Better Future

Chapter 1

Death Valley, California, Year 2150 A.D.

Two men and a woman crouched together, shielding themselves from the onslaught of dust. In the center of the huddle, there was a glowing sphere being worked on by the woman. One of the men, Jace shouted over the howl of the wind. "Kelia, we must hurry! The guard is coming! Our devices won't hold them off for long!"

"Just a second, Jace! I'm almost done with the time coordinates!"

"Please hurry!" called the other, Jameson. Kelia worked faster on her device. The men continued to shield the orb from particles in the air. Jace pulled his cloth further up his face to keep the blowing sand out of his lungs. Their hearts pounded as adrenaline coursed through their systems. They could not fail this mission.

As Kelia finished punching in the coordinates to the screen across the side of the orb, the three heard shouts off in the distance. Their hearts sank in their chests. Kelia took a breath, trying to remain calm as the wind whipped her body and the shouts grew louder. If only Jason wasn't arrested before she could get the rest of his blueprints. She would have been able to suppress the energy signals coming off of the device had she known the rest of the plans. The generators on their tracking shields must have given out. The device stuck out like an electromagnetic beacon to the people scouting them out. It was set to leave in two minutes exactly.

"It's finished!" she half-shouted, instantly regretting her choice. Through the mass of dirt in the air, they saw the dark figures of the people in the distance rapidly approaching. It was go time.

They did not exactly know who exactly was following them. There was a vide variety of possibilities. It could be a small group of mercenaries sent after them to thwart their plans. It could be a squadron of junkers seeking out her device for money. Technology like that would manage to put at least a few breadcrumbs into their starving bodies. Or worse. It could be a squadron of scouts from the labor farms, seeking out the scientist and her bodyguards to enslave at the food factories.

Food was scarce. The basic human necessity had all failed after chemical food adaptations went sideways. The defective resources mixed in with the whole batch of food. Vegetables without carcinogenic substances were hard to come by. The substances eventually got into the ground water. People got sick. Generations of children contracted incurable diseases and the world went to the dogs when there wasn't enough fodder to go around.

People continue to hold onto the threads of societies, though they are often overtaken by larger groups of people to be scoured for resources. One of the larger groups settled on the West Coast of North America, and managed to scrape together factories and laboratories to try to make the world liveable again. Though their intentions were good, it was gone about the wrong way.

Millions of people were forced into labor to work in the thousands of factories across the newly-established territory. Children as young as seven were put to work to earn a ration of food to barely sustain their own lives. Those who didn't comply with the factory 'employers' either starved or met a worse fate. Very few escaped the work and lived to tell the tale. Kelia, Jameson, and Jace managed to get away as a group.

Kelia was not about to be taken back after years of hiding long enough to develop a solution to the world's problems. It had taken actual years to gather enough parts from sneaking into factories to even develop a plan for said solution. She met her friend, Jason, along the way and he was able to assist in the development of the machine. Unfortunately, he had been captured again, though she is not sure what kind of fate he had met.

Time was of the essence in more ways deemed imaginable to Kelia and her group. Nothing could try to stop her. She looked up from the orb to her bodyguards. "They are already on us, we can't run. We have to fight; only one of us will be able to go."

"Yes ma'am," the two barked back at her, getting to their feet in a battle stance in front of the woman.

In seemingly seconds the scouts raced up to the three, shouting, "Remove all weapons! If you do not obey, you will be punished," in a droning, monotonous announcement. They stood their ground. Jace was the first to be attacked by one of the scouts.

He managed to throw in a few good punches before being thrown to the ground and handcuffed by the four men. The two split up against Jameson and Kelia. Kelia reached for the orb -- which was set to leave in thirty seconds -- and ran in the opposite direction, trying to buy time.

One of the two men tackled her from behind while the other reached for her arms. The orb was knocked out of her grip, just a few feet in front of her. She screamed and flailed in resistance to the men trying to restrain her.

She extended her fingers, writhing in the arms of the scouts, to the orb. Her fingertips were just millimeters away from the curved surface until it disappeared before her eyes in a beam of light.