It had him completely stumped, until he got to the section on animals. It was not only on identifying different types of animals, it was also on how to butcher them. To watch them, track them, hunt them, and then eat them. There were no specifics into each kind of animal—simply how to understand which were predators and which lived off plant life, posing no threat.
It became so clear to him in that instant—the State was building a new city. It was time to go aboveground, and he was to be a part of building their new home. He nearly threw his tablet as he jumped off the cot. They were going to the surface, and he was responsible for building the communication devices.
He suddenly wished he knew more information, that he could talk to someone. Was this my responsibility alone? Or would I be part of a team? There was no way the State could rebuild the Security system aboveground; it was not possible. With all that open space, cameras could no longer see all. No. He was to begin construction and be the voice to report the progress back home.
He also figured they were running him through general training. Once communications were set up, he would be expected to be a laborer to build the new society. He fell back to his cot, overwhelmed with emotion. Two realizations had struck him at once. Freya was not lost. They would be together again; however, it would take a very long time. It could be months, years even, before they would be together, but it would happen.
She popped into his mind hundreds of times a day, and every single time, he had forced the thought of her out. Forcing himself to forget her existence had been his only hope for survival. Thinking about her, about never seeing her again, crippled him.
This hope of being together again would be his new burden to bear. His days would become longer, every moment spent in anticipation. Already he felt the loneliness of his captivity that he had also managed to push out. No matter what happened, no matter what they told him, he would obey. The more he fought against this, the longer it would take for them to be reunited.
A new energy came to him, a new drive. He was going to get through the training as quickly as possible and perform as well as he could. No longer would he work only hard enough to appease Lewis to keep himself safe. Now was the time to work, and work harder than he ever had worked before in his life. He had never been this motivated for anything.
He would study, but when he needed a break from his training, he started to exercise. His body had atrophied a surprising amount in a short period while in captivity. He was becoming thin, weak, and frail. If he was to rebuild a new city, he would need to have strength and endurance.
It started with a few push-ups, sit-ups, and then pulling himself up on the bars in his cell. He experimented with different stretches and movements, finding the right way to make each muscle in his body light up. Lewis would come in at every mealtime, but still remained silent, even with his new routine. He stopped counting what he thought of as days; he just counted how much of his training he had completed, and how much he had exercised.
If he had kept better track of his progress, it might not have come as such a great shock when he finished a training module and the tablet exited out of the file and shut down. Colin looked around, trying to decide how to flag Lewis, or anybody down. He was doing what he was supposed to do, and then the tablet just shut off. He put it in the meal tray and began to exercise. It would soon be mealtime, and surely Lewis would be by soon to fix it. When he heard the door open, he jumped right to the cell door.
“Lewis, my tablet is broken. You have to fix it!” he nearly yelled. It was not Lewis who walked through the door, but James.
“It is not broken. You have finished.” A soft smile pulled up the sides of James’s lips.
“I’m done?” he asked. “Oh, did you bring me food?”
“No, Colin, there is no food for you tonight,” said James. “I have a special finale for your training, just for you. I think you would enjoy it more on an empty stomach.”
Something about the way he spoke sent a jolt of fear throughout his core. James signaled, and four soldiers appeared in the cell. One held restraints, and another a hood.
“No, you can’t do this. I did everything you asked of me!” Colin said, pleading.
“Yes, you did. But I also know what a slow learner you are,” said James. “I thought perhaps you might need to repeat a lesson I taught you. I need to know that you really got it.”
The men moved on him so fast; he cried out, screamed, kicked, but they were too strong. He knew he couldn’t plead, couldn’t reason with James. There was nothing that could save him from his fate. The routine was identical to the torture Lewis had previously performed, and Colin hoped that the knowledge of knowing what was coming, knowing that he could endure it, would ease his suffering. The hope was very quickly extinguished. It didn’t help to prepare himself. It didn’t make him stronger; it made it worse. The anticipation combined with memory; he questioned how he had survived the first time, and whether he could survive again.
***
All ambition was lost. Colin lay in his cot, unable to exercise; he even refused his meals. He had met the devil, and knew he was no match. No matter what he did, James would not let him have Freya back. He had become a target of James’s evil; he would ensure his suffering. There would be a new city built, but Colin was not to be a part of it. He would rot there in his cell, he was certain of this in the very depth of his soul.
He didn’t know how long it had been since he had eaten or drank anything, but in his torture-weakened state, he couldn’t survive much longer. Colin slept more than he was awake, feeling great disappointment each time he awoke and found himself still alive.
