They taught The Invasion to us as children so from the first day we could understand anything, we knew our world was stolen from us by a malevolent alien race hell-bent on consuming Earth's resources.
It didn't matter there was a population of nearly eight billion souls. It didn't matter there were cultures, histories, families, lovers, and futures they were destroying with one single blast of white hot light.
"In the Year of Destruction, your mommies and daddies fought hard to protect you. When the Invaders came from the sky and dropped poisonous gases on our towns and burned our homes with their lights, the only place we could survive was underground. It's why the United Regions of Earth conglomerated to live peacefully here, in this safe, wonderful place, while the Invaders try to force us out of our home."
I still remember the same singsong story told by the fat woman with the brown and gray, curly hair. I remember her looking at us with her second chin jutting out of her neck and her mouse-colored curls bobbing on her rotund head. I remember sitting cross-legged with a sad-looking side ponytail my four-fingered father had managed.
Right now, if I could find a way fight every single one of those bastards in the sky, I would. I'd pluck their lifeless bodies out of their ships in the clouds. I would do it with a smile.
They've trapped me down here. They keep me stuck in this rat-hole day after day after God-forsaken day.
The URE abounds with my outrage.
The stray drafts from the earth's surface blow through the cracks of Level 1 and howl with my agony. As I pass the militia training rooms, I feel every free-weight dropped, every order screamed in the face of a private, and every boot that hits the track.
By the time I reach to the Rotunda, the massive ramp, and the interconnecting highway stemming from it, I see red.
How dare he.
At Level 2, I pass frenetic civilians. We whirl in a blustery storm as they bustle with gurneys and medical supplies for the Clinic. I swerve left to avoid slower traffic like the Agriculture Technicians who smell like soil. I descend further.
On Level 3, I weave around the gray-garbed clergy of Our Lady of the Impenetrable Heap. They meander slower than the dead and weave their soft hymns with the raucous discord around them.
I want to keep moving, to keep my fiery momentum, but the Heapists block my way. I can't push them aside. I'm going to need my hoarded karma if Dean keeps up this shit.
How dare he.
It's all I can think about as I try to empty my brain.
How dare he.
I don't even bother holding my nose as I pass Level 4. A few livestock litter the ramp while men and women barter with poultry clutched at their feet.
How dare he.
The stink carries to Level 5 where silent men and women in jumpsuits and masks haul rubbish bins and cleaning supplies. The grim sanitation workers' trudge through Rotunda block my path. They slow me but don't extinguish the fire.
How dare he.
How dare he.
How fucking dare he.
Level 6 stands empty. Children have abandoned the classrooms for the day.
I stop at the first door on the left. The Kitchen Sink waits for me—rusted, broken, and benign.
I pause to expel the angry, soiled air in my lungs as if it were the gaping gunshot festering into a scab.
Breathe.
And when I'm done, completely without a molecule of oxygen in my body, I hesitate—breathless, resentful, morose, wishful, and sullen. It's weightless, wonderful and so incredibly empty.
I don't want to breathe in. I don't know if it's worth breathing this air anymore.
I stand here for a veritable eternity under the scrutiny of the slanted red letters on the door. I don't inhale. I'm solid as a statue while I force the tears to stay in my eyes.
It's only when my world starts spinning and my knees buckle, I gasp. In enormous gulps, I try to return myself to the URE.
I'm not calm.
I'm still shaking, my anxiety burning stronger than ever. Steeling myself, I raise my hand to the scanner on the side of the door and wait for the notification before dragging myself to the bar.
I traverse the empty establishment and with mechanical precision, unlock the safe and stock the wells with Junk Juice barely in time for my first customer to hobble on one steel leg to the bar stools.
Clink, drag, clink, drag, clink, drag.
No.
My wafer-thin restraint crumbles under my skin.
Not him.
Not now.
Anyone but him.
YOU ARE READING
ARC10
Science Fiction[Book 1 of the ARC10 Trilogy] **Winner of the 2017 Watty Storysmith award** The President created an underground safe-haven for the survivors of the alien invasion. He built it to save them all from total annihilation. He protects them, feeds them...
