Anarchy

~ Prologue ~

~ PROLOGUE

The cold concrete was pressed hard against my face, tiny sharp rocks slowly carving at my smooth skin. I lay still, hardly daring to breathe for fear of being caught. Loud footsteps thudded towards me, but were almost drowned out by the rapid drumming of my heart. I clenched my jaw shut, desperately trying to hold in the whimpers that threatened to escape my lips. My thin russet hair hung over my shoulder, sticking in the cracks of the dark rough wood suspended only millimetres above my head. The table I was hidden under was small and uncomfortably low to the ground but it did the job. The low dipping table cloth allowed just enough gap between it and the floor for my bright blue eyes to take a peak. A dozen well built men ran past, heavy boots covering their feet and guns slung over their massive shoulders. Each one of them had similar emerald coloured eyes and contrasting dark hair, along with perfect bone structure that marked them as clones. As every time I looked at one of them, fear engulfed me. How long could I hide until they finally found me? I felt sick and my body felt limp against the dull icy floor. The men, just like the woman back in the Greater Region, were perfect in every way humanly possible. Only they weren’t humanly possible at all.  In sector H we called them ‘lab babies’ or ‘mods’, but to most they were known as the Master race.

From across the street I watched carefully as my little brother peeked around the corner. Paulo was 7, his skinny body covered only by a thin piece of brown material that acted as makeshift pants, and his coffee coloured hair sprung in wild tufts from his tiny skull. He made a small gesture with his hands signalling that the coast was clear and I crawled reluctantly from my hiding spot, the rest of the people from my sector following close behind. There weren’t many of us left here, most had already been taken and killed, including my parents. But I hardly remembered them, and those of us who remained were like a family. I turned to my left were the eldest of our group lay in a wooden box full of corn. Her gray hair that had come loose from her bun poked stiffly at her eyes which stared at me through cracks in the wood. I walked over reaching down to take her cold wrinkly hand in my own, and pulled her swiftly from the vegetables, tumbling a sack of potatoes out from underneath her feet. I laughed, crouching down to scoop them back into their heshen sack.

“How is it you can still smile?” Her ancient voice crackled through my ears forcing me to stop what I was doing. Her eyes were deep brown, like mine, and they bore into me as if she was trying to read my mind. I stared up at her, smirking at her from where I crouched. She had asked me this so many times before and my answer was yet to change.

“I smile because the sun is still shining, the birds are still singing, and I am still breathing.”

She was the wisest woman I knew, made this way slowly by age, and in the small community we had assembled she was my best friend. Her olive skin hung in layers over her bony arms and legs and her neck swung low like a turkeys. But though her expression seemed hard as stone, there was always a soft glimmer in her eyes. It was hope, I knew that. She had grown up in a time so different to my own. A time when people like us, natural borns, were the people who populated the Earth. And foolishly she kept hope that things would return to how they once were.

 Like most things about her, her name was old fashioned, a name you would only hear among the eldest of the Master race. Maggie.

She claimed that her father had named her after a magical yellow baby who lived behind a sheet of glass in a small wooden box, but none of us believed that rot. Maggie was very old, and the things she said sometimes seemed so unrealistic. She told stories of when she was a child, of how different things were then, how there was a thing called ‘internet’ which you could pick up and speak into and your friend could hear you from where they were. But it all seemed too strange to me.

Maggie hobbled over to where an old milk crate lay on its side and flipped it over, resting her fragile body gently against its uneven surface. She stayed there, staring off into the distance, eyes glazed over, as a dozen or so people from our sector crawled out of hiding around her. I sat across from her, resting my head on my hand patiently, but she didn’t speak for a long time. She was like that now, like her brain took so long to process things that she had to stop and think for a while before she could speak.

“One day, they will come.”

I looked up at her bemusedly, my eyes clouded with wonder, but she didn’t look back at me. Her eyes were focused on something way off behind my left shoulder and her pupils had dilated big enough to make her eyes appear black and demonic. I couldn’t shake the fear that bubbled inside of me so I reached out slowly to take her hand. Her head whipped around with so much speed that I fell backwards in shock.

“They will come. The ones who will save us all. The ones who will restore what once was. They will be betrayed but we shall rise!”

Her voice was constricted in her throat and her hands gripped at my wrists tightly, her long nails cutting open my skin. I cried out in pain as scarlet droplets began to bead on my skin. What the hell was going on? I clawed at her fingers which were pressing into my veins, desperately trying to unlatch her from my arms. I called out frantically for help, but before anyone could assist me Maggie stopped. Her arms rested gently on her lap and she looked at me worriedly, her eyes their usual auburn colour.

“What on earth are you doing?” She furrowed her brow at me, gripping at my arms to lift up from where I had been left on the floor, but when noticing the blood she became suddenly anxious.

 “Who did this to you?” She looked at me fearfully, dragging me over to a nearby tap to wash my wounds, but I did not answer her. After all, I had no idea what to say.

 Did she not remember what had happened only a moment before? I felt my skin go cool and my head hurt from the number of confusing thoughts rushing through my brain.  What Maggie had said, ‘They will come’ who did she mean? Perhaps the mods were coming back for us and this was some kind of warning. But something told me it was bigger than that, as if Maggie had been foretelling some sort of uprising. Perhaps this was the sign we had been waiting for. Perhaps it was time for the true people of this planet to fight back.