Cure's Aftermath

Chapter 2 / Beyeon

16 years later.

For the first time in months, the moon and stars emerged from the pollution. Filtering into the window. Onto her pale legs. Beyeon plucked one audio bud out of her ear, pausing the tape she'd listened to over and over. Music was hard to come by in the compound. Any devices were promptly confiscated. Still, Beyeon was willing to risk a slap across the cheek for a few good tunes; it passed the hours quicker.

So she spent them--listening to the tracks skip and repeat--gazing into the picture on her nightstand. It captured the day her sister was promoted to O.R lieutenant, the day the crowd of faithful Uropa followers hollered the name the Regime had given her.

Lorna the Stark. Lorna the Faithful. Lorna the conquerer.

And that churn in Beyeon's stomach hadn't gone away since then. The hollow in her that'd manifested when their eyes met...and when Lorna tore hers away. As if they'd never met. 

That was the day Lorna left her behind to suffer through the Regime's "school curriculum," which was really just chapter after chapter of Uropa propaganda, prayer directions and some crazy shit about how the Regime was out to save the world and reach every last soul with the gospel of their...god, or something.

Silly that they believed after all the chaos that'd stricken humanity, there was still a chance to "save the world." Hell, the cure wasn't even really, well, a "cure" anymore. The plague kept mutating. Soon enough the vaccine would be useless, and the world would once again be overrun by infected.

...And here the Orion Regime was. Preaching their "gospel" while annihilating anything that wasn't human. That's what Lorna was out doing? Killing the outsiders, the...aliens  that could've actually saved the world? Because they "transcended the Uropa's mortal design"?

Accepting her own sister as a leader in this extremist group gave Beyeon's gut a good, hard twist. But accepting that she too would soon be tossed onto the front lines as one of their soldiers-of-light made her blood freeze.

Trumpets echoed across the compound; the rise-and-shine symphony.

Throwing her choppy black hair into a ponytail, tugging on her boots and buttoning up her uniform, Beyeon scrambled outside her door just as the drill sergeant came thundering down the corridor.

"Morning you groggy little bastards!" 

"Good morning, sir!" 

"Hit the asphalt like the bottom-feeding vermin you are! Single file outside in thirty seconds, maggots!"

"SIR!" 

The floor crammed outside into the yard, scattered for what seemed like millisecond before assembling into a line so straight and narrow, Beyeon swore she glimpsed a tear wriggle out from under the sergeant's eyepatch.

"To the mess hall, and don't break formation!"

"SIR!"