Moonflower | Bellamy Blake

Pilot

There was a guard at my door, which meant I was going to die today. A sort of calm washed over me as I sat against the wall in the corner of the room. I'd heard of prisoners being floated earlier than their 18th birthday. Prisoners who didn't have anyone to miss them. I'd already accepted that I might be one of them.

"Prisoner 74, please stand," the guard said as the door to my cell opened with a click. He was a short man. Balding and stone-faced.

Not exactly how I pictured the angel of death.

I stood from my place, wondering whether I should fight back or shout or scream or do anything. But my breath was trapped in my lungs and came out of my mouth in sharp pants. Soon I wouldn't be able to breathe, which only made it harder to do so now.

The guard stalked closer to me and pulled something from the pocket of his uniform. "Remain still, prisoner," he said coldly.

I was shaking, but he didn't seem to mind as he took my wrist and clamped a gray metal cuff around it. It stung for a second as it was snapped on, and the pain centered my focus. The numbness faded and suddenly I was afraid.

So I did the natural thing and punched the guard in the mouth.

His head whipped back. "Fucking bitch," he snarled, wiping blood from his mouth before pulling out his baton. "You'll regret that."

I tried to run but made it two steps towards the door before he had me on the ground, a knee to the back. I struggled, managing to catch an elbow to the eye and a baton to the gut. The haziness returned, and I stopped moving.

It was easier, then, for him to drag me to my death.

I hardly noticed as the guard shoved me into a seat, and it wasn't until a voice started chirping in my ear that I snapped back into my head and began to feel again.

"You have a bruise forming on your eye," a girl said to my right. She was also strapped to a seat. I glanced around the room and found that it wasn't really a room at all. It was a ship, slowly filling with teenagers.

"You should see the other guy," I said finally, turning to look at her.

"I did," she said with a grin, dark hair gleaming in the low light. "Looked like you got the worst of it."

I thought about it for a second. She was right, but... "He had a baton." I gingerly touched the skin around my eye, pain slicing through my head. "And a hard elbow."

She laughed. "You're funny," she told me, which was strange because I hadn't been trying to amuse her. She offered a perfectly manicured hand. "I'm Octavia."

I glanced down at her open palm. "Isra," I said before taking it. Her skin was smooth, and I felt bad because mine was clammy.

Octavia looked ready to say something else when a loud slam sounded through the ship. It began to shake, a sort of humming filling my ears.

"Do you know what's going on?" I asked, my voice cracking as the ship jerked.

Octavia's teeth were gritted tight as she said, "Absolutely no idea."

I nodded, gripping the arms of my seat tightly. The chair to my left was empty, its buckles flapping wildly. I wondered if my limbs would move like that when all my bones broke.

"Prisoners of the Ark," a voice said suddenly, drawing my attention away from the thoughts of impending doom towards a screen, "hear me now. You've been given a second chance, 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, indeed mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would send others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable." A bubble of hysteria floated up my throat and I laughed. Octavia shot me a look that I couldn't decipher in the midst of my panic. "Those crimes will be forgiven, your records wiped clean. The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain three hundred people for up to two years."