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  My mind raced as I thought about where my friends could be. When the takeover happened, I'd watched all of them flee into the woods while the three hundred ‘crew’ members went after them. I knew it would be hard to get through the crew, but I had to find my friends. It was like everyone vanished. The possibility of them all dying wasn’t plausible to me, but I couldn’t comprehend what else had happened.

  That night, I lay awake hungry, drenched in sweat, and restless, recapping the prior day’s events as I tried to make sense of it all. Nothing ever came from it, and my loss of sleep confused me even more.

  The next day wrapped its long claws around us early, with the heat choking us before the sun even had the chance. We sat on the floor, up against the walls, our clothing at a bare minimum in an unsuccessful attempt to stay cool.

  We heard a thud and glanced over to see one of the women in our group slump to the floor, unconscious. Everyone rushed to her aid. One man called out, “She’s not sweating. Her breathing is really fast and shallow.” I knew it was heat stroke, but there was nothing we could do. Her brain would swell and cause damage, but none of us were doctors, we were just knowledgeable enough to make it more traumatizing for ourselves. We were no help to her.

  We called for help and listened for any sign of life beyond the walls, but there was nothing. People tried with all their might to help her, anyway. They waved shirts in the air to create air movement only to exhaust themselves, and yelled at the top of their lungs for help or water. No one ever came, though.

  Hours passed, then the seizures started. Her body went rigid for moments at a time, one arm outstretched in the air, until she went limp. This happened for hours on end. I watched as people hovered over her, trying to help. They turned her onto her side to prevent choking, but it didn’t matter. I sat against the wall watching, emotionless, as her breathing stopped with one last seizure. She seemed to choke on nothing for a few seconds until everything ceased. They quietly checked for a pulse, as I closed my eyes and waited for my turn.

  “Please!” one man cried at the door. “Please...” His loud pleas for help turned into quiet whimpers and sobs. The night passed slowly.

  The morning of the third day, someone opened the door. It was Smith. “Anyone thirsty?” he asked.

  I looked at him through tired eyes but was too weak to reply. It was amazing what heat and dehydration could do to a person. I tried to open my mouth to speak, but was met with silence. In my mind, my hands lifted from the floor where they lay, but my eyes said otherwise. My vision was obscured due to having such dry eyes. Everything hurt.

  “Let’s go, come on. Let’s go get some water,” he said.

  No one moved.

  “Come on! Move!” Smith yelled.

  Still, no one moved.

  I grasped for words until finally they forced their way out, “We’re too weak. I don’t think I can stand up, Smith.” My voice shook as I tried to explain our situation. My throat felt like it was bleeding. He looked at me as though he was trying to understand the garbled words coming from my mouth. “A girl died. She had a heat stroke. It's been too hot in here,” I said. I was desperate. “Please help us...” My eyes burned but I had no tears left to shed. The only thing that kept me from turning hysterical was my extreme lethargy.

  I shot a glance over toward her lifeless body and caught his eyes light with panic.

  He stepped away and locked the door. Everyone thought he had left us there to die, but I knew better. Smith had done a terrible thing, but he had a conscience. Whether it was stupidity or orders, he had left us in here, but I don’t think he realized there would be deadly consequences. Not until it happened, at least.

  Immediately after he left, people started talking about how they needed to fight back. Start a rebellion. One man attempted to persuade everyone to overpower the men together when they came back. No one responded, just like me, they were weak. Another spoke of waiting until they had strength, then rebelling. While people didn’t sit in silence like the last proposition, it wasn’t met with a lot of enthusiasm. Another sat up and said he would ‘take one for the team,’ and take out Smith. Everyone seemed in favor of that idea.

  I sat quietly in the corner. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Smith dead, because I did. It was more so an internal battle that I felt like he was still my friend. Yes, he had killed our leader, betrayed us, and starved and imprisoned us—but to me—he was still a friend. Although I was angry, I was scared for him, too. I held out hope that he was still a good person, even if he wasn’t.

