In seventeen-year-old Blair Randell's world, a nuclear Apocalypse has destroyed earth; covering it in radioactive gases and wiping it of all of its previous inhabitants. Or so they think.
When one hundred adolescent prisoners from on-board the Ark...
She paced back and forth along the length of her dark-stricken chamber, counting the number of steps it took her as she went. Eleven in total. A sardonic smile graced her dry, chapped lips. Ironic, she thought. In eleven days she would be celebrating her eighteenth birthday, which subsequently meant she would become eligible for flotation; the ultimate punishment for criminals aboard the Ark.
A punishment that resulted in death.
Puffing out her colorless cheeks before releasing the air in an audible sigh, the brunette paused mid-stride, halfway between her fourth and fifth step. Sinking to the concrete floor beneath her feet with her legs crossed and arms folded resting lifelessly upon her lap, she stared up in wonder out of the far-reaching window above her. Despite looking out of the same window every day for almost a year, the view of earth still somehow managed to leave the young girl breathless.
Only eleven more days, she told herself, and then she would be on the opposite side of the glass. Floating.
As she sat she wondered who, if anyone, would miss her once she was gone. After her mother was floated when the girl was only two, her father became the only family she had left. Picturing his face the last time she had seen him as he was forced to watch on helplessly whilst she was taken away, a single tear fell from the girls sunken blue-eyes. Leaving a small stain in the thin layer of dust that had built up over her months in solitary confinement.
Even if no-one else missed her, she knew that her father most definitely would.
It was that loving notion alone that brought the girl comfort as she laid herself down on the bitter cold ground and gazed up at the stars, slowly drifting off into another night of unconsciousness.
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The girl awoke to the muffled sound of her name being spoken and a hand on her arm, gently rocking her into the land of the living. Her eyes fluttered open, slowly adjusting to the sudden brightness within her usually dark and gloomy cell.
"Sweetheart, wake up." The voice was clearer now and she sat up immediately to become eye-level with the man knelt down beside her where she lay.
"Daddy?" she questioned warily, unsure of whether he was really there or whether she was dreaming he were like she had done so many times before. "What's going on? What are you doing here?"
Her father smiled and stroked a strand of hair away from her face, tucking it into its rightful place behind her ear. "We don't have long. I made a deal with Commander Shumway so that I'd get a few minutes with you to say goodbye."
His words gripped the girl with a sudden wave of anxiety. "What? I don't understand. Goodbye? It's not even my time yet."
Hushing soothingly, her father cupped her face, forcing her fear-ridden eyes to meet his. "They're sending you to the ground, Bea. All one hundred of you."
Her fathers words echoed within her mind like a ricocheting bullet. They're sending you to the ground, Bea. All one hundred of you.
"No, they can't be. The earth still needs another hundred years to be-" Before she could finish her sentence she felt a sharp scratch on the side of her neck, causing her to engulf a sharp intake of breath. A burning sensation swept through her body like wildfire, leaving her entire anatomy feeling numb and train of thought blank.
