For the two souls, Sheelagh and Nayla, who complete mine.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 1

  My ears searched for my twin sister, Melina. I heard her voice in the far left corner of the encampment tent where the rest of the teen girls changed before work. We looked nothing alike. It felt good. If the proctors knew we were twins they might have viewed us differently. We mustn’t be different. We stayed unknown, irrelevant and, most of all, alive by blending in with the orphanage crowd.

  I heard her laugh as she joked with her best friend Kat Three about the teen boys at my end of the tent. She was safe. Nothing else mattered.

  My eyes opened to capture the breaking sunlight. I sat up on my cot to look around. The spring air filled my lungs with metallic fumes from burning scrap metal and roach pesticide. I looked out to see the factory filtering out black clouds. I straightened my black burlap factory shirt and matching pants.

  My stomach growled for something to eat. Underneath my cot were only crumbs. Someone had stolen my leftover graham crackers from the night before. With all the new orphan slaves around, I never expected the crackers to make it to the morning.

  I grabbed a canvas rag hanging off my cot. I walked into the boys’ washroom. As I flicked the light on, about fifty factory roaches the size of my palm scurried back into the cracking green cement walls. Roaches made every hair on my body stand. Twice this week I found them crawling in my oatmeal. It made me vomit. I preferred rats. I imagined they were squirrels with thinner tails.

  I ran the hot water until all of the brown liquid cleared and only a slight tint remained. I soaked the canvas rag and used it to wipe the sleep from my eyes. My black hair grew past my shoulders. If I didn’t cut it, the proctors would. Proctors holding blades so close to my head made me nervous. After a few cuts, my black hair layered down to just above my shoulders. I walked toward a measuring pole the proctors used for our physical exams. I grew to five feet and ten inches tall. I had gained six inches since January.

  “You measuring yourself again, Eric?” Marcus Moore asked. He was one of my friends at the factory. He never lied to anyone. I respected his high integrity. Lying seemed natural to the rest of us orphans.

  “Got another inch this month,” I said.

  “You know the girls have been talking a lot about you since this little growth spurt of yours.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you know Becky? She’s the one with the nice body. She wants to know what days you go to the archive library after dinner.”

  “I go almost every night. It’s no big secret.” No other place in the factory provided me such peace as the archive library and museum. I wandered through all of the displays, electronic scrolls, holographics, and artifacts until the proctors called me for sleep time. “Why does she want to know?”

  “She likes you. She talked to the other girl you messed around with last summer. Do you remember her name?”

  “Shelly. How did you know I messed with her?”

  “Come on, Eric. Everyone talks, even the proctors.”

  “Nothing happened anyway. Melina told me to stay away from her.”

  “Yeah, a couple of guys been looking at your sister Melina, too.”

  I stepped closer to him. “Who, Marcus?”

  “Easy, Eric. Nobody did anything to your sister. They noticed she’s growing up, too. Some of the guys take notice. You know.”

  I grabbed him by his shirt collar. “Tell me, Marcus.”

  In an instant I felt my arms twisted and ready to break. “OW!”

  “Not a good idea to put your hands on a former militia scout. I said don’t worry about it. I watch over Melina too. She’s my friend just like you are.”

  Marcus let go of my wrist just before it felt ready to snap right off. I shoved him against the green tiled wall. The noise caused more roaches to come out of the wall.

  “I’ll kill anyone who tries anything with her,” I said.

  Several large roaches ran between us. I lifted my right foot to let more pass by. Marcus stepped back a few steps as we watched the roaches march out of the bathroom and into a furnace closet near the entrance. They numbered in the hundreds.

  “The sad thing, Eric, is I believe you. You’ve got to get your temper under control. It’s going to get you in a lot of trouble one day. I don’t mean staying in detention. I mean real trouble.”

  We leaned back against the tiled wall as the last of the roaches scurried by. He was right. When it came to my twin sister Melina, I was protective, and it didn’t take much to get me riled up. I finished cleaning up for work. Marcus went into one of the stalls. I heard him crush some roaches. He pushed them to the side before he relieved himself.

  I returned to my cot. My bare feet absorbed the cold from the green cement floor. I still felt tired from my late night at the library archives. I knew nothing about my own history. Maybe in a strange way, I hoped to find something out about how Melina and I came to be.

  As far back as I can remember, Melina and I have worked in slave orphanages under the ownership of Commerce City. We started as toddlers at York Shores, an hour’s drive by solar truck to the south. We worked briefly, not more than a week, at the Scrap where they burned and buried waste from Commerce City. When this factory opened up, Commerce City chose to transfer a bunch of us from the Scrap.

  Even if I found nothing about myself in the archives, the history of our land, New America, intrigued me. Deep in the archives I learned of regions called states, fifty of them. Each had major cities. Every time I tried to picture it, my mind got dizzy from imagining how fifty cities could have fit on New America. Today we had Commerce City and the rebellious land of Sanctum Village, who refused to fall under Minister Taybor’s rule.

