Silent Moments: Book One (The 100)

Chapter 1

 Ninety-seven years ago, a cataclysmic nuclear war ravaged humanity, leaving Earth a scorched wasteland. Amidst this apocalypse, twelve nations' space stations became the unlikely sanctuaries for the remnants of humanity, orbiting a once-blue planet now cloaked in nuclear winter. Twenty-two years adrift in this celestial limbo, these disparate nations coalesced to forge the Ark, a symbol of unity and survival, as the legends recount.

Fast forward to the present, and there I was, a lone soul confined within the cold, metal walls of a cell, suspended in the vast, unforgiving void of space. My crime? The mere act of being born. On the Ark, draconian laws dictated that each family was limited to a single child. Any additional children resulted in the parents being 'floated'—a chilling euphemism for being cast into the vacuum of space—while the child was condemned to incarceration. This was the unyielding edict of our time. My mother, an esteemed member of the Council, was spared by virtue of her status. My father, however, met a grimmer fate. He stumbled upon a critical flaw in the Ark's life support system and attempted to bring this dark secret to light. His efforts were thwarted, and he was floated under a fabricated charge, leaving my then-minor sister, Clarke, branded as his accomplice.

Clarke, with her sun-kissed blonde hair and oceanic blue eyes, was the spitting image of our father, or so the whispers went. I bore the legacy of our mother's raven hair but shared the same piercing blue eyes as our father. Clarke and I, unbeknownst to each other, tread separate paths of existence, our sibling bond hidden in the shadows until destiny intertwined our paths at the ages of 14 and 15. The revelation came like a bolt from the blue, upending our worlds just as Clarke faced arrest, followed soon by my own.

I drifted like a ghost from station to station, until the Fosters, Max and Ella, offered me refuge. Grieving their own son, lost to the void of space, and of the same age as me, they welcomed me into their lives, allowing me to don his identity like a cloak. They bared their souls to me, unveiling the truths of our existence once I was of age to comprehend. Yet, even amidst these revelations, my life retained a semblance of normalcy, a fragile bubble that burst when illness unmasked my secret.

Stricken and desperate for medical aid, my adoptive parents ushered me into the clinical, sterile embrace of the medical unit. There, the absence of an identification chip—never embedded in my flesh due to my clandestine birth—revealed my true origins. The scanner's silence was a death knell, leading to my immediate arrest and the swift, merciless execution of my adoptive parents.

Months into my incarceration, I crossed paths with Finn, a maelstrom of chaos yet a beacon of stability in the tumultuous sea of my existence. He filled the void of the family I had lost, a brother in all but blood, guiding me through the maelstrom of grief and loss. Life in the 'skybox' trudged on in a semblance of normalcy until one morning, when the harsh clatter of boots and the jarring opening of my cell door shattered the monotony, heralding a new chapter of uncertainty.

I am Kegan Foster, and this is the stark, unyielding reality of my existence.