by Eve Langlais
The creak of armor let her know the guard moved in her direction. Rather than be dragged, Sofia began to walk, noticing the etched circle in the stone, the one they’d told her to stand in. It made her an easy target, but what choice did she have?
She stood on the spot, staring down at her bare feet as a voice went through the theatrics of introducing her.
“Citizens, what we have here is an enigma. Let me introduce the usually well-behaved Citizen Sofia, assistant apothecary, avid reader of the biological sciences and a beautiful lady before the incident.” The subtle jab at her scar almost made her raise her hand to it.
She remained still.
“Accusing her, we have the exemplary Citizen Jezebelle. Known for her voice talent, she’s the daughter of Lady Jazinda.”
Not one of the most powerful families in the Ruby City, but higher ranked than the majority of other citizens.
“Are you ready to hear the charges? See the evidence? And aid with the verdict?”
The applause proved energetic. That drew her glance, and Sofia noticed the hierarchy of seating. Where a person sat in the arena showed off their position.
Closest to the action were the Enclave members themselves, and their close family by extension. Above them, friends to the Enclave, more family. Then there was everyone else.
Unlike most things in the city, the events that occurred during court were open to the public. Other businesses closed that day. Just about everyone went to the arena to see their government and justice system at work.
Sofia used to be one of them. One of those watching, cheering, and jeering. It was different being on the receiving end. She didn’t like it one bit.
The charges were recited and received with boos aimed at Sofia. They already believed her to be some kind of violent offender.
“Citizen Jezebelle, state your case.”
With grand theatrics, Jezebelle began telling her elaborate story, the truth of it lost in the exaggerations and utter fabrication. By the end of Jezebelle’s rendition, even Sofia hated herself.
The crowd hissed in Sofia’s direction.
The announcer returned. “That was a vigorous retelling. Now for the accused. How do you reply?”
“Jezebelle attacked me.” A weak rebuttal.
“Can you provide proof?” the announcer asked in a deep rumble.
The crowd held its breath, hoping for an exciting twist.
She shrugged. “I can’t.” It was her word against a higher-ranked citizen’s.
But she’d forgotten that court, in the spirit of entertaining, sometimes liked to give the cases unexpected flair.
A giant hologram appeared overhead, suspended in the air over the area. A frozen image of the door to the apothecary shop appeared.
Sofia’s mouth rounded. A camera in the shop. She’d never even known. Only the city’s security force had access to cameras. Which meant they’d bugged the shop.
Why? Didn’t matter. The truth was about to come out, and she glanced in the stands to see Jezebelle fanning herself furiously.
“Citizens, it is our delight to announce we actually have video of the alleged incident. Would you like to see it?”
A resounding “Yes!” shook the air.
Which meant Sofia got to see and hear herself in action. Hear Jezebelle once more accuse her with no merit. Wince at her impertinence, cringe as the glass exploded. Then ache with pain in her cheek as she saw the moment she was wounded.
The video ended, and there was a second of hushed silence before a buzz of conversation clouded the air.
“Citizens!” The announcer spoke a little more loudly to catch their attention. “Citizens, the evidence is clear. The assistant started the altercation with her inability to do her job correctly. Then compounded her crime with her rudeness. Personally, I find citizen Jezebelle’s actions justifiable. But what say the people?”
“Guilty!”
Sofia could only gape. How could she still be guilty? No. It wasn’t fair. She turned around, looking for succor. All she found were walls surrounding her and a roar as people shouted, “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.”
“Justice has spoken. We need to pass sentence.” The voice deepened. “There are three punishments applicable for this type of offense. Let us start with the most boring, sending the accused to the factories.”
That received boos.
“A service position within the city on her feet or her knees. That’s up to her new employer.”
“She’s too ugly with that face!” someone shouted, drawing attention to the imperfection she’d have to live with.
“How about my personal favorite?” the announcer purred. “Banishment to the Wasteland.”
The reaction proved instant with cheering and whistles and calls to “Throw her out.”
“Make her walk.”
The crowd began chanting, “Banish. Banish.”
A door at the far end of the arena opened. Sofia’s breath left her. She wavered on her feet.
“Former citizen Sofia, you are hereby sentenced to banishment in the Wasteland. If you try and return to the city, you will be shot dead.”
Thrusting her into the Wasteland would kill her, too. It might be gentler to get shot.
“Please. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t deserve this,” she stupidly pleaded.
“Guards, escort the criminal to the door.”
Panic had her breathing hard. A firm hand at her back shoved her forward, and she stumbled, tears clouding her vision, hearing the approving roar of the crowd.
They wanted to see her cast out. Approved of her death sentence. Just like she’d cheered in the past for others.
This was wrong. So wrong. But there was nothing she could do to stop it. The guards propelled her through the doorway into the tunnel. When it sealed, the sound of the audience was cut off.
She stood in the dark and waited. One by one, lights lit, going down the hall in a long line. The floor underfoot began to move, shifting her along.
“Proceed to the exit,” said a robotic voice.
