Luminescence

Three.

_______

I had tested negative for mutant abilities.

But why was the commander so angry over the results? I was just a girl that scavenged a junkyard — not a criminal with a six-figure bounty on my head.

Two weeks had passed since the mysterious commander came to test our workplace. And ever since then, my coworkers had flocked to me with questions about him. He was the hot topic. Everyone had heard of Commander G-R72, yet nobody knew a thing about his personality or what he looked like. The most asked question I received was if I saw his face or not.

Last weekend I had taken advantage of my Sunday break and took a trip to the public library. I found a book on the history of Plague commanders and indulged myself in hours of reading. What I had learned was astonishing.

Commander G-R72 was an evil mutant. And not just any mutant, he was powerful.

I read that the first order given to him by the Plague was to execute all mutants remaining in the country. And I'm sure you all reading this are like, 'The Commander is a mutant, so shouldn't he be dead too?'

That's the same thing I asked myself. But in the book it read that once Commander G-R72 completes his mission, he will be rewarded with the greatest reward of all time — the throne. The Plague must favor him. So I therefore assumed it was one big power grab.

It didn't take a genius to see that the commander was young. He was reckless, dangerous and intimidating — everything that a young adult would be. The book said he was born December 12th, 2139. Meaning he was only one year older than me. 

But what was even more chilling, was that if he truly were a mutant, then the legends of life before the Plague would be true. A world of peace. Hope. Freedom. Something that we didn't have in today's world. 

But what we did have in our sector today, was rain. Torrential downpours rocked the city causing minor flooding, and by orders we were forced to work inside the factories today in case of lightning strikes around the junkyard metal.

Factory work generally wasn't bad, except for that it was extremely dangerous. One wrong move, and you could end up losing a limb, or even your life. Inside the factory, our job was to compress the leftover metal from the ships we scavenge into compacted cubes. First, the metal was sent through an oven, where it is melted and made more malleable to be shaped easier. While they are still semi-warm, they are then sent to a compressor which crushes the pieces of metal into an organized cube, and will be sent to larger-scale factories in order to be reused. Sometimes, being a scavenger really paid off for the environment.

Being a girl, I always got put on the weaker shifts. My job was to simply press buttons all day long, and guess what the buttons do? They put stickers on the cubes of metal. How exciting is that? Can't you just feel the excitement coming out of me right now?!