Fate Project

Phase 1 | Pilot

RHINE

I watch as the golden strings weave through the air, aimlessly floating around me. It seems to do the trick of calming me. The nightmare was horrible. And I've been dreaming it for months.

"That damn brat," I perk up when I hear old lady's shrill voice approaching, "he must've been snoozing his ass 'till now."

"I want you up and ready, if not I'm beating your ass!"

Great.

As my senses are pulled awake with all her thundering, I hastily rush to pull my covers up in my head and pretend to be asleep. Maybe that's why I barely hear her say, "you heard me, brat."

I hate mornings, all the more because it always start like this. But I refuse to be swayed by old lady's petty warnings. I will not move an inch here in my bed even if she drags me and starts beating me like there's no tomorrow. I've opt for another nightmare instead, as if going back to the Farms is not enough nightmare already.

The heavy stomping of her feet, well foot, breaks me out of my thoughts. Old lady has only one foot, but you cannot tell she's a cripple at first glance because she doesn't really look the part. With a mechanical device replacing the lost limb that can support and walk for her and with that lean but stocky build she carries, she's been the head of our village, Moor, for the last century.

Somehow, I manage to take a peek behind my covers as she limps her way towards the door, her face contorting at the state of my room. As usual, her flaming red hair hits me first in the eye and her black beady eyes glint with irritation as she sees me snuggled on my cot.

First, she makes the small effort to tap my shoulders, then a couple of slight shake and she finally runs out of patience. She yanks my covers and with a great tug, I hit the floor and fall on my back. The strings in the floor did nothing to cushion my crash.

Fuck.

"Seriously, old lady—" I growl, scowling as I get to my feet.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" she prompts, giving her usual disgruntled look.

"Waiting for you to leave me alone," I protest, "I told you, I'm not going back to—"

"'Course you are," she bids, "I'll need some help at the Farm. And the barn can do with some cleaning, hurry up."

"But—" I start but she ignores me.

"Oh, and tidy yourself," she adds, "you look worse than I am."

"Hey, I don't want—" But of course, she ignores me again but this time, she went off without another word. I can pretend not to care and just go back to my sleep but I know she's expecting me to follow her. To obey her. And I can't disobey her even if I wanted to. You could say it's the only downside of caring too much. She wasn't really my mother, nearly all of us can be considered orphans, but she was almost the second thing closest to a mother for me. And my old man who practically raised me and took care of me as if I'm his own blood. That's why I made a promise to him.

I promised my old man I'll take care of old lady, I promised him I'll always be beside her. But that was before he was alive.

Before he was suddenly killed and the promise became a responsibility for me to bear.

I frustratedly wrench out my clothes and discard them on the floor to head to the bathroom. Then regretting it because Bambi is already back in the beat-up mirror hanging over the sink, leering before me. I wish to crack her mirror but since she lives in any reflective surfaces, until now I'm unsuccessful to keeping the lecherous mirer away. She and her kinds, anyway.

So I do what I always do and ignore her and start my bath. I clean myself, scrub off the sweat and the dirt. Soaking myself in the tub, I play with the golden strands like I always do and allow myself a moment of respite. When I start rinsing, it's then that I catch the sight of the scar positioned in my chest. Just right there, in the middle. I trace the four-pointed starburst-shaped scar with my fingers, feel the edge of healed flesh and the beat of my pounding heart. I close my eyes and tell myself to stop. Twice, until I have enough sense to stop dawdling again. This is not exactly the best time to be helplessly drawn by my stupid scar.

I move to climb out of bath, grab the towel and wrap it around my waist. Dressing myself with shirt and pants, I pull down a gray long sleeved sweatshirt and run my hand through my wet hair as I saunter back to my bedroom. After fixing my cot, I stack the books scattered in the floor, sort them out and find where I stopped last night. I pick up Henry Frit'z Born Under the Bad Sign, its third sequel and browse for the page I hit off last night. That's when a zooming sound suddenly pierces the heavy silence.

Not again.

I hastily put down my books and goes to hunt for my jacket. By the time, I'm opening my doors, a swarm of people has already been forming just over the edge of the heath, the buzz of the converging, gathering of the strings alerting me of each presence. I move to join them.

"Did you see it?"

"What? Another one came again?"

"Was it an aerocraft?" asks Teena, the girl with a black skin.

"What if it's an aerojet?" cries gran Ursa, tearing out her hairs even though there's nothing left in her scalp, "oh no, this is pure madness, I can't—"

"Did you saw when it passed?" blind Navis asks, using his walking lump of stick to tap me in the legs.

Auriga, both deaf and mute, tries to answer for me with her sign language. But it's no use so instead I try to reply but Hector, my neighbor with a huge hump on his back beats me to it.

