I awoke to a pounding – hard, aggressive, and startling.
I jolted up in bed, looking over to where my sisters were suddenly sitting up in their own beds, looking as startled as I felt. I held a hand out toward them to silently tell them to stay in bed before I threw off my sheets and hurried from our room, nearly running right into Dad as he came out of his room as quickly as I was. We exchanged concerned looks before he went down the stairs with me right at his heel, Roy coming out of his own bedroom with a bewildered look, his second-born daughter awake and annoyed looking in his arms before he turned back and put her on her feet in his bedroom and closed the door with her behind it, his back pressed to it as he scowled.
The pounding very clearly came from the front door, and I waited at the bottom of the stairs, Roy coming over quickly to hold onto the banister by my arm as our Dad went to unlock the front door.
When he opened it, we saw that a pair of Novus in their head-to-toe black were standing just outside.
My stomach dropped and I saw Roy straightened, his chin dropping.
There was a beat before-
“Lawrence Earnest David Blackwell?” One asked, his voice that horrible artificial sound that came through the mask. My skin flushed and prickled with a cold sweat before he even got to ‘David’ and I stood back on my heels, knowing right away what this was about.
They had been called about my discussion with the mayor.
This was a breeding colony, and the only ones allowed to live here contributed to the growth of it, and as I wasn’t willing to do so…
They had come to remove me.
Or kill me.
My Dad didn’t catch on as quick, but my brother did, blindly reaching over to plant a hand on my chest like he either wanted to prevent me from going forward or maybe push me further back up the stairs. I could feel his hand quivering, his entire arm shaking. I touched it as I looked at him and saw the blood had drained from his face and his eyes were wide.
“That’s my son-” My Dad said as he leaned away from the door. “I don’t – I don’t understand?”
I focused on Roy. I suddenly didn’t feel scared. Seeing Roy so terrified seemed to have taken that ability from me. “It’s okay Roy,” I said softly, his head spun to stare at me with wide, frightened eyes, “It’ll be okay.” His face twisted and his eyes welled up with tears. He didn’t cry often, but when he did, he cried hard. When he got married. When Little Lawrence was born. When he told us Joy had died. And now. He was seventeen years old, and he had been through so much more than me, and now he was about to lose his older brother and best friend. His entire being seemed to curl into itself as his face crumbled and I took a step down to reach for him to embrace him, say goodbye, and that I loved him-
I was suddenly yanked sideways by an unbearably strong grip on my arm and I lost my footing to be fully dragged along the floor in my thin sleeping shorts out to the porch. My Dad tried to grab me but to my horror, the Novus that wasn’t dragging me away punched my Dad in the jaw and it visibly shattered up into his mouth with the most sickening sound I had ever heard before he slammed into the door and then collapsed onto the ground like a broken doll.
My brother screamed and I heard a woman scream – my Mother, I think – but the second Novus slammed the door closed and then walked swiftly toward me to grab my ankles and lift me up off the ground so I was carried by both legs and one of my arms away from our house.
I looked back and saw Milla push open our bedroom window and scream out for me and I met her terrified gaze before I was suddenly dropped to the ground. A boot covered foot planted on my chest as I watched from the ground as the Novus that had dragged me by my arm opened the door of a metal carriage, pulling his foot off my chest to grab the same arm to lift me without any effort, shoving me hard up against the side of the carriage. The other Novus grabbed my arms and bound them behind my back before I was suddenly pulled away from the wall of the carriage very briefly, then thrown roughly inside.
The inside was metal as well and cold, and I sat up a little to look toward my family home for what I knew would be the last time.
And then the doors were closed, and there was nothing but darkness.
I sat in mild numbing silence before I slowly laid down on the metal floor of the carriage, listening as two doors were opened, slamming one right after the other. The carriage jerked and I stared up into the darkness and wondered if I had seen a horse or not. Perhaps it had an engine, as the train did. Perhaps the technology was so advanced outside the colony that they didn’t even need engines anymore.
Perhaps I was about to find out.
Or perhaps I would die like John Greenbelt did, my body left for the crows to pick at as well. They’d write ‘Homosexual’ or ‘Refused to Reproduce’ under my body. Maybe they’d give all of my nieces and nephews harder times because they put a mark on our family file.
Either way, this was how I would be remembered.
This would be the last time my family saw me, ever, I was sure.
I didn’t even know if I regretted it or not.
I slowly slid back to sit against the wall of the carriage as I felt it move, and I closed my eyes to pray.
I sat in the darkness for a very long time, praying. Thinking about what my brother would do now as the eldest in the family, what my poor parents would do without me there with them. What might happen to my nephew and my nieces and my sisters – and all of the children that would come after them, what they would hear about me, about this night.
Would Dad be okay?
I cried after that, and I cried until exhaustion took hold.
