My breathe echoes strangely off of the walls as I run through the sludge of the old sewers and the pitch blackness threatens to swallow me whole. I run and run, losing the pursuers behind me.
Soon there’s a blue-green glow coming from a bend ahead of me and my body tenses. I round the bend, throw out my arms, and dive face first into the bone-chilling cold water. It washes around me in the cold, the salt threatens to get between my eye lids and my arms start to itch from the contents.
I kick upward losing all sense of direction hoping- praying- that I’m kicking towards the surface and not into the oceans murky depths. My shoulder screams in white hot pure agony but by now I’m used to all kinds of pain…emotional and physical.
My head breaks the surface and sweet -sweet air fills my pumping and gasping lungs. I try to wipe the salt water from my eyes only to get some into my mouth and the salt that’s on my arms fills my eyes. I about roar out loud from the burn that erupts into my cornea’s. I try to get my bearings while treading water. The world around me is fuzzy and blurry but I make out the brown boat docks for the shipments that come in for daily rationing for the blue coats.
My heart starts to pound as I hear the slight chug-chug-chug of the boats that come in for afternoon shift.
“This is going to be dangerous, Blue.” I chide myself out loud while getting a mouth full of salty water. I spit it out and go under the water listening for the distorted sounds of the boat.
When the boat is right on top of me I swing to the surface, tread water ten feet below the surface, as the motors go past I grab the anchor that slows the delivery boat down.
I got lucky this time. Because if this was one of em’ big dusk boats that haul people- I would be dead. But this is just a rationing boat.
My hands grip the salt encrusted rope and I start to pull myself upward, fighting the water current that batters the life out of my arms. By the time I grip the metal railing of the boat and my head breaks the waters surface my arms are shaking and on the verge of bleeding.
I haul my shaking body onto the back board and wait- listening. This is where they keep the cans of food and clothing. It’s the butt of the boat and people use this area for changing. It’s just my luck. I look around for smaller blue coat and white pants leaving on my soaked leather boots. I sling the bag that was on my shoulder down and it thumps onto the wooden boat with a hollow thud. I bend down and start to shove all the contents I can into the bag. Can’s of different things with no labels, some with labels, and some of them are see through so you can see its contents.
I stand up and put the bag back on my shoulder and turn around to go back under water the way I came.
But a man stands in my way.
Not just any man but…a Blue coat.
Stars glitter on his collar warning me of his higher rank and his fighting skills along with his skill of strategy.
“What, my dear…. Do you think your doing?” His voice is cool and appraises me. The man is tall, lanky body, his appearance shadowed by the doorway he stands in.
“I’m stealing food.” The words must startle both of use because we both stiffen at the same time. The man relaxes much sooner than I.
“And how do you propose you do that?” I’m backing away now back to the waters edge. But why hasn’t this man raised the alarm? Why hasn’t he reported me, or shot me yet?
The hat raises some and I’m looking into clear blue eyes the color of the surfaces water below me. I feel the boat shudder as it stops.
And then another thing hits me. This man, this captain of high rank cant be much older than I. Eighteen or so.
Without another thought I jolt backwards and land into the icy cold water. The guy reaches out to me and for a split second fear laces his eyes.
And then he is cold and distant again and there’s red flashing. He’s raised the alarm.
And then he has men buy his side pulling out guns and loading them. And then he points at my form in the water.
And explosions light my eyes as my ears ring with the boom under water.
I close my eyes, and I swim like my life depends on it.
And in all consuming reality….. It does.

I don’t exactly know where I am by the time I get to the surface and the rationing boat is behind me. Everything is fuzzy, I’m exhausted and my head is all but led on my shoulders.
I claw onto the sand, my fingers dig into the dirt pulling pulling pulling; hauling myself to shore. My body rakes from the coughs that erupt from it and blood drips down from my shoulder. I turn my head a fraction of an inch to look at it- and nausea almost makes me lose what little contents of my stomach.
A bullet wound is on my shoulder where the zapper stung it so ts also red, swollen, and oozing green stuff.
I flop my brown back pack onto the sand and lay there looking up at the cloudless gray sky.
I remember my parents telling my story’s of their Grandfather’s days…The days we aren’t supposed to utter. But now that I think back on it no one can take away the memories of my parents telling my sisters and I the stories. Of what I used to think was just another thrilling tale.
I remember my parent’s eyes going dark telling about the bombing, the government taking over everything, and especially- especially the blue coats….
I close my eyes and it’s like I’m transported there, in time….

I open my eyes to the fast heart beat. My little five year old eyes are wide and innocent. Everything is blurry from sleep and my head is loud with the pounding of the heart at my left ear.
“It’s going to be Okay, Jay.” My mothers voice softens as she touches Dad’s cheek.
“Lets hope so.” My Dads voice is tired.

And then his hazel eyes are staring into my own as he bends down to look me in the eye while I lay on my mothers breast. His face is more lined than I have ever seen it and my mothers face is taught and drawn. Everything is loud and in chaos. We can hear the scream of our neighbors as their doors get torn down by the blue coats.
“Okay now, Blue. Take your sisters to safety. Get them there- do you understand?”
My parents shoved my and my three sisters into a cabnnett hole that is a dug out that leads to the sewers. We crawled and crawled while I carried the youngest of the three. Her name was Susie and she got sick all the time.
She was also the first to go.
Once Susie was gone we foraged for food, we hunted, and we were basically savages. Until we found the underground camp for survivors of the bombs; they had an army at their hands. And I knew I wanted to help even though I was just nearly twelve years old.
I left my sisters with a family who would take care of them- hopefully give them a good life. I went off with the raiders and we raided a couple of houses, some farms, some blue coat military bases, you name it. I was everywhere, always pushing away the memories of my sisters, hoping and praying every night that they were still alive. I also learned many things while on my journey. Many good and many not so good.
And then I learned about the slummers. They lived alone but they got food to the underground army’s and to the people. So I then joined them. There was approximately fifty of us in the beginning. Then thirty. Then nine. And so forth.
Only four of us ever survived. And the people depended on me to give them food. See it’s a network of tunnels down there so no matter where you are food gets rationed through the world and people pass word around. It’s like a networking system.

