Rotting Flowers

Chapter One

People were shouting. People were often shouting, but this was different; this shouting made my blood curdle, and I found myself waking from a not-so-sound sleep and stumbling out of bed before I was fully aware of what I was even doing. At some point in time, my body had simply learned to do things without my mind's knowledge--it was easier that way, safer.

I reached for my clothes with numb fingers, fumbling with the coarse cloth and nearly dropping them on the floor a couple times before I was able to get them on.

I was out the door, hopping on one foot while I tried to get my shoes on. I didn't want to take the time to stop moving completely; instead I chose to create a spectacle as I hobbled with my shoulder against the wall.

It was chaos.

No, not chaos. Chaos was normal; this was beyond that. It was pandemonium.

People raced down the narrow hallways. Some were only half-dressed; others fully, but there clothing looked rumpled and I wondered if maybe they had slept in them. Everyone looked sleepy and bleary-eyed, so I could only assume it was early morning.

Everyone poured outside. Well, I say outside, but really it was all just one large interior with artificial plants and lighting. The real outside didn't exist—or at least it was no longer habitable; the Scourge had seen to that.

I quickly found my spot in the lines that were being formed and waited with bated breath as the fearful whispers around me steadily grew quieter until they stopped all together. In the silence, everyone's terror was palatable, like some sort of living organism.

The place was suddenly lit up with a bright light; it was meant to look like the sun and maybe it did, but it wasn't the sun. There was no warmth and it had no set cycle. This fake sun was not the wonderful symbol of a new day that I had so loved watching rise with my brother.

I sought for him in the crowd—with my eyes only; I didn't want to draw attention to myself—but I couldn't see him from where I stood, which was probably for the best. Cole had this way about him that made me want to fight, fight against the injustice, fight against the mockery of Earth that we lived in.

But fighting was pointless. I had seen many people fight, and then the Scourge killed them. As much as I hated this life, I didn't want to die; most people had the same sentiment, but then there were those, like Cole, who were always planning, always trying to find a way out, always seeking to end the Scourge.

There was a quiet whirring, which quickly grew louder, and soon, we were surrounded by hundreds of drones—bots, clickers, spies, there were a lot of names for them. They buzzed around us, each one equipped with some crazy high-tech machinery that no one understood—so no one was willing to do anything when the drones whacked into heads just because they could; no one so much as even rubbed the place where the drones had collided.

We all stood stock still because that was what the Scourge liked—for us lowly humans to stand petrified in terror as their minions flitted about us like gnats. It was a game to them, an amusement, and it made me sick to my stomach.

One of the drones stopped and hovered in front of my face. I could feel my muscles quivering, but I didn't move, just held my breath and waited—until light was blasted in my face. When that happened, I flinched backwards and held my hands to my eyes. Any thought of what might happen to me for moving was distant; only the surprise was held forefront in my mind.

When I looked at the drone again, I realized I was being scanned—just like everyone had been after the initial invasion. I didn't know what type of things these scans determined, but it certainly couldn't be a good thing for me. And once the surprise wore off, the fear came rushing through me—fear so crippling that I was lucky I remained on my feet.

A series of red lights flashed in my face, and my heart was pounding a mile a minute. Finally, all the lights were turned off, though I could still see dark spots floating in front of me as the afterimage remained burned in my retinas. The drone continued to hover in front of my face, but before I had any time to worry about what this might mean, something pricked the back of my neck.

Instantly, my body began to feel numb and I collapsed to the ground, eyes wide.

"Dani!" my brother's voice sounded.

I could just make him out through my darkening vision; he was rushing towards me, but the drones were quick to stop him, slashing at him with whirring mechanical parts until he collapsed to his knees and then slumped forward.

Then there was nothing but darkness.