Author's Notes: AU. Contains dark themes.

Praying For the Future

The rumble of sound was building momentum as it closed in around them. They were merely whispers where they should really have been screams, but to even a half-trained ear their meaning would be obvious and unavoidable.

They were coming.

The signs of their approach were always most obvious on these nights. Whatever tense illusion of normality the world managed to cling to during the week faded away along with the last tendrils of light on Sunday evenings. From the moment curfew commenced, the night spilled over with oppressive quiet and encompassing darkness, both of which would only be broken when the residents could hear a Squad marching in on their neighbourhood

On every other night the Squads wove their way almost aimlessly around the cities, present more for show than for practicality, for no one in their right mind dared to do anything that actually required the 'peace'-keepers to step in and do their job. But on Sundays they advanced unrelentingly, the sound of purpose echoing in the oncoming pounding of their boots against the pavement.

On Sundays they implemented the Selections, and dread filled the air alongside the crying and protests.

Oh, sure, some weeks the Estate would be blissfully devoid of sound all night long, signalling that the Selection Squads had passed them over this time, keeping themselves too busy in other parts of the city and surrounding countryside to be bothered with this particular neighbourhood, at least this time around. The residents all knew that they probably wouldn't be quite so lucky the following Sunday, but no one thought too hard about that. This wasn't a world of futures; even the present wasn't always safe.

This week wasn't one of the weeks they would be passed over, though, left alone to wait out the night in anxious silence. No, the otherwise highly anticipated breaking of sunrise over the east-facing wall of the building would tomorrow be stifled by mourning.

The volume outside was still rising, with the sounds of muffled sobbing and worried titter filling the air like swarms of buzzing insects. Closer, closer. The exponential growth of noise preceded the Squad down every street and every hallway, spurred on by the anticipation of knowing they were coming for someone, but not yet knowing for whom.

Closer, closer.

They were so nearby now that in one particular flat the individual footsteps of the Squad members could be heard clearly even over the clatter of the people around them, and even through the solid wooden door. Closer they came. Closer. And then through that same door, leading into that same flat, came an efficient series of knocks, announcing the Selection Squad's destination.

They weren't just unbearably close, then. They were here.

The occupants of the flats on either side probably breathed deeply in relief that it wasn't them. Not this time, at least. They were safe for another week, it seemed, and if they were lucky, another and another after that. They still had time; that precious commodity that the Squad and everything it represented insisted on stealing away, claiming it belonged to them and them alone. They had time to live out their lives, or at least pretend.

But inside the particular flat in question, time had reached its end.

Mickey's eyes went wide and he instinctively ducked behind the arm of the couch, as if that could shield him... as if there were any kind of protection to be had at this stage.

Rose, though, somehow knew he had nothing to worry about. She'd never believed that anyone could see into the future – anyone except them, obviously – but some sudden prescience, or mental clarity, or whatever this feeling should rightly be labelled, left her with a sense of overwhelming certainty about what was on the verge of happening. She just knew. This might be Mickey's flat, but for some reason she was the one they were actually here for.

She was fully expecting the faceless announcement from the other side of the door when it came.

"Subject #392711, you have been Selected. Please surrender yourself immediately. I repeat, Subject #392711, you have been Selected."

No one would be able to tell from the look of pure terror on Mickey's face that it wasn't his number they were calling.

"Rose..." he said, sounding helpless. "Why? You haven't done anything wrong."

That was the question everyone asked in their times of despair, in those few moments of stolen privacy when the Squad wasn't observing their every move. Why was that person taken? Why not that person instead? Hadn't that person done something so obviously worse, and if so, why were they allowed to remain behind with the rest of them? What made those who were Selected stand out, and how could everyone else avoid the same fate?

Why?

On nights like these, all of the cries that rose into the night seemed to coalesce into that one word, calling for answers that would likely never come.

Rose knew the 'why' didn't actually matter, of course. Not at this point. It was hardly as if she could appeal the decision. If she honestly had to guess about the reason, she thought that her grades had probably been too low when she'd left school months ago, or maybe she'd been considered insufficiently productive because all she'd made of herself was becoming a shopgirl when she'd put school in her rear-view mirror. Hell, maybe she'd just ticked one of them off by breathing too loudly one day last week when the Squad had been circling the streets outside Henrik's with their tiny data collectors in hand, intermittently adding notes that looked to human eyes strangely like a child's drawings crossed with advanced geometry. What difference did it really make, in the end? What counted was that, whatever the reason, she'd clearly done the one thing that every human being devoted their life to avoiding: at some point she'd somehow broken their rules and thereby attracted their attention. Her name had been added to their List, and tonight she'd been one of the names they'd randomly chosen from it. That was the end of it. Selection was always final, no matter what.

Still, even knowing all that, Rose didn't feel any degree of acceptance of her fate. She didn't feel much of anything at all outside a dull sort of disbelief that she'd spent her final day folding clothes and ringing through purchases for people who were too worried about whether they were being observed by unseen eyes to even notice the girl who stood right before them even existed. It couldn't just end like that, surely. She couldn't end up just some unnoticed cog in their machine. There had to be something else.

A blurred roaring filled her ears, and it seemed to her as if time itself were slowing down and pooling tangibly around her, the passing seconds thickening in place to encapsulate her like setting concrete. God only knew that those bastards outside probably had the ability to literally make time slow down like that, drawing the suspense of their victims' last moments of freedom out into agony.