I sit up in the sand and color, sound, and even the noise of a boat rush to my ears. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I chide myself and I get up clumsily in the sand and run into the woods. There are shouts behind me and people yelling but I just keep on running.
Jungle leaves slap my face as water pours off of them from the left over rain, grass tangles around my legs, and the humid air threatens to choke the life out of me.
But then my feet end up in a net. The ones that poachers- people who defy the government to hunt for their own meals- use.

I fall face first to the dirt covered ground as my ankle twists painfully and my head thunks off of the ground. I spit out the ever present dirt and look around.
My weight must not be heavy enough to pull the levy on the trap. I shift and that’s when the thing gets set off. My body loses gravity for a split second and I come crashing back down into the hard rope. My body is curled at an awkward angle and my ankle is exploding with pain as well as my .
“Well. Well. What do we have here, Boys?” Men step into the clearing and they wear the blue coat seal on their left shoulders. These aren’t trappers or poachers but hunters of the government. They also wear camouflaged pants and shirts.
“A little run away, perhaps?” The man that seems to be the leader steps forward. I cants see his face clearly because he is currently upside down. But I can see that his eyes are very green.
He comes close to the net and grabs my hand and uses that to pull me and the whole net towered him. The heavy weight of the net and my body on my little lanky arm? That doesn’t feel too good. I growl deep into the throat and spit onto the mans face. He flinches and wipes the spit off with a growl of his own.
Suddenly he clicks his fingers and then I’m falling. I land on the ground on my tailbone and a yelp escapes me.
I sit up quickly because I’ve learned that men- ones you don’t know- are dangerous to a girl. Suddenly my head whips to the side and stars implode in my head.
I turn my head back slowly and painfully. The man stands above me with a triumphant grin. I blink and something takes hold of me. Anger, perhaps.
But it’s like I’m my own personally demon. I launch into the man and he reels back with a startled look on his face. My hands grip around his neck but his goonies pull me off just as quickly. Suddenly there are hands every where, there’s shouting and I‘m, reminded of the time that we had to crawl through the sewer when we had to leave our parents- I push the memories down and go limp and curl into a fatal position. Kick’s and blows land on my body and pain is every where.
Pain is now my friend.
“Stop it.” Its not a loud voice nor a quiet voice. But a voice that holds a lot of command.
Suddenly the feet are off of me and arms are pulling me to a warm chest. I head lolls to the side and my body feels disconnected. I cough and blood dribbles down my chin. A soft white hanky wipes it off with gentleness.
“Everything will be OK, Now blue.” That commanding voice is somehow now very silky. It wraps around me with warmth and softness that I only felt with my parents.
“Who are you?” The leader of the hunters asks harshly. Even though I cant see him I can see his anger.
“Who are you…to question me?” The voice at my ear is careful and confident. It holds lethal venom.
Suddenly everything goes quiet and then a scared voice pies up, “Are you- you…. are you Captain Hall?” Everything is now quiet again. And then the man holding me answers.
“I’m his son. Lieutenant Nikko.” I don’t know who this man holding me is but I also down know why I’m letting him hold me.
I struggle against his chest and I try to push away from his warm skin, from the heat radiating from his body.
“Shhh.” He whispers in my ear like I’m a little child.
“Getter off.” My words are bloated and struggle from my mouth.
His arms around me loosen and I launch out of them. I land on the ground and pull what little clothes I have on up over my bra.
My eyes zero in on the blue- eyed captain. “Don’t come near me.” My head hurts.
“Shhhh, Blue.” His hands are held up and my eyes slide to his palms. They are scarred but he has long soft looking fingers. His thumbs are long and strong looking also.
“How do you know my name?” I try not to panic.
My head and heart hurt. My lungs feel as if they are collapsing onto my heart.
“Everything will be alright.”
My hear thumps- Thump-thump and as I take a shuddering breathe as pain embellishes on my body.
“How do I know that?” My voice is harsh and the world tilts to the side and than harshly to the other side. Something thumps onto my back and arms clamp around me.
“Let her go.” The blue eyed man’s voice and eyes are hard.
“Why would I do that?” The hunter says behind me. His voice is hard and I picture his green eyes hard also.
“Because she’s mine.” Blue eyed man smiles a gruesome smile and suddenly I’m scared of him myself. His sharp canines flash in the little light there is. I now have no doubt about how he got his rank.
He launches himself at us and he shoves me out of the way to rip the other mans throat. I just know. I can feel it before it even happens.
So I do the stupidest thing ever.
The hunter behind me goes slack with fear. I push the hunters arms away, and shove on the lieutenants chest. Hard.
He flings backwards a coupled of feet and glares at the hunter behind me.
“Stop it.” My words are even more slurred this time and everything is turning gray. My knees are about to give out and I can see the blue eyed man move towered me.
I move out of the way of both men and pick up my brown back pack. The blue eyed lieutenant catches me as I fall. His blue coat is warm