Blodreina

Sage Kane

Hi I'm Sage Kane and I'm Prisoner 91 of the Arc. The Arc is a space station full of the descendants of people who used to live on Earth, but had to leave as they destroyed it from all of their pollution, contribution to global warming, and much more. The hope of this space station was to live up here long enough to go back to Earth when it is finally safe to live there as the radiation levels were too high for humans. But over the years there have been shortages of supplies and oxygen, which meant we had to take the people that were deemed expendable and float them into space so that the rest of us could live. Floating people can only do so much and now it's become a regular occurrence on the Arc as every day a new prognosis is made and it never seems to improve. There's a group of people who are tasked to decide if we need to float people among other things called the council, my father being one of the members. My father is Marcus Kane and he is seen as the right hand man to Chancellor Jaha and is known for being merciless as he's always pushing for more people to be floated. Usually the kids of the privileged aren't ever arrested or even caught doing anything wrong so the fact that I'm in here has him embarrassed, especially for what I've done. I was arrested for stealing, fighting, and assaulting an officer and sentenced to stay here until my 21st birthday, which will be almost exactly two years from now as I just turned 19. The last three years of my life I've been kept in solitary confinement and only have contact with special guards who are assigned to watch me every hour of everyday. Also over the last three years my father has refused to visit me, even on my birthday, as his ego yet again gotten in the way. If you think that's bad, he has also faked my death just so when I get released that he doesn't have to deal with me any longer, using his proximity to the chancellor to get it done. So when he randomly stopped by my cell today to give me a very important message I knew something was up.

"You're being sent to the ground. We're running out of resources, mainly oxygen, and if we don't try to see if Earth is livable then we'll all die up here in a few months. But, if we don't send you and 99 other juvenile prisoners down today then there will be no way we survive without reducing the population by half." I look at my dad blankly as he just said that basically because we're prisoners that they think we're expendable, that we're their guinea pigs to see if this works. We've been told since we were little that Earth won't be habitable for another 100 years so when he says that we're going early that means it was either us or floating more citizens. That this was a way for the people of the Arc not to push back and rebel because no one cares about us over here and think we're a waste of oxygen. It also pops in my head that technically I'm not a juvenile prisoner anymore and when I say that to him he gets even more nervous, "I asked Jaha for another favor, he put you on the ship himself. I couldn't let you die in a prison cell, not after all I've done to you." I look up and see that he actually looks bad for what he's done as his eyes start to water and he can't sit still. Seeing him this way has me suspicious as he's never the one to get emotional in front of me at all, the only emotion I've ever seen was anger. He's always had the mindset of not showing emotion. So when he stands up and asks for a hug I grow even more suspicious but reluctantly do so just in case I'm being paranoid. I hear the door open and feel a sharp pain in my neck as the light in the room starts to fade. As everything fades away I feel as though I'm falling to the floor and that someone catches me right before I hit the ground. Looking up I see Abby Griffin and it looks like she's been crying recently so she probably has just got done visiting Clarke and doing the same to her. She yells at Kane at what he did and all I hear is him make more excuses about why he thought treating me this way was justifiable. I hear her whisper, "I'm sorry Sage," as she starts to cry again as I see my father walk out of the room without another word.

I wake up as the ship quickly fills up with other teenagers as the guards to a final headcount and seal the doors shut as they leave. As I look around my eyes fall on the only girl in my row and the row across from us, but her hair shields her face from my view. The ship shakes again as a voice over the loud speaker says that we have about a minute until the launch sequence begins. So according to the boys across from me it's the perfect time to start throwing awkward compliments my way which only makes me laugh. It's not enough that I'm gay and they just don't know it but it's also amusing to hear them awkwardly flirt as it's obvious we're the first girls they've seen in years. This only makes one of them extremely mad and he tries to sit up but doesn't understand that he's strapped in and can't get to me. "Dude I'm gay. Stop acting like a child, not everyone is going to like you." Everyone else around us starts laughing at them while a few look at me with unreadable expressions which I ignore for now as they start flirting with the girl next to me. I block them out for a while as I look around the room to see if I recognize anyone but am brought back to reality when I hear them start mocking her after they see who she is. "Who knew 'the girl from under the floor' was so hot? No wonder they hid her from everyone else," one of them says. They all keep throwing those backhanded compliments at her and eventually I jump up from my seat and grab onto the collar of his shirt to scare them. Before I could say or do anything more the voice comes back and tells us that they're launching in ten seconds. I punch the kid in the face and strap myself back into my seat just as the rockets start hurtling us towards Earth, the ship shaking as if it could fall apart at any second. Quickly the effects of artificial gravity wear off and three boys decide to unstrap themselves so they can float around. I roll my eyes as I hear Wells yell at them as no one would ever listen to him as they continued moving throughout the room. It wasn't until we heard another countdown that I grew nervous and yelled at them to get back in their seats so they don't get hurt, only one of them making it in time. As we entered Earth's atmosphere the two boys were thrown to the floor so hard that they died on impact as one of them landed directly on his head. Everyone starts screaming as sparks rain down from the ceiling along with loose parts while another countdown begins for when they think we should land. But I could tell something was wrong as we were still going way too fast and there was no sudden shock as the parachute deployed, which they said should've deployed at the start of the countdown. It wasn't until five seconds until impact that it finally did and barely slowed us down as we crashed to the ground with an explosion type sound.