Elite Nation: Book One

by H. A. Rockley

  She starts to feel light-headed as she lies back down, feeling she would soon give in the darkness that threatens the corners of her vision.

  Typical, she thought. Her plan for escape would involve her dying before the guards discovered her. Lucky for her, however, there is a shout from the other side of the door, as the nearest guards respond the sound of metal and crunching bone. The shouts grow clearer, Maude realising they must have spotted the blood on the floor between the grate and the door. She hears the sound of grinding metal as the latches of the door are opened – an old system that belonged with the newspaper in the Old World.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ a guard says, exasperated by the sight before him.

  Maude smiles.

  Her plan is working, but to her chagrin she cannot keep her eyes open to see the look on his and his colleagues’ faces. Soon the world around her goes black, as she feels her body, now so much lighter with the loss of most of her muscle through months of poor nutrition, being hoisted into the air.

  Then there is nothing.

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  Welcome to Rostenburg. Population: 16860

  Ari gawks at the weathered wooden sign with words scrawled in peeling green paint, standing before the hundreds of scrap-metal buildings of the shantytown. She wonders at how long this sign has stood here, before the town had been destroyed then turned into a slum for the unwanted commoners kicked out of the nearby Republique and other Elite towns and villages.

  A slight breeze pushes a tumbleweed across the arid turf.

  She continues on, following the others who have entered the town, gazing upon the empty makeshift homes. Most are constructed from corrugated iron, others with walls and roofs of dull cracked plastic.

  The group ventures further and further into the town, moving amongst the random scattered homes. Occasionally, Ari glimpses some semblance of the life that once existed here. Many homes have tattered clothing that were hung out to dry on nearby tree branches or improvised clotheslines.

  Ari steps on something soft, making her jump, hoping it was not one of those infernal rats that she so often finds. Looking down she finds a small doll, face dirty, blonde hair matted. She picks it up and stares into its brown eyes, wondering what child might’ve left it behind, and why.

  ‘Hey guys, look at this,’ Malik cries out to the others.

  They rush over to the brick wall Malik stands before. Graffiti is scribbled on the yellow brick – most words indecipherable, but some phrases and a symbol stands out to Ari.

  The words: Die, Parasites, New World; New Race sends a shiver down Ari’s spine. Scattered amongst the words are the repeated symbol of a bird, fire spewing from its beak, flames surrounding its wings. Ari extends a hand, placing her fingers over the red paint, wondering what it could represent.

  ‘A phoenix,’ Malik explains.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s a mythical creature that represents transformation and rebirth. At death it is turned to flame and then it is reborn, arising from its own ashes.’

  Ari contemplates this for a while before asking, ‘so why do you think it is here?’

  Malik shrugs, ‘no idea.’

  They rejoin the others, making their way through the town, searching for resources and a safe place to make camp for the night. Xavier ushers them into a larger brick home, roof consisting of panels of metal and plastic. There is no door; just an entryway into a larger room with a wooden bench covered in rotting fruit, to the left, a low bed of wicker to the centre and to the right a terrible smell. Ari scrunches her face as she notices the smell emanating from a metal toilet.

  They remove and unfurl their sleeping bags, from their hip pockets, before sitting down around the cylinder of blue gas, absorbing the heat into their bodies. Their prisoners are bound together, back to back, sitting beside the toilet. A position, Ari did not envy. Guy sits to her right. Kaley, sitting on her left is in deep conversation with Xavier. She looks happy with a smile so genuine, Ari does not think she has ever seen before.

  ‘Doing alright?’ Guy asks her.

  Ari shrugs, ‘I suppose.’

  Guy takes a bite of his dried out fruit bar. ‘We will find the others.’

  ‘It’s not just that,’ Ari admits, though she feels so worried about Justin and Maude that it keeps her from sleeping most nights. ‘It’s all this talk of forming a new race – super-humans. Wiping out those of us not deemed useful to carry on the human race. Then we enter this deserted town full of hateful graffiti on all the walls.’

