As Nila strolls through Sanctuary Beach, (as she prefers to call her new home) all she can hear is silence. Though, this time it feels different. Despair and grief no longer hangs in the air but determination and teamwork. Around her, people are getting to work on building huts and tents for others to take shelter in during night-time because unfortunately, the tiny cave Nila and the rest of the trio found, isn't going to be large enough to fit a population of about three-hundred. A sense of melancholy and sorrow washes over her when she passes by two shabby crosses made from twigs and vines looming over two graves. Those graves hold the bodies of her two deceased friends. Have they already started decaying? In the afterlife, are Anna and Brice resting peacefully? Are they watching over them, rolling in their graves as Miss Chaucer's greed continues? These thoughts make Nila's stomach do loop 'd loops. However, a sweet-like-honey voice interrupts Nila's train of thought.
"Hey, Nila!" Kaitlyn yells and beckons her over with a wave of her hand, earning a smile of acknowledgment from Nila. After what seems like forever, trudging through the uneven sandy terrain of the beach up to the cave Nila catches sight of a table, made from slabs of flat rock with a humongous peace of paper scrolled over it. Actually, Nila's pretty sure it's a blue-print. Meanwhile, Naite works with his back turned on piling some sort of dusty mineral into individual cans.
"Lucas, I have no idea what we'd do without you!" Friday exclaims with a laugh.
Naite joins in as well, turns around and slides his arm around Lucas', (Sanctuary's chef) shoulders. "Mate, you are a bloody legend," he says and pokes the big guy in the chest.
"What's going on?" Nila asks.
"Lucas has lent us a hand with his arty-crafty stuff and made these smoke grenades," Riley explains and Lucas, throws Nila what seems to be a dark green and black painted soft drink can with a random piece of string drooping over one side of it. The girl almost feels the instinct to duck but quickly reminds herself to take note that it's not really a grenade.
Nila fiddles with the can in her hands, which gives her a sense of achievement. Things are finally starting to happen, giving her a sense of purpose, of meaning, of righteousness. "Cool. How'd you make it?"
"The ingredients are potassium nitrate which is this white crystallised substance you see here," Lucas takes a moment to turn behind him and pick up a small shard of a almost opaque, misty-white coloured crystal. "This could be found on some areas on the cave walls, sugar, baking soda and Janette's blue crayons out of her collection she swiped from the bunker before it fell. Friday insisted we do blue in mockery of Eden. Janette wasn't too happy about this but I offered her a job and a clipboard and that was good enough."
"What kind of job?" Riley asks, whose now relocated from the other side of the cave to lean himself against the wall besides Nila.
"She's our 'Movement Manager' and her job is basically to stroll about Sanctuary beach and boss people around. She seems pretty satisfied," Lucas explains with a shrug of his broad shoulders.
"But hold up for a second. What's the plan in all this?" Nila asks in a sceptical tone.
This time, Friday who was looming over the desk like a hunchback, studying the blue-print finally joins in the conversation. "You know how I said we wouldn't be a match against Eden? They are the only population in the world other than us and we're minuscule. But in order to stand a fighting chance, we need weapons and Eden, they have heaps and quite advanced ones at that. Which is quite ironic considering Miss Chaucer considers Eden a "peaceful society". Since the armoury is smack-bang in the middle of Eden's main sector, we're going to have to infiltrate straight into Eden unnoticed. But that's inevitable, which is why Lucas has created these smoke grenades to "hide" us from Eden's surveillance system. The armoury is usually filled with guards, so, and this is the hard part, whenever you spot a guard, let off one of these smoke grenades and take the guard out. Oh and Nila, we found that bottle of Ether you had on you yesterday, it can be used to knock out the guards as well."
"But you've gotta do it toot-sweet," adds Naite.
"Unless...you don't like the idea?" Friday asks Nila in an uncertain voice and bites her lip.
