Starry Night
An X-5's thoughts before the escape...
DISCLAIMER: I own no characters other than Ria, so please don't sue me. As for the title--thank Vincent Van Gogh for that.
NOTE: I came up with this after watching the season finale for the third time. If you like it, please review and I might write a series about Ria after the escape. Enjoy!
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It had been after ten o'clock at night before they went to bed. Marching into the dormitory in two perfectly straight lines, just like always. If they hadn't been trained not to show any emotion, the children--more like machines than children--would have looked exhausted after hours in the dark forest. Each of them, clad in nondescript gray scrubs, lay down quickly on their cots and pretended to sleep. The guards left and turned out the lights. The room was quiet.
Ria listened to the soft breathing of her brothers and sisters. It hadn't been a good training session. It was cold outside, so cold the air hurt her throat when she breathed. Snow covered the ground, even beneath the thickest trees. It had been the snow that allowed one team of X-5s to track and capture the other team, Ria's team, as they tried to find the flag. Ria was the last one to be caught. Even though she was the youngest and smallest of the X-5s, her six-year-old body was strong and quick. Zack had caught her in the end as she nearly reached the flag. Ria remembered the look on Lydecker's face, right before he made them train until the stars had come out overhead. He had looked as cold as the snow glittering beneath her feet.
The girl shuddered, trying to forget that hateful face. She slowly pushed back the blanket and got out of her cot. Most of the X-5s had fallen asleep by now. She saw Max twitch a little and hoped she wasn't going to have another seizure. Ria didn't want her big sister taken away like they took Jack. Satisfied that no one else was awake, she padded over to the window in the dormitory wall.Its clear glass reflected her thin face. Her crew-cut black hair was stark against pale skin, and her bright green eyes looked strange--old, somehow. A handful of freckles dotted her nose and cheeks. Ria gazed through the window at the snowy forest. She didn't look to the right, where she knew concrete buildings held hospital rooms and prison cells; it was the Bad Place that Ben talked about, where they kept the Nomalies.
Instead, Ria looked out and up, at the stars twinkling in the black sky. She pressed her small hands to the frigid glass, leaning so close that her nose almost touched it. Ria liked watching the stars; they meant that there was a world outside of Manticore, a world where no one yelled at you or locked you up or broke your arms. When her brothers and sisters went up to the High Place sometimes, Ben would point out the different stars. He said they had names, names like Krit, Syl, Jondy, Max, Zane, Ria..... and there were stars named Jack and Miri and Jen, for the ones who'd been taken away. Ben also told them stories about the Good Place, where all obedient soldiers went.
Ria didn't like to be obedient. sometimes she wanted to yell and kick, to beat up Lydecker or the guards. She wanted to run far, far away--her fists clenched at the thought. Ria looked back up at the stars. They always calmed her down when she felt like running.
Suddenly, she heard a noise from the door at the end of the dormitory. The girl whirled around and sprinted to her cot. The guards would be very angry if they found her out of bed. As she pulled the covers over her, Ria thought of the star Ben had pointed out: her star. Someday, she promised, she would look up at her star from outside Manticore. Someday she would be free.