  After we waited for a while, Smith and three other crew members walked in the door with barrels of water for us. They set them in the middle of the floor and left again, returning shortly with soy shakes to provide us with protein and carbs. They left those in the middle of the room too and silently walked out without saying a word or helping us. To most, it would seem heartless, but to me, it was Smith’s mercy.

  Two large men walked over to the girl’s body, picking up each end to haul her away. I wasn’t sure what they would do with a body here on Circadia. We hadn’t had anyone die before Leslie took over, we hadn’t even come close. It never occurred to me to think about graves or burials. I hadn’t stuck around long enough after they killed Idris to observe what they did, I was too busy running. The memory of Idris’ death was unwelcome, but came flooding back in. I didn’t think I would ever forget the look in his eyes, or the sound of the blood gurgling from his lungs. Then I thought of the young woman’s body they were now carrying away. Everything was supposed to be different on Circadia than it was on Earth, so I wasn't sure what we would have done, but what they would do was completely unknown.

  The doors locked behind them once more, and we all slowly made our way to the center of the room to drink from the barrels and sip the shakes. Some crawled, everyone shook, but everyone made it. At first, I thought it would make me sick to take in water and food since we had been deprived for days, but after the first few hours, my body begged for more. For once, we all felt replenished and relieved. The heat didn’t seem as intense, and our bodies started working to regulate our body temperatures like they were supposed to. It’s amazing what a body is capable of, or incapable of, under extreme conditions.

  That night, I lay against the wall near an open hole where a stove pipe was obviously supposed to be placed in due time. The breeze wafted in lightly granting a small bit of relief, but not enough. I drifted to sleep, until I heard a noise from just outside the apartment. Someone was coming. I sat up and looked out the carved hole to see Smith walking toward the house with his hands in his pockets.

  “Hey,” I whispered just loud enough for him to hear me. “Hey, Smith!” My dehydrated lips cracked when I spoke, and I felt the blood soak into the flakes of skin.

  He looked around, then approached my tiny window to the world. “Yeah?” he asked.

  “How’s it going out there?” I asked.

  “Are you joking? Or...”

  “No, I’m serious. How is it? Are you being forced to do this? I know you didn’t want to see that girl die,” I said.

  He sighed, looked down at his boots, then said, “Aella, you honestly have no idea what I want. It should probably stay that way.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s just better that way, don’t you think?” he said. “You’re probably still hoping I’m a good person right now, right? Still holding onto a time when we were friends and I said something nice. You need to let that go. It’s just going to get worse here.” I watched as he gritted his teeth and turned his face away. There was a moment of silence, then he was gone.

  As he walked away from my window and out around the huts, I watched him for as long as I could, trying to figure out what he was doing. It was difficult to see through the darkness, but I saw him enter a hut for a moment, and return with a pink blanket and a small box seeming to contain pictures. No doubt they belonged to the girl that had passed away earlier in the day.

  Long after he
disappeared, and I had drifted off to sleep once more, I was awoken to the stark sound of a shovel digging in the dirt. Strikes came swift and loud. Accompanying the repetitive noise, were the cries of a man. It was Smith. For a moment I thought he was in trouble, but then I realized he was digging a grave. Alone. The shovel would strike the dirt, and then I could hear the muffled sounds of sniffling and cursing. Then the shovel would hit again. Whether he was ordered to do this or not, I had no idea.

  Chapter Three

  We listened to the rattling of the latch being unlocked. Light from the sun blinded all of us sitting on the floor as the door swung open. Five men and a woman, built stout and muscular, stood right outside the door. Smith walked in. “Get up. Time to get to work,” he said.

  We were led in a single file line toward the doctor’s old hut. There, they had rounded up all of the tools from everyone’s huts—shovels, knives, axes, hoes, and saws—everything was now contained in the hut under a padlocked door. “You will check out each tool as you need it. There’ll be a guard at the tool shed at all times so that no one gets any bright ideas. He will help you check out each tool as necessary. Understand?” Smith said.

