A/N: I know, I know, another new fic but no updates on the ten fics I currently have in progress. But hey, I think this one will be a big hit and that you'll forgive me for not updating the other stories first…Maybe.
In memory of my sister, Heather, 2/17/1987 – 10/27/2014
Chapter One – To The Ground
Mother gave me a new journal on her last visit. I now have more journals than I have room for in this cell. I am honestly surprised they let me keep journals and pencils in my cell to begin with. Oh well.
Hello, new journal. My name is Beth Greene and I live on The Ark. The Ark is a space station forged from twelve smaller stations. It houses what remains of the human kind. It has been almost a hundred years since mankind lived and walked on the earth, thanks to war poisoning the planet with radiation.
There is no one person on The Ark who knows what it feels like to bathe in the warming rays of the sun or to have a breeze float across their skin.
But I know something that fills my blood with freezing cold dread.
The Ark is dying. There is no longer enough oxygen for the population numbers The Ark holds. This secret is one of the reasons I am in a cell.
What is the other reason, you ask?
I was born.
Families on The Ark are only allowed to have one child. My father, Hershel Greene, a brilliant engineer, and my mother, the best surgeon The Ark has, made a mistake and I was born. I spent almost all of my life hiding in air ducts or in secret compartments in our apartment on The Ark, watching through grates as my parents, their friends, and Maggie, my sister, all enjoyed various activities, pretending I was not hidden below their feet or in the room.
It took my father preparing to go public about the secret for things to fall apart. For me to be found. My father had been killed over the secret and my mother, who was too important to The Ark, was placed under a strict type of house arrest.
Blinding lights powered on and Beth squinted at the door as it opened, her hands automatically shutting her journal and stuffing it, with her pencil, in her back pockets.
"Prisoner 319, turn to face the wall and hold out your right arm," one guard ordered. Beth turned to face the wall but refused to stick her arm out.
"You can't kill me yet, I don't turn eighteen for another month!" the blonde retorted. A second guard entered the cell and grabbed her left arm while the other readied a large metallic cuff to place on her right. "No! You can't, no!" Beth fought, punching the man holding her and kicking the first guard away from her.
Beth had felt comfort in her age and the time she had spent in the cell. She knew they couldn't kill her until she turned eighteen. Confusion and panic ebbed at the blonde's stomach as she pushed her way out of her cell and watched as all of the other criminals around her were herded out of their cells like cattle.
"What the hell?" she mumbled to herself.
"Bethy," a woman's voice sounded from behind the teen. Beth turned and leapt into her mother's arms. "It's okay, Beth. You need to trust me. Let them put the cuff on you.
"What's going on, mama? Are they killing us? They are, aren't they? To give the rest of you more time and air?"
"No, Bethy, they're not. You're not being executed. You're going to the ground. All one hundred of you. You're going to Earth." The blonde looked at her mother, her blue eyes wide with panic and confusion.
"N-no, it's not safe yet, they can't…" a small prick stung Beth in the back and she sagged into her mother's arms.
"You're going to Earth, Bethy."
