My Allegiance
#First and last warning there will be some swearing, mention of sex, murder, and other adult themes.#
Chapter One
I dance around an open field my bare feet damp with morning dew. The scent of wildflowers fills my lungs and the suns morning rays warms my cold skin. I feel so free here… That is how I know this is a dream. I have never seen grass or blue sky. Never felt morning dew, or the warmth of sunlight on my skin. None of us have. All those things and much more were lost over 97 years ago when earth was destroyed in nuclear warfare. Humans did survive with the last of mankind now living in space, on The Ark. We are not free here though. Trapped under a mountain of laws, we were all prisoners here, ever before we were labeled criminals.
When the Ark was made, so were rules to keep it running for as long as possible. The main rule on the Ark was people could only have one child to keep even population. Then there were other rules like limited medication could be used on a single person. No stealing, no extra food or leaving the mess hall with food, no alcohol, no gambling, no disobeying instructions from superiors. No fighting, and of course no killing. If you were found breaking the rules, and you were over the age of eighteen you got floated, sucked out into space without a trial. If you were under eighteen you were sent to stay in the Skybox - which is a high-tech version of what prisons on earth were like - and trialed on your eighteenth birthday. The council would either send you to be floated, or you were sent back to civilization to do demeaning jobs.
I like many others was wrongly accused of breaking a rule and got thrown in a small grey room to rot away until I turned eighteen and got trialed. The problem is I turned eighteen four years ago and I am still in the Sky Box. I had been prepared to die that day, to get this over with, but I'm still here. Deep down I feel like this was a worse punishment then being floated. Never knowing when your time is up, waiting every day for guards to pull me from this cell and walk me to my death. That was the real torture.
Were they waiting for me to go fully crazy and kill myself? Could no one push that button to float me? I though my father would have been first inline to push me out into space. The solitude had been hard to deal with at first but after a few years it seemed normal. A guard would slip food into my room twice a day through a hole in the wall, and every month I would receive a visit from one of the medical staff. They were not allowed to talk to me. They would steal my blood and occasional one would live me a book to help pass the time.
All I could do was wait to die. Who knows, maybe it will be tomorrow.
Maybe it will be tomorrow…
A buzzing noise rings through my cell waking me from a light sleep. I look up to see the steal door opening, the doctor had only visited last week so I was confused at first as to why the door was opening. I sit up straight swinging my legs off the bed, so my bare feet touch the cold grey concrete of the solitary cell floor. A member of the guard holds open the door as Marcus Kane walks into my cell. This is the third visit I had from him in the past nine years I've been kept prisoner here.
"Prisoner 0-2-0," he greets me solemnly, as two guardsmen follow him in, shutting the cell door behind them.
"Father, to what do I owe this great honor?" I smirk as irritation flicks through his dark eyes. I remember a time when I loved my father, when his dark eyes were warm and protective. Standing across the room from him now it was like looking into the eyes of a monster. "What is it finally time for my review? It looks as though you're four years late to my eighteenth birthday."
"This is not a review." Kane states glaring at me.
"What do you mean?" I ask, confused. I expected to be floated when I turned eighteen, but I at least thought they would give me the respect of a fair trial first. The only joy I had in waiting around for my death was dreaming of the day I would be taken to trial. I would be able to drag up all those all memories for my father and ensure he would never forget me.
"Hold out your right hand," says one of the guardsmen.
"What's going on?" I yell glaring back at my father, keeping my hands by my sides. "You left me here for nine years! Is my death finally convenient for you dad? Has everyone finally forgotten about your psycho daughter so your free to float me now without a trial or raising suspicions?" I did not care what was going to happen to me next. All I wanted was an answer to why I had to wait so long for this day.
"Just do what your told prisoner…" Kane snarls.
"What? You can't even say my name now. Am I really that much of a disappointment," I smile venomously as Kane shakes with anger and his hands tighten into fist. "Say my name Dad. Let me hear it one last time."
"Just do what you're told for once!" Kane growls.
"I have always done what I was told to do. That's what got me here," I say sickly sweet, holding my hands out to the guard. I never break my eye contact with Kane as one guard grabs my right arm and the other clamps a devise on my wrist. I flinch in pain.
"What is this?" The devise feels like three needles had been stabbed through my wrist. The guards grab my arms and began to drag me to the cell's exit, stopping as they pass Kane.
"You can't get rid of me this easily dad. You can't float all your problems!" I shout at him. Kane takes a step forward so there is no distance left between us, he lifts a white knuckled fist and then… it all goes black.
...
The sound of a machine humming, and murmuring voices wakes me. My vision's blurry, and my head's banging like a drum making me shut my eyes quickly. What happened? The last thing I remember is Kane and- that son of a bitch punched me as I was being dragged off to be floated. That's just- Wait, wait if I was getting floated, I would be dead by now, wouldn't I? Not in pain. I breathe deeply through my nose and reopen my eyes; blinking rapidly to adjust my eyes to the poorly lit room.