"No!" she exclaims and smiles wildly. "No, it's fine. As long as it works and as long as it gets us one step closer to defeating Earleen, I don't care what we have to do." As Nila finishes her sentence, somebody entwines their fingers with her own and gives her hand a gentle squeeze, slowly, her gaze lifts from their hands, up the male's arm to see Riley's smiling face. His chocolate brown eyes stare into hers, giving Nila a feeling of encouragement and he gives a small nod of his head as if to say, "You're doing the right thing."
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"Can we just..can we just take a rest?" Kaitlyn complains.
"Why do we have to go the long way around anyway?" Nila even finds herself complaining too for once.
Friday sighs, "Because Eden's wall is built in the shape of a circle and their main gate to get inside is all the way on the west side."
"Yeah I'm a bit exhausted too. Besides, it's already getting dark and Earleen gave us a week, am I right? We'll be at the West Gate by tomorrow afternoon," Dimitri says matter of factly and gives a dismissive wave of his hand towards Eden.
"Fine, we'll set up camp over here," Friday grumble in defeat and leads the team over to the top of two small hills.
"Ah, there we go!" Dimitri says whilst setting himself down on the short green grass, overlooking the plain, vast fields that spread for miles all around them, the occasional tree here and there. Far, far in the horizon, the top of Eden's high stone walls can be seen. There's a gentle breeze that caresses Nila's skin where she stands besides Dimitri, cooling her down. Something she's desperately needed after the team's long hike out of the jungle. However, there's one thing that's missing from this peaceful, tranquil surrounding and that's blue skies. Instead of white, fluffy cotton-candy like clouds dotted across a baby-blue dome of sky, the sky is a mixture of brown, green and grey. Exactly like how it is at Sanctuary beach. Nila has no idea how Eden managed to do it, but they've disguised the whole world as being burnt to a crisp and unsustainable for a population of their size to the people of Mars. To be honest, recalling what she saw when she fell from Mars to Earth, they've done a pretty convincing job.
Abruptly, her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Dimitri cracking open a bottle of some type of alcohol.
"Just a little cold beverage," he mumbles.
"No, mate. No can do, hand it over," Naite insists. He stands with one hand on his hip and the over outstretched, awaiting for the bottle. Miraculously enough, Naite decided to be apart of the team after his recent injury.
"No, mate. This is mine, I have my privileges," Dimitri spits back in a mocking voice though this doesn't settle very well with Naite and he starts to wrestle for the bottle instead.
The two quarrel for awhile, with no one actually getting anywhere for a few minutes. Naite yells absurdities and Dimitri roars swear words whilst holding the scrawny male back from his precious booze, however, Friday decides she's had enough.
"Get your hands off you little c-" Dimitri starts but abruptly stops mid sentence. SWOOSH! "Hey! Friday?!"
Friday stands arms crossed with the bottle in her left hand. "Stop acting like children and Dimitri, you know the deal. You have to be sober on this trip and we all know you're not capable of doing that with temptation around," she states, sounding quite unimpressed and after giving the two a stern, motherly glare, she turns around to help Lucas with dinner.
The sun's set, sending the world into darkness and Lucas and Naite set up a few lanterns here and there around camp, which consists of a fire surrounded by stones where a steaming pot of some sort of stew begins to boil, emitting flavoursome smells to float in the air, a few fold up chairs and seven sleeping bags. Nila watches the bright embers from the fire float into the night sky and dance away with the breeze. The heat from the cozy fire warming her body from head to toe.
"I hope Sanctuary beach will be alright without you there, Lucas," Friday jokes and plops herself down on the grass with everyone else.
"I left Miss Dandra in charge of feeding everyone, let's just hope that by the time we get back, she hasn't poisoned anyone," Lucas chuckles deeply.
"Nah, she's too ambitious and worrisome for that to occur," Naite adds whilst grabbing himself a bowl of stew and everyone starts to laugh, except for Dimitri, who doesn't seem to have a great relationship with Miss Dandra.
"Nila! Over here!"
Nila hastily looks around the circle of people sitting around the fire and notices, neither Riley nor Kaitlyn are present. She must've been too busy staring off into the fire to have noticed. Nila, curious and intrigued hastily hops up and follows the voice which seemed to have come from higher up on the hill. She claws herself up the steep slope like a cat to see what the problem was. But before she even gets to the top, Nila can already see why her friends called her over.
