Rapidly blinking, the girl cleared her throat and continued her story, her voice less sure now, wavering from time to time. "You probably learned, when you were in school, about how the world was on the verge of a nuclear war, right?"
I nodded to that as well. It had been only about thirty years ago, in the late 2030's, I was born shortly after the possible end to the world. Luckily, they had come up with a solution, destroying all nuclear substances and banning the creation of nuclear missiles for the united goal of world peace.
"Well," she said, her voice barely above a whisper now, "as it turns out, the United Nations, which as you know became the primary governing body of the world, didn't particularly like that rule about nuclear weapons being illegal. They...they kept making missiles, but undercover now." She took a deep breath, and I felt myself inhale as well, waiting for the final puzzle piece, the thing that fit all of this information together. "That warehouse wasn't just a warehouse," she said, "and that explosion wasn't an accident." Once again, she looked me straight in the eyes, her gaze so intense I almost scrambled backwards, although of course, even after all of this, her hand was still wrapped in a death grip around my wrist. "It was an undercover nuclear base, and..." her voice broke. "And the explosion was a test. Not legal, and not something the scientists working there or the people living in the surrounding area knew about. They...they didn't even give them a chance to run!" the tears that had been waiting to fall from her eyes for so long finally got their chance. "And they planned it all, down to the very last death." she let out a sob.
"My father was there," she whispered softly, "he was there, and if he had known he could have gotten away in time. But that wasn't their plan. Their plan was for him to die, just like everyone else." she took quick breaths, a sure sign of anxiety, and I felt the need to do something, to help her in some way, but I knew that there was nothing that I could do to fix the mess that I was rapidly realizing the world was.
"And do you want to know the worst part?" she let out a harsh laugh and continued, not letting me answer. "He didn't even die. The radiation was so intense it drove him crazy, but he managed to get far enough away from the explosion that the blast didn't kill him." Her voice was so heavily laden down with despair that I almost began crying myself, but I stopped my tears. I had to know how this all came back to the chain-link fence. "But of course, they couldn't just let him go." the bitterness in her voice startled me, although I suppose it was justified. "There was always the possibility that he would let something slip, especially with his mental condition, which was their fault, so...so they decided to create a place for people like him, for people who knew too much, for people who had somehow survived their merciless experiments."
YOU ARE READING
Glass Houses
Science Fiction"They built up all these lies like glass houses, too dangerous to move around in, but at least that house kept me warm at night. Now I lay in bed shivering with fear of the very people that claimed to protect me, to protect us all. The windows in...
