29 Minutes

Five

Checking in for my shift.

Time... about eight minutes to 12 midnight.

Day...

Day...

Shit! I can't remember what day it is! The one person who keeps track of days in this messed up world and I've lost count.

Oh, wait...

I remember now... It's been three weeks since Grandma died.

So that's 21 days since I last saw her.

Shit!

Why am I even thing about her?

She's one of them.

At least that's what Nico says. Oh, you don't know who that is. Commander Nicolae was the acting leader of the fifth regiment that stood with my father when the war with the Neos was at its final moments. Now he's the leader of the civilization known as Rath. The regiment had been tasked with the duty of not letting a single one of the Neos crawl into civilian populated areas, and as such were deployed at the Lower and Outer Divisions where casualties would be devastating were the machines to breach.

After the war, the General ordered them back to Capitol and showed them the new world order he was building. Commander Nico refused and he, together with his men, left to start their own world in the nuclear wastelands of Rath (or what you know as Russia). It turned out that the nuclear wastelands were not all as uninhabitable as taught in the Facilities.

Nico has been trying to get people out of the Commoners world and has amassed quite a respectable nation here. He says that the plans the General has for the New World will only see the extinction of mankind. He has been planning for years how he was going to storm him out of power. And he says my machine is the one thing standing between the success of the General's lunacy idea of a plan.

I thought he was crazy. Who wouldn't? I was just coming back to take Elena, Mihaela and Luca away and there he was. A crazy story in one hand and a photo of him, Mama and Papa holding me for the very first time I was born in the other. He says he is our Godfather... all four of us. I don't know what it means, but right now it is the only thing that saved my siblings' lives. My home has been burned to the ground. Every single thing I owned... gone. Everything... except for this bracelet I made for her.

Shit!

I did it again.

Nico says that I shouldn't go back to the Controller's world. It could give away our location and things are already complicated as it is. So I left her a message.

Stupid thing to do. Those nine words are the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life. I should have told her I love her. I should have told her that it was just confusing to go back to her, but I still loved her.

Her.

I'm not sure I can even call her that. If what Nico said was true, then it was not correct to call her that. There was only one thing left to call her and all those Controllers in that place.

It

*** END OF TRANSMISSION***

Middle Division, 0015 A.N, 20156 O.E

"Don't forget to have my suit pressed for tonight's party. I'm going to be late out again and I don't need you to stay up and wait. And for goodness sake Aisle, don't burn the cuffs again. I might have money but I'd rather not spend it on your stupidity."