Eradicated Freedom

Chapter 5 (14624)

They started training the next day. Bonnie had no idea what it was all for but had learnt that when you wanted to find something aking only drew attention to the fact that you wanted to know it, the instructors didn’t like that and purposely made sure that you never knew what you wanted to know. The best way to get information is to listen. The only problem was that the instructors apparently didn’t know what was going on either so the more she listened the more confused she got.

Apparently, there had been an attempt to leave South made by the TE before, but not ,as the guards believed, to kill Rowell. Her father had been part of it and he defended the cause until his dying breath but only for somebody to leave. The plan had been to get out of South and sho the outside world that they did exist and were human in every way that mattered. the instructors weren't surprised that they were trying again, only that three twelve year olds could be part of it, they were loyal however and taught them everything. Even more than the guards learnt. They were taught the basics of a computer and then advanced and then how to hack any piece of technology, they learnt how to fight and shoot and how to throw a knife at the same time as maths and science, they learnt how to act and lie and the standard language of the outside world.

Even though it had the same roots as the language in South they had changed considerably so that some times when they spoke to a new Light guard neither party had any idea what the other was saying, it didn't help that Slain slang was filled with dark humor while the Light’s was made from a mixture of other old languages, most had died out and while everybody on the planet had was required to speak a new language made up just before the virus that created the Slain was started, world war three had finished barely a decade before and being able to speak in the same tongue was deemed ‘helpful’ in stopping world war four. regional languages were still around and English, Spanish and Chinese were going strong. They only  knew this because one unfortunate guard had got caught by the TE whilst he was hammered outside the Morgue and very talkative about his life at home. Bonnie didn’t know what happened but the guard had never been seen again.

As winter came they spent a lot of time outside getting comfortable in all situations and making lots of little lights that were confiscated and then given out to all buildings,they repaired the Flag House twelve times due to winter storms helping Clair and her friends. When spring came around Bonnie put renewed effort into her work and in her spare time skirted around instructors and hacked the TE’s computer system to find out about her father and uncle Charlie. She only ever got about five minutes to look through their online files but by the time the new twelve year old testers showed up she had got everything from Charlie’s page copied onto a pad of paper she stole, it had had coal dropped on it and was stained black and deemed useless by the TE but by writing on it with a white piece of chalk she found solved the problem. By the following spring she’d got the final bit of her fathers and was desperately trying to find where the TE kept their hard copies since the files had giant gaps in, she’d looked up NSD and found nothing she would have looked up the full name only she didn't know it,she didn’t even know if the full name was slang or the official term. She'd Figured that in the beginning there must have been lots of people who weren't born Slain as other genetics got in the way, back then everybody had been part Blessed or born Blessed and the Blessed carried plenty of genetic diseases and mutations.

John had been going to school for a year and Bonnie had to make sure that they left at different times and went to school by different routes or the guards would get suspicious, Bonnie had also somehow managed to get Maxie in as well and she regularly saw the two of them sitting together in the few times she joined the rest of civilisation for lunch instead of practicing something she didn’t understand. The boys picked up things easily Miles got the computing and Ezekiel got fighting, they both beat Bonnie in maths and science and were got at being just above average at everything they weren’t the best at while Bonnie was just below average at everything. The only thing she was good at was when they had to get creative but even then the boys beat her at acting, she was surprised that they still kept her around.