Slowly he turned around. His brilliant green eyes bent on the ground, clothes torn and bloody. He tried to speak but couldn’t find the words.
She watched as the Graveturners put a gun to his head and very deliberately tied his hands behind his back. They used some shining metal thing to secure him to a pole. It was already slick with 10 other prisoners’ blood.
The chief Graveturner ripped off his shirt and was handed a rope with a dull gold handle. The leather wasn’t from cows.
They whipped him until he collapsed. Ji, the girl, watched behind the shadows of the half-burnt buildings as her boyfriend sank to the ground, never once crying out.
He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t alive either. He was merely one of the victims of the Graveturners wrath. And once you got put on the list, you became part of their games.
______________________________-
Ji ran through the village. Her heart sang at the thought of Colby. He was to come back from Hannibal City today. Finally. He had been gone for 3 months now, and she was getting impatient.
A woman, one of high mili-bits by the look of her stature clucked at her as Ji flew past. Ji knew she was being bad and that if it wasn’t that woman who reported her to Council it would be some other that took away some of her mili-bits.
Although she came from a high standing family Ji didn’t care about the amount of mili-bits she had unlike some others such as her sister Sara. Sara was newly Joined with a wealthy man called Gore and her mili-bit rank had gone up 100 million. Ji was tired of the boasting.
Her mind was wandering as she ran, idly falling upon one of her history lessons. It was so stupid; she thought laughingly, that people actually governed themselves once. No wonder it had to be stopped. They would have destroyed themselves if it had gone on any longer.
To prove her point she dashed past a large holographic poster showing the Leader Boron giving an order speech. Above his head was the motto of NEW WORLD:
“Stand with and not without and you will know the way.”
That was the reason why she hung out with her friends who were all obsessed with making high ranking Joinings and pretended she was excited too about being joined with a man who will only want a male child to continue his existence.
Personally Ji didn’t care about taking the bright purple medicine Sara was to ensure she would have a boy first before moving on to the also mandated girl. She didn’t care about mili-bits or keeping her sari-dress free of mud. It was also why she kept her relationship with Colby a secret. Colby didn’t like those things either. However, if her parents found out about Colby they were that high up they could get Colby taken away to be collected, killed, and processed to be used for the disease ridden.
Colby was very, very low on mili-bits. He only had 800 versus Ji’s 900 thousand. But then again, when your father was taken away from you for being apart from the crowd you didn’t really have a chance of climbing back up too far.
She finally reached the Maglev station. The silver snake was just expelling passengers.
Ji searched the crowd desperately, looking for her only true friend, one that still had his mind like Ji. Colby caught her from behind, heedless of who might be watching and hugged her tightly. Colby wouldn’t go so far as to kiss her in public, he would be collected for sure that way.
Ji laughed and shook her long dark hair impatiently from her heart-shaped face.
“Colby!” She exclaimed and hugged him back.
The camera’s lens was put on flash zoom. The picture was to the council before Colby and Ji got to his house that night.
Leader Boron signed the Graveturners order before the night was over.
It wouldn’t do for his future bride to have an affair with a mere pawn in his killing games.