Chapter 1

Norway

Nearly a hundred years ago, a world war erupted across the lands. Allies turned on each other, families were torn apart, whole countries burned to ashes. The result from the world destruction was the abolishment of all countries. There were no more official countries, just land stretching around the Earth. An area the size of Russia was cleared and a large fence built around it. Camps were built, and there were also regular cities and villages and towns for certain privileged nations.

Although countries weren't around anymore, people still had their nationalities. For example, Americans and Russians were the most powerful, Russians owning the land where the camps were built and Americans having a lot of power and wealth. The British, French, German, and a lot of other European countries and other countries were privileged as well, allowed to live outside the camps in various cities, towns and villages. The Danish were especially special, gaining control over many major cities.

However, some nationalities weren't as lucky. Norwegians, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Austrian, Australian, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and many more were imprisoned within the camps. Russia and America had full control over these countries and kept them under control in the camps, known as concentration camps. Crimes were punishable by extreme punishments, even going as far as execution for certain crimes. These nationalities lived in fear.

When I was five, we lived under cover in a small cabin in the woods. My mother had died in childbirth, my siblings were living with me and my father was missing. It was a rough time in our lives, but I had my siblings alongside me, and we were looked after by some mysterious people. They were called Canadians – Canada used to be a country, before it too was destroyed. However, the Canadians escaped and lived outside the fence.

However, the Russians sent their armies out and they hunted out our cabins and captured us. My oldest brother was shot, my youngest sister shot in the leg, and the Canadians were executed. Publicly. One of the Canadians managed to escape again, and search parties had been searching for years. I was a Norwegian who had lived undercover, disguised as a Canadian. When I arrived in the fence, they interrogated me and my remaining siblings and we revealed our true Norwegian heritage.

We were pure Norwegians, a very rare occurrence in the camps. Most pure Norwegians were killed during the war, so we were kept in a very special camp for a while. One of my sisters died of an illness, and we were soon moved to the normal camps as if nothing happened. They never even removed her body from the premises, and the area was closed off.

I never told anyone I was from Norway. I kept quiet and usually stayed reserved from most people.

Now I sit, a fifteen year old girl, in my dorm room in the camps. They are incredibly cramped and the living conditions aren't of a good quality. But nonetheless, we live, and we go by our day-to-day business, keeping the fear of execution or punishment pushed back in our minds. I sit on my bed, my knees drawn up to my chest. I'm turning sixteen in a month, and then I will be expected to choose my future profession. I can either be an 'exotic dancer', a prostitute or a servant. I don't like any of the options – the boys get the chance to be in the military, or be a sailor or a merchant. Whereas girls are expected to choose between the three worst professions to decide from.

I look down at my hands and clench them together. I look up and see all the different nationalities around the room. My Chinese and Japanese friends are gathered in a circle, discussing their futures – an Italian is in the corner, wailing once again about the lack of pasta dishes in the camps. It's like an on-going comedy in this room. Then there's me, the out of place Norwegian. I'm younger than most of my siblings, so they're in different dorms, and I was split up from my final sibling last year when we were re-roomed and I was left alone.

"Aye, Elsie! What you doin' just sitting there on your own?" a loud, chirpy voice calls to me, and I look up. A Scottish girl stands, her ginger hair standing out against the dim light of the room. I offer her a weak smile.

"Oh, nothing. I'm just thinking."

"I've always wondered this, yanno. Ya've got this accent, and ah can't quite place my finger on it." She tilts her head, confused. "Where ya even from, anyway?"

Everyone's eyes seem to turn and face us. Curse this girl and her loud voice; now she's attracted attention. I take a deep breath – honesty is the best policy, right? Although there are barely any Norwegians left, and the ones who are left are seen as traitors to humanity.

"Norway," I say, and a feeling of dread spreads across the room like some kind of weird Mexican wave. People exchange horrified looks, whispers, people even scream out loud and move away from me. The Scottish girl stands her ground, and stares down at me.

"Aye…don't that mean ya're some kinda traitor to humanity or somethin'? That's what me mam said, anyway. She said I gotta stay away from them Norwegians, cause they ain't good news. Guessin' I gotta stay 'way from you, then?"

