The Silk Moth Dream (Season 1 Complete)

EPISODE 8: THE GIRL FROM THE NEWSPAPER

Fiona has never been one for the battlefield.

She used to stumble through Left Behind combat drills, taking triple the amount of time it took Shailene to master a skill to even barely get it right. Plus, her hands would always get too sweaty to properly grip onto a firearm and her heart would beat too fast for her to focus properly on a target.

So when they turned 18, Fiona did not insist on sitting in on missions like Shailene so eagerly did. She relished nothing about the logistics preparation, calculating the casualties, devising a weaponry plan that would best ensure success.

It'd been Fiona's mother who insisted that Fiona come along for their plot against "OP-PALINURUS", a government ploy to send a select few elite families into space and onto another habitable planet. "This is when We Are Behind's really going to make history," Madison had said, over their evening cup of tea. Fiona's memory hazes at the edges, maybe from time or maybe from the steamy tea and her sleepy yawns.

Fiona had been given a small role, watching over the weapons and supplies at a far-off drop point while everyone else went off to fight. Between the explosions and sounds of gunfire. Shailene spent nearly the entire time complaining and Fiona had to hold her back many times from just jumping onto the scene herself.

"It isn't fair," Shailene had said.

"This isn't our fight," Fiona had said, shoving against the girl's tiny frame.

"Yes, it is," Shailene snapped back. "You know it is."

Fiona has never been one for the battlefield. And that's why she had to watch as Ragnar emerged, beaten and bloody, as the sole survivor. That's why she could say nothing as Shailene grasped her shoulders, trying to turn Fiona away before she had to see it. That's why every night, Fiona has to see her mother's limp body, slack against Ragnar's shoulders.

Don't forget to breathe, her mother had said, in and out. She closed her eyes.

Fiona wanted to scream. An inside joke from her childhood. When her mother would get into one of her fits, after a particularly heated meeting, she'd look down at her docile daughter and say don't forget to breathe as if Fiona was the one who'd just told an entire room to fuck themselves. Or when Fiona would be immersed in a hot, steamy, romance novel, lying belly down on a couch, Madison would suddenly chime in from her office, delighted to make Fiona's cheek burn with crimson tint. Don't forget to breathe, honey, she'd say with a wink.

Only now, it wasn't a joke. Don't forget to breathe, her mother had said, right before taking her last breath and leaving Fiona an orphan.

***

Again, the deathly click signals what's about to happen next. And again, Abin moves ever-so-slightly and a white light bursts from his hands, blinding everyone in the room. This time, Fiona squints through the overwhelming images and sees that he's using the paper scrolls he showed her earlier to wave through the air, pushing all of the bullets back towards the troops.

Except this time, they continue to fire from all directions. Fiona whips out her weapon and starts to fire back, but she can't keep up with the barrage of bullets from what must be nearly 100 Order troops. Their Sheltersuits are nothing like Fiona or Abin's. Wrapped entirely with metal plates and pipes with pressurized air that enhance their physical power, they look more robot than human. Her gaze flicks to Abin, whose scrolls are being consumed by the white light and supply seems to be dwindling by the second.

"Abin," she calls out. "We have to get them out."

He nods. She can see the exhausted determination on his face and the tense veins along his arms that are bulging through his tight civilian Sheltersuit. She can hear Kira comforting the other students through her own tears. She can see the endless drove of clones and all she can hear is stupid, stupid, stupid.