It takes me a few seconds to understand where I am, a pod? A launch pod! I strain my neck to get a better view of my surroundings; people are strapped on seats to all sides of the room. I turn towards the person closest to me; a girl with pale skin and long curly black hair and ask, "What's happening?" Her head snaps up to look at me.
"Oh! You were sleeping, I thought you might be dead."
"I- uh-" What am I meant to say to that?
"She is dead, we all are!" Calls a guy from the row of seats behind us.
"Shut up, Murphy!" The girl next to me snaps, twisting her head to look between the seats to look at someone is the row or seats behind us.
"What the hell is going on?" I start having a small panic attack. Am I alive, am I dead, is it really that hard to tell the difference?
"They're sending us to the ground!" I look to where that guy's voice comes from and see Chancellor Jaha's son. Given I haven't seen him in real life in years, but I have seen him on video feed of a few ceremonies before. They are sending us to the ground... Earth? I must have heard him wrong, that can't be possible.
"Forget I asked…" With wide eyes I sink back in my chair. I'm not being floated, Kane is sending me to an uncharted, and radiation soaked, wasteland. Can I vote to be floated instead? The pod begins to shake.
"What was that?" asks the blonde girl that sits next to the Chancellor's son.
"That was the atmosphere," Wells answers just before the lights flicker and screens around the room turn on. Chancellor Jaha's face appearing on them all.
"Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now. You have been given a second chance." A second chance? I would have rather been floated then used as a human guinea pig. "And as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."
"Your dad's a dick Wells!" A guy's voice calls out and some of the others laugh.
"Those crimes will be forgiven; your records wiped clean. Your drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain that was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain 300 people-" Jaha's speech is tuned out by people's shouts.
"Check it out!" A shout echoes across the room.
"Yeah Finn!"
"Whoa, go Finn!"
"Spacewalker bandit strikes again!" A guy in a beanie is floating around the pod. Passing my row, he comes past my row with an amused smirk on his face as he crosses his arms saying.
"Don't look so scared sweetheart, we're only flying through space." I scoff at his comment.
"You missed out the part where we are plummeting towards a radioactive waste land in a hundred-year-old tin can."
"Exactly, why stress over what's out of our control." He smiles throwing his hands in the air he spins across the room. The ship rocks and Finn goes flying over the center screens and almost crashes into Wells and the blonde girl. But just catches himself on the metal bars next to their seats. A few laughs, wows, and cheeky comments flow about the room. I bang my head back into the seat closing my eyes for a moment as my headache returns. When I reopen my eyes, I see two other guys undoing their seatbelts.
"Look what you started!" I gesture towards the other morons now floating around.
"Get back in your seats if you want to live!" The blonde that sits next to Wells yells at the boys, but they don't listen. I am so focused of the people floating around I almost miss the end of Jaha's speech.
"Mount Weather is life. You must locate those supplies immediately. Your one responsibility is to stay alive." Then the screens go dead and Jaha's words hang in the air for a few seconds before the pod begins to shake rapidly. The pod makes an abrupt jolt causing me to slam forward in my seat. Finn and the other free-floating guys are thrown across the room at high speed.
"Finn are you okay?" The blonde calls out to no response.
"Shouldn't the rockets have fired by now?" Yells the girl next to me.
"It's okay!" I think it's the blonde saying this but my vision blurs from being shaken and my ears pop. "Everything on this ship is a hundred years old, right? Just give it a second."
"We are sooooo… dead," I hiss. My hands tighten their death grip on the straps across my chest as they start to cut and burn the sides of my neck. Panicked screams ring through the pod and I wonder how they are managing to make so much noise when my own lungs feel like two deflated balloons. The room starts to shake even more frantically, and over the screams I can hear a hissing noise behind me, and fog fills the air - a pipe must have broken. My vision is blurred and blocked by the fog and moments later the lights go out, so I just close my eyes and hope death is fast. The seconds that pass feel like a lifetime, but before I know it there's a final shake and a loud bang.
Slowly I open my eyes, having to blink them several times to help adjust as the lights flicker back on. Everything is silent, dead silent, but everyone I can see looks very much alive. They all look around just like me with wide eyes filled with shock.
"Listen," says a guy on one of the back walls. "No machine hum."
"Whoa, that's a first," mutters the guy with goggles next to him. But it's so true, on the ark, no matter where you went there was no escaping the hum of machines. But now… god my ears feel like they are broken with the silence. It only last another second though, before people undo their straps, chatting to one another and starting to walk about the room. With shaky fingers I unclip my harness and slide out of the seat. My legs are weaker than expected and I hit the metal floor, hard.
"Are you okay?" I look up to see the girl I was sitting next to looking down at me with an extended hand and kind eyes. I gratefully take her hand and shakily rise to my feet, having to grip to a nearby post for a few seconds as feeling comes back to my legs.
"Thanks," I mutter quietly.
"It's okay, I'm Bree. What's your name?" She has a wide smile on her face somehow able to forget the fact we could have just died.