  Taking another bite of his dinner, Guy then replies, ‘this has been brewing for some time. The Chancellor’s hateful rhetoric has been monitored by The Underground, well before he came to power.’

  ‘You mean before you guys killed off Chancellor Heston?’

  ‘Years before, yes,’ Guy admits.

  Ari is befuddled by this new piece of information. If The Underground’s Colonel new his plot for power and damnation for most of the current human beings living a life of struggle, why would he allow it to continue for so long. Clearly he had the resources at his disposal to have been done with him from the start. After all it wasn’t very hard for The Underground assassins to target Chancellor Heston or the other Elites in power in The Republique.

  Before Ari could voice her thoughts to Guy, he suddenly stands and turns out the fire-cylinder, shushing everyone in the same motion.

  Sitting perfectly still and controlling her breathing, Ari tries to peer into the darkness. She feels something grab her hand only to realize it was Kaley, trying to show her solidarity and support, knowing how much Ari hated the dark especially in confined spaces.

  Stealthily, Guy and Xavier move to opposite sides of the home’s entryway. Within minutes, Guy has snatched something from within the darkness, there is the sound of a scuffle and then the blue light of the cylinder starts to glow.

  Ari is surprised to see Guy holding a small child by the scruff of his neck.

  No, Ari realises, not a boy. It’s a little girl.

  ‘Little spy,’ Guy spits, tossing the girl to the floor. ‘What is your business here?

  The girl sits cowering under his glare. She is draped in what looks to Ari like a dirty, tattered pillowcase, tied up at her shoulders. Her short dirty-blonde hair is matted in places. Her piercing blue eyes are scared in her gaunt face, almost completely covered in dirt.

  As Guy makes to ask her of why she was spying on them again, Ari shuffles to the space between them, shielding the girl with her back.

  ‘Out of the way, Ari,’ Guy commands.

  Ari shakes her head.

  Guy stares down at Ari for a long while before conceding and leaving to the other side of the room, ensuring their prisoners have not tried to escape or have any hand in the appearance of the child.

  Ari turns to the girl, as Xavier joins her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asks, looking over the skinny child.

  The girl trembles, not saying a word.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ Ari apologises. She hands part of her rationed fruit bar to the girl.

  The girl eyes the bar cautiously for a few seconds, before deciding she’d take the chance, grabbing it from Ari’s hand and shoving the entire thing into her mouth.

  ‘Poor thing, you must be starving.’ Ari rises to peruse the duffle bag of rations, searching for more food for the girl.

  ‘Don’t be giving all our food away,’ Xavier cautions Ari, before addressing the girl. ‘Where are your parents?’

  The girl blinks up at Xavier, looking at him as if he were speakin another language.

  ‘Do you have a home around here? Are you lost?’

  The girl does not reply, taking another fruit bar from Ari and finishing it in one big bite.

  ‘We can try find her parents in the morning,’ Kaley suggests. ‘It is a bit too dark to try looking tonight.’

  Xavier agrees and Kaley and Ari set up a space between them on their sleeping bags for the girl for
the night, before settling down.

  Guy takes first watch as the others settle in for the night.

  Xavier stirs in his sleeping bag, unsure why he feels uneasy with Guy taking first watch. Surely he wouldn’t do anything to harm the child?

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Maude wakes to find she is in the infirmary.

  White walls, like the walls of the laboratory she has spend most of her days these last few months, surround her. The bright white light is stark and harsh as it beats down on her, whilst she lies, hands and legs bound to the gurney.

  Crap, she thinks, as she tries to figure out how she will escape her bounds to find the mysterious coder who had planned to help her break of this place.

  She looks over to find her right hand covered in a long metal cylinder – a healing conduit. Something she has not seen for years. Since money had become scarce and only very few had the millions of bullion to afford such contraptions, they had stopped being manufactured for years. At least it would be doing a good job of healing her mangled hand, she figured.

