The Sky People

~Welcome to Earth~

A warm breeze. Sun on your face. The smell of the ocean. These are things that Tatiana has never experienced. She has always been trapped inside a cold, dark, void that everyone calls the Ark. Ninety-seven years ago a war broke out on Earth. Nuclear bombs went off all over the world, destroying everything in its wake. Radiation seeps out of Earth, killing everything that it touches. Thankfully for humankind, there were survivors. Those survivors had created the Ark. The survivors were from twelve nations, each with operational space stations. They created the Ark, one station made up of the twelve nations' space stations.

Everyone on the Ark has been told that Earth needs another hundred years to become survivable again. Four more space-locked generations and man can go home, back to the ground. It's what everyone says, but for Tatiana, that day can't come soon enough. The Ark felt suffocating and freezing, especially the part which Tatiana is in. The jail. The part where the children are locked up for crimes they've committed. They are not yet old enough to be floated, but Tatiana knows once she is eighteen she will not be safe.

She knows of her crimes and she has accepted her sentence, but she could feel each day her sanity leaving her. She has been locked up since she was eight years old, that was nine years ago. She's sixteen now and hasn't seen another person since. The only company she receives are from the guards who look at her and only see a monster. The little girl who murdered her step-father.

Tatiana has accepted her faith, has all but welcomed the embrace of death that was sure to come in two years. She had accepted it. But what she didn't accept was what was happening to her right now.

"Prisoner 309, face the wall." Guards. Tatiana hated the guards. Hated every last one of them. Ordering her around as if she was just some animal. An animal that had no choice but to follow orders or get hurt. Tatiana had enough injuries from these guards to last for a month until she needed to be reminded again that she had no control of her life. She never will.

Tatiana turns and presses her hands against the wall, clenching her jaw and trying to not lose her tongue by speaking the vicious words towards these men. The men that have caused her to end up in this situation. If they had just listened to her...

Tatiana squeezes her blue eyes shut, forcing herself to remain calm. Getting angry would not do well to keep her safe. Submission is safety. Don't submit and you get beaten. Rule number one. "Hold out your right arm." Tatiana holds out her arm, forcing her mind to relax. They never visited her like this. They only ever visited to get her to submit to them and this wasn't just about submitting. Not this time. This is something more.

Tatiana gasps in pain as she feels the strange bracelet dig into her skin as it is placed on her. Tatiana's heart is racing inside her chest. Normally when you are floated you didn't get a bracelet, but Tatiana couldn't understand why else they'd be visiting her. On the Ark, any crime, no matter how big or small, is punishable by death or what everyone calls floating. They are kicked out of the Ark only to be sucked into space to suffocate and die. It's a quick death, but a death nonetheless, but they never get bracelets. She wasn't being floated nor submitted, so what is happening? She wants to ask, but she knows they won't answer her. They never do.

"It's too bad, we had fun with you here." Tatiana felt the bile rise in her throat as the guard's hands groped her breasts, but she allowed him to. Submission. Rule number 1 of Tatiana's survival guide. Submit to them and they will let you live. She swallowed back the disgust and allowed them to pull her out of her cell and down the walkway. The Sky Box, it was the jail for the children. She never really got to leave her cell and see the Sky Box except for when she first arrived, but that seemed like a long time ago. "Keep moving." The guard forces her to walk faster as her eyes took in the scenes around her. Every single child in the Sky Box was being hauled out of their cells and forced to walk someplace. Some place that Tatiana knew was going to be major. But where? Where were she and the others being taken?