Chapter One

"We can't let it go on like this!"
"Like what?"
"We're losing on every sector. It's destroying us."
"You don't fool me Artemis; it's the money you're worried about."
"And so what if it is? It's a hell of a lot of money. And your money too! If I'm right."
"You're not wrong."
"We won't survive this!"
"Not with that attitude."

That was all that I could gather, kneeling in dirt and pebbles to listen to a couple of idiots repeat common knowledge. Of course people were worried that we would perish during the war. That was obvious. The Others were taking over us slowly, and soon we would be left with nothing. Half of us would probably give all we had to be one of The Others. But that was the problem, we had nothing to give. Our lives revolved around trying to get higher up in the world, trying to stay alive, trying to have something. But it was difficult when we had to start off with nothing and there was nothing to be gained. So it was assumed, that this is where we would be born, live then die, whilst repeating the same circles of worthlessness, poverty and eventual despair.

A couple hundred years ago, Earth had begun to collapse; new technologies meant that those with money could live out lives of luxury and fulfill every idea or dream they'd ever dared to have, but not on Earth. They built grand societies high above the clouds, far from the crumbling earth beneath them. Their buildings looked like domes, casting the darkest shadows upon the rest of us who struggled to get by, day by day. The domes were held up by thick concrete and steel structures, called bases. They were heavily guarded, and it was thought that if we could blow each base up we could collapse the sky city. But in the event that any attempt would be made, then we would have to perish as well for the sake of our cause.

Often, we were referred to as the heathens. Their depiction of life was that we lived in hell, whilst they lived in heaven. In reality, we were highly aware of the elite society living high above us, breeding perfect children who could speak 5 languages fluently by the age of five and be able to calculate the most ridiculously difficult algorithms by the age of ten. But the ones who were born up there were taught to despise us, the lower class. They were warned of our cavemen antics and our unethical living. But what they did not teach, was what had led to the division amongst the human population in the first place.

Nobody was entirely sure. It had happened so long ago that those who were old enough to tell the true story had already passed on, as had their children and grand-children. It probably didn't help that The Others destroyed any article or file that was created about the wars. Since their technology was so much more advanced than ours, they could detect anything we were doing. The more paranoid individuals suspected that they kept tabs on us via infrared monitors that were planted around our sectors, but that was all we had - suspicion.

In sector 38, most of us lived with those who we were born with, frightened and clinging to our elder's. But those unfortunate enough to be left alone had to work hard for themselves. And that meant, finders keepers. It meant that we had to scrounge dumpsters for every meal and that we had to band together in the hope that we could protect each other from those who would attack them weaker than themselves. Despite our feeble efforts, it happened anyway. Over and over again

On one occasion, a teenage boy had taken a seat on a park bench with only a couple of broken nuts and bolts holding it together. A man appeared around the corner and shouted at him before running up behind him and striking him behind the head with a fierce blow. Anybody who witnessed this tragedy made no notice of it, and nobody moved to help the boy. We all watched in silence as the old man beat the young one till he was a bloody pulp on the side of the street. It was only later, when the body would mysteriously go missing that we would feel the bile rise up in our throats at the very thought of how long the human race had sunk.

We lived by day and feared to tread into the darkness at night. We were gripped by the fear of death and yet so many of us, past and present, craved its release. We would cry for freedom, but it would never hear us.

This was one of the first lessons I had to learn while growing up in the wreckage that once was a busy and prosperous city, and I learnt it quickly.

                                                             ***

Sometimes you could feel yourself slipping into a stupor filled with negativity, desperation and hopelessness, and so things became muddled. Were we the good guys or bad? Were we safe or in danger? How were we supposed to know that we lived in suffering, when we knew no other life? Many of us grew tired of depending upon hearsay and wanted delve into the dangerous life of living as an agent of The Resistance. Their existence was a rumour and most probably a false one. We were told stories when we were younger about how The Resistance would fight against The Others, and amid adversity succeed in reclaiming sectors. It was all lies, of course. Stories made up to establish a false hope amongst the new generation, in the hope that we would rise up and do what they had tried and failed to do.  It rarely worked.

The way things did work meant that if you could do something, you did it. If you wanted it, you got it and if you had it, you could lead. We were sheep, all of us, one following the other, the weak following the strong and the poor gathering together to fight the power, but always failing.

Every so often, even in the daylight you would see things that you could only envision in your worst nightmares. It kept the powerless at bay and the Shepard's in power. It was the same regardless of which sector you lived in and still there was only one thing anybody could ever be certain of.

Death.

It lay drunk in the gutter, it hid silent in the shadows. On some days you could feel the vile thickness of it in the very air, the stench inflaming your mouth and your nose as you took in your treasured oxygen. Death was everywhere. We had grown accustomed to it, or perhaps, it had grown accustomed to us.

The Others were rumoured never to have breathed real fresh air since the original separation way back when. They used their oxygenated tunnels and tubes to breathe. They were everything we were not and it was disgruntling to accept, especially when we were forced to breathe in the dirty, tainted air on the ground.

When past efforts to sustain peace were rejected, we grew angry at them. We didn't want to think about how we were being left out, we were just children. They were the rich bratty kids who lived upstate and had everything they could ever wish for. We were the forgotten children, left out of the fun and games. They wouldn't share! And so our innocent envy turned into a jealous-filled anger, and ultimately, hatred.

I had no other children to play with while I was growing up. Not many people at all, in fact. In a small amount of time, the children that were left behind finally emerged into society not as children, as they should be, nor adults. We were all fledglings, clone-like. We were brought into the world to develop the same phobias, intolerance and misgivings that our parents had learnt themselves and then taught us.

If you were alone, you had the toughest challenge. The larger groups would savagely attack the smaller ones. And at times you would feel a certain kinship amongst the groups who still banded together. We weren't all so lucky. I had never had the luxury of kinship and I saw it fit not to indulge in the dreams that would never break into the monotony of my reality. Not now, not ever.

Little did the world know that something more powerful was brewing, something that would change both sides of the world forever.