Project 6

Chapter 6: DANI

CHAPTER 6
Dani

Harper's knives have almost cut through me seven times this afternoon. I wish they did for thinking about Evan's plan so much. Ever since he is in charge now Tyler is gone he has managed to take more and more people on this suicide mission. Shelley and Mason agreed and I am sure that is also one of the many reasons Harper will say yes.

   ''Watcha thinking about, Dani?'' Harper asks me as yet another knife impales the target in this abandoned gym.

   ''Nothing you will find interesting.'' I murmur, pointing a paintball gun at the target yet I just cannot manage to pull that trigger.

   ''Evan is not going to give up, you know that?'' Harper says, as if reading my mind, while still throwing. ''He wants to fulfill where Tyler stood for, and that was freeing those kids from the Project no matter what the cost.''

   ''You say it as if Tyler is dead.''

   ''It is the Dominion,'' Harper stops and looks at me. ''Have you not hear Shelley speak up what she had to go through before we saved her?''

   ''But Shelley is not dead,'' I speak up.

   ''She sure as hell could have been,'' Harper claims as she continues to throw. ''And you know it too.''

   ''What if I tell you that you're right?'' I ask her. ''Would you be running happily through a beautiful meadow with the thought of how beautifully I gave in to my wrong being?''

   ''Hmm, when you say it like that,'' she turns to me. ''I actually might.''

   ''Shut up,'' I laugh. ''You might as well use me as your target then.''

The eating area is bursting with laughing voices and music. That is because it is the center of Section M and so a meeting area as well. I am very glad our people here at least have fun. I bet Section A's breakfast, lunch and dinner are all held in a big bright room with open windows where they have to sit straight up and eat like a 'proper Section A member'.

   They are the Dominion after all. Any flaw in their system and they think the world is going to end, again.

   ''Do you think they will let us go outside the fences?'' Mason wonders as he sits down next to me.

   ''Probably one day,'' I sigh. ''When the Dominion will not notice and the 'danger' that is out there won't kill us.''

   ''Which is never,'' Mason pouts disappointed. ''Wouldn't have expected anything else.''

   ''Alright,'' a voice interrupts our conversation, coming from the stage at the front of the eating area. ''We all know Evan Marshall's plan. We will travel to the Cabin within a couple of days. I want everyone going to get in the ring after dinner. No exceptions.''

   There are some huffs coming from left and right, as they had already planned something else after dinner. I have no objections to that. I'd rather do something useful for once than sit on my lazy ass and judge people by the way they look. That is the Dominion's job after all.

   If I was me five years ago I would have wanted nothing more to live with them. Have luxurious meals every single night and watch over what our government has created from our windows. Thank them for not throwing us into the other Sections. Yet they did. They threw us out like livestock. Had us fight for even one piece of bread what could have been our death a long time ago. Sometimes I wish I did. Many people here wish they didn't have to live in filth but yet we are all so thankful. We don't have to dress neatly everywhere we go. The Dominion could not care less about what happened to the people out here in the outer Sections. They see us as no threat.

   That would change when we leave towards the Cabin. It makes me nervous if I can say that honestly. There will be deaths to get those children out. A doubt even consumes me that tells me we will not even succeed. It twists my guts. Yet there is something in the back of my head that my mother told me before the monsters beyond the mountainside took her. I should still have faith. That is what fighting is about. No man should go down with the thought it was for nothing. Somewhere and somehow it is worth it. Even though that does sound like something far from how, something very elusive.