After a few days of his refusal to eat, he awoke in restraints. They had put an IV in his arm. It was probably too late for him to be replaced on the mission—they had to keep him healthy. Whatever was going to happen was coming soon, yet Colin felt nothing. It no longer mattered whether he lived, because his life was owned by the State, and James was his puppeteer.
His mind suddenly drifted back to his father, and the situation that had gotten him mixed up in all of this. The corners of his mouth upturned into a soft smile as he realised the gravity of his actions. So people can survive on the surface now, which was why James had made me the target of his cruelty. There are people up there who could cause some damage to this project, and I’m going to find them.
***
“It’s time to wake up, Colin. You have work to do.” James gently slapped his cheeks with the back of his hand.
Colin opened his eyes, and quickly shut them again. He was restrained, sitting up in a chair. The room was impossibly bright. How he could have been moved there without waking, he could not comprehend—they must have drugged him.
“Look, you and me need to have a little talk.” James pulled up a chair, so he was sitting so close to Colin that their knees touched. “I could torture you again, but I don’t think it would be effective as you have lost your will to live.” He paused. “So I have decided instead, I will make you a deal.”
Colin’s eyes had not fully adjusted to the light. His cell had been so dark, the light was causing him actual pain, trying to adapt. He managed to open his eyes into tiny slits, just open enough to see James.
“I don’t know what you want, but there is nothing you can offer me, so you might as well just kill me.” Colin tried too hard to sound confident in his broken voice, but James simply began to laugh.
“Oh, on the contrary, I do have something you want: Freya.” James chuckled.
A jolt of electricity shot through his body. He instantly tried to jump and fight the restraints. “What have you done to her! Where is she!” he yelled. “I’ll kill you, you bastard!” James began to laugh again, which would have made the old Colin angrier, but he was different now. “What have you done to her?”
“I haven’t done anything to her, Colin,” he said after a long pause. “She is working in the grounds at the State house. I assure you, she is quite healthy and safe
. She has, however, been rather melancholy in your absence.”
Colin couldn’t hold back any longer; he broke into a full sob. He cried harder than he could ever remember doing. James simply just let him be, sitting in silence until Colin could gain some control of himself.
“Are you ready to hear our deal?” James asked.
Colin nodded. He didn’t care what the deal was; he was just so desperate to hear more news of Freya.
“Good. You have come a long way, Colin—there is hope for you yet. I need you to do something tomorrow, something incredibly important. You have always been a clever boy. I suppose you have guessed what this has all been about?” Colin nodded, but it wasn’t enough for James. “I need you to tell me why I have brought you here.”
“The State is ready to build aboveground. You want me to set up communications, and then to help in the general labor of building a new civilization, or city.”
“Very good, Colin,” James replied in a patronizing voice. “I am glad to see my faith in you was not misplaced. Can you tell me why it is that we would need someone to set up a communication device?”
“You need to keep most of the population here while we build. You will want someone to send progress reports and updates, so we can schedule migration of the civilians, or possibly establish trade.”
“Again, well done, Colin.” James paused again, which Colin found unnerving. “You see, Colin, I need you to perform tomorrow. I need you to pull off just one simple task, but I need you to act a certain way while you do it. You see, we are making history, so naturally, it will be recorded and broadcasted. I need you to put on a suit, go to the surface, and board a vessel. I need you to do all of that, of course, without making a scene. A smile might even be a nice touch. You should look excited—this is a big step for us, after all.”
“Vessel? Where are you taking us? If we need suits to go to the surface, then how can we build aboveground?” Colin shot the questions out like gunfire.
“Yes, you put that together rather quickly. You see, the area that we currently occupy was one of the more damaged areas on our planet. The environment immediately around us is still uninhabitable, but we have found a space much farther away that will be suitable.”
“So we are going far? How far?” Colin asked.
“You need not worry how far; it is a trivial matter. We will transport you, and the vessel will return to pick up others when the new colony is ready.”
“So that’s it? I go, get on like a boat or something, smile and wave to the cameras, and you send Freya on the next boat?” Colin asked. There was something he was missing; it couldn’t be that simple. James must be hiding something.
“Oh Colin, a boat? How archaic. No, since you paid attention in your history classes, your transport will resemble something much closer to an airplane, but you can call it a ship if you like, you get the idea.” James paused with a soft smirk. “I can’t promise you that Freya will be on the next vessel. All I can promise is that she will be given the choice to go.”
“I don’t understand; why would you think she wouldn’t want to go?” Colin asked.