  I read about the fifteen world wars prior to the turn of the year 3001. It amazed me how, with every great war, countries used new technology and how each war caused a redistricting of countries who survived, until only three regions remained. These were New America, European Legacy, and Asia Major. I knew nothing of Asia Major, but the orphans who arrived via exchange from European Legacy described their country as far more advanced, civil, and rewarding than New America.

  I wondered why every war fought over the same thing, diminishing resources. Why couldn’t they just ration like we do here at the factory? The archives spoke of billions—not millions, but billions of people living on Earth. Where did they all go? It did not seem possible. The archives talked of machinery, not like the compactors at the factory, solar trucks, or data screens, but flying machines. Imagine, not having to travel by solar truck everywhere. The proctors often complained when the solar cells ran out in the middle of the night. Unlike the buildings in Commerce City, they waited until the sun came back out before new energy could be produced.

  The daily life of those in the last two hundred years fascinated me. In the past, food didn’t have to be rationed. People could move about freely, and New America had two other cities beyond our eastern seaboard. Where did all those people go? My mind absorbed all it could from the archives, especially since the proctors discontinued formal classes. I looked forward to my free time at the library. I never had to worry about Melina as she slept early under the watchful eyes of the proctors. I got to enjoy the quiet and peacefulness of the archives without the screaming noise of heavy machinery.

  I searched for my brown work boots.

  “Hi, Eric,” Kat said as she sat next to me.

  As usual, she tied her dirty blonde hair back into a ponytail.

  “Kat, did you take my boots again?” I complained.

  “And what if I did?”

  “Kat, give me my boots.”

  “What’s going on?” Melina asked as she walked over with some flatbread and jelly one of the proctors had left on the community table. She gave me a piece. It staved off my hunger for a moment.

  “Kat took my boots again.”

  Melina closed her eyes. She touched Kat on the shoulder. After a few moments, she smiled at me.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Under your overcoat, beneath your cot.”

  Over the last year, Melina started to develop a way of reading people. She needed to only be near them, it seemed, before she could understand what they thought. Being twins, I hoped to develop such a skill, but it never happened. When the proctors noticed she did real well in school, prior to the cancellation of our studies, they often challenged her with tests designed for people years older than she. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t know how it developed.

  I grabbed the boots and slid them on. Melina and Kat were already fully dressed and ready for work when a senior proctor came in.

  “Stand up, all of you!” the senior proctor screamed.

  We al l stood and took our place by our cots.

  “Where’s Lee Drew?”

  A skinny kid whom I hardly knew stepped forward. We worked different shifts in the factory, but from the scars on his arms and hands, he, too, probably worked on the sorting team like me. The proctor pulled him by his shirt collar to the middle of the orphanage tent where all of us could see him.

  “Where were you five minutes ago?”

  Lee Drew trembled with fear. His eyes began to water as he shook his head in disagreement.

  “Damn it! Where were you?” the senior proctor yelled at him.

  “The kitchen,” Lee whispered under his breath.

  The proctor pulled out his electric baton and shocked Lee Drew on the leg. Lee screamed in agony as the senior proctor continued to shock him over and over.

  “You know the rules. No slaves are allowed in the kitchen unless authorized by us!”

  Lee screamed and then passed out from tortured exhaustion.

  “Pick him up and put him in isolation for a week,” the senior proctor directed.

  Two proctors, a young man and woman in their early twenties rushed over. They dragged Lee Drew by his hands out of the encampment. He looked limp and pale. His eyes stared at me as they carried him away.

  When the senior proctor left, the rest of us relaxed. Torture had entered our daily routine over the past few months. The senior proctors seemed to be at a high stress level. Over the past few weeks, they demanded more and more production from us.

  The sound of militia marching outside the factory perimeter toward the west filled the air like a low, unrelenting growl. Thousands of young men moved past the factory. They broke out into occasional cadence when their officer screamed at them.

  The young soldiers appeared to carry long machetes at their belts with some of them also carrying crossbows. I never traveled outside to Commerce City’s provinces, but I’ve heard of many dangers lurking in the lands up to and beyond Sanctum Village to the west and the Asylum to the southwest. The archives talked of traditional animals like wolves, bears, and mountain lions still inhabiting these lands.

  I’ve also read about the genetically mixed species, or genoids as they were called. Depending on the mix—human and bear, human and dog, or any other species combination—the end result yielded creatures of uncontrollable rage and strength. Marcus shared many stories with me about these creatures from the days he served in the militia.

  The factory bell rang once to signal the start of the work day. I scampered with the rest of the boys to the scrap metal heap. I pulled on my char-covered work gloves. I stretched my shoulder by pulling on my elbows. Sorting scrap metal exhausted my upper body and back muscles.

  The proctors called this place Vocational Factory. I found it odd. It seemed strange since we created nothing. We took old machinery apart and salvaged the scrap metal. The only things moving were the orphan boys who sorted the scrap metal and the girls who washed down the good ones for reselling. The giant compactors didn’t make anything except to crush the scrap metal we sorted into cubes to be loaded and taken away.

