Chapter 1:

Inescapable Sadness

The kettle was whistling, but Jina paid no attention. The water was hot and scalding, running over her hands and turning them a blistering red. She didn't noticed; the burning of the water seemed to drive the pain away. She turned off the water; the feeling of the faucet underneath her hand was trivial as the scorching metal burned her hand slightly.

Finally the sound of the kettle hit her brain, though she knew she'd heard it the whole time. Just being in the kitchen made time stop, made her mind blink slightly, brought memories back. Her mother said that she needed to move, but the therapist decided that staying in that apartment would be much better. She removed the kettle from the stove, pulled a teacup from the cupboard and poured hot water into the cup. She pulled down a vanilla teabag and started to steep the tea in the hot water. Her mind started reeling. Lemon. She needed lemon. She pulled a lemon from the refrigerator and realized that she needed to cut it.

She stared at the drawer that held the knives. Those sharp objects, the serrated edges, they would cut the acrid, yellow flesh of the lemon, making the sweet juice flow. She shook her head. She couldn't be afraid of knives, or what she would do with knives in her hands. Her mind and her eyes turned from the drawer to her own wrists. Long sleeves covered them, but she knew what lay underneath. Scars that ran as thick as the sleeves, as thick as the pain that they represented. She gulped and put the lemon down. Her tea would have to be tasteless for the night.

"What do you want from life, Jina?" her therapist asked in his throaty baritone. She didn't know the answer to that. Just a month back she realized that all she wanted from life was not to live it. Now, she was being asked what she wanted out of a life that she didn't want to live. It was ironic. Scary, sad, and it made her bitter inside. She could do nothing right not even take her own life. She supposed it wasn't hers to take. It may have been selfish, but she knew that life would have been better had she not had to live it.

It was five minutes before Jina realized that her therapist was staring at her like he sometimes did. His eyes were a strange brown that seemed to look deeply into her soul, but they only looked, they never said anything. She realized that she hadn't answered. There was no answer, so she gave him a generic answer, one that would allow him to ask more questions.

"Happiness."

"What brings you happiness?" he asked her again.

"Nothing at the moment."

"Jina. I know it may seem as if nothing is in front of you, but you must understand that life will get better. You just have to take everything one day at a time. You're alive. You're a survivor. Life will get better. Well, it looks like our time is up. See Marisa outside to pay and schedule our next appointment." Jina was ushered away from a fifty-five minute session sixty dollars poorer and nothing to show for it. She met Marisa in the lobby, paid for her session then walked outside into the massive building. There was never any time for exploring. Her mother had taken her out of school after the "incident." That's what they called it, the "incident." An "incident" was something that was subordinate to something else, a minor occurrence. By saying that the scars on her wrist were an "incident" made it sound trivial and small. It wasn't trivial and small. The word incident was bureaucratic and pretentious, belittling. The fact that she was in therapy was belittling. All she wanted to do was to be left alone to sort things out herself. She wanted to cut the pain directly from her body, emerge herself in happiness or numbness so that she could never feel the inescapable sadness.

"Miss, isn't this your floor?" a man with a nice face said in the elevator. She realized that she'd ridden all the way from the twentieth floor to the first without even taking in the experience. She was so far out; so far gone that nothing came to her mind. Reality wasn't real anymore. She smiled at the man and ushered her way from the elevator and made her way onto the street.

The thing that she liked most about New York was that she couldn't see the sun, not even when outside. She found it comforting to hide from the yellow and orange rays, to escape the blue of the sky. It wasn't dark; the sky was just hidden from view by the monstrous skyscrapers that gave the city an eclipsed concept of night and day. There was no night and day. There was no actuality; it was just a limbo of time, what Jina loved the most. She walked towards her apartment ignoring the twinge of fear she felt as she walked into the crowded sidewalks. The world would have been better without the people in it.

