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COLD LIGHT OF DAY {entry} warriorpunk

COLD LIGHT OF DAY

"Tiny." 

Someone was shaking me. I hated when people shook me. Opening my eyes, I tried not to glare. I really did. But the electric blue eyes of the person looking back at me made me even more annoyed. "Jesus, fuck, Bella. This couldn't wait until the alarm goes off?" My voice low, hushed, trying not to wake someone else up. The room was filled with beds, one after the other, three high, all of them containing sleeping forms. All of them woman. All of them branded. She looked so scared, in the dark, her shawl pulled down carefully over her hair to keep it out of sight, even now, when no one but me could see. 

"Look," she hissed, pointing out the window. The horizon glowed an eerie purple and green. it made my stomach drop, watching the smoke start to rise from the horizon. We could all feel it before it even started. Bella more than anyone. Poor girl had been branded on the worst night in decades. 

Getting out of bed, I pushed my feet in a pair of boots and grabbed a tanktop to throw over the leather bustier I'd been more or less attached to since I got called in. Fuck it all. Moving down the line of beds, I hit the switch at the end. The windows turned black in seconds, steel sheilding us from the horizon. And then I flipped another switch, blue, cold light filling the previously dark room. I could feel my eyes stining, glaring up at the horrid lights. We still ahd four minutes before the alarm went off. That was four minutes we had to get the fuck out. 

"Okay, everyone, gear up. We gotta be outta here before the bells go off."

No one asked why. No on hesitated in throwing more leather over leather, steel and iron to cover them, then thick coats and helmets. Patches on their backs declaring we are not things against fur and leather. Sighing again, I made my way down the line once again, tugging Bella from where she was crouching next to my bed. "You need to get moving, Bel. Or things are gonna go sideways for ya, real fast." She blinked up at me, those blue eyes unreal even with light flooding the room. "Come on. Gear up, kid. We don't have time for this," is aid, this time gentler as I pushed her, nudged her really, forward to her bunk. 

Nineteen seconds before the bell and the alarm went off we were a mass of dark figures heading into the icy desert. The green never touched us as we hid in whatever shadows we could. The only one to walk in the light of it being Bella. Her electric blue eyes trained on the horizon as the rest of us hurried and scurried, long black cloaks hiding us. We should have been too hot, but I could hear all the girls around me shivering, their teeth chattering. 

"Bel. How we lookin'?"

"Only a few more minutes, then we can head down."

Walking in circles was never fun, but the bunker couldn't be subjected to the light.

***

At first they had thought northern lights had moved south. That they could now cover the world. Then they thought it was nuclear - assuming Chernobyl on a massive scale. But when people didn't die, when people started to hide and hurry away from the sun as it rose... Rising green in the sky that turned an eerie shade of purple, that's when we knew. The earth was dying. We all were. So they had started digging. Going down and down, as far as they could go. Trying to find salvation in the ground, in the rocks that we had built our houses on. The houses that seemed to melt in the summer, and stood like burnt candles in the winter, lopsided and waxy. We all had to leave our homes. We all had to sacrifice something. 

For most of us, that happened to be our lives. Some to serve, some to fight and protect. Others decided it was time to take what they wanted from the world before it became too late. So the world was at war in a time when technology and warfare had come to some kind of peak - only the rich who had once been in charge? They didn't get the memo to get underground in time. The ice desert swallowed them and their homes on Doomsday. Only people left... Were those like me. The ones hidden away in bunkers, training, being branded and marked for things. With a little sticker next to our names, stickers we never knew what they meant. Still don't. 

***

Banging on the door to the bunker, this particular bunker, was a little like breaking your fist over and over again. Pulling out my empty gun - I'd run out the night before - I banged harder, until a soft face appeared in the little slot in the door. Keen eyes looking out at us, before a smile quirked the corners. "Thank fucking god," he breathed, the slot closing and the door rattling as he opened it. Letting us in, dark figured into a dark hallway, leading down into more darkness. We all filed into a single person line, moving down the hall towards where I knew the elevator was hidden. "We didn't think you'd make it, Tiny," he murmured, somewhere to the left of me. 

"I always make it back." I sounded tired, cold, distant. Because I was. I felt so out of touch, so disconnected from the mayhem we'd left behind. I wondered about the people who had perished this time. I wondered about the ones who had suffered through their bodies changing, like Bella. I wondered about the monsters that would rise from the houses where happy families had lived. It made my stomach twist. 

The elevator opened, letting all of us in. He pressed the button at the top, and then the bottom, and somewhere in between. The middle one turned orange, and soon we were on our way. It was always so slow, getting down there. We passed layers and layers of the building, before we stopped abruptly. I heard Bella whimper from behind me. 

"Okay, ladies, out you go. Into the training room, I'm expecting all of you to have done your training and had breakfast in the next hour." They didn't argue with me, just disappeared into the great hall, pairing up around the room. Everyone but little Bella, tiny and small in all ways. Fragile, really. It's what she'd become. No matter how much she ate or trained, she was dying. The blue of her eyes told a story no one wanted to hear at the moment. "Bel, kid, maybe you go talk to Doc Merry."

She nodded, and disappeared down the hall. Next to me, Canada sighed. "She's--"

"I know," I snapped, turning to him. "Where's the General?"

"Where he always is," and this time he sounded tired. Sighing heavily, I nodded, moving in the oppsite direction of Bella, down a narrow hallway. It was a winding maze before I got to the heavy steel door. Banging on it, my fist throbbing, this time I didn't wait for permission to come in. Opening the door, she tilted her head and looked at the figure by the table. "Hey, pop."

"Oh good," he sounded pleased, turning around with a tired smile. "You look tired, baby," he murmured, moving over to wrap his arms around me. He was getting old - but he was the only leader I'd ever followed and I wasn't about to quit now that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. "Did you eat?"

Shrugging, "Not since Thursday."

"It's Monday."

"Is it?"

"Don't let it change you, Tiny, I know it's hard, but you're stronger than all of this. I know. I raised you." And when he smiled, he was proud. I could feel it. I started to peel back the layers of dark cotton, leather, steel and iron. Putting it down until I was left in a t-shirt and jeans, my leather gear underneath it just in case. Like always. A blade strapped to my one hip and a gun to the other. "You look like something right out of a sci-fi movie," he grinned, sitting down. 

Gesturing around me, I laughed, "We're freakin' living in one, might as well look the part."