THE YEAR 2146
Raven was eight years old when her mother got sick.
It started with hunger.
This didn’t ring any bells because it was a regular occurrence with the food shortages.
But then her mother began sweating profoundly and started saying weird things in her sleep—which frightened Raven, especially at night.
Her mother often had seizures, during which Raven was told to go to her room. She always did, but she would lean against her door and watch the living room through the keyhole. When her mother’s body finally slackened, she would listen to the conversation between her parents.
“You must bring me to the hospital, Leon, and take Raven to West-Ardenza. You’ll both be safe there.”
“What about Borzia?” she heard her father ask softly.
“No.” Her mother was shaking her head.
“But many—”
“I said no, Leon,” she said sternly.
Raven didn’t know what Borzia was.
Her father stared at their entwined hands. “If it’s the mutation… I can’t lose you, Natasha.”
“It is the mutation,” her mother said. She clasped a hand on his arm. “And I don’t want to endanger either you or Raven. I won’t. Call them.”
Them.
This, Raven understood. The people in the white suits.
She barged into the room. “No!” she exclaimed loudly and fell to her knees beside her mother. “Mama, they picked up Dany’s brother, and they never saw him again.”
Her mother took her hand. “You’re going to see me again, dear. I promise.” But her mother’s hand was shaking, and her voice broke on the last word.
Raven put her head on her mother’s chest and listened to her heart. She nodded. The possibility of her mother being taken away wasn’t one she wanted to think about. So, if her mother said she would see her again, Raven believed her. She willed herself to believe her.
One day later, the people in the white suits picked up her mother.
* * *
A week had gone by when Raven woke up in the middle of the night to the groaning of the wooden floor. She clicked on her bedside lamp, which she rarely used. The light flickered weakly, as it usually did nowadays. Bracing herself against the cold with her robe, she opened the door to the living room where a burning light showed her father packing a suitcase.
“Papa?” Raven asked as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What are you doing?”
Her father paused for a moment, but then continued packing. “We’re going on a trip, dear.”
Her jaw dropped. “What?” Tears rushed to her eyes. “To where? And what about Mama?” Raven had never been anywhere outside her hometown, Damruin.
She didn’t know it then, but hell had broken loose in a city nearby, and people had been banging on the doors. Not to seek shelter, but to tell everyone to get out of there as soon as possible.
“Mama knows we’re going.”
Raven’s bottom lip trembled. “I’m scared, Papa. I don’t want to leave.” Something wasn’t right. A fun trip meant they would be happy—and her father was far from it.
He straightened and knelt in front of her, planting a kiss on her forehead. “I know you’re scared, Raven. But I have to ask you to be strong right now. Just for a little while.”
She blinked through her tears.
“For Mama?” he asked, swallowing.
She nodded.
* * *
After what felt like an eternity, they arrived at a refugee camp near the border of Borzia, which Raven had learned in the little makeshift school she went to with the other children, was a neighboring continent.
Raven celebrated her ninth birthday at the camp.
This year, there were no presents, not her parents singing to her or her mother baking her favorite cookies. But her father was there, and he had gifted her a tiny cupcake with an unlit candle. She didn’t know where he had gotten it from, but it tasted divine. It made her forget they couldn’t even light the candle for her to blow out.
The days blurred together, and the food grew scarce. Panic rose among the people in the camp. Raven felt like everything around her was crumbling, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
She didn’t know it then, but the mutation left no survivors. Once the genetic changes kicked in, you either died or turned into a mutant. Years later, she would discover that there had been many sick people everywhere—that they had all been taken to hospitals, like her mother. Too many of them had been packed together in one room because the doctors didn’t know what to do with them. The nurses and doctors took care of them to the best of their abilities. That was the first problem: the hospitals were the first to fall when the mutation finally expressed itself.
One day, at camp, a family came in. With them was a sick person—sick like her mother had been. They were sweating, seeing things that weren’t there, jolting in their unconscious state. The family refused to bring the person to a hospital.
Raven went to her father and asked, “Papa, why did Mama have to go when she was sick?”