She began to walk, her emotions numb. This couldn’t be happening. She’d been a good and obedient citizen. Done everything she was asked. The unfairness burned.
Her steps slowed as she reached the far end of the long tunnel, hidden by a door. The moving walkway dragged her closer, and she knew she’d gone far enough to have passed the edge of the city wall.
The walkway stopped in front of the door. On the other side, the end of life as she knew it.
The portal slid open, and she looked out to see the windswept plain that bordered the top edge of the city. They didn’t deposit her anywhere close to an actual road or some semblance of civility.
They banished her on the bad side, where even the air could kill her with its toxicity. If she lived long enough to breathe, that was.
“Exit the tunnel.” The command came, and still she couldn’t bring herself to step onto the dirt.
Taking that step was to accept her fate. To sentence herself to death.
Suddenly, rather than the robot voice, she could hear the announcer, “Uh-oh, citizens, it would appear the convicted former citizen is balking. What do we do to those who don’t graciously accept their punishment?”
She didn’t hear the crowd’s reply but could imagine they were screaming for her death. The bloodier, the better. They wanted to see what came next. They loved the fierce desperation of it.
And once upon a time, so had she. She used to watch and cheer and gasp with the rest of them.
Now she was the one who oozed desperation. Who would struggle not to be a bloody smudge soaking into the dirt.
To survive, she needed to move, and quickly. Sofia ran those last few paces, bolting out of the door onto the arid edge of the Wasteland. She didn’t dare look back. How many pitfalls could she remember? It was important she not get caught by any. The first was the easiest. In theory at least.
She ran for the ditch, wide and fairly deep, but she’d s
een some of the banished cross it. She moved as fast as she could and leaped.
Missed the other side.
Her upper body and arms slammed into the edge. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase. Her toes dug in as well. She halted her slide. Panting, she heaved herself over the lip and rolled. She ended up facing behind her and got to watch the spiked ball exit the tunnel, chipping holes into the ground as it rolled and dropped into the ditch. It missed her.
But she wasn’t out of danger yet.
She got to her feet. Five more traps to get through if she didn’t want to die today.
There was a nest of roach-like insects with wings to her left. She’d seen a few exiles get flayed alive by their mandibles.
Too far right and she’d be close to the chasm, which spilled demons at night. At least that was how it looked from the footage the drones sent back to the city.
Straight ahead was pure desert, where people and drones went blind. All signals died at its border.
Who knew what happened once a person went in there? They probably died. Perhaps it would be less horrible than the death offered in the other directions.
Her bare feet scraping on dry ground, she ran for the desert, knowing if she took her time, the drones sent to document her banishment might hurry her along. She caught sight of one humming alongside her, capturing her every desperate expression.
Did it also capture the rude gesture she flung and the mouthed words of rebellion? Fuck the Enclave.
She’d been wanting to say that for a long time.
Fear gave her speed, and she flew. To her surprise, there was a sense of exhilaration. She was in horrible, horrible danger, but she was free.
She laughed as she entered the desert. Kept laughing as the drones that followed crashed, their machine parts shut down. She almost joined them, feeling the strangeness in the air, the electrifying nature of it. She glanced ahead at the barren landscape and saw the smudge of a high mountain. A destination.
She just had to make it to those mountains. She trudged under a beating sun then shivered as it disappeared, leaving her in darkness. Suddenly where before there was quiet, she now heard the scrabble of life. The whisper of movements on the ground.
Every single horrifying story of monsters that devoured human flesh came to mind. Hugging herself didn’t relieve the chill in her blood. Tightly wound, she gasped as a strong gust of wind wrapped around her, a cold, sharp breeze in contrast to the heat still radiating from the ground.
Slowing, she realized she could see a bit again, the stars above giving her a pale, pale light. Her bare feet were sunk in soft sand, a weird transition, given a moment before it was still hard. Now, in the starlight, the smoothness rippled. The expanses of land humped, the ground undulating.
As if alive.
Suddenly terrified, she finally looked behind her, expecting to see the lights of the dome, but instead she saw the haze of a storm approaching. A storm she couldn’t hide from, its windy fingers already wrapped around her, sharply tugging. With no recourse, she trudged up the dune that formed in front of her, aiming still for the mountain. At the top she paused and groaned. A field of sandy humps stretched in front of her.
The wind grew nippier with each dune she crossed, and she wished for a scarf or something to cover her face. The sand scoured her skin. She lost count of how many hills she climbed. There was a never-ending amount of them, and they kept moving, shifting.
Then she crossed one and saw something dark against the ground. Something jutting from the sand, an edge that didn’t belong. Excited, she ran for it, only to slow as it took shape.
It was the edge of a drone. The drone she’d been moving away from for hours. She’d been traveling in circles. She’d gone nowhere at all.
The wind lifted her hair and her filthy gown. She sank to her knees, exhausted and on the verge of crying, if she had any moisture left for tears. She gripped two fistfuls of sand as that wind circled around her, flaying at her exposed skin. She closed her eyes and wished hard to be safe, even knowing wishes never came true.
