DIVIDE

~Chapter 4~

Date: 28/10/2364 Time: 06:57am

I am leaving and never coming back. 

There is so much to be said in these last few minutes before the air train arrives and dumps me and twelve other eighteen year old transfers on the other side of the wall. The wall which will separate me from the only person I truly love, my mother, forever.  The cold is biting. I try to think of something I can say to her, something which might ease her pain. But all I can come up with is:

"So, this is it." Pathetic really. This is it. But it's true, because you only get one chance at life, and if you don't stop to realise that this is it, the only chance you're ever going to get, you'll miss it.

My chance may not be perfect. Even my transfer, which was meant to bring me hope, has gone a bit AWOL. For starters, I will be entering inferno with only worry lines marking my forehead; I will still be an anomaly. And secondly, the government are probably planning my 'accidental' death this very minute, as Shamsay threatened. Great.

She looks at me with a funny glint in her eye I've never seen before and replies, "Now you know it's illegal for you to send me a letter or attempt contact, so for God's sake, don't you dare get yourself arrested for something as unworthy as that- they'll use-"

"Any excuse they can find to lock me up," I finish, rolling my eyes. I hear that too often. This is my chance at freedom. I am about to profusely apologies for screwing up our last moments together with some flippant remark, when my mother's calloused hand brushes against my own and quicker than a blink, she pushes a tiny pocket into my palm. I turn to her curiously but she shakes her head so discreetly it could be seen as a jerk of the head to ward off one of those poisoned mosquitoes so common in this area, only fifty metres from the wall. The station is the only thing standing for miles around, like a lone tooth in an elderly person's mouth, yellow and crooked and crumbling but still there. We can hear a few stragglers outside, whose homes have been destroyed. Through an inch-squared hole in the wall, I observe a woman not much older than myself, tossing debris aside. Shrieking, screaming, howling. She is cradling a deformed child no older than 9 months old, the infant's crimson blood dripping through her fingers and onto the corrugated metal of her house's roof that lies at her feet.

I sob, and bury my head into my mother's shoulder like I used to when I was young.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is all my fault." I whisper through ragged breaths, which catch in my throat.

She holds me tight for a few moments before grabbing me firmly by the shoulders and giving me a stern look.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." She speaks slowly and emphasizes each syllable. "Go out there and show them who you truly are. You've read enough papers to know those people care more about the weather than they do labels. This is your chance, Quinn. This is it. Make me proud."

A piercing whistle which fills the air notifies us that the air train has indeed arrived. And, having lived so close to the area for the past eighteen years of my life, I know exactly what happens next.

A girl a few metres to my right is purple in the face, clinging onto her sibling like she is her life support. "NOOOOO!" The sound is nothing like I've ever heard before, a guttural howl, an audible representation of crushing pain. This is going on all around me. My mother simply plants a kiss on my head, as if she's seeing me off on my first day of school, and waves with melancholy written all over her lined face.

I'm about to step from the waiting area to the platform when I see the outline of a boy my age- a transfer- right at the other end of the building, but waiting for this train nevertheless. He is with nobody, as far as I can see. His body language looks fairly relaxed. If it weren't for the situation, I would've been intrigued, but I can barely hear myself think.