“I didn’t say she wouldn’t. I simply mean you are commanded to this project, but she is not. She is quite content working in the State house. I also don’t take Freya as the type of girl who has much of a sense of adventure. It might be difficult to persuade her is all.”
“She’ll come.”
“For your sake, I hope you are right,” James replied.
“You’ll see, she will be there,” Colin said, more to reassure himself than to prove a point to James.
He was right—Freya didn’t have much of a sense of adventure. Living aboveground would not only be difficult, it could be downright terrifying. All he could do was to work hard so that he could build them a home in which she would be happy living in.
Another thought struck him, and it took all of the self-control he possessed to not react. If they were to go and live aboveground, Freya should have been the first agriculturalist selected. This was all either a punishment, or a sick and twisted form of motivation. He wondered for a moment whether he would be the only person on this mission who would have a carrot dangled in front of their face the way they took Freya from him.
Perhaps James never really busted him; maybe, just maybe, he was going to find that most of the people sent on this project had undergone something similar to what was happening to him.
He knew it would be imperative to live by the rules, yet he had never hated the State more. He may be able to control the outcome of whether he saw Freya again, but he knew at that moment, he would never see or speak to his parents again, and it filled him with shame. They had been right. It was right to fight the State; he was right to fuzz the cameras. He would find Freya again, but it wasn’t enough to just find her—she needed to understand. This all came down to exactly what his mother had said: she needed to love him enough to trust him.
All he could do was hope. He hoped James would follow through on this deal they were making, hoped that being separated for so long would anger Freya, that she might have a more open mind the next time he saw her. Freya was on the side of the State, but she also believed in the State. Maybe, just maybe, this could open her eyes to the truth. She was not adventurous, but she was strong, and would make a fierce opponent to the State.
“Then do we have a deal?” James asked.
“Yes,” Colin answered.
“Good.”
***
The line was longer than any Colin had ever seen. There must be at least two-hundred, if not more, people all headed for the new colony. A nervous energy was present; everyone seemed agitated. No one spoke to one another; they all just took their place in line.
It was finally Colin’s turn. He was brought into a room, where he was outfitted into a suit. He had worn this suit before, the first time he had ever seen Freya. A pain tore at his chest—the memory of her, her absence—and then it grew deeper. When he had been on that skylight cleaning, the purpose was just. He had broken a rule and was paying the consequences. This—being sent away, taken in for a mission he didn’t sign up for, and them holding her on the other side as a ransom—was almost more than he could bear.
Once in the suit, he was brought to a series of hatches until he was finally walking aboveground. He could see what had to be their airplane, or whatever they were calling it. It was so much larger than he had expected it to be.
Once his mind adapted to the size, it was the general shape of the thing that had him puzzled. It stood upright, nearly as tall as an apartment building. He could not comprehend how it would take flight, but then again, it was a long time since airplanes had been used. The State was so obsessed with conserving resources; they must have found a better way to travel. He walked until he entered a new lineup outside of the airplane. In the distance, he could see men with cameras—the broadcasting James had mentioned.
It was a good thing Colin was wearing a mask. He didn’t feel he was capable of smiling if the cameras got close. Fear coursed through him, but he didn’t understand why. Maybe it was the size of the airplane, or maybe it was not knowing how long it would be until the airplane came back for Freya.
He kept telling himself Freya would come, pleading with himself to believe, but he was not certain. James had spoken the truth; that girl didn’t have a sense of adventure, and she did love the State house. The real question he was not sure of was whether she loved him enough—he wasn’t certain. All he could do was get there, work as hard as possible, and try to convince her.
The line progressed slowly. He reached the decontamination area and stripped off his suit. There were so many stairs to climb, so far to go to get into this airplane. He got into another lineup, but this one aggravated him. They had not let him eat or drink anything, saying he might get sick on the flight. Hunger gnawed at him, lowering his patience with all the lines. It was finally his turn again, and that fear he had felt earlier was only aggravated at the end
of the line. He was asked to strip into nothing but his underclothing. It just didn’t seem logical to need to be almost naked to travel.
He climbed another set of stairs, only to find yet again, another line. He was mere seconds from saying something, from yelling out in aggravation, but there was a camera there, and he wanted to make sure James held up his end of the bargain. He would have no way to communicate with Freya. If he agitated James, who knew what he was capable of, what they could say to her in his absence—they could poison her mind.
He saw some strange chambers that people were getting into. His temper was so close to the surface. Why was this necessary? Why must everyone have room to lie down? It was all so ludicrous to him. The crew waved to him, and he stepped forward. He was aware of the camera on him but was unable to smile or look excited. It was not just his anger; a large part of him was terrified.
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