The gust turned into a tornado, and it sucked her into its whirling body, stealing her attempt to scream, making her lose consciousness.
When she next woke, she lay in a field nose to nose with something, staring into the big eyes of an animal, about to be eaten.
She screamed.
Two
Snapping forward years later to Haven Dome, the new, if temporary, home for the Wastelanders led by Axel and his eminently capable and good-looking second, Gunner.
“We intersected another Enclave patrol sweeping a little too close,” Gunner informed his boss.
Not that Axel liked the word boss. Axel would argue until he ran out of breath that he wasn’t a leader, that he preferred to be alone, that people were a pain in his ass. He was also the first guy to literally give the shirt off his back, put his life on the line to help anyone he knew, and a bossy fucker who gave orders all the damned time.
Gunner hoped to one day be half the man Axel was. Only with better hair.
“I told you to stay out of their way.”
“They literally ran into us. What did you expect us to do?” Ever since they’d stolen a dome, they’d been dealing with increased Enclave presence. A bad situation, given they were rebels.
The building they’d taken over as a command center? Formerly belonged to an earl. In their defense, the earl attacked first, and when they retaliated, they hadn’t encountered much resistance. The men and women they’d found working at the dome proved to be docile to their rule. There were fewer of them than expected. The barracks for the employees surprisingly empty. Kind of like the tanks. A good thing. They worried about handling five babies. What would they have done if the full batch of two hundred were ripening?
“What happened with the soldiers?” Axel asked.
“We beat them, of course. No losses on our side,” Gunner informed.
“Prisoners?”
Gunner shook his head. In the Wasteland, a person learned early on to always handle potential problems. That included loose lips.
“It’s only a matter of time before those deploying the soldiers realize that the patrols that aren’t returning are all working in one area.”
“Will they notice? We’re assuming they keep track.” Gunner had come across some serious arrogance when it came to the so-called citizens of the Enclave.
“They’ll notice when patrols stop reporting in. Although it helps we’re still accepting shipments from the other domes. Makes it look like business as usual.”
“You’re welcome.” Gunner grinned.
It had been his idea to let the Enclave keep supplying the dome. It wasn’t as if those who accompanied the trucks ever saw the earl who used to run the place before pissing off the boss. The earl didn’t survive the change in ownership.
All they had to do to fool anyone who came visiting was pretend everything was normal. Axel put some of Haven’s people in armor and had them act like guards, shooting the shit with the delivery truck drivers. They’d had no problems bringing in all kinds of goods, on the earl’s account, of course.
Only problem was nothing was coming out. Especially not any of the babies.
The Incubaii Dome they’d taken over had an abundance of tanks, a few with tiny bodies in them. They were lucky. They’d just missed a batch being born, but they were coming up on another one due. No one knew what they’d do with the five babies that would suddenly birth. Just like they’d yet to settle on a plan for the Madres they discovered in varying stages of pregnancy.
The people who ran the domes were sick, using woman as nothing more than supplies of eggs and wombs for the rich. More astonishing, some of those pregnant women kept begging to be returned to the Enclave. Who wanted to be a slave?
Gunner couldn’t handle it. He needed out of the dome. It was too much, a reminder of all the things he hated.
“I’m going to head back out in the morning,” he announced.
; “So soon?” Axel rubbed his chin. “Maybe you should take a few days off. Rest up.”
“I’d rather be out there than in here.” He gestured over his shoulder.
Axel grimaced. “Me too. But what can I do? Someone has to keep the peace. And apparently that someone has to be me. Living here has everyone on edge. I keep telling them it’s temporary.”
“But we need to find somewhere else to go.” Gunner sighed. “I know.”
Because when the Enclave did discover they’d taken over an Incubaii Dome, they’d probably send an army after them. At least they’d bought some time.
“Any word from the other camps?”
Haven wasn’t the only band of Wastelanders out there.
“Nothing.” Axel shook his head. “I kind of expected it. Forming an alliance is like declaring we’re going to war.”
“Cowards,” Gunner growled. “We need a bigger ally. Someone with the numbers and infrastructure to help us.”
“You’re talking another city.” Axel shook his head. “None will ever agree.”
“Not an Enclave-controlled city. One is just as bad as another. I mean we need to find the Lost City of Eden.”
Axel groaned. “Not this again. We talked about it. The lost city is a myth. A rumor.”
“You said that about dragons, too, until we saw one last year,” Gunner hotly retorted.
The beast was impressive, its wingspan big enough to cast a shadow when it crossed the Wasteland and headed toward the sun rising over the forest.
“The idea of a secret city is different,” Axel said.
“How?”
“Because it’s impossible. The Enclave rules for hundreds of miles around.”
“Or so they’d like us to believe.”
“Don’t you think if there really was this magical kingdom, we’d have seen proof?”
“How many people talking about it does it take?”
Axel’s lips pressed into a line. “Second-hand stories aren’t a reason to uproot our people. We need more.”
“Then I’ll get you more.”
“As in an actual location.”