"Alle, Alice," I hesitate slightly but she doesn't seem to notice. So no, that is not my name, my real name is so unforgettable and one of a kind that anyone that's ever been on the Ark remembers it. So, I keep it a secret, and hope no one ever finds out. "I'll see you around," I mutter to Bree as I clumsily walk to the other side of the ship where Finn was pulling himself off the ground. "I guess the funs over," I say dryly looking next to Finn where the other guys that had left their seats lay died from the impact. The blonde girl that had been sitting by Wells got here just before I did, and looks up from the bodies, sending a death glare my way.
"This isn't funny," she snaps. She reminds me of someone, but I can't quite put my finger on who.
"I don't remember laughing," I say bitterly. She opens her mouth to respond but someone yelling caught her attention.
"The outer door is on the lower level. Let's go!" A disagreeing look crosses her face as people begin to flood down to the lower level of the drop ship.
"No! We can't just open the doors!" The blonde yells out as she races over to the ladder leading to the lowest level. I look back at Finn one more time, as he sadly looks to the bodies, obviously blaming himself. Then I jog over to the ladder as well and push by a few people to get down the ladder faster. My balance has returned but my head is still pounding. As I push my way through the room of people. I find the blonde - who's name I'm sure I'll learn soon - speaking harshly to a guy dressed in a guard's uniform, unlike the patched rags everyone else wears. He looks older than everyone here, definitely older then eighteen. His black hair is slicked back, and a five o'clock shadow is forming on his sharp jaw line.
"The air could be toxic," says Blondie, trying to urge the man away from the door.
"Who the hell put you in charge?" I don't even realize the words have left my lips before Blondie sends a death glare my way. The man's lips twitch in amusement.
"Well, if the air is toxic, we're all dead anyway," he turns to the lever at the right of the door and reaches for it to open the door. As his fingertips touch the lever a girl with long brown hair and smooth complexion starts pushing her way through the crowd yelling a name I had not heard in years.
"Bellamy!" The man's body tenses slightly as he turns back to the crowd who separate to let the girl that had called out by. She rushes towards the guy at the door, both wearing sad yet joyful emotions on their faces. Bellamy holds the girl at arms lengths for a few moments, as his eyes quickly look her up and down before pulling her into a tight hug. After the moment of the embrace, the girl steps back slightly then looking at the uniform he wares. "What the hell are you wearing? A guard's uniform?" she asks in disgust.
"I borrowed it to get on the drop ship. Someone's got to keep an eye on you," he jokes. She sighs and throws her arms around his shoulders again. After nine years of being locked away faces seem to become harder and harder to remember. He was older now, but I could still see the same Bellamy Blake I had gone to school with all those years ago. Some people are simply hard to forget.
"Where's your wristband?" Blondie asks her tone a little annoyed. Did she not release he had snuck onto the ship, he was not forced like the rest of us.
"Do you mind?" the girl hugging Bellamy snaps at Blondie. "I haven't seen my brother in a year."
"No one has a brother!" Shouts someone at the back of the crowd.
"That's Octavia Blake!" Another person exclaims. "The girl they found hidden in the floor!" That set the whole room alight with gossipy comments. I had assumed she was his girlfriend or something, the fact Bellamy had a secret sister was a surprise to me. She must have been discovered after I was locked up. Octavia looks like she is about to lunge at the crowd, and I sidestep out of her way. But luckily her brother catches her arms and holds her back.
"Octavia! Octavia, no! Let's give them something else to remember you by."
"Yeah?" She says stepping out of his hold and turning to look at his face. "Like what?"
"Like being the first person on the ground in a hundred years," he smiles as Octavia's face lights up. Before Blondie could protest Bellamy turns and grips the lever, and with a deep breath pulls it down. A heavenly bright light fills the room, momentarily blinding me and everyone else. My eyes burn from the brightness, but I don't dare look away. Black spots cloud my vision and I blink a few times. When they adjust, I can see trees, real trees, and clear blue sky, it looks more beautiful and real then I ever thought possible.
Octavia cautiously makes her way down the ramp; pausing to take a deep breath of real air. She stops at the edge for a few moments, then steps off the ramp her feet landing with a strange crunching sound. Leaves? She looks to the sky raising her arms above her head and shouts, "We're back, bitches!"
Everyone cheers rushing to get out of the ship and see earth for the first time. I run by a few people as I leap off the ramp. The smile on my face has never been bigger. As I start to run on solid ground wind whips long strands of hair around my face, a few going into my mouth but nothing could ruin this. I run for over a minute with bushes brushing against my genes. I run down a slight decline and jump over a fallen log covered in green moss, my feet slip out from under me as they land on loose soil and I fall on my rear. But damp soil and leaves soften my fall, and I can't help but laugh. I lean back on the fallen log and drag my fingers through the soil, dirt catching under my fingernails.
My breath is ragged, lungs burning for air, so I just lay there looking up through the thick tree branches to the clear sky. Thinking about how just this morning I was locked in a steel cell up there in space, and now I am here! On earth! It feels too good to be true.
#Thanks for reading, hope you have a good day/ night#