Her father gave her a quizzical look. “People with Mama’s illness have to go to the hospital.”
She shook her head. “Someone downstairs is sick, too.”
His eyes widened. “Sick like Mama?”
Raven nodded.
Her father cursed, stood abruptly, and walked down the stairs. An hour later, her father had repacked the worn-out suitcase and stroked Raven’s hair. “Let’s go. We’re continuing our journey.”
Raven’s body shook, but she nodded—tried to put on a brave face for her father. She understood they hadn’t arrived yet where they needed to go. But every step they took onward was another step away from her mother.
* * *
A couple days later, they stood on a crowded square before tall golden fences.
Raven could only see the top of the fence, and grabbed her father’s hand more tightly as she got swallowed up in the masses.
“Let us in!” someone shouted.
Her heart started pounding in panic.
Another person cried, “They’re already so close, you can’t let us walk all the way to the wall! We won’t make it.”
Yet another person used words her mother wouldn’t allow to be repeated and ended with, “Borzian scum!”
Shocked and wide-eyed, Raven had looked up to her father, who didn’t seem to be the least bit shaken by the comments. She was sure her mother would have put the man in his place for using such vulgar words. She always scolded Raven for them, too.
Raven missed her mother. She hoped she was doing well.
The crowd went wild when the fence opened and some people were allowed to enter.
Her father dragged her through the crowd, all the way to the front, until people in grey uniforms appeared before her. Soldiers, Raven realized. They were at the Borzian borders. Why were they at the Borzian borders? Didn’t her mother tell them not to go there?
Tugging her father’s hand, she tried to get his attention, but he kept walking.
Her father said something to the soldier she couldn’t understand.
The soldier looked down at Raven, which made her feel uneasy—saying something that didn’t sound very nice. After that, the man looked back at her father and held out his hand like he had all the time in the world.
Her father retrieved some papers from his inner pockets and handed them to the soldier, who skimmed them and looked back at Raven with pinched brows. He walked over to another soldier and let him read through the paperwork—who looked to her, too. He retrieved a device from his jacket and made a call. Then, he nodded to the soldier, who came back and spoke to her father again in harsh tones.
Raven’s eyes were glued to the soldier in the back, who was still looking at her as he held a large device to his ear and talked, reading something from the document still in his gloved hand, misty clouds escaping from his mouth in the chill air.
Suddenly, a large hand gripped her shoulder, and she looked back up at her father, who was urging her forward. “Come on, sweetheart.” He held the suitcase in his other hand and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze—but the soldier put a hand on her father’s chest.
He barked a command.
Her father’s face turned outraged. “What? I’m her father.” These words she understood.
“And an Ardenian one at that,” the solider replied coolly, with an accent.
“No way,” her father countered as his voice turned desperate. “I’m all she has.”
Raven frowned. That wasn’t true. She also had her mother.
The soldier ignored him and grabbed her by her shoulders as he urged her forward. Raven quickly took her father’s hand and held on to it for dear life. “What’s going on?” She asked, and her father cursed as the soldier put more pressure on her body, forcing their hands to part. “Papa!” she said again, louder this time—more afraid.
The frown on her father’s forehead drew deeper.
Another soldier walked over to her father and pushed him back into the crowd.
“No! Raven!” he shouted.
The sound of his voice got swallowed by the loud yelling of the people, and he, too, disappeared.
She kept shaking her head, resisting the soldier’s insisting hand on her back. “I don’t want to go without my papa!” she yelled to the soldier. Panic fought its way through her small body.
The soldier didn’t even look down as he said, “You’ll be safe inside.” As if the words were reassuring.
“No!” she shrieked as her father’s voice reached her again, and by some miracle, she pulled herself free from the soldier’s grasp. She tried to walk back into the crowd but was too slow, and he grabbed her again, pushing her in front of him. “You will walk inside, little girl, or I’ll carry you—oh.”
Raven punched him hard in the crotch, the place her mother had pressed her to avoid as she fought with the boys in her class. She must have hit him well because the soldier heaved over, letting go of her, and used curses she didn’t know. Before he had time to recover, Raven sprinted away.
