe tree-oxygenated air.
The ground was dangerous for those that resided in Mount Weather. Their small population of three hundred and eighty-five people were cursed with a disease — their bodies rejected the radiation that still lingered upon the ground ninety-seven years later, plaguing them to never step foot outside of Mount Weather walls. Cullen, who was still youthfully nineteen, had only ever dreamt of being outside, on the surface that was created to sustain human life; she was afraid that would forever continue to be a dream, for however long she may live.
She couldn't complain — not in the slightest. She was alive; herself and her Father, Julian. To live long lives beneath the ground, untouched and unharmed by what threatened them above. She was promised safety from the radiation, and reassurance that if the killer toxin were to ever enter Mount Weather, she would be relieved of her pain; this, Cullen could complain about.
Refusing treatments as a Mount Weather resident was something severely frowned upon by those who exploited what the ground 'gifted' them. Human beings, Cullen came to be knowledgeable when she hit the mature age of eighteen — human beings were what 'gifted' Mount Weather residents from the effects of the radiation. Grounders, Cullen once heard somebody call them. The men that lived upon the ground, unaffected by the harmfulness of the radiation that could kill a Mount Weather resident within seconds.
Cullen hadn't ever accepted a treatment, and she could confidently admit to never accepting one in the future to come, either. Her late Mother, Gracelyn, had taught Cullen that no matter the amount of physical pain she may suffer, it could never equal the amount of emotional pain she would perceive after obtaining the knowledge her survivability harmed another human. Cullen acknowledged that the people able to roam the Earth were human beings, with feelings just like herself — she believed she'd rather remain underground, with a conscience of knowing she had never aided somebody else's pain, then be above ground, with somebody else's blood in her system that alleviated her ability to withstand radiation.
