One Half Radiant

Chapter 1

"Hey, get back to the mission," Leonardo says to the group who is lollygagging in the building. The mission we're on is simple, but important. Home base has made it our job to put supplies in random abandoned buildings, so we have safe houses throughout the journey between rebel base and the enemy capitol called Envisioned. "Peyton get over here and help carry stuff in," I move from the window I'm looking through and move down to the truck to get the supplies and move them into the building.

Everything but the capitol is abandoned. When they took over, they killed off the non believers and moved everyone to a central area. Leaving the rebels, us, to all the buildings we need. We finish this safe house and move to the next one down the main road. The safe houses or buildings will be a whiles away from each other but sporadic enough that if something happens we'd have something. The mission consists of me, Peyton Blade, my friend Leonardo Fawzi and some other rebels from home base. Our base is growing in numbers and there's less and less people I actually know. But I don't care as long as we are all fighting for the same thing.

That reason being to bring the Envisioned down. They're basically controlling people in the capitol. Having everyone do what they say and have little to no free will. Everything is run by them, and you have to abide by them or die. Seriously, they don't do that jail stuff. Just death. Even if you desert the capitol, they'll find you and you will die. Most people stay in the capitol under them but some venture away, maybe even to us to work against the Envisioned. They envisioned a perfect world, their perfect world, and now they're working to make the whole world that way. At the moment they only have a small portion of the world, but that won't stop them.

"Peyton," Lee catches my attention with this, I put down my box of supplies and walk to him. "What do you think this building used to be?", he wonders out loud. I stop and think for a moment. I begin to look around to see what I can find to help my answer. It's been abandoned for a long time and there's not a lot left to the building. "It looks like a house that was turned into a business. Like a law firm, or an orthodontist maybe," he looks at me in wonder. He seems to miss the world when it was in order. Most of us do. But I can see he's trying to envision it filled with people and workers making a living.

"I wish I could have been a part of this town, it looks like it would have been a nice community to live in," Lee, aka Leonardo says as he looks down and daydreams. I put my hand on his shoulder and shake him a little bit. "Hey, we're done for the day let's just get back to base." He looks at me and nods. We walk out with the rest of the group to the trucks and start the drive to base.

The drive takes a couple of hours. We started near base and worked our way up state. The safe houses are for when and if we fight the Envisioned. If anything was to happen we can't take any chances, we are already fighting to not be under their influence. Somehow we still have all the necessities for the base. "Hey, guys," Nathaniel Morse starts over our communicators we all have in our ears. "Big news coming at you, our intel in the Envisioned have said that they're working on a project to make their army better." Nate is blind but hes in charge of our information and intel from our spies in the capitol. "What kind of project?" Leonardo asks. We look at each other as he drives. We both seem concerned. We are in a fight against the Envisioned and them getting a better army just means death to our cause and our people. "Not entirely sure yet, but all we know is that whatever they do, it's gonna make us fear their army, as told by my intel," I sigh in frustration, "Thank you, for the news Morse"

I look around at the scenery running by the window of the truck, the others following in their own behind us. All the signs on the sides of the road are rusted and unkept, some have graffiti on it. The graffiti is old and from when the Envisionaries first took over, now no one cares about putting graffiti on signs, we're all just trying to stay alive outside the Envisioned. The trees by the roads are thriving, no people to take them down or disturb them. The buildings on the side are abandoned like all the rest. Letting us know that there used to be life along this road, but now it's no more. Except maybe the deserters if they chose to live here.

Leonardo notices I'm looking out the window like some sad scene in a movie, "We're about 2 hours away from base, wanna play a game?" I look at him in question, we usually don't play games on the road. Not like we know of many, you might be able to find some in our information stored about the time before the take over or how life is in the capitol. "It's called the alphabet game," I look at Lee confused. "There's a ton of old signs on the road, maybe we can find a word that starts with each letter of the alphabet, can't be that hard can it?"

"Well, do we have to go in order or out of order?" I question. "Well Pey, let's make it interesting, in order to make it a challenge, well stay in the original order of the alphabet."