Dellings Secrets of The South

Chapter 1

Sakura

I squinted my eyes to adjust to the light in the room. It's been three months since I got here. Three months since they found me wandering in the woods.

With sleep still in my eyes, I grabbed my shower items and headed to the public bathroom down the hall. People walked up and down the hall, the youngest to being a two-year-old holding the hand of his mum and the oldest being his forty-year-old woman.

You never see people older than that in south side. None of them survive due to the strict rules. We were always on alert for war and people who couldn't fight to defend themselves were seen as liabilities.

I'm surprised that they were even here on the fighting corners. You never see mothers or children below the ages of six here, they stayed in their own corners.

Southside was divided into six sections. The first being the breeding houses, found at the centre of camp where young healthy and fertile girls were taken to pump out babies to further populate Southside. They had to at least give five with the same man - sometimes strangers sometimes people they knew and chose themselves - and take care of the kids until they're 7 then they come back here. To the fighting grounds.

We were the second section, the hands, we divided into three groups on each side of camp closest to the wall except the west. A waterfall dropped on that side, making it impossible to build a wall so no one protected that part. We didn't need to anyways.

Our duties were to fight, or better yet get trained to exhaustion every day of our lives until we either became a warrior, a guard, commander or are transferred over into other sections. The quarters were random, we weren't picked on any particular features, just placed into one, wear the same uniform as our groups and live the same life but separately. We only knew how to identify one another based on our clothes.

The other sections were the labs, where research was done just a few distance behind our section, food sectors were the furthest away, nearest to the south section where crops and animals were taken care of in a large field, the builders section was found on the west and last was the clinic. It was never really busy when people would rather suffer at home then go to a place where they could potentially get killed for being too weak.

"Hey, Sakura." Tom waved, leaning against the frame of his bedroom door. His messy blonde hair fell onto his round glasses, once again outgrown from his weekly trim. He was the first person to welcome me with opened arms when they brought me here. Mostly cuz he didn't have other friends, so he took the opportunity to make one. He was also the one who told me everything I knew.

"Fix your bed." I told him, not even bothering to look inside the room he never kept neat. And by the looks of it I was right, cuz he quickly shut the door at the sight of a commander walking up the hall.

People stepped aside to make way for him, most bowing their head to not make eye contact which boosted his ego to raise his head up even higher. If only he knew that the bright light from the bulb above created holes in his buzz cut head, making him look bald.

Commanders were supposed to have power only on the field but somehow most abused their rules to bringing them into the houses also. Now instead of looking up to them as idols who swore to protect us, we feared to even be the person their eyes landed on.

With my head down, I walked pass to the now familiar bathroom. The buzz of chatting and laughing unpleasantly welcomed me at the door, reminding me of the fifty-fifth reason of why I hated this place.

People.

I squeezed myself pass naked girls wrapped in just their towels, trying really hard to not make any contact with their damp hair until I reached the small stall at the far back of the room.