Underneath a Purple Sky and Several Tons of Rock

One Believer in a Sea of Non-Believers

Talindarian year 4692, July 2, Tae

I have fifty talins who will go with me. More than half are my good friends, and the rest are slightly younger, the twenty- and thirty-year-olds. They're young enough to believe that everything will work out fine. Me, I'm fifty-seven. I know that our chances are so slim that the likelihood of us all ending up all over the floor with the radiation having messed us all up is so high we could just do that and be done with it.

But freedom is worth everything - and if we succeed, we'll leave a legacy for others to follow. If we don't... well, there won't be a second chance. For us, at least.

We spent all of yesterday writing up plans. We'll do it during the night, since there's less guards then. 

I have various maps of the Bunker, drawn by talins who've lived here all their lives. They know every staircase and hallway, even the blocked-off ones where we think we dug too close to the surface.
That's what we'll be aiming for. Sure, they told us they had been filled with diamond-cement and everything, but we know the direction to dig in. 
The problem isn't that, of course. It's the guards.

The guards with their gamma-guns and electrocontrells. The guards who can see everything. 

There was a period when I wanted to be a guard. When I was just ten years old, I would run around the guards with the other children and shout "can we hold your gun please can we hold it?"
The adults, upon seeing this type of behavior, would always put on a mask of faint disapproval heavily tinted with "How cute they are! So cute, right?" and quickly walk by. It was only at around twenty when I realized that the guards were not fun. It was when I was twenty that my dad's body was left in the bedroom, slightly purpled skin an indication of the gamma radiation that was listed as his 'cause of death'. 
"Here." Said the guard. "You can hold the gun."
He held it out.
I screamed and ran off, deep into the mines. In two years, the guard fell down one of the shafts and shattered half of his spinal bones. The mine is closed off now, his purple blood staining the stones forever now, and I remained tight-lipped about the whole event and had a strong alibi. 
It's not like anyone asked about the odd remote-control stopwatch or the wires leading to the elevator-hook system. It's not like anyone heard the guard's screams. Or noticed the purple tinge on my hands and feet. His death was branded an "accident".
After I set the timer, I went to the bathroom and threw up. I hadn't thought of himself as the villain, the torturer, but I'd done it and something in my chest felt lighter. Something else, though, felt cold and wrong. I was afraid at first, but then I got used to the feeling. 

I shake my head, floating to the top of the memory pool. It's okay, I tell myself. They're all long dead: my father, the guard, younger me. 
It shouldn't matter, but it does.

Talindarian year 4692, July, Valtari

Valtari, 4692, July 3. Orinoco Gold Bunker, Entry 4

The other talins in our bunker want to go to the surface. They think there's no war! I'm terrified - it must be a trap. The Vyrkoll must have threatened her or something to make her say that. They're smart, the Vyrkoll. Once everyone leaves (if they can, I hope the guards stop them without hurting them!), I'll seal the escape tunnel or whatever, and hope it all blows over. 
I wonder how much food is in this bunker. 

Otherwise, today was fairly uneventful. Instead, everything's been very quiet. Talins are just talking in small groups unlike the shouting-across-the-dining-hall arguments that would happen, like clockwork, every tuesday, between Margeh and Hirma. They both love the same guy, and he's too smart to choose one. 
Tina and Giat aren't fighting either: and they're always mad at each other! They got married many years ago and I guess they just didn't click. Two weeks ago Tina hit Giat over the head with a ceramic jug, and it broke. Now he has scratches all over his horns. They'll probably heal but it must hurt. Three weeks ago Giat tore up one of Tina's favorite skirts, and they didn't talk directly to each other for five days.