Eradicated Freedom

Chapter 1 (2042)

Chapter 1

The little girl with the pigtails and clean shirt ran after her father down the cramped grimy streets. It was spring and the one time of the year you could feel alive, the sun was starting to rise the raging darkness of winter was gone. There would still be storms, there was always storms, but she was never afraid when she could see what she was doing.

The part of the city they were going through was deserted, almost everybody at work those too young to work playing together, those who worked the afternoon shift getting a few precious hours of sleep before the scary men came and dragged them out and into the scary buildings. The girl thought fleetingly of her mother hidden in the basement looking after her one year old brother. They were lucky to have a basement and her mother was always telling her that nobody could know, if the scary men found it they would be in trouble. The girl didn't think that it was the same sort of trouble she got into when she stole bread for a midnight feast.

They turned right at a crossroad at the end of the street and raced past thirty story buildings, they house about a hundred people each and sway in the winter storms. They wanted to build them higher, make the rooms larger and living conditions nicer but they were destroyed by storms or by the scary men she didn't know but her father thought it was the later.

"Exile us and send us back to the Stone Age. That's their plan, unfortunately, for them, they forgot the memory wipe." Her father alway told her when she mentioned it before he would laugh. She didn't know what the Stone Age was or a memory wipe but she didn't ask. It was one of the reasons she was so eager to go to school though.

School.

She got giddy just thinking about it. Nobody got to go to school, there had been one when she was little, when she was a toddler but the scary men had found out about it and burnt it to the ground. There was a law against education for her. The punishment for thinking about it was death, it was another secret that must never be told.

There were a lot of those in her life. There were a lot of those in South. The entire city was a secret with all its people hidden from sight in hope that they would go away, just because they were different. It was her favourite bedtime story.

Once upon a time the world was in a little spot of bother, there was a big war and some clever scientists decided to help mankind. They created a potion to give people superpowers these people were powerful and saved the world from the war. One type were the type the girl and her father were, they were fast and smart and couldn't be hurt by anything, the other two types of people were either super smart or super strong and fast but the people in charge didn't get theses powers and were jealous so they found all of the people with the superpowers and locked them in two cities at the top and bottom of the world. They were horrible and gave them the name Slain while they got called Blessed because they had escaped the potion, those who were clever and able to explore the depths of the human mind were the Dark and those who were fast and strong and able to push their bodies to the limits to help those in need were the Light. The Light's and the Dark's agreed to help the Blessed, the Light's became police and guards, the Dark's were designers and artists using their imagination to help the Blessed but the Slain were too powerful and the Blessed were scared of them so they locked them away at the ends of the earth.

However soon came along a hero who was brave and good who left South and defeated the evil Blessed freeing the Slain, Light's and Dark's. It was lots of hard work and she had to be stealthy but she didn't get caught and found her way to Blessed HQ traveling the world and seeing wonders along the way.

"What kind of wonders?" She would ask her father who would just smile.

"Clean air; trees and grass; day and night; different seasons; love and friendship woven together so tightly that nothing could break it."

"Why would the hero want to be friends with somebody who locked her up?"

"Sometimes you don't get to choose who you love,  they creep up behind you and drag you on a whole new adventure." then she would frown at him.

"I said friends." Her father would laugh and kiss her on her forehead.

"Sometimes they're the same thing."

Her father stopped running at the end of the road and ducked into the nearest doorway, the girl ran up to where he stood and stopped dead as five of the scary men walked past, four of them barely looked at the terrified girl but the last one, a young man with one less badges on his blood red uniform than the others. She recognised the missing one, one one that gave him the ability to help if something went wrong, like the others were going to.

"Hello little girl." he leered and the other guards turned and rolled their eyes. "What are you doing out here all alone?"

"Walking." She squeaked.

"Walking." He repeated and one of the other guards laughed. "Walking to where?"

"Nuclear reactor three. Daddy forgot his lunch." She said chewing on the bottom of her lip and holding up her small packed lunch. The guard stared at her for a second before apparently buying her story.

"Well then in that case you wont mind..."

"Harrold." One of the other guards stepped forward and she saw he had one extra badge. The one that put him in charge. "Leave it, she's only what seven?"

"Nine." The girl mummbled.

"But sir..." Harrold started.

"It's not your job, it's your job to protect the Jinxed in this city and is your duty as a Light to get that job done now lets go." Harrold threw the girl a dirty look and the men marched away.

"Well done." Her father said stepping out of the shadows when he was sure they were gone. "But we're going to be late." He grabbed her hand and they ran down the street from where the guards had come from. Five minutes later they slowed to a walk to go past the guards stationed around the school, but not the light gaurds the Slain ones who all wore a grey jacket and grey hats and carried hidden knives that wouldn't kill any Slain but hurt for the rest of their days.

"Daddy?" She asked and he looked at her. "What's a jinxed?"

"It's a bad word for Slain." He replied curtly and she nodded. "Here we go, be good." she nodded again and walked up to a desk by a door, the rest of the room was dark and unforgiving but the desk was lit up and the woman behind it sat reading papers, brushing away her dark brown hair that the girl would have thought was black if her own wasn't darker and blacker.

"Name and age and purpose." She asked without even looking up.

"Bonnie Morgan, aged nine. I'm here for school." Bonnie replied hesitantly.

"Go on through." She sighed in relief and marched through the door catching a glimpse of her reflection in a dirty mirror and stared. She rarely saw mirrors and was surprised to see how she had changed in the past year, her hair was longer, down past her shoulders, her skin was paler though that might be because it hadn't seen any light for the past six months and her face was slightly fuller. The only thing that hadn't changed were her bright blue eyes.

"Bonnie Morgan?" Said a voice behind the door and she stepped through into a dark corridor to see a tall man wearing sunglasses and the grey attire of the guards.

"Yes sir?" She asked.

"You are very nearly late."

"Sorry sir."

"Make sure it doesn't happen again."

"Yes sir." Bonnie said turning to follow the corridor.

"And Bonnie?" She turned to see him taking off his glasses revealing kind brown eyes that didn't suit his face and build. "Try not to die."