My name is Rachel Clancy.
Thirty years before I was born, the world ended.
Unlike my father, I’ve never lived above ground; I’ve never seen the real sun.
I don’t miss it. How could I? You can’t miss something you’ve never known.
And yet today, on my sixteenth birthday, I will, for the first time, go to the surface and try my hardest to fight back against the monsters that still want to get to us. It’s something I’ve always known I would have to do. My people identified me at birth as having the right genes to handle the fight. It’s not a surprise, I suppose. My parents had the genes, too.
A week after I came screaming into the world, my mother died. The monsters killed her when they breached our defenses. I wish I could tell you a big dramatic story about her sacrificing herself to save me or something, an idea I cling to on long nights, but it didn’t happen that way.
No.
One second she was there, the next she wasn’t. Before they could kill me, the Warriors arrived to end the lives of the monsters.
I have no memories of her.
Today I might join her fate by taking on a job I’ve never had a choice to refuse. Life can really suck sometimes.