Whatever its cause, that sense of everything moving in slow motion did strange things to her mind. It made her believe that she might actually have enough time to scramble out through the bathroom window and down the emergency exit corridor before the Selection Squad grew tired of waiting for her to emerge and simply knocked down the front door like it was made of flimsy cardboard. In those few long seconds of contemplation, it didn't matter to her that even if she did get away she'd just be earning herself a death sentence from the very next member of the Selection Squads she was unlucky enough to encounter. The idea that she should at least try reverberated on a level far above such practical concerns.

Run for it, Mickey's eyes urged her from across the room. Run, run, run, run, her own heavy inhales and exhales simultaneously demanded.

Yet for the space of far too many heartbeats she stood paralysed, unable to do anything but think (and even doing that far too slowly and badly for her tastes), wanting more than anything on Earth or beyond to move, but somehow finding herself utterly incapable. She knew better – that the only way out of this, if there was one at all, was to keep calm – but she was panicking despite herself. She could only blame the adrenaline, and that all-too-human propensity for denial of what she knew was coming.

By the time she recovered enough of her wits to stagger to her feet, the door was already springing open – the hinges squealing with a sound of protest that Rose would very much have liked to echo – and the Squad was parading in as if they owned the place. Which, Rose reflected, they really might as well have.

With that, the chance to make a play for liberty slipped away mutely, without any fight. The battle was lost before she could even start waging it.

To be honest, the real battle had been lost so long ago that no one on Earth recalled a time when things had been different. Perhaps it had predated them all – their overlords did have all kinds of frightening abilities, after all, and at times they seemed like they might have created the universe in their image. People would probably worship them like gods, if only they showed any hint of benevolence along with their ever-present wrath.

She'd known all these things. She'd known that she was an insect under their boots, easily squashed. But somehow she'd still hoped...

They all hoped. It was vital to their existence. But it was also a double-edged sword. It kept them firmly under control even as it allowed them to survive through their powerlessness. Right up until the moment they were taken away, each and every person on the planet latched onto the tiny ray of optimism that it wouldn't be them; that they, at least, could avoid ever being Selected and taken away from their families and friends as long as they just kept their heads down and got on with things without making trouble and threatening the status quo. They could get on with their lives, and pretend. False hope was as powerful sometimes as the real thing.

Aren't we generous leaders, their rulers seemed to wordlessly announce. We could enslave every single one of you with a thought, and yet see how many of you we allow to go about your lives of prosperity. Are we not just?

And everyone prayed, until their last breath, that skewed 'justice' could work in their favour instead of against them. They hoped. It was the human condition, apparently. It was that one unbeatable and powerful thing that they could never fight against, regardless of whether or not they should.

For her part, even now, Rose found herself hoping that things wouldn't be as bad for her as the long-told stories of the Selected had led her to suspect, and to have nightmares about as a young girl. And she thought, if she could still hope for something – anything at all – on her own behalf, then she should surely use her last act on Earth to help keep a little hope alive for those she was leaving behind as well.

For Mickey's sake as much as her own, Rose held her head resolutely high, pointedly shielding her trembling hands from sight, determined to put on a brave face. "Tell Mum I ran, and that I got away clean," she instructed him. "And hey, don't even worry about me. You know I'll be fine."

She wished that she could add that she loved him, but it felt disingenuous somehow, and that fact had little to do with the presence of their unwanted audience. To be candid, she mainly didn't want for those to be the last words that lingered between them, never able to be taken back. She didn't even know whether it was possible for her to love anyone, being raised as she was, forever expecting that on any given Sunday the person who mattered most could be taken away with no warning. It felt wrong to say the words, not knowing for sure whether they were a lie.

Before she could say anything further or even hear Mickey's reply, though, hands that looked human but felt far too cold to be anything but alien closed abruptly around Rose's upper arms, and she was pulled bodily from Mickey's flat. She could only assure herself that Mickey would do as she asked, and that he'd somehow manage to be convincing enough to be believed. Better that Rose's Mum let herself imagine that the reason she would never see her daughter again was only because Rose was deep in hiding, burying herself in some virtually untraveled stretch of countryside where they'd never even think to find her. There was no need for her Mum to know the truth; that was for Rose alone to endure now.

Once she'd been led down the stairs and out of the building, Rose was shoved into the short procession of other Selected people. They were sluggishly herded away like livestock, with one other woman being pulled from her home just a few blocks down from the Estate and added to the line-up before the Squad seemed satisfied with their numbers.

Rose wasn't surprised to see that no one voluntarily ran in their wake, begging for their wife or their son to please, please be released. She could sense by the heart-wrenching sounds of distant crying, even muffled as it was, that there were those who clearly wished more than anything that they could do just that, but there was an unspoken understanding between those taken and those left behind that there would be no point in making such a pointless sacrifice. And it would be a sacrifice. There was no other fate awaiting anyone who stepped out of line.

Individual rebellion against the process meant immediate Selection for those involved. A large-scale uprising would be quashed embarrassingly quickly and even more decisively; history had taught the human race that they could and would be exterminated like vermin at will. They couldn't stand up for themselves; that much had long since been established.

If there were any screams of anguish echoing after the Selected, they remained purely internal, for even that was considered a step too far; screaming aloud was a sign of aggression and therefore a precursor to violence, as far as the Squads were concerned. Even that most basic expression of pain had to be held inside, unexpressed, as if they weren't even human anymore. No real voices; only the supposed freedom of speech that was grudgingly granted to them to keep them in line. They were nothing more than slaves in waiting, all of them.

But even as she was led away to be made into a true slave – with no freedoms, even the fake kind, to tide her over for the rest of her days – Rose couldn't help but cling to the idea that, somehow, there might still be a way for her to save all of them, even herself, all the same.