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❘❙❚ ISSUE #05 ░░░░ VOL. 1 ❛ COMPOUND N❜ ┆🌹
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"Four hundred and ninety-eight! Four hundred and ninety-nine! Five hundred"
Rosie and Ben had had an afternoon to prepare for what the doctors called "the next step." None of the children knew exactly what they meant, but they followed the specific instructions assigned to them individually: for Ben it was to keep the training the soldiers were carrying, doing push-ups and weights; for Rosie the sentence forced her to do edible fruit or she would be killed.
"Five hundred one! Five hundred and two! Five hundred and three!"
Ben was doing push-ups having Rosie sitting on his back to make more weight, while she had scattered dirt on the ground and tried to create a damn edible apple for the soldiers. She had been given a box and had to fill up by four o'clock, when they would be taken outside. The girl's nerves increased with each failed attempt, the room was full of apples rolling to the boy's mouth and took a bite.
"Five hundred and four! Five hundred... Rosie! I forgot." Receiving no answer, the boy got up as if nothing, and threw Rosie on top of the failed apples. "Rosie!" he demanded attention by taking the apple he had bitten. At least someone ate them. "How many apples are you going to make? You have to count my push-ups I can't count them, I get distracted, and I don't like to count."
"Ben, please! I have to fill the box of apples before four, there is half an hour left, and I haven't done one!"
"What, are you blind? There are hundreds of apples! Put them in the box and help me count!"
"Oh god Ben!" She exclaimed in a volume she felt uncomfortable, but she was the only one who woke the child up from his narcissistic vision. "If I didn't have this box today, I'm going to die. Do you understand, Ben? They are going to kill me, I spent months trying to do this and I still can't, they are already fed up with my failure. Please, I need to concentrate."
Of all the times Rosie had felt on the edge of death, threatened and frightened, this was the worst. The doctors of group II have spent months deciphering the problem of the hardness of their plants –and amazed by the new ability that would work to explore an ocean of money– without looking at a solution, putting the pressure and blame on the girl, even hung her as a traitor to the homeland and a liar. The poor girl was on the verge of collapse, knowing the symptoms spoking frankly about her problems: glassy eyes struggling not to cry, uncontrollable breathing, and voice broken by the lump in her throat and her fingers, full of dirt, trembled more and more.
"They're not going to kill you," the boy's words didn't reassure her, what did he know? They would never kill him, they worshipped him. "I'll tell them not to kill you."