Her apartment was dark, frighteningly clean and pitch black. She'd found a way to keep the darkness inside. She knew when it was day, inside the apartment shown a silvery blue while the sun glowed luminously outside. When it was night time, she sat humbly in the dark, the only light her computer. When she was in the light there was chaos. There was talking and busy people doing things, asking questions, making noise. There was always the background noise, the voices ruminating in her head, bubbling and gurgling in her mind like flies or frogs or locusts. There was never enough quiet, never enough peace to allow her to think, to connect her mind. Her therapist had prescribed some pills but they didn't work. Jina had stopped taking them months ago; she wanted something else, something helpful. Her computer brought her peace and quiet. It was just the gentle humming of the fan that caused her to concentrate, to connect and relax. She simply sat at the computer, staring at the muted screen, trying to focus on the screen. The computer was the future; it was her future. Within the screen she could see her body relax, the tenseness jus fade away. Her concentration settled on a single pixel that was discolored, a strange shade of green. Within that pixel she could see her future. She could see the future, her mind became one and she closed her eyes.

"I don't know who she is. She doesn't look familiar, and her clothes are strange," a voice said. Jina's eyes were still closed. In the back of her mind she wondered who was in her apartment and why they were there, but she continued to keep her eyes closed.

"Do you think she's an Insensible?" a male voice asked. The voice was comforting to Jina. He seemed to be concerned about her. She, to them, was apparently in a comatose state.

"No. She doesn't look like one, but one can never be too careful, Trowa."

"You're right, Duo. We should take her in. We can test her when she wakes up."

"Looks like she's waking up now," Jina moved, opened her eyes and looked up at the two men that were talking. They held guns over her, cocked and ready if she was going to do anything. She wasn't in her apartment, panicked settled in and she sat up quickly. The two men cocked their guns and held them at her ready to fire at any time. One man had green eyes, was tall and muscular, she could tell despite his heavy and unrevealing, dingy clothes. His face was thin and handsome, with a thin-set jaw and a aquiline nose. She considered if he smiled, and knew that he would set warmth on her chilled heart if he did. He had no smile lines on his young face; she knew that he didn't smile a lot. The other man had a refreshingly beautiful face. His hair was long, reaching down his back in a sensually thick chestnut braid. His eyes were the strange color of violet and indigo set against one another, purely unique and shining. They shone even in the darkness of the place where she was. His cheeks were plump and childlike, but his face still held a dewy masculinity that was only found in teenagers. His body, however, deftly illustrated that he was a fully-grown man, at least adult age. He was broad shouldered and strong, tall and hard, masculine. His voice was deep, throaty and warm with a twinge of sarcasm. In her mind it had only been a few moments, but by the looking at their faces, she was seriously staring at the men.

"Where am I? Who are you? What's going on?" the three questions left her lips in a flurry of confusion. The green-eyed man dropped his gun lower and walked towards her.

"Are you an Insensible?" Trowa asked. Jina looked at him strangely.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jina whispered. She surveyed her surroundings. It was dangerously dark in the room, with only a few orange lights burning. The smell was close to that of a dank sewer and the humidity around her seemed to burn her body and twinge her nose and make her eyes water. It was sulfur. She knew the smell, knew the acrid taste in her mouth and the pain in her eyes and throat. She choked.

"An Insensible, from up top," the violet-eyed man pointed upwards and Jina looked up for the first time. There was no ceiling to the room; there was no room. They were outside. There was deep orange fog covering the sky. Or maybe the fog just looked orange because of the sulfur. She could barely see above the thick haze, but what she could see were buildings hovering high in the air beyond her sight.

"Up… top?"

"You say those words as if you've never seen this sight before," the green-eyed man commented. The violet-eyed man looked closer at her, noticing a small necklace that she was wearing. The necklace seemed like an everyday necklace that one could get at any mall chain jewelry boutique, but to the violet-eyed man it was a sense of salvation. A black leather strap bore the Chinese symbol for "dog" on it; the violet-eyed man dropped his gun and he dropped down to his feet in homage, the green-eyed man followed suit. Jina stood back, confused.

