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Prologue:
~ The year 2528 ~
My name is Clarissa Morgenstern, daughter of Valentine and Jocelyn Morgenstern.
One hundred years. One hundred years since human kind has had the sun grace them with her presence. One hundred years since the population has run free of the constricting ropes of Earth, well at least what's left of the population anyway. One hundred and ten years ago to this day all hell broke loose on the surface of our once great planet. War broke out between each and every country, leaving behind in its wake disease, famine and total destruction. Human kind had managed to almost destroy everything they had ever known, including themselves. But a lucky few had survived the nuclear bombs that rained down from the yellowing midnight sky. But although the bombs stopped coming down, in its haste death and destruction followed. Plagues much like the Black Death hundreds of years before threatened to kill all remaining life on Earth. So the chosen few decided that the only possible chance at saving their own endangered species, was to go into hiding deep within the Earth.
They set up an official government and elected a chairman every few years. Of course this worked for a while, but the time soon came for them to consider the future for the world that they had not hesitated to destroy and for the inhabitants living on it. The food and water supplies they brought with them ran out, the adults of the group started age, oxygen levels ran low and the already low population started to decrease. New laws were passed in order to make the population rise and to better suit the situation. Adults had to marry and produce children by a certain age; each person was given a certain quantity of food and water per day and were charged if they went over it and oxygen was cleaned and filtered through pipes from the Earth's surface, sacrificing five lives in the process. Slowly but surely the human race started to rebuild itself again, creating a completely self-efficient life underground. But as always humans have an undeniable draw to power and are driven to terrifying lengths in order to achieve that power. And as there are those in the world who are kind and gentle, there are those who are cruel and unjust because the world is based on a theory of balance. Everything reaction has an equal or opposite reaction, for every death there is life, for every hill there is a slope, for every man there is a women and for every crime there is a punishment.
Well at least this is what I believe. When I was young I thought what every other hopeless individual thought, and that was what the government etched into the brains of each person born down here, that we were a dying species and in order to preserve a dying world we must abide by the laws of our Nation. Now you may ask what this Nation is that I speak of, well let's just say it's less of a Nation and more of an extended community. When humans first arrived down here there were only around two hundred and fifty of them, but now two hundred and ten years later the population reaches almost thirty thousand. You see, everyone down here believes what they want to hear, not what the reality of the situation is. They say that one day in the near future we will adventure back onto the surface of the Earth, but in reality they have no clue.
When the government was first set up it was a democracy, citizens voted every two years for a leader called the Predestine or his full title of the maker of the foreseeable future. But one Predestine got greedy, he didn't want to just make decisions he wanted ultimate control of every living thing, and so he set about just that. The once democratic Nation was now a totalitarian state ruled by a tyrant. And that Tyrant just so happened to be my father.
I was born in 2512 and am the youngest child of my family. I have two older brothers Jonathon and Sebastian, both destined to be 'bold and fierce young leaders' as my father constantly reminds us. But to my father I am merely a means to a growing Nation, simply a child baring machine designed to do one thing and one thing only, have children. Although you can't say being the daughter of the most powerful man alive doesn't have its advantages. I have never once been given a punishment at school although I have lost count of how many times I have broken the rules. I am given a wide berth in the streets as if they are all too afraid to even graze past me, which I suppose they have reason to be. But with Advantages there are drawbacks for example I have next to no human contact at home or at school apart from my best friends - Simon and Izzy - and my brothers.
When I was fourteen years old I saw a man shot down by a white soldier on the streets of Mituga, which was a slightly less developed section of our Nation, those born there usually died later than others due to poor sanitation and dirty water. I had no idea what the man had done, whether it was steal, injure, threatened or perhaps he just talked back to the soldier standing over his now crippled body. But whatever it was it was rewarded with death? Was it really in anyone's right to decide what action deserved a punishment so severe? I thought it was remarkable how a simple object could have the power over life and death. How one simple choice could change the lives of thousands? And once you pull that trigger there is no going back, no way to reverse time or take back what you've done, no matter what you do in the future to make up for it. You can tell yourself that the decision was justified, that you were only following orders, that it was you or him, but their blood will always be on your hands, and where is the justice in that. I don't know if this soldier was following orders, but somehow I doubt it.
I asked my father later on the day, of what he thought about the deaths of his citizens, and why the white soldier had done that. He brushed off my comment because apparently I 'ask too many questions for my own good'. That's when I realised that my father, the Predestine, the ruler of our Nation, did not care. He didn't care that the death of this man would go unnoticed, he didn't care who lived or died, he cared about himself and the power he holds. And that's when everything became clearer, I no longer believed everything the government said and I stopped playing by their rules. I was no longer loyal to the Nation, I was loyal to myself. I placed my trust in those I knew deserved it, if my father wanted my honesty and trust he would have to earn it.
But then just when I thought I was starting to figure out the world I was living in, everything changed.
Thankyou for reading, please let me know what you think :)