"Hadn't saw it," he says, "I reckon it was just another disposal aerocraft."

Deported. A deported aerocraft that contains another batch of deportees from Mars—from the Capitol—but here, we call it the disposal aerocraft. Because honestly, it serves the meaning better. Every month, an aerocraft would zoom in and out to deliver the deportees to different regions of the Bridge. There are exactly five regions located in this synthetic space station. Town region, Lake region, Arid region, Arctic region, and ours, Mountain region. Last month, they delivered another batch at Pampas, two villages away from ours, so we expected it will be our turn. That's why it was somewhat a relief to know that the aerocraft drove past Moor because another addition to our population is really the last thing we need right now.

And neither a bunch of three-year-old irregulars who will only be denting the food supply from the Farms or lucky them if they find themselves being took up by farmers. Some can be enslaved and sold to other regions. Worse, in the Citadel.

A living hell, that's the Citadel. With all the uprisings and the irregular's rebellion, that's the worst place you can ever end up. A place of chaos, a bloody battlefield, a planet that once we called the Earth, left in ruins and brink of collapse. And as if that isn't enough, now their waging war on its land, carrying nothing but savagery, cruelty—and destruction, so much of it, on its wake. As if they actually stand a chance against them—regulars.

"You're up early." A voice makes me spin on my heel and there stands a friend of mine, probably the only friend I can call. Old lady must've sent her to come pick me up. But I can't, no, I'm never going back to the Farms.

Of all the villages in the region, Moor is the smallest and the poorest compared to the other villages but I say that because we don't consider the woods as part of our village. The other three villages here, Veld, Llano and Pampas, were too far at the south to claim the forest as theirs. And it's practically useless, irregardless to say. Even though the woods bear resources we can use, the dangers it possess are not something to bargain for. To risk for.

It contains horrors from the Capitol.

Particularly the Gates. The only entrance to the Capitol.

But since I've seen true horror, the woods don't scare me.

The Farms do. With small land to till and to cultivate, barring the meadow that's been used to graze the animals and the heath that's generally useless except a dumping ground, the Farms is the sole source of our food supply. And the sole site for burying corpses.

Moor used to have a grave site but as our population grew, we had to expand the Farms to upped the food supply. Homes were moved. Irrigations were changed. Pens and cages were shifted. But all of that wasn't enough. We tried to cultivate and use the heath but it was a vain attempt that caused a lot of arguments and conflict. So they settled on the graves, first a tiny lot, next a certain chunk, then a large portion, and as our population inflated, a larger segment of the grave had been converted to farms. Today, the graveyard and the Farms are practically merged to one.

If I have to venture the woods, I'd do it, not that I haven't tried. It's better than planting crops and digging up bones, worse, coming across skeletons and skulls. The last time I was there, I stumble on a piece of wood, only it wasn't a twig but a human spine. I swear to never go back at the Farms. I don't know how old lady or the others stand it. Just thinking about it makes me sick.

"Lisabeth is calling for you, let's go," says Alice, passing me a peach. Breakfast. I catch it and take a bite at the fruit. Yet to mature, it gives a slightly sour taste but it's sweet. It's a bit stale, must be stuck in the Market's wares for at least two or three days.

"I'm not going," I tell her.

"We need some help."

"Still not going."

"Come on, don't make this harder for us and yourself—"

"And myself says, I don't give a damn," I claim, "besides, I already said to old lady that I'm not going."

"Well, I'm not asking, Rhine," she smirks.

Her sneering face pulls me short. I refuse, I die. If I put up a fight, I die still. It's not an exaggeration. Years of friendship with Alice showed me how violent a person can be, irregular or not. Even children who scamper, trying to steal from the Farm's barn and the thugs who usually act high and mighty in the Market's streets are all afraid of her. A self-righteous, justice enforcing, inclined to violence wench, that one. The very opposite of me.

I am not talking about the things outside. Appearance varies, it changes over time, but the things inside, the ones kept hidden only for yourself to see, those hidden things you use to hide yourself, are matters buried inside. Besides, while Alice is brown and brash, with lean build but somehow strong for a girl, exactly two years ahead of me, I'm black and gloomy. No, cold and indifferent, as my peers would say while laughing.

Alice Lincoln is the village's brute but the responsible one, I, Royal Rhine Artilleans, is the village's weirdo, a freak to everyone. While her's are bright blue eyes, I mean eye, since her right eye is blind and isn't working, and her hair an ashy brown that flows in her back, mine is black as raven's feathers. But what stands out mostly are these eyes of mine. Golden, much vibrant than the sun's, lucent than any gold, and stranger than any color I've ever seen. To my old man it was extraordinary, to them, it was different—strange.

And sometimes different scares people.