  On good days we had two full meals. They included breakfast oats, meat, some potatoes, and water. On bad days we had potatoes and water. It all depended on what the proctors could bargain from the cafeteria owners who served the militia.

  Marcus and Blue Dog, a country boy from Bear Valley, worked with me on a scrap metal pile. I liked Marcus. He carried intensity older than his age and took nothing from anyone, but unlike me, he managed his temper well. Words and talking to others came to him easily. Blue Dog was harmless. I thought maybe he had a crush on Melina or Kat. He seemed to be real nervous around them all the time. He was curious about a lot of things, but never caused any trouble for the other orphans, though he did get into some himself.

  “Got word the Minister is going to move on Sanctum Village,” Marcus whispered as we pulled apart the hunks of scrap metal gathered from old buildings and military vehicles. By the time the scraps got to our pile, they were manageable at around thirty to slightly over a hundred pounds of rusty metal components.

  “Quiet,” Blue replied.

  Blue looked rail thin. He’d spent the last two months in isolation after a female proctor caught him looking in on the factory girls’ change room. The electric baton burn marks were still clear on the back of his neck.

  “Ain’t nobody going to hear us out here, Blue Dog,” Marcus replied as he searched the upper reaches of the factory scaffolding for proctors. “You hear me, Eric?”

  “I hear you, Marcus,” I replied.

  “You get it?” Marcus asked.

  “What?” Blue replied.

  “It means the Minister is going to need some soldiers to join his militia. It means he’s going to get some from this factory and around the other orphanages. He’s going to need strong backs to fill the first wave.”

  “What makes you think he’s going to pick us?” Blue asked.

  “Those soldiers ain’t much different than us. They’re kids, too, only they get soldier training. Real good training up in the Crying Hills. They turn boys like us into warriors.”

  “Soldiers? Come on, Marcus,” Blue replied. “Those soldiers aren’t warriors; they’re bait. They go in first, and they die first. I’m not ready to be cut to pieces of meat or be a pin cushion for crossbow arrows.”

  “Well, he’s sure as hell going to pick me cause I already served my time as a militia scout. Sure, I worked only as a runner, but I’ve got experience. Only by dumb luck did I get assigned to this forsaken place. You can be sure he’s going to take a hard look at Eric.” Marcus pointed at me as he finished his sentence. “Eric, this is your chance at freedom. You could be a soldier. You’ve got a real chance to elevate up society.”

  “Marcus, I’m not going anywhere,” I replied. “The only thing I want is for Melina to be safe. If we have to live in slavery, I’ll do it.”

  I felt someone standing behind me. It was Beckerman. He volunteered in the factory, from Commerce City, to make his political parents look good. He dressed like us but wore a bright yellow arm band to distinguish him from the orphan slaves.

  “Don’t worry, Eric. I’ll take real good care of your pretty little sister Melina while you’re away. She’s filling out real nice.”

  Before his fat face could crack a smile, I filled his teeth with my right hand, including my glove and whatever piece of scrap metal I held. With every strike of my fist, blood poured out from his teeth and nose. I kept going. With every punch, my body seemed to move on its own. I raged against him. I pounded his chubby face at least seven times before Blue and Marcus pulled me off him.

  “Eric!” Blue yelled. “Stop! You’ll get thrown into isolation.”

  Marcus, while shorter than I, had a thick, stocky build. He held me back as Beckerman covered his mouth to keep the blood from flowing out. I watched Beckerman scamper to the other side of the scrap metal heap, bloodied and crying like a little baby.

  “Damn, Eric! You could have killed him,” Marcus whispered in my ear. “Come on, relax. Let’s get back to work.”

  I wiped Beckerman’s blood off my right glove onto the mud underneath the scrap metal pile. I continued my work.

  Marcus pushed me to the other side of the pile. “Damn it, Eric. Your temper.”

  I hated to draw attention to myself, but when it came to Melina, I raged. I couldn’t help it. The thought of anyone harming her put me over the edge. I had no life without her. As toddlers, we separated once before for a week. I got in trouble at Scrap. They isolated me from her. When I came back to Melina, she cried for hours. She made me promise to never leave her side again. I’ve kept that promise ever since.

  When the sun hit high above us, the whistle blew to indicate feeding. We dropped our work in place. I walked over to a clearing near the southern factory entrance. A proctor came out with a basket. She dropped it on the mud.

  About thirteen other orphan boys ran to the basket to grab some food. Beckerman and the rest of the volunteers ate inside with the proctors. I waited until all the boys were all done. By the time I checked the basket, only a flask of water and one large sweet potato remained. I grabbed both of them. I joined Marcus and Blue near the heap, to eat my meal.

  “Word has it the Minister has a deal with the Europeans. If he can capture Sanctum Village, they’ll join forces with him. But they don’t want to make a move until Sanctum Village has fallen.”

 

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