⚝──⭒─What We Make For Ourselves─⭒──⚝

Chapter 24: R.E.D.

My name is Reyna Esmerelda Dahyun. I was born on October 28, 2002 in North Carolina, nine years after my brother, Rowan was born.

My parents are Jae-Deok Dahyun and Indigo Calavante. They met through an international martial arts conference during college and moved to North Carolina to pursue a career in surgery and accounting, respectably. My father wanted to name me Rainey after his favorite weather, but my mother was adamant about Renata, which means reborn. They settled on Reyna, which almost combines the names.

Before moving to a private school in California, I attended a girl's boarding school in North Carolina where I played the clarinet and attended book club meetings every Friday morning in my middle school years until that part was drilled and suctioned out of me when I got better at martial arts.

My parents, who were martial artists, thought it was natural that their children learn their respective arts. Rowan stuck with tae-kwon-do while I learned both even though I was better with Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Martial arts was where our parents' impossible demand of perfection stemmed from, and eventually branched into schoolwork and whatever we did. I guess that's why Rowan joined the Marines, so that he could live up to someone else's standards other than our parents'.

We lived in North Carolina up in the mountains until Rowan joined the Marines. By then, the house was less lively and my father had gotten a job offer in Oxnard, California, so there was no point in staying.

I was then thrown into Barrington-Rosseau for my high school years. Instead of the clarinet and books, it was Model UN and of course, more martial arts. But at least I had close friends, closer than those from North Carolina. And Pretzel. And Victor.

Vic, or Victor Magdalen, was my first love. To say that I fell for him would be an understatement. I literally fell because of him. He was riding his skateboard through the halls like a self-privileged brat and ran into me when he wasn't looking.

I didn't love Victor because he was basically a celebrity. I loved him because I did have to live up to ridiculous standards; he was proud of me regardless. Until one night.

It was prom, my senior prom. My dress was red, like the color of my mom's rarely upturned lips. After prom, I went to his house for the after-party, but it was just a bunch of drinking. I didn't drink. I went outside to be by myself, but a drunken Victor found me. I told him I wanted to go home, but insisted that we... that we...

When he didn't stop, I made him stop. The place where I went to be alone? It was basically a cliff. So when I kicked him to stop, he did, but out of physics. 

I will never forget the true sound of fear. 

I looked to the skies for an answer for my problems when I saw it: the nuclear strike.

I ran inside, screaming at everyone to take shelter, but they couldn't hear me over the music.

Victor's house was built in the 1940's, so it still had a bomb shelter underneath the basement. Not too many people know about it, only Victor, his family, and a few close friends.

I still remember warning everyone, trying to drag them with me to save them, but no one listened. I still remember punching in the code. I still remember slamming the door behind me. 

I still remember the world and the accomplishments we, as a society achieved, crumbling.

 I'm not sure how much time had passed, or if I was even dead or alive. The first person who found me wasn't even a person. It was my dog. Pretzel, who had somehow survived (probably by digging a hole, her favorite pastime), fetched me from the rubble that was Victor's home. I didn't dare look for the bodies. And even if I tried, it was too dark to see out, since the ashes of everything was covering the clouds.

I didn't even ask Pretzel to take me home. Where could I go? Who could I go to?

Everyone was gone. My family. My friends. Everyone who promised me that they would never leave left. But why me? Why was I kept alive after what I did?

For forty minutes or forty years, Pretzel led me past rubbles that used to be buildings, overturned cars, and brittle skeletons that crumbled to dust underneath my heels.

Something hot flew past my head behind me. Pretzel started barking. I turned around to see who shot at me, but hunger, exhaustion, and dehydration began to kick in. I fell to my knees and crawled away from the reality that became a nightmare.

My hands scraped against something metal. I don't know if I dreamed it, but a metal skeleton with glowing red eyes loomed over me with a gun in its hand, pointed at me.

Pretzel tackled the metal skeleton to the ground. A crack, whimper, and thud later, Pretzel fell to the ground next to me. She didn't move again.

I stayed still as I felt warm hands lift and carry me and heard people's voices yelling over the explosions.

The next time I woke up, I was sitting in a metal chair. My dress had been replaced with cargo pants and a cotton shirt. My heels had been exchanged for leather boots.

The room around me was blank. Blank walls and gray, concrete floors.

A door in front of me opens. A man, about forty years old with a long scar running down his face and a tall woman about my age, had the physique of superheroes that I don't believe in anymore.

The man and woman stopped in front of me.

"My name is General John Connor." The man said and gestures to the woman. "This is Angel Zarytska, Homo novae 3. She found you in the battlefield and brought you here. Because your vital levels were below normal, we administered the Homo novae solution to you yesterday. Could you please tell us your name so we can register you in our system?"

"Reyna Esmerelda Dahyun."

Angel wrote down my name on a sheet of paper. "Being a Homo novae is a serious role, Reyna. You may notice in your missions that you'll be faster, stronger, and more intelligent in the battlefield, so you'll be first in the line of defense. But just because you are more improved than the normal Homo sapien, doesn't make you any less human. Do you have any requests you'd like to make before you start anew?"

I had been combing my hair with my fingers the entire time she was talking. My hair, which I kept long for the entirety of my life. My hair, which reminded me of my old life.

"I would like my hair trimmed to my chin, please."

Everything else, like my hair, went down in history.