  An intravenous catheter is sited in her right arm at the crease in her elbow, a clear fluid in a bag hanging on a pole running into her veins. She blinks as a figure comes into view – sitting at a desk, a screen partially obscuring her face.

  Doctor Hadrad looks up and a coy smile flits across her face, as she sees that her prisoner is awake.

  She saunters over, voice lilting, ‘so good to see you are awake, dear Maude. I was starting to worry you’d lost too much blood.’

  Maude snorts.

  ‘Oh but of course I was worried,’ Doctor Hadrad croons. ‘You are my most prized vessel, after all. I can’t have you dying on me. Not when we’ve been making such amazing progress.’

  A feeling of dread fills Maude’s chest, before seeping along her bones into her arms and legs. She has tried to shut out the horrible torturous experimentation the bitch Doctor and her colleagues had been conducting on her all these months.

  Doctor Hadrad chuckles, sensing Maude’s fear as the memories of the experiments come flooding back.

  ‘Your eggs are so very precious,’ she trills. ‘I mean who knew someone like you would so easily fall into our laps one day? We can’t take it for granted. Not since so many of us women have become completely barren since The War.’

  Memories Maude had been so successful at shutting out of her mind these last few months, come rushing back.

  Being strung up in the lithotomy position.

  Needles placed in her arms, her thighs, her pelvis.

  Harvesting of her eggs to be genetically manipulated.

  Eggs relocated into her womb for incubation before being removed again to check on their progress.

  She breaks out into a sweat and swallows hard, hoping today was not one of those days. She thinks back to last time she had one of those hormone injections to help the scientists harvest her eggs. It was only a few days ago – surely they could not try harvest her so early.

  Doctor Hadrad strokes Maude’s cheek, catching the tear rolling down her face.

  ‘Today is the day we try again,’ she says, quietly.

  Two female guards enter the infirmary and unshackle Maude from the gurney before dragging her along the clinically white corridor.

  ‘No,’ Maude cries, breathless. ‘No!’

  She fights them off, hitting one of the guards in the head with her healing conduit. There is a loud crack as the guard is struck and the device splits in half, falling to the floor.

  Doctor Hadrad clicks her tongue, ‘now why’d you go and do that for? That was my only one. Your hand will never heal without it.’

  Maude looks down at her right hand – her shooting hand.

  Dried bloodied bandages sit around her wrist and fingers. Despite them, she can still make out the gross deformity in her palm and fingers – only partially healed and now likely not to set in their correct anatomical position.

  Before she could register what this would do to her career as an assassin, she is dragged away, limp between the two guards to the laboratory where she will be subject to further torture.

  As she is strapped into the chair, legs hoisted up beneath her gown she looks up to the ceiling, seeing the clouds above in the sky in her minds eye.

  She starts to hum her grandmother’s lullaby, thinking only of her friends and family in the outside world.

  A world far away from this hell-hole she found herself in.

  Chapter THIRTY

  Sunlight breaks through the plastic ceiling of the home.

  Ari wakes, to find the little girl from last night has disappeared. Kaley is sitting up eating her breakfast of condensed milk and bread.

  ‘Where has that girl gone?’ Ari asks her sister.

  ‘She was gone before I woke.’

  Concerned regarding the girl’s safety, Ari searches the surrounding grounds of the home, trying to find any clue as to where she might’ve disappeared. Or worse, whether she was taken.

  ◆◆◆

  After packing their belongings, the group move on from the home, and make their way through the rest of the town, en route to the nearby Tuchersfield Village.

  The hot sun beats down on them, with no trees in sight to provide shade. As Ari stops for a water break, she notices something moving out of the corner of her eye. She investigates behind another home constructed of corrugated sheets of metal, interspersed with plastic. The little girl is sitting, playing the doll Ari had found and packed with her things yesterday.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Ari rushes over to her.

  The little girl looks up, but then continues on playing with the doll.