  We all nodded. Not that we were happy about it, but what choice did we have? We were vastly outnumbered, even if we had weapons. Twenty-five people weren’t enough to fight off a three-hundred-person trained army.

  “Jobs will be assigned daily. Today, you will all be working to collect lumber. Go ahead and grab the saws from the shed, and we’ll head down to the timber,” he said.

  Two of the men from my group went into the shed and brought out six two-person saws. The guard watched as they left the hut and padlocked the door behind them. “Let’s go,” said Smith, as he took off toward the woods.

  We followed.

  When we reached the woods, we began to work. As we sawed away at the purple-leafed trees, sweat ran from our backs and drenched our clothes. The temperature was sweltering. We hadn’t previously experienced anything this hot on Circadia, and of all days, we were enduring the hottest day yet. The saws went back of forth, creating a loud roaring as all six worked away at the trunks of the trees. The smell of the newly-cut timber was one that couldn’t be found on Earth. Although the trees here were similar, the species was completely different. Fresh cuts mocked the scent of a fresh melon, and sweet aromas filled the air.

  Smith supervised as we sawed, and he spoke up over the rough sounds of the saws. “Once these first six trees are down, the rest of you will work to remove as many branches as possible and haul the logs back to camp. It’s gonna take a few of you since these are big trees, but I have faith in you,” he said, winking. “Greta and Keith will supervise during the trips back and forth, just to keep an eye on you and show you where to put the logs.”

  When I glanced over from sawing, I saw a man and a woman standing beside Smith, waiting. We kept sawing until the tree began to make crackling noises and started to tip. Hurriedly we sawed as much as we could and stepped away from the direction the tree began to fall. It crashed to the ground with a whoosh as the branches and leaves cushioned its fall, and the other half of the captured people rushed over to break limbs off and lay them in a pile.

  Smith walked toward the girl I was sawing with. “Hey,” he said, “I don’t believe we met before all this. What team were you on?”

  She continued sawing but turned to answer him. “No!” she screamed. We both held rigid as a huge branch cracked over Smith’s head. He fell to the ground with a thud. The man standing behind him was one of our own and was tackled to the ground within seconds by Greta and Keith. The man screamed in anger at Smith, his wrists pinned, “You traitor!”

  Smith rubbed the back of his head as he lifted it from the ground then slowly stood. Now towering over his assailant, he looked down at the man malevolently. “Take him back to camp. Leslie will know what to do with him.”

  Greta and Keith nodded and pulled the man up. He yanked against their grasp and threw them off balance. All three fell to the ground as his feet tangled with theirs. They struggled for a short time. Finally, Smith yelled, “Enough!” Greta and Keith subdued the man, regained their footing, then hauled him to his feet as well. The man spit in Smith’s direction as they marched him away. The rest of us stood in shock.

  “Get back to work,” Smith said.

  All of us immediately resumed our duties as the other three men observed and a few occasionally went with people hauling logs. Smith sat quiet under a tree, out of the way, rubbing his head.

  As the sun rose high into the sky, my belly rumbled after Smith announced it was time for lunch. We were escorted back to camp in a single file line once again. I walked up front with Smith. “Can I talk freely? I asked.

  He threw a sideways glance at me and smiled. “Of course. We’re friends, right?”

  “Why’d you choose Leslie?” I asked. I stared at him and he stared back.

  For a moment, he didn’t answer, until he said, “It wasn’t personal. Why wouldn’t someone pick the winning side? He told me before we left that I’d wanna stay in touch. I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but when I called him up here from the softphone, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone else? Why’d you keep it a secret?”

  “He told me not to, but it’s not like this would’ve went down any differently, maybe even worse had I told you guys. It was better this way. If you can’t see now that it’s better to be on the winning side, then you definitely wouldn’t have seen it then. Am I right?” he asked.