"What is going on?" Jina asked again.

"Mistress, you are our salvation. You were in the prophecy. You have come to save us. Come, we will take you back to our headquarters. Despite her worries, Jina complied.

Their headquarters were small. It was a little room that was situated underground; Jina realized that it was an abandoned subway shaft. The streets seemed familiar, and she at once realized that it was New York. She had no idea how, but she'd traveled into the future. She thought on the walk towards their headquarters that she was dreaming, so she slapped herself. No, she wasn't dreaming. The smells were too real, the pain of the slap too painful; the choking sensation from the sulfur was too intense to be a simple dream. She looked down at her wrists, the scars were there. The scars were never present in her dream.

"Can you explain to me what is going on," Jina stopped in mid-stride through the subway shaft, demanding an answer. Trowa and Duo stopped and turned to look at her.

"You see, we don't really quite know ourselves. We were out on patrol and found you passed out in the middle of the road. We figure you for an Insensible but it turns out that you're wearing the seal of the chosen," the violet-eyed man touched her necklace, Jina pulled away then touched her own necklace.

"My Chinese Dog necklace?"

"Yeah. There was only one other person that wore that, and she's been taken by the Insensible. She was our leader until her capture."

"Leader for what?"

"Look, let's just keep walking and it will all be explain, okay?" The green-eyed man said.

"I'm not walking another step until someone explains something to me."

"Look, my name is Duo and that's Trowa. We're not going to hurt you; we really can't do that much explaining because we really don't know. All we know is, that we found you. You must be hungry and you have one hell of a bump on your head. So, we're trying to take you to shelter and patch up that bump. So, please, follow us," Duo said walking off. Trowa followed suit and so did Jina. She was more annoyed than anything else.

They walked about a quarter of a mile south until they came to a door. Trowa knocked on it, whispered a few words and the door was opened with a metallic loud thud. All three of them entered. Lanterns hanging against the wall lighted the passageway; it was all very primitive and indescribable. The one called Duo took Jina's hand and led her quickly down the passage to another door that was opened quickly.

They were brought to a simple room where there were only three lanterns shining a dull orange. Jina gripped Duo's hand tighter as she saw something move within the dark confines of the room.

"We found her on the street passed out in the middle of the road. We thought that maybe she could have been and Insensible, but she wears the seal."

"She does, does she?" a deep baritone came from the darkness. The man walked into the light and Jina could see the most beautiful blue eyes. His hair was messy in a way that seemed to work with his face. He was of Asian decent, with a very broad chin and a completely masculine face. His face was in a tight-lipped scowl, daunting and fearless. He looked at Jina, and his eyes seemed to bore into her soul. They were tough, hardened, and almost emotionless. Jina was instantly quickened. She was almost frightened by his presence, lost in his eyes and his face. Much like the others, his clothes were militaristic in fashion, olive cargo pants, combat boots, thick cotton shirt and comfortable jacket. He didn't wear dog tags, but Jina felt as if he did, the ensemble would be complete.

"My name is Heero Yuy. You wear the seal of salvation. You seem quite frightened."

"Not frightened, confused. I want to know what is going on."

"We are rebels, fighting a cause that we seem to be slowly losing."

"What cause is that?"

"Against the Insensible, that's what we call them. The Insensible are the comatose state in which most of this society lives their lives. From the time we are born, we are given a dosage that affects the hypothalamus, which turns off our emotions. We become robotic, mechanical. We are lust free, anger free, emotionless beings. The upside is that we're free from chaos and destruction, the many things that ruined human society before. The downside is that there is no laughter, no joy, and no creativity. All those things are not allowed. As for us, the rebels, we stopped taking our dosage and therefore are in violation."

"So, what does this have to do with my Chinese Dog necklace?"

"Our leader, before she was taken a few days ago said something about your necklace."

"Where was she taken?"

"She was taken by the Insensible. They have probably sentenced her to death."