When we were sure that the pods were all accounted for, we headed out in teams of fifty or more to meet them. Footsteps landed with a thud from every step, slowly shuffling along through the open fields and into the trees.
Chapter Sixteen
Trudging through the night, my group came upon a pod. It was even larger than the second group’s pod. We were prepared with ladders as we had expected such. This time we waited much longer for the door handle to turn and the hatch to open, accompanied by the screeching sound of metal-on-metal. When it finally lifted and fell onto its hinges, we watched as the moon lit the hands grasping for the way out.
The first woman that appeared looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Her face was plump and her hair was well-groomed. Her eyes were wide and scared. Garrett hollered up to her, “Hey, welcome to Circadia! We have a ladder to help you get down over on the left of the pod.”
She looked around quietly and began to climb down. Twenty or more people climbed out of the pod after her, and then I saw him. Leslie Marshal. That son-of-a bitch! My blood boiled as I watched him emerge from the craft and make his way down the ladder. No one else around me said anything, so I wasn’t sure if they had noticed or recognized him, but I had. I walked around the pod slowly and quietly. This was going to hurt.
As soon as I watched both feet fall from the ladder, I caught him by the shoulders and slammed him up against the pod with one arm while my other fist slammed into his fat face. “You asshole! You knew, didn’t you? You fucking knew!” I screamed through my tears as I kept hitting him. My knuckles felt warm with blood. It wasn’t his, it was mine—my fragile skin burst upon first impact and got worse with every hit.
My tears obscured my vision, but through the blurriness I could see his eyes grow wide when my fist withdrew then came in for yet another shot. My knuckles burned and ached, but I didn’t care. I kept going. “You’re going to pay for what you’ve done! You mother—” My hand was caught.
I turned to see who’d stopped me. It was Smith. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. “Aella. Enough.”My anger quickly turned to sorrow. I held onto Smith for support as I bawled hysterically. Leslie fell to the ground behind me with a thud. I knew that I was angry before, but not that angry. More so, I didn’t realize I was so upset with losing what I felt like I had helped build here on Circadia.
Glancing up, I saw Garrett walking towards Leslie. I sniffled, caught my breath, and watched as he knelt beside the other man. His hand tilted Leslie’s battered face to meet with his. “How did you do it? How did you manage to get yourself a seat to Circadia?”
“I was just lucky, I gue—” Leslie barely got any words out before Garrett punched him in his stomach, hard.
“I’m going to ask you again. How did you do it? I want to know.”
“I paid for my seat, just like everyone else,” he muttered. “6.8 million, to be exact. Just like everyone else.”
The disgust I felt at that moment was insurmountable. We had worked for this world. We were not paid to come here. We kept the ideals of currency out of Circadia, and had flourished. Now we had seven hundred people who had paid millions of dollars to be here. The fate of who would survive from Earth had been decided by money. My heart ached for the people still down there.
“Not like everyone else! You think everyone from Earth had that much money laying around? You’re not like everyone else, and you don’t deserve to be here,” I said. “It wasn’t even your money, was it? You probably got here with money you asked for from people that are still down there, dying. Am I right?”
“Oh my God. So self-righteous, huh? You’re telling me you would have given your seat up? I don’t think so,” Leslie coughed. “You can pretend that you're a decent person here, but you weren’t down there, were you?”
I stared back at him.
“Look,” he said, “I’m here now. Let’s move on.”
I couldn’t take anymore. I left the group, and took off for the woods.
STRESS LEVELS SURGED through my body as I trekked through the dead fields in the dark, towards the even darker woods. My heart pounded in my chest, so hard that I thought it might break free. My eyes welled with tears that streamed down my face. The faster I went, the better I felt. I broke into a run, and then a sprint. Nothing could touch me.
I ran for what felt like forever. I ran through the fields, into the woods, on past the woods into a new prairie, over a creek and onto the next patch of forest, until I encountered a large lake.
When I met with the water, I dropped to my knees and bawled. What little energy I had from nearly starving and freezing to death from the week before, was now gone. Every muscle in my body electrified with intense jolts of lactic acid. Burying my hands in the sands before me, I felt the ice-cold water that ebbed along the beach.
Glancing out at the moonlit water, I tried to clear the hatred from my mind. Letting my brain drift into nothingness was soothing for once, and the tears dried. I sat there for the rest of the night, freezing my ass off, not giving a damn. It was the best and worst thing that I could have possibly done.
WAKING UP, MY MIND instantly panicked. My eyes shot
