Chapter 30

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"So why are you here now? You could spend the rest of your life staying in Floukru and avoiding seeing me."

"I saw something come down from the sky and heard you were interested in it. Then I heard that you were going personally to check it out." Luna gives Lexa a light hearted smack to the back of the head. "Branwoda (fool). That, and one other thing. Something is changing, and will continue to change. The balance of the world is shifting."

"How do you know?" Lexa asks.

"Since going to Floukru, I have become... I do not know the proper Gonasleng word for this. In tune, perhaps? With the world. The elders of the clan have confirmed it."

Something's changing? Big enough to shift the balance of the world? Could it be that the people of the Ark will come down here? I already know they'll be sending down a bunch of delinquents... It wouldn't be so hard to imagine them sending everyone down.

"Do you know what'll happen?" I ask, hoping she'll deny my fear. It's not that I'm hoping the people of the Ark will die in space, I just don't want them to screw up Earth like they screwed up the Ark.

"No. We will just have to wait and see, and fight to survive." Luna says, her voice quiet but strong and determined. We're all silent for a moment before she breaks it. "What did come down from space? Is that why the two of you are out here?"

"No, we came here to hunt the Pauna." Lexa says, giving me a look that tells me she wants me to tell Luna about me falling from space.

"Uh, and I'm the thing that fell from the sky."

Luna looks at me in confusion. "You? A fall from that height would turn anyone into a red puddle on the ground."

"If it were just me, yeah. I fell in a special pod made of metal that was made so I could survive the fall."

"What did you fall from?" Luna asks, leaning forward.

"There's a giant ship up there called the Ark." I begin and am cut off by Luna's next question. If it were anyone else I might be annoyed, but her enthusiasm and curiosity reminds me of Lexa when we first met. I guess they really are related, as if I had any doubt.

"A ship? As in boat?"

"No, it's like a giant metal city that's self dependent." I respond. With an idea, I get up and go over to my furs. I pull out my sketchbook and bring it over. "When I say metal, I mean everything's made of metal."

I begin a quick rough sketch of the exterior of the Ark. I didn't see it when I was in the pod (Earth was too beautiful for me to look away), but I saw drawing of it a lot before I was locked up. Dad was an engineer, so he kept a bunch of pictures of the exterior. The home screen on the television and his tablet was a rotating 3D image of it. It's not the best, and I know it'll bug me enough that I'll finish it later, but I do have a rough sketch. I show it to Luna and Lexa.

"That's what the outside looks like. It's huge and has a little over a thousand people. I think. I'm not sure about the population, but I know there's a bunch of people. The Ark is made up of twelve smaller stations all put together into one. There used to be thirteen, but it was blown out of the sky."

"And all of these people are up there now? That is up in the sky?" Luna questions, sounding awed.

"Yeah, it is. But it might not be for much longer. This might be the shift you were talking about." That gets both of their attention. Lexa's heard this, but a refresher might be good. "The Ark is dying. The oxygen supply system is failing catastrophically and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. Soon, they're going to be sending down a hundred delinquents, all of them kids under 18 who've committed a crime, to see if Earth is survivable. After that, they might send everyone down."

Luna jumps up, pulling out a dagger (where the heck was she even hiding that?) and points it at me. I stay down, not wanting to be accidentally (or purposefully) cut by it.  "So you were sent ahead? As a spy?"

Lexa gets in front of me, "Put it down."

"Lexa-" Luna begins.

"Put. It. Down."

I'm glad I'm behind her, because Luna's slightly paling face is telling me that Lexa's glaring at her. Luna sighs and sheaths her dagger.

"Why are you defending her?"

"Hear her out. Then you will know." Lexa says before sitting back down next to me. Luna sits again, eyeing me warily.

"The problem with the oxygen was something my dad discovered. He wanted to tell everyone. He had faith that they wouldn't riot, but do everything they could to help. I agreed with him. But the Council, including my mother, did not. Oh, the Council is a group of people all representing a larger group of people. It has a representative from Farming, Medicine, the Guard, and others. My mom is the best surgeon on the Ark, and representative for the Healers. The Council decided against informing everyone, but Dad kept working on his plan. They found out, and they killed him. Tossed him into space like he was nothing. They learned I was helping him, and put me in jail. I was too young to be sentenced to death. I was locked up in the Sky Box alone for a year when my mother came and broke me out. The Council was going to vote on me being executed earlier. She'd been working with a mechanic to fix up an old escape pod and told me about the hundred before sending me off. And then I landed here."

"Your people are harsh." Luna comments.

I give them a sad smile. "I haven't really considered them to be my people for a while. But yeah, they are. They always told us that was how we'd all survive and how the human race would go on, but little did they know you all were down here surviving too."






Another chapter with a lot of dialogue... Next chapter will probably have a bit more action! Thank you all for reading and your lovely comments! Stay awesome!

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