System Zero

Poppy v.01

If a girl is on a rooftop, shuffling a game of solitaire to play alone, it's likely she's not winning the congeniality contest. Since enrolling at Slugbrook Academy—an all-girls boarding school nestled in a glaciated valley, surrounded by mountains and soaked in crisp, dewy air— Poppy's dealt more hands of solitaire than she'd care to admit.

Yet, there she was again, her kilted skirt nestled against the cedar shank of the dormitory roof, while her peers fraternized in the green fields below. As they engaged in matches of chess and croquet, no one paid mind to Poppy, like she was a harmless Gargoyle cast in stone. Occasionally, an amber leaf fluttered from an oak tree onto her stacks of cards disrupting her game. Otherwise, she was left unbothered.

Poppy wasn't always a loner. After all, it's hard to find privacy when living in a commune, also known as a 'cult', depending on who you ask. Specifically, a doomsday cult, the kind with a soothsayer leader who could talk a banker out of his life savings or—as in the case of Poppy's mom— convince a protective parent to wed off her underage daughter.

Marriage is a small price to pay for eternal salvation, Poppy's mom said. It was a blessing to serve the Master in all of perpetuity, throughout the vastness of the universe. Poppy was saved! She was on the VIP list for admission to the pearly gates, until her father swooped in with the child custody order, thereby damning Poppy to the hell of Slugbrook Academy. Threat of the FBI's involvement was all the Master needed to relinquish Poppy. She was now the property of her father, like a vintage pinball machine bid sold at an auction, only to be passed off to another reseller.

Quality time with her father was notably absent from the schedule at Slugbrook Academy, the all-girls boarding school, go figure. At least in the commune, Poppy had family. While her mother was sloshed with 'the Kool-Aid', glassy eyed and preachy; her sister, Claire, was somehow still affixed to the ground. They'd play Gin Rummy, a game notable for needing two players. Someone Poppy could jest when she won.

There wasn't much else for Poppy to do at Slugbrook Academy, but study and solitaire. Nothing ever happened at the isolated boarding school, unless she were to count dust collecting on bronzed busts of past Headmistresses. Each morning would start the same. The church bell in Slugbrookville, the town downstream, chimed six times waking Poppy with a spine shattering echo throughout the valley. Then, it was breakfast, classes, lunch, more classes, followed by a variety of bourgeoise activities designed to boost college applications in the early evening-cribbage, crew, crocheting, croquet- only to be repeated at the same monotonous pace the next day.

It's true, life was painstakingly boring at Slugbrook Academy—that is, until the vibrations started.

The roof rumbled. Poppy's cards popped from their stacks like grease in a hot pan. Aces and jacks fell to the ground like autumn leaves. "Dammit," Poppy cursed.

The vibrations increased in intensity to a jolting tremble, causing Poppy to lose her balance and slide down the slanted roof. Her foot hit the gutter, jamming her ankle joint but stopping her from skidding off the roof's edge. Luckily, Poppy avoided a fall, not just because she was nearly twenty feet from the ground. At the very moment Poppy's foot hit the gutter, Madeline unleashed an arrow from her bow in the courtyard below, sharply piercing through the air where Poppy would have met her demise.

Chances are, Madeline would have shot Poppy right in the heart.