I pull the brush through my tangled hair, ripping through matted dreads and dirt. Looking in the mirror, I can see my sad reflection. Boring brown hair, dark eyes staring back at me hauntingly, empty of emotion and sunken deep into their sockets. I scrape some dirt and grime off my cheek and watch in disgust as I smear it across my pants.

I am a Recluse, an individual thrown out of my city because of the specific genes in my DNA, capable of making me a monster. It was life or death out here, survival of the fittest. I had never really been bothered to live in the forest but, sometimes curiosity got the best of me and I would spend hours contemplating what were to happen if my “diseased genetic traits” started to show up. How dangerous would I be? Could you cheat the system and remain a Civil?

Gripping my hair, I began to intertwine the dirty strands into a messy braid. I twisted the old elastic onto the end of the braid, tying it off. Satisfied with my clumsy handiwork, I turned to face the rest of my bedroom.

My shelter, or what I liked to call The Womb, was a small one room hut made from logs and mud, slowly built over fifteen years. The entryway was filled with a car door that I’d found abandoned by the Civils years ago. There was a window made from shards of glass, hastily shoved into the mud and a large brass bed frame covered in cloth and a thin mattress. A polished piece of sheet metal served as my mirror and leaned against the opposite wall, decorated with small snippets of news papers and photos I had found. The Womb served me comfortably and was almost welcoming.

Lush, green forest surrounded my shelter in every direction as far as I could see. No matter which direction you looked, you could always spot a colourful plant. It was exhilarating, how much there was to see so deep into the forest. If you went North, away from The Womb up a large hill, you could find a large teal lake that I spent most of my summer days at.

I took a short stroll over to a tall oak tree and stretched my hand into the crevice of the tree, gripping my old hunting knife, which was buried deep in the tree. It was a simple blade strung to an old fashioned handle, carved a long time ago. I used the knife to cut vines and hunt for food, which happened to be the mission right now.

A pashel, was a fruit that was genetically modified from two fruits before Degeneration Day. The large pink fruit was the size of a large rock and had an unnatural green skin that protected the pink flesh. The fruit itself was so sickly sweet, it was hard to resist, especially in season.

When I was a little girl living in the city, I would go to the local pashel farm with my parents and we would spend hours in the orchard, looking for the biggest and brightest fruits. Unfortunately, pashels didn’t grow in the wilderness, they needed to grow in a greenhouse, somewhere safe for the plant.

Twigs crunched under my sneakers as I hopped through the woods with determination. There was one place I knew I could find a pashel, and that was on the edge of the city. No sun broke through the trees, just a light fog spreading thin across the ground like a blanket. I pushed through bushes of berries and thorns before a large wall came into view past the dense tree line. The wall towered at 40 feet tall and was almost impossible to cross, which was the point.

A massive maple tree stood by the blockade, tall and disma. Its branches stretched across the tree line, reaching over to the top of the wall. Inside, a city sat, tucked away and sheltered from the wilderness. They said as kids that the wall was for protection. I didn’t know what they were talking about and I would ask my parents but, I never got an answer. I didn’t realise that soon that wall would be used to protect the Civils from something dangerous like me.

With the hunting knife tight in my left hand, I shimmied up the trunk of the large tree. My shirt rode up as I reached for the branches, coarse bark scratching my skin harshly. I finally reached the top and was out of breath, panting. At the base of the wall on the other side was a road, houses lining the edge of it. I took the opportunity to scale down the wall, looking for cracks and fissures to create hand and foot holds, keeping me from falling.

Hitting the ground, I took off in a sprint. My shoes smacked against the pavement as I dodged windowsills and barrels of flour. A large pink fence appeared in front of me and I ducked down, diving into a bush of grapes, spilling over the edge of the fence. The vines hid my figure as I pulled away a chunk of the gate, revealing a hole that was just big enough to crawl through.

The garden I intruded was small but, the pashel bush was right in front of me. I cut through the flimsy vines and snatched up several of the fruits, excited about my steal. I was almost ready to leave before a low growl nearly knocked me off my feet.

The dog behind me was huge, a spiked collar wrapped around its neck, saliva dripping carelessly from his snout. His teeth were bared into a snarl and his beady eyes were targeted right at my throat. It was my cue to turn and run but the dog pounced quickly, knocking me back into the grape vines. The fence behind me shuttered and I cursed, trying to swipe at the canine on top of me. It was so loud. I knocked the beast off, crawling through the hole in the fence just to feel the dog’s mouth clamp onto my ankle dangerously.

I let out a cry and kicked at the dog, escaping its hold and scrambling out of the garden. My face ran into a pair of legs and I cursed, not wanting to be caught by Civil guards. There’s no way they’d let me back into the forest if they caught me again. I was hoisted up haphazardly and in front of me, a crazy mane of blue hair stood up.

“Jackson?” In front of me stood my best friend, Jackson. Skipping greetings, he grabbed my wrist and tugged me along to the wall. A loud voice cried out behind us, screaming something about a thief, which I had to assume was me. Jackson yanked me along and I stumbled, putting too much weight on my ankle, which was dripping in blood and dog saliva.

Jackson’s expression was somewhere in between worried and annoyed and it concerned me that he wasn’t moving as fast as normal. In a normal situation, he might make split-second decisions but, right now? He wasn’t doing anything. He stood there before finally tungging me along again, helping me up the wall. We had to scale the wall, listening to the chaos below as guards began to run in, eyes scanning everywhere for the Recluse Invader.

We scrambled across the wall and onto the maple tree, sliding down the base of the trunk only to hit the ground and finally catch our breaths. Jackson turned and gave me his best stern look but, I simply grinned at him and rolled my eyes, offering him one of the pashels I had stolen.

“That was crazy,” I exclaimed. The blue-haired boy gave me a lopsided grin and threw an arm around me as we walked back to The Womb.

“Did you see your face, Anne,” he asked, chuckling a bit. He opened the door of my shelter for me, ushering me inside and suddenly, the warmth of Jackson’s arrival left. He never came to visit and if he did, it was work related.

“Okay, Jackson, why were you in the city?”

“I tried to swing by but, you weren’t here. I assumed you were breaking one law or another so, I took a trip,” he answered, shrugging. “I have some news and things from the Palm Trees, and more importantly, Derek.”

[continued in the next chapter]