  ‘I was so worried about you,’ Ari says, kneeling down by the girl.

  ‘Cinnamon!’ A woman in a plain faded yellow dress and curly red-orange hair pulled back on her crown appears from the other side of the home. She stops dead in her tracks at the sight of Ari near her daughter.

  Ari notices the hostility emanating from the woman at the sight of her and she quickly rises and steps back from the girl. She also notices a large gash on her lower left leg – somewhat old and starting to turn gangrenous.

  ‘I mean her no harm,’ she says, arms up in surrender.

  ‘Cinnamon,’ the woman whispers.

  The girl reluctantly rejoins her mother, who tucks her behind her legs, out of sight.

  Ari ruffles through her bag, trying to find more food for the girl and her mother, before the woman screams.

  ‘Get away from us. Your kind are not welcome here anymore.’

  ‘My kind?’

  ‘Demons with power,’ the woman says, voice quaking.

  ‘But how -?’ Ari is confused as to how the woman could know of her healing – and destructive – powers.

  The woman takes a few steps backwards, limping, still protecting Cinnamon behind her. ‘Stay away from us.’

  ‘I can help you,’ Ari implores, looking to the infected wound on the woman’s leg.

  She shakes her head, ‘your kind are working with him. All you want is to enslave us. To take us to your internment camps. To destroy us and anyone that does not agree with your ideology.’

  ‘Who?’

  Just at the woman begins to answer; Ai-Ling and Delta appear.

  ‘There you are,’ Delta sighs. ‘It’s not smart to go running off like that in a place like this.’

  Ari looks back to the woman who has seemed to have disappeared with her daughter. Disappointed she wasn’t able to help her; Ari rejoins the others as they continue their journey North.

  She explains what she saw to the others. Questioning what the woman meant by people like her who must be working with Chancellor Chvostek.

  ‘My sister would never agree to work with such a monster,’ Malik says, defiant.

  ‘And neither would my brother,’ Delta states, after Ari recounts the conversation with Cinnamon’s mother.

  ‘Do you think there could be others?’ Ari wonders, aloud.

  They shru
g as they move through the housing. Ari glances around, searching for any sign of the woman and her daughter. Searching for any others that may be hiding out in this town.

  People who may need her help to heal.

  A cackle from ahead is carried on the slight breeze towards Ari and her gifted companions. Eli says nothing but a coy smile crosses his features.

  Xavier pokes him in the side with his phaser, ‘what is it?’

  Eli clasps his hands together, ‘oh didn’t you know? My dear cousin has gotten his hands on some very powerful artillery.’

  ‘Don’t make me stun you,’ Xavier warns. ‘Why are you telling us this now.’

  ‘Well it’s only come up now, hasn’t it?’ Eli chuckles.

  Ari rushes forwards, hands up towards the prisoner, ‘tell us.’

  ‘Or you’ll what? Heal me into telling you?’ Eli asks, patronising.

  Without warning, Ari taps into her dark power, releasing it through her fingers and into the frail man in the chair before her.

  He cries out in agony, as her power bores through him, setting all his nerves on fire, crushing his bones, melting the muscle and fat. Ari smiles as she feels his pain – feels his mind almost give out.

  ‘Enough Ari!’ Xavier yells, snapping Ari back to reality. ‘Enough.’

  Cowering in his seat, Eli looks over his arms and legs to find no external marks of the fire inflicted on him by the woman he had let into his room almost daily for the past few months for her to heal him. Little did he know of the true power which lay within – a power he knew that if it ended up in the wrong hands, the world would definitely not be a better place.

  ‘Tell us what you know,’ Ari says quietly, voice level.

  Still shaking from fear and pain, Eli splurges, ‘he has the Fire Twins.’

  Ari stares at him, not a hint of recognition at the name.

  Eli continues, ‘the Fire Twins were an experiment gone wrong. They came into possession of Heti Chavez many years ago and then she developed Project La Vie.’