I laid down then and slept.
The doors at the back of the carriage opened and I lifted my head to see a Novus standing there, but unlike the ones that had torn me out of my home, this one was dressed in head to toe bright red. He climbed into the carriage and grabbed me by my upper arms with the same painfully tight grip before he picked me up easily to throw me over his shoulder. I screwed my eyes shut as he carried me out of the carriage, and I was held like that for what felt like ten minutes, his shoulder pressing right up into my stomach and making it hard to breathe.
And then suddenly I was set back down on my feet.
We were inside a very cold room, everything bright white – there was a desk with something white in the middle that obscured the front of the woman sitting there, a chair on the other side of the table. I was pushed then from behind not too gently and brought to stand by the chair, and I felt something cut the bindings on my hands before my arm was grabbed and pulled so I had to sit down in the chair.
A hand with sharp nails grabbed the side of the object on the desk and slide it to the side so I saw a pair of the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen. It was a woman, young, maybe my age, or a few years older. Her hair was blonde and braided with large flowers in it, two lines painted under her left eye, the first red, the second yellow.
She smiled and I saw that her teeth were sharp, her canines long.
A female Novus.
Terror gripped my stomach and I closed my eyes to hear her amused laughter, slowly dropping my chin.
“Name?” She asked in a light tone, laughing still.
“Lawrence Earnest David Blackwell.” I croaked, gritting my teeth as I shook violently. She had looked like a normal girl. I would have never guessed unless she opened her mouth. Maybe that was why they kept covered even when it was dark and they were in no danger of being hurt by the sunlight - they looked just like us, and didn't want to make us feel comfortable enough to forget our place in the colony.
And that was below Novus peacekeepers.
You didn't look at them, or talk to them, and if they came down the street you crossed it to stay out of their way. You never ran from one because it could trigger a predatory instinct and they could attack you just for that. They told you to do something, you did it. They stopped to inspect you, you let them. They knock you down, you stay down.
Because the Novus was the lion, and the Sapien was the lamb. There was no competition. There was no way to win against something of extraordinary strength and speed and brutality.
The one thing we had on them was the ability to freely go into the sunlight...and that was it, really.
I heard tapping like the computer keys at the doctor’s office and realized she must have a computer like the ones at our clinic, and perhaps that was what was on the desk between us, a type of computer. I rubbed my arm as the fine hairs on my skin stood up, the cold biting. I never thought I’d miss the heat of summer, but God, I wanted it so bad right now, and maybe a pair of pants.
“Oh, there you are.” She said to her screen. “Eighteen years old…” her eyebrow quirked as her lip curled into a look of appreciation. “Pisces. I love me some Pisces men, sexy little fishies,” I opened my eyes wide and my gaze jumped around the room briefly before I found her face again, focusing on her lips because her eyes were forbidden. “Blackwell...so...you were assigned to the Deatherage clan...that’s going to put you in lower Victoria - that’s very lucky for you, they treat Sapiens very well over there - and give them so many rights...but you'd probably would have been better off in North Campora, since you’re already trained to be subservient to your Novus overlords.” She said with a laugh She pinned me with a look that lingered before she stood from her seat with a twinkling gaze that I quickly looked away from, my throat constricting as I felt the overwhelming need to start crying again. “You are going to make someone very happy, Lawrence Earnest David.” I heard her purr, “Ooh,” She bent forward over the desk and reached forward to trace a sharp claw down the taunt muscle of my stomach, “Farmboy, I see-”
Suddenly her hand was slapped so hard from the Novus in red that stood behind me, the noise echoed off the walls. The female loudly screamed ‘OW!’ before she scowled at him over the top of my head.
“We don’t get to touch the girls, you don’t get to touch the boys.” He growled, and I realized he wasn’t speaking through a mask, but out in the open. I broke out into a cold, anxious sweat as I remembered the sight of the boar being torn apart from behind.
“He’s not even in the colony anymore, though?” She said with a scowl, “Sooo?” She rolled her eyes and as she straightened, reaching up to trace the red eyeliner under her eyes with claws that I saw now were tipped with blue. She patted her hair into place before she took a petal off of a flower in her hair and stuck it in her mouth to chew on, stiffly sitting back down, swallowing a beat later. “Reason for expulsion?” She asked in a cooler tone, her gaze lifting to stare at what I assumed was the male Novus behind me.
“Homosexual.” The male said behind me.
Her mouth dropped open before she smiled wide, running her tongue over her teeth. “There is a male out there that I want to kill right now…I hope he’s peeling the skin off his face as we speak...” She said as she typed.
I frowned, confused as to what she meant, but she didn’t elaborate or say anything further. Instead, she typed for a long time, staring at her computer screen as I sat here sweating. It was so cold, but I had never been so anxious.
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