Haven

Chapter One

When someone asks you what your name is, you know it instantly without having to give it a single thought. It's like your dog tag that you carry with you your whole life, it's how you are noticed. Some find their name beautiful, powerful, perhaps even mysterious in all the right ways. However, others may find their name to be ordinary, boring, maybe just too dang long. People take names for granted. Its such a simple concept, yet a most prestigious privilege to own one.

I've never known my name. Well, my real name to be exact.

You see, my real name is unknown to everyone, including myself. I was found abandoned when I was less than a year old. The sweet old woman who happened upon me brought me straight to the guard depot so they could try to locate my parents.

After days of waiting and waiting, my parents never appeared.

The lovely elderly woman who found me, Mrs. Collins, took it upon herself to adopt me immediately. She was also given the privilege of naming me since I didn't seem to have one yet. She named me after her late grandfather, Roland.

I lived with that dear old woman until I turned six years old. She told me so many grand stories of her grandfather's adventures before The Great Flood. There was so much about the old world that I wanted to know about. What was a sunset? Does a summer breeze really feel better than the cold air of the cooling ducts? What did a real tree look like?

So many questions and I would never get an answer. A month before my birthday, which took forever for the doctors to even determine when that date would even be, Mrs. Collins went to sleep.

I remember laying down in my little bed, the one she helped me make every night from a heaping pile of blankets and pillows, and watching her close her eyes as she dozed off in her recliner.

She had been sick for the past few weeks but kept telling me not to worry, that it was just a common cold and that she would be fine tomorrow. After many tomorrows, she never seemed to get better. If anything, she got worse.

She closed her eyes that night and never woke up again.

Ever since that horrid day, I've lived in Sector 22's Home for Wayward Children.

It isn't the nicest place in the world, I can tell you that much. As it does lie in The Vents, which is what people love to call the smaller, less fortunate sectors of The Leviathan, it's not a very clean or well run place. The building is run down and drafty, so old it may very well be one of the first buildings ever built on The Leviathan when it was put to use all those years ago.

All of the children there are almost always adopted off before they reach ten years old. Me on the other hand, I refuse. I've never given up on the idea that my parents are out there some where.

I wont give up.

"Ro! Oh Roland! Come on Collins it's time for the Choosing Ceremony!" A voice boomed, pounding incessantly on my bedroom door. I groaned and rolled over, placing my pillow over my head to block out his voice.