Falling Skies

One

December

Not a month, not a weather nor a season, but a boy. A boy who wrings his fingers against one another with a hint of absent minded worry, the knuckles paling to a stark white under his own grasp. The color slowly begins to fade back into each joint, a soft pink blooming into an almost alarming red as the process is repeated over and over.

Squeeze, release, fade, burn.

Squeeze, release, fade, burn.

The pattern carries on, the tension burying itself into December's shoulders and back. His large hand coming up to physically knead away at the gnawing ache accumulated under his grasp. It's as if there's something the matter but it's not quite here yet, rather a distant problem for another hour.

December eyes a clock on the wall, its hands ticking away with each second and minute that seem to drag by. It's nearly 9am on a Wednesday morning, which means that it's delivery day. At the very least three different shipment trucks should be hauling into the back door of Haven at any moment. The blaring of their horns audible before they ever reach the outer gates of the facility.

Once more for good measure he glances up at the clock. Its glass is slightly cracked and the hands seem to move too slowly, the ticking of its stubby fingers enough to be maddening. A slight disappointment washes over him when it doesn't tick any faster, just continuing on with its steady thump of a rhythm in an almost teasing manner. December can nearly envision its fingers as a tongue mocking him, purposely slowing down to prolong the most exciting day of the week.

In much need of a distraction he gathers his papers from the glass desk in front of him, tidying and shuffling each into its own manila folder. The corners of the aged paper are dog-eared and torn, a coffee ring here and there and each page scribbled and marked with red pen strokes. The folders, neatly lined up in a row in front of him, all stand decorated with the same bold, stamped out message:

LAB A/SURGEON DEPT.
DECEMBER

A strange satisfaction washes over him as he reads the words to himself, relishing in the slightly cracked letters as if the ink were running dry when it were stamped. There's a familiarity in it; a warmth that floods through his veins in a way one gets when thinking about their childhood home or Christmas dinner with their parents. Yet none of those events bring anything but a chill to December, his mind hazy when he attempts to think back to how things were before. Before Haven, before labs and surgeries, before the Sky Fall.

But he can't. It's as if he was subjected to a memory wipe in his youth, a protective barrier coming up from the depths of his mind to protect him from the memories of the past. His memories stay locked away in a vault, the idea a somber one as the boy ponders over whether to embark on a journey of recollection or not. A slight flicker of an image passing across the recess of his mind. An image of a star...

An alarm sets off somewhere in the distance, snapping December out of his foggy daydreams and sending him jumping out of his chair with a crash. Manila folders litter the floor but he doesn't bother to pick them up, instead rushing to the entrance of the lab door and watching as guards dressed head to toe in white come sprinting down the halls.

Their faces are obscured by white metal masks, an opaque semblance given to the metal that bestows on each man an ominous appearance. Only a reflective piece of glass gives hint to where their eyes lay, the rest of their uniform a blob of shapeless white metal and cloth. Even the tips of their fingers have the illusion of being connected to the trunks of their body as one giant, emotionless, entity. They're robotic, less than human, as they sprint in rows of two in perfect harmony. Their combined steps shaking the halls in unison with the blasting alarm that only adds to their menacing actualization.

The light of the alarm pours on them from overhead, basking each man in a hazy red glow that bleeds into their white uniforms. The stream is intense on their backs before fading off down the hall and disappearing all together. Somewhere down the hall another light picks up the slack of its brother, blaring at full intensity and sweeping the hall with its rotating lights. Its scream is so loud that December has to force his hands over his ears, searching the small office space like a madman for a switch to undo the assault.

As he scrambles around he pauses and takes a look around his office. The space isn't a large one, the switch surely easy to find in the compact space. On the front wall of the office a glass window covers nearly all of the wall, its view displaying the hallway of the facility and the men still running past.

There are no actual windows leading to the outside world, creating a lack of sunlight and a strange fog of fluorescence from the amount of overhead lighting needed to liven up the place. The only pop of color lies in a half dead plant stuffed into the upper right corner of the room, and the off white of a love seat used in substitute of a waiting room.

His glass desk sits square in the center of the room, manila folders and red pens scattered around its base. His overturned rolling chair lies in a corner from the outburst, its wheels still spinning in tune with the alarm.

With one hand pressed tight to the side of his head the other finds its way to a switch at the other side of the room, a relief instantly flooding over him with the slaying of the onslaught. The alarm quiets but December can still hear the faint buzz, a finger digging into his ear to remedy the sound. The room almost seems too quiet without it, the aggravating tick of the clock picking up the slack.

December turns to leave the room but is halted by a soft knock on the open door, an older woman resting against the glass framing with a smile on her thin lips. Her arms lay crossed over her chest, all white outfit matching those of the guards who previously ran past into the abyss of the mile long hall. The woman doesn't speak, just carries on smiling as she waits for a response from the boy ahead of her, small beads of sweat forming on his forehead from the panic of moments prior.

December, registering the face before him, flashes a smile large enough to rival the woman's in the door as he crosses the room in two short strides and lands into her now open arms. "Mom..." The word comes out barely a whisper, each syllable soft on his tongue as it grazes his drying lips in its escape.

Barely audible, the woman seems to have heard him as she squeezes him tighter in response. Her long brunette hair cascades  around him in loose ringlets, protectively wrapping itself around his shoulders and head. Shielding him from the outside world in a cavern of warmth and protection.

Abruptly, she's holding him at arms length, hurt flickering in the back of December's eyes for only a moment before they fall away from her face, focusing on anything else in the moment. His blue eyes find their next target, falling across a line of black stitching laid across her left arm, the fabric falling only from the elbow down, in thick, blocky letters.

HAVEN

"As much as I love family reunions you know what that alarm means and you know I expect you to be the first one in line when we get new shipments, December." Her tone is sharp but comforting, he notices, a mother's scorn never too rough on her favorite, and only, son.

December merely pushes past her, peering into the yellow light of the hallway, it's too bright fluorescence disappearing in the direction of the shipment drop off. It's only a few hundred feet straight and a few sharp turns over but the all-white walls creates the illusion of miles and miles of void.

His fingers absentmindedly overlap hers on the glass doorway before he casts the mid-age woman a soft look of reassurance. "I know and I'm sorry. It's just been a busy day." He half lies, a pang of guilt stabbing at his sides before he's heading down the halls himself, rubbing a finger distractedly across his own stitched Haven that graces the arm of his white coats.

——-
A/N
Hey! The chapters were VERY long so I cut every one of them in half (hence weird chapter endings) I most likely will upload 2 chapters at once because of this ! Hope you enjoy

2021 A/N:
Hey!! The first half of this book was written in 2018, while the back half was written in 2021. However, I'm going through to review & edit the 2018 portion to ensure the quality of the two sections (writing & story wise) matches. Just wanted to mention that !!