After Earth's Fall | ✔ UNDERGOING CONSTRUCTION

Chapter 19

Varia watches helplessly as down, way below her fiancé's new glistening Andursite tower, her minions glistened with sweat work with determination to haul those ginormous shiny, reflective panels. People came back from an expedition on Mars, it was quite the spectacle considering it was the third time mankind set foot on Mars but the first for the astronauts to bring back a material. When Earleen heard of this, she started bidding immediately to get her hands on the rock. Hundreds and hundreds of men and woman push with all their might against the panels that are placed on top of hovering boards, which partly make it easier for them, and set the objects in the correct position against the newly made fifty-feet high wall, surrounding what Earleen claims to be 'Eden'.  They've at least got to be the size of  nine, stadium flat screen televisions glued together. Except these are for are much more important purpose. 'A new era', 'A new nation for mankind', is what she calls it. Apparently, it will be an intelligent and advanced society consisting of only the elite.

Varia exhales a puff of hot air, watching as a murky cloud forms in the freezing, humid air outside on the balcony. Then she turns her eyes upwards. The sky is as grey as her soul, dull and void of happiness. The only colour evident are the little ice-blue flakes of frost falling from the sky. The weather has turned bizarre since the largest nuke in the world, bomb A769 was deployed by that terrorist, sending climate change breaking the scales and going all over the place like a raging teenage girl high on too many hormones. There's a certain..sinister feel in the air. Those who still believe in logic can sense it. The sense that something is coming, changing. Varia eventually turns her gaze to the glass railing besides her and sees her reflection. Behind her head, Earleen can be seen storming off in fustration away from her due to their little dispute earlier. And all of Varia's anger comes back.

"He's my son and I'm taking him!" she bellows and slams her fists against the railing on the balcony before turning around.

"Your son? He's our son." Earleen's head flips back around so fast, she could've broken her own spine there and then.

Varia scoffs, now making her way towards Adrian's room. "I'm more of a mother to him than you'd ever hope to be!"

Varia almost has her foot in the hallway that leads to baby Adrian's room however, in a panicked frenzy, Earleen lunges herself against an emergency lockdown button and the hallway gets blocked off by electric-blue, high voltage lasers. Varia's face only inches away from the beams. A strand of her luscious, curly brown locks falls gracefully towards the floor, one end seared black and smoking. The fear and semi-shock in her eyes gets replaced with a flaming anger and she lets out an outraged gasp.

"Don't your dare," hisses Earleen.

"You're deceiving the human race! Making them believe that fleeing to Mars is their only hope at escaping the radiation. 'These are experiments, nothing more' my ass! I-I've been patient, I've stood by you and.." Varia chokes on her words, her eyes clouding with tears and years of hidden fatigue and distress. "Tried to talk sense into you but you're not there anymore! The woman I fell for had a moral compass. YOU'RE NOT HER!" she finds herself screaming at Earleen.

Earleen's hands still lay across the red button, unmoving, however she can't help but flinch at the words Varia is spilling out and shuts her eyes tight as Varia lets out her rage. A single tear running down her cheek. For a moment, there's just silence, Varia's heavy breathing and the electrical whir of the laser beams blocking Varia's path. Once Earleen is certain Varia has finished, she gains the confidence to speak.

"Where would you go?"

"There's one last ship deporting to Mars."