"I'm not a bad person," I say, more to myself than the rest of them. "I'm just the normal Elsie. I'm not involved with anything the Norwegians did, whatever they did do. I've barely even lived in Norway at all. I mean, I only lived there till I was five. Then I lived-" I stop myself from talking immediately and clasp a hand over my mouth. The silence remains hanging in the room.

"Lived where?"

"Doesn't matter," I sigh at the end, and turn my back on them. "Anyway, it's lights out in a few moments. Better get ready for bed."

Slowly, but surely, the room returns to normal. People flash me wary looks, taking caution when moving around my bed, but they mostly ignore me. I change quickly into my night dress and fold my everyday clothes neatly, placing them at the foot of my bed, ready for tomorrow. I take the pins out of my left side of my head, the one which pins the hair back – a Nordic cross. Nobody ever took much notice to the symbolism of the pin. It's a sign that I am a Nordic – I suppose people assume I'm from Sweden or Finland. I'd never be from Denmark; the Danish are free spirits, roaming freely outside the concentration camps.

My two best friends are Swedish and Finnish, but I don't know where they are. I don't know what happened to them – we were split up, once again, when we were re-roomed. I'm with a group of strangers. I didn't know them at all when we met, but we got along well. Okay.

The lights are switched off and we're left in the dark. I curl up in my duvet, hiding my face. The night is always tedious. We can't do anything if we can't sleep, because the slightest bit of noise and they're on us, in the room and demanding to know the culprit.

'They' are the guards. The ones from other nations, the free nations. There are mostly Russian guards, because they are powerful. There are some Americans, some British ones. The chefs are French, that I know – and there are some Italian chefs, treated less nicely than the French because Italy is a nation conquered by Russia and America.

We really all are just pathetic prisoners, aren't we?

Then again, we don't have the enforcements to escape. No tools or anything, and they keep the camps guarded like hell. If someone escapes, it's deemed a failure on the behalf of the Russian Protection Service – 'protection' really just meaning how well they keep us locked in here – and the whole camp goes on lockdown until that person is found, dead or alive. Only one person has escaped and never been found, and that was one of the Canadians who raised me and my family.

I miss them. I haven't seen them in years, and the only time we are in the same room is when we have the gatherings with all the different batches of prisoners. It is the only time we see boys other than meals, and the only time we see other people not in our specific groups. And during harvest, when we all go out and harvest crops, we are in the same field, but the field stretches out for miles and we all have designated areas. Leave your area, and you're shot on the spot. They keep the strict rules pretty well enforced here; they kill as many as possible upon seeing them commit a crime punishable by death, as to create more space. Where will all the new prisoners go? The dorms are already pretty tight, beds not too far away from each other, only enough room to walk and that's it. There's always a clearing in the middle of the room where we can sit in a circle, but that's it – even that may need to be filled with beds when more prisoners arrive.

They're working on a new camp, but I haven't heard much about it. All I know is that it's stricter, larger and there are iron bars surrounding the cells when someone has been punished and kept in there. There are even iron bars around the hospital beds, with a protective transparent wall around them to prevent germs from flying freely around the air. Medical support only goes so far in the camps – who cares if a few prisoners die from disease and illness? As long as the guards and nurses, valuable staff, don't get infected, they'll turn a blind eye to the disasters. However, one time a group of cells down below the building, in the underground, exploded suddenly, a bomb having been set by one of the prisoners. It was a mass suicide, all the people agreeing on it. They'd killed themselves with one bomb. There were no survivors.

I guess stuff like this is supposed to make you sad, but I don't. I am jealous of them – now the guards protect us from suicide by making sure we can't do it. No access to weapons or bombs or anything that could harm us. If we try to strangle ourselves or hang ourselves, guards are at the ready to stop us. It's funny how they'll kill us for any crime we commit, yet they don't want us to have the satisfaction of killing ourselves.

Not that I'm brave enough to do such a thing.

The morning comes quicker than I expected, birds narrowly avoiding getting caught in the tall wire mesh of the fence. One day closer to turning sixteen, and I am still completely stuck. I don't want to be a dancer, or a prostitute, or a servant. The job options for the boys sound far more to my liking, adventurous and exciting, but we girls are just domestic slaves. I don't know how I can cope. I don't want to be a lady, I don't want to be a servant.

Then it hits me.

If I don't want to be a lady, I can always be a man.