Running. It was her only chance of survival. Left, right, left, right, left, ri-. She tripped going head first into the pine needles, unearthing the damp musty smell that lurked below. Her hand still stung, and as she looked at the puffy red number one on her hand, she wondered how it had gotten this bad, what she had done to deserve this, this number which signified so many things. Hundreds of years ago it was a good thing to be number one, people had competed from around the world to be number, it was the highest honor to be number one but not here, not now. Here, in the woods outside of Gheth, her home, her sanctuary, everything she loved had all been turned against her. How had it gotten this bad?
No, it was not good to be number one, because being number one meant that you were the government’s top priority to terminate or recover. Whichever was easier. She got up. The anesthesia made it hard to run without tripping. She was a fast runner. She had won many medals at school track races. But she could be the fastest runner in the world and still her situation would be hopeless. She could not out run the hover car trailing her. No. She could not outrun it, but she could out smart it.
As she ran around a tree her leg caught on a root sticking up like a mutilated arm and she tumbled head over heels, straight into a large pine. Her head hit the solid truck with a sickening “thunk”, and as her vision started to blur, and the all too familiar humming of a hover car drew near, one last thought echoed through her head:
How had it gotten this bad?
Ch.1
“Ella!” The teacher’s impatient voice cut through her daydream like a knife through butter.
“Yes Mrs. Lee,” Ella said, feeling the blood rush to her face as she realized she had been staring glassy-eyed out the window for a majority of the class.
“Tell me, Ella, what was this country called around three hundred years ago, before the Breaking occurred?” Mrs. Lee was standing next to her desk looking down at her the way a cat looks at a mouse before devouring it.
“A-America, the United States of America.” Ella managed to stammer.
Mrs. Lee looked disappointed, like a cat who had planned to devour a mouse, only to find it had eluded its grasp at the last moment, finally with a sneer she said “ Well Ella, it seems not all of the lecture as gone through one ear and out the other, but keep your attention to the front of the room and not the clouds outside.”
Several students in the class snickered.
Mrs. Lee was a tall older woman with graying hair and a face that seemed to have a permanent look of distaste frozen on it. She enjoyed making her students uncomfortable, and when she succeeded, her mouth bent into something as close a smile as it ever would be. Very few students made it through her class with an “A”, probably because an already meager amount stayed in her class the whole semester before switching to another history class with a less dismal feel to it.
As the teacher turned her back to go back to her desk, Ella looked down to try and hide her embarrassment. That’s when she heard the soft sound of someone blowing air into a straw. Ella looked up immediately to see that her twin sister who sat just a seat away had blown a spitball at the teacher, one that was extremely accurate from years of practice. Olivia was steaming over the way her least favorite teacher had humiliated her sister, not to mention she still had a bone to pick with her over the detention she issued Olivia last week because she was “laughing too loudly in the hallway.”
Ella felt a twinge in the back of her mind as she almost reflexively adjusted the trajectory of the spitball so it would just miss the teacher’s head. As it hit the wall with a tiny “splat”, Ella could already hear the lecture she would get from her sister for even hinting that someone in the classroom could be a Potential Danger. Luckily, Mrs. Lee paid no attention to the spitball.
Ella let out a sigh of relief, and spent the rest of the class taking notes about America and how it and many other countries completely dissolved for a three month period of chaos known as the Breaking, before being restored to order by the System. She hunched her shoulders as she saw her sister’s reproachful glare out of the corner of her eye. Ella loved to please people, and she could tell her sister was not pleased.
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