Nocturnal World: Flashes & Flames

Chapter 1

Placing my first story here. I believe it might be a young adult-thingy. I hope it will find some readers. Looking forward to hearing your responses and get some constructive criticism. English is not my native tongue. Be kind, be fair 😉

-Warning mature language-... or really immature some would say.

Chapter One

-I won't be seeing you again, the guard flipped through his pages. Here's your final stamp, and I mean final.

Jayden took the plastic bag that he was handed. He grinned, he couldn't believe it. It held all the possessions he had been carrying as he was taken in. His cell phone, a small pocketknife and those beautiful, blue little pills. He couldn't believe they had left them in there.

-Don't go get all carried away, the guard gave him a look. You know next time you get caught it won't be this easy.

-I won't get caught again, Jayden said.

-Your kind always does, the guard opened the gate.

-And what's my kind?, Jayden squinted his eyes.

-Don't try it with me, the guard sighed, you want out or not?

Jayden huffed and passed the guard. Freedom was near.

-Remember what I said, the guard yelled after the tall boy. Next time it will be real prison time. Not this juvenile shit.

Jayden flipped him the finger behind his back. -Spoiled earthscum, he heard the guard mutter.

He knew he was earthscum, most of them were. What else could they be? Sure, the first colonists had been engineered. Fancy superhuman kind of clones. Specifically created to travel through space and colonise a new earth. To be pioneers while the rest slept safely in their cogbeds on board the ship. But that was all in the past and watered down by now. What good did those bloodlines do for anyone these days? Nothing. The ones set to lead back then still led, and the rest followed. Old traits like longevity and endless endurance had disappeared with time and interbreeding, but the old privileges and advancement systems for the weaker earthborn were still intact. If anything the tide was turning for those with earthborn ancestry. Perhaps that was why the guard had called him spoiled. In his eyes kids like Jayden were lost cases, spoiled brats who hadn't taken advantage of what they were given. To Jayden it was all the same. He didn't see any difference between someone like the guard's family and his own. They were all born blue collar and they would stay blue collar. Didn't matter what ground they were walking on. Earths or some asteroids. Or what blood they were carrying. That generation-ship had ended its flight a thousand years ago. Now it was all dismantled, re-used and almost passed into myth. Humanity had established itself on yet another moon, asteroid or inhabitable world and that was it. They were here to stay and probably never leave. So what did it matter if one had earthblood or clone blood? It didn't. Jayden's mom had still divorced his father. His sister had still gotten pregnant way too early and he was force fed plograss his whole childhood. As on earth as in heaven, he thought. Had their lives improved on the asteroid? Had it changed much? Jayden didn't know, he just remembered the questions from an assignment from junior high. One of the last classes he had attended as a matter of fact. He had quit the day his English teacher had called one of his stories "too generic". The topic? "My life until now".

Just look at old Jefferson, the guard. Had his colonist ancestry given him anything? Probably not, maybe that was why he was so bitter, Jayden thought. Think about it, hailing from the first humans in space and having to work at a juvenile detention center. Jayden drew a deep breath and exhaled. He wouldn't miss that place, but he would miss the old man, though. He would admit that. He crumbled the release slip in his fist and threw it away. He didn't need it. Anyone wanna check him, they could scan his chip. Behind him the note caught fire and ignited some debris near a garbage can.