"Wow," she sighs, breathlessly.
Yes, the world may no longer be buzzing with life and fluorescent lights, with parties on every corner, hundreds of shops with all you could possibly want, hundreds of different cultures, languages, ideas and new inventions. But...the silver lining? The Earth can finally be seen as what it truly is and meant to be. A beautiful, awe-filled masterpiece. No, a paradise! Full of wonders. Thanks to having billions of years to recover and because of the lack in anthropogenic light, whole constellations can be seen from Earth.
Nila's eyes seem to be glued to the star-speckled sky and finds herself almost tripping over two or three times when making her over to her friends. Even though Nila has seen the exact same constellations from her little window shed use for gazing out of on Mars...seeing this magnificent sight on Earth, the small little planet Nila always dreamt of going to...makes the experience ten times more magical.
"Isn't it just...amazing?" Kaitlyn asks, running a hand through her hair.
"Yeah...oh! Look!" Nila shouts and points to the sky where a shooting star bolts across the night to who knows where, the three all share ecstatic grins. Shortly after returning her gaze to the sky, Nila mutters, "It's beautiful."
"Your beautiful," whispers Riley and Nila turns her head.
Riley makes his way over and caresses Nila's cheek which gives Kaitlyn standing in the background the impression that this is probably her cue to leave and silently walks away. "God, I've always wanted to say that," he pauses for a second to just stare into Nila's midnight blue eyes and how more captivating they look with the reflection of the star's twinkling lights in them, making them dazzle. "How about we have an actual, proper kiss?"
"I like the idea of that," Nila mumbles and their heads inch closer for a heartfelt, passionate kiss until Riley breaks away.
"You and me," he begins causing Nila to open her eyes. "Are we a thing now?"
Nila can't help but roll her eyes and she can't stifle a laugh any longer. "Yes! You vegetable. Yes, we are."
"Ha, excuse me. You're going to have to be more specific than that. I am a carrot," Riley states in a posh voice. "Hence the hair."
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Nila sighs blissfully whilst getting comfortable in her sleeping bag besides Dimitri. "I just had the most amazing moments of my life," she claims but then goes silent for a few minutes. "Life's never gonna be easy when you have a target on your back.."
"I guess so kiddo," he sighs.
"Kiddo?"
"What? Am I not allowed to call ya that?"
Nila merely shrugs.
Silence.
"Religion, it's such an ancient thing now."
"Do many people still believe?"
"I guess, some do. I'd be one of them," Dimitri shrugs.
"Oh?"
"You seem so surprised-"
"Well I mean, it's just-"
"It's fine," he sighs. "You know that Eden, according to the Bible, was a magnificent, utterly blissful and beautiful paradise in which the first man and woman was made. It's also believed to be the place where sin originated from and Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to fend for themselves and live a life of hard work."
"Why are you bringing this up?"
"Well, History has a nack for repeating itself..."
"So what? You think that Earleen is the new Eve?"
"No, no. In my eyes, Earleen is the snake, the tempter. She was of course, the mastermind behind Earth's Fall. She may not have deployed bomb A769, but she definitely made the situation a whole lot worse. Now she's built an entire civilisation out of greed and gluttony. Well, it looks like the snake has won again."
"No, no she hasn't. We'll stop her!" Nila insists and props herself up on one elbow to look at Dimitri.
"Hmph.." Dimitri makes his iconic noise once again but this time it sounds a little different. Less pessimistic and more hopeful.
"You know..you're quite the intelligent man when you're sober," Nila compliments, staring at Dimitri with an odd expression.
"Ha! Well enjoy it whilst it lasts. Because this won't happen again.." he grumbles, chuckling a bit, the frown lines around his mouth loosening a bit. It must've been so long since he last smiled.
He turns around and goes to sleep in his sleeping bag. Nila soon does the same.
"You know. If Cele-" he stumbles on his words, he hasn't uttered her name in about a year now. "If Celeste have had a daughter, I think she would have wanted her to be like you.." Dimitri whispers which leaves Nila with a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.