  He wasn’t wrong, and I couldn’t disagree with him. “You’re right,” I replied.

  “Do you feel any differently about me now?” he asked. “Did you think that question would make you feel better about me?”

  “No, just wanted to understand why someone would stand on the losing end of things. Someone already bashed your head in once today. You really think that’s going to be the end of it?” My cold stare attempted to burn through his head, but instead, I was met with his cold eyes.

  “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

  Conversation stopped after that, and we walked quietly into camp. When we returned, I didn’t see the man who had hit Smith anywhere. Forced to turn in our tools, we were directed back to our small house. It was still sweltering inside. They told us to walk in and padlocked the door behind us. An hour later, they brought our rations that consisted of two glasses of water, a third of a corn cob that was halfway rotten, and a small loaf of hard bread for each person. There was no protein to keep our bodies nourished; just enough food to keep us from rebelling or complaining. We ate our food quietly.

  Once we were finished, they unlocked the door, took us to the tool shed, and sent us out to work again. We sawed all day long while Smith and his men watched.

  Night fell, and we returned the tools and went back to our house to be locked up for the night. Sleep came hard and fast, and I was never so grateful. We would have to start again in the morning on whatever project they saw fit. The daunting tasks of each day would never be known, and it discouraged me. How could I ever possibly get away if I couldn’t plan?

  Smith announced in the morning that we would be working the fields. My heart jumped with joy. Finally. I was an agronomist brought here to grow crops, and I had succeeded. The fields of wheat and soy were my pride and joy, and I couldn’t wait to get back there.

  They equipped us with new tools and sent us out. Smith followed behind the group this time, making sure to keep his distance from everyone. My saw mate from the day before struck up a conversation as we walked side by side “So, you were part of the agricultural team?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m an agronomist—specializing in crops—so this is kinda my thing,” I said. “What about you? What team were you on?”

  “I was on the engineering team,” she said.

  “Oh yeah, what did you do? Like, what kind of engineer, and what did you do here?”

&n
bsp; “Well, my specialty was transportation, but we didn’t end up getting to that. Everything happened so quick.” She looked down. “So, instead, we worked on climate control for the homes.”

  “Climate control?” I asked.

  “Yeah. They knew it would get hot here on Circadia, but they weren’t sure how hot. Since it’s so much like Earth, they weren’t sure what kind of variances we would see, so they wanted us to prepare for the worst. Luckily, fires kept us warm during the blackout,” she said. “So, we built air conditioners.” She put air quotes around air conditioners ostentatiously, and I was confused.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, while we are trapped in the sweltering heat of that house with no windows, Leslie is holed up in a house that’s cooled by a geothermal coil that pumps water up from the ground. It’s not exactly an air conditioner, but it’s keeping his house about twenty degrees cooler than the air outside at all times,” she said. “His ‘house’ was meant to be a town hall for everyone. Had I known Leslie was coming, I'd have asked Jane to blow the whole damn thing to pieces.”

  That piqued my interest.. Jane was one of my friends from before, and she was close with Smith. She was nowhere to be found though, just like the rest of my group. “You know Jane?” I asked.

  “Yeah, did you? She helped us find the aquifers below. She had requested a tool that could kind of see underground, so she didn’t blow anything up that was valuable or going to cause us harm.”

  “Yeah, I did know her. She was actually on the agricultural team with me. We roomed together back in New Zealand,” I said. “I wish I knew where she was.”

  “Me too, but I have a feeling she’s out there. We’ll see her again, and when we do, we’ll be getting out of here,” she said and gave me a wink.

  Arriving at the fields, I realized we had a lot of work to do. The flower weed had overrun the crops and was choking the life from every useful plant. We stopped at the edge, and Smith began to speak from behind us. “Follow what Aella says. These were her fields; she’ll know what to do.”