Her father watched it happen and immediately disappeared into the crowd, towards where she was sprinting. Suddenly, she felt her father’s firm hand grab hers, and he pulled her closer. Raven was glad there were so many people in the square, because whistles sounded, and harsh orders were shouted, but the Borzian soldiers couldn’t get past the dense crowd.
Her father’s eyes were red, but he held on tightly to her hand while they escaped—almost to the point of pain. “I’m so sorry, Raven. So, so sorry.”
She clung to his grip—the only thing left in her life that she could hang on to—as she could hear the soldiers yell, “Stop the girl!” A sharp whistle. “Stop the girl!” But either no one knew who they meant, or no one cared.
Most likely, the latter.
* * *
They walked and walked and walked. Raven had never walked so much in her entire life, maybe not even all of her life combined. Their shoes were threadbare, but even as her feet started hurting and she had gotten tired, her father had carried her on his back. Day and night blended together until they couldn’t separate the two anymore.
After a while, her father stumbled, which dragged Raven from her sleep as they fell onto the cold, hard ground. The frozen skin of her hands tore open as she broke her fall, and her father clasped one of his knees, dazed.
She told him she could walk on her own, but her father instead insisted that they needed a quick break. He said he needed to close his eyes for just a moment.
But the break turned into a very long one. So long that Raven ended up sitting in the dark, way past the point of shivering, just looking up at the stars. She did that often these days. It was the only light they could see. She wondered if the stars could see them, too. Every time she blinked, she wished on them for help.
In the distance, she could see two enormous lights coming their way after what seemed like forever. A car. She tried to wake up her father, shaking his cold arm. “Papa. Papa! Wake up.”
When he didn’t respond, she got up slowly. She waved, even though her arms felt heavy and ached with every movement she made. Her frozen, stiff limbs worked just enough to stand.
The car came straight for them, and in a moment of madness, or numbness, Raven stood in the middle of the road to slow it down. To this day, Raven still doesn’t know what came over her at that moment. It might have been dehydration or malnourishment—lack of sleep, even—but it had seemed like the only solution.
She knew, however, that if she didn’t stop that car, her dad would die—and she would too.
The car came to an abrupt halt, the tires skidding on the sandy road. A soldier quickly got out, pointing a sharp light her way. “Are you out of your damn mind?” he yelled. “I almost ran you over.”
Raven didn’t flinch. Didn’t even cry. She wasn’t afraid, just pointed to her father. “We need your help.”
The soldier stepped closer and grabbed her chin to take a better look at her as he shone the light in her face. He inspected her clothes, her shoes. He whistled loudly, and another door in the vehicle opened—two footsteps coming closer.
“Help her,” the soldier said, and a sense of relief washed over Raven as he walked over to her dad, who still lay at the side of the road.
The other soldier, a female, came closer and looked toward her father. “How long have you been here, sweetheart?”
Raven shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her head hurt.
The soldier squatted in front of her and handed her the tube to a water bag. “Not too much at once.”
She nodded and took a sip.
The soldier in front of her pointed to where the other soldier was working on her dad. “Is that your father?”
Raven nodded. “Is he okay?”
Then, as if she couldn’t stop herself, she continued drinking from the tube. The soldier whisked it from between her cracked lips. “Not so quick; you’ll get sick. Tiny sips.”
The female soldier guided her toward the car and opened a door. “Get inside. It’s warmer there.”
Hesitating, Raven looked behind them. “My father…”
“Will be here in a minute,” the soldier finished.
Raven looked at her.
“I swear,” she said.
And she hadn’t lied. A couple minutes later, she and her father sat in the back of the warm car, and they were driving back to wherever the soldiers had come from.
She gripped her father’s hand, who gripped hers back weakly, but it was enough reassurance. Raven drifted off into sleep now and then, but in the dim light of the car, her eyes focused on the soldier’s shoulders—on the stars embroidered there.
And from that moment on, Raven swore to do everything in her power never to feel helpless again.