Intervention | NaNoWriMo 2018

Chapter 31

For the next few days, Lincoln and Marie were left alone in their cell. The only interruption to their routine was the food deliveries that arrived morning and evening, always brought to them by the same guards that had escorted them to the cell on their arrival day. Lincoln and Marie had briefly considered trying to overpower them and try to escape, but had eventually ruled it out.

Overcoming one guard whose hands were full of food may be possible but reaching the other guard that always remained outside the cell with his weapon ready would be next to impossible. It was too much of a risk. Despite Marie's urging, Lincoln had decided against it. He couldn't put her at more risk than she was already in. They agreed to keep their eyes open for any mistakes made by the guards but otherwise settled in to wait for whatever Colonel Hastings had in mind for them.
Lincoln had a feeling that Hastings had not been joking when he said that they were going home. The transfer station served as the hub for the logistical aspect of moving locally produced products, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, into space. It also received the unwanted garbage from orbit. He couldn't help but think about what he had learned during his training and realized that there were a lot of inconsistencies in what he had been told. The uncomfortable questions, such as what happened to all the waste, were mostly glossed over, deemed unimportant. After all, if Earth was uninhabited, did it really matter where all the waste ended up? That seemed to be the view that had been passed on to him and all the other cadets at the time.

In a way, it had made sense at the time. It was only now, as he sat on a well-worn bunk in a cell six floors below the surface that he realized how deceptive those statements really had been. What bothered him the most wasn't that they had been misled but how receptive he had been, how easy he had accepted what he had been told as the truth.

"What's wrong?" Marie asked at one point when the anger had been particularly visible on Lincoln's face.
"Nothing," Lincoln said with a dismissive wave and let out a deep sigh.
"Don't give me that." Marie jumped down from the top bunk and sat down next to him. "I've known you long enough to tell when something is bothering you."

Lincoln shook his head and made a sweeping gesture as he looked up at the ceiling above them. "It's just...all this. What we're doing here on Earth. I had no idea and it makes me angry that the people I looked up to, the people I believed in, would lie to me like they did, and tell me what Earth was basically a garbage dump. I'm mad at myself for believing that garbage."
Marie put her hand on his arm. "People lie all the time, Lincoln."
"I know, but lying to a whole nation? To all your people? Dismissing all those that live down here? Even Potter doesn't deserve that."

"I experienced the same thing, you know."

"How?"
"With the shelter. They were pushed as a way to save humanity but there was little emphasis on the fact that only a fraction of the population would actually be able to make it into one. There just weren't enough resources to save everyone, so they lied about it. They led everyone down a trail of hope that they knew didn't have a happy ending."
"That's different though, isn't it? There would have been chaos if they knew."
"Yes," Marie nodded and pulled her legs up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. "But was it right? Some shelters, like the one my father led, were never made public. They were intended for scientists and other essential personnel. The elite. I can't believe I went along with it."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, both deep in their own thoughts. Lincoln was the one to finally break the silence.
"Listen, as horrible as it feels, the circumstances were different. You had an impending disaster on your hand, the survival of the human race to think about. We don't. We're dismissing all those that live down here as if they don't exist. That is not right."
"But Lincoln-" Marie objected, only to be cut off by the door unlocking and sliding open. Colonel Hastings entered with a couple of other soldiers and a man in a white lab coat.
"It's time," Hastings said and nodded towards Lincoln and Marie.
"Time for what?" Lincoln said and jumped to his feet. "What do you want?"
Hastings didn't respond as he motioned for the man in the white lab coat. A couple of guards surrounded Lincoln and held him tightly. Another pair secured Marie as the lab coat approached her. He pulled out a small, black case, unzipped it and extracted a small vial and a syringe.
"What is that? What are you doing?" Marie said with increasing alarm in her voice her eyes wide. She squirmed in the tight grip of her captors as the man in the lab coat extracted some of the yellow liquid in the vial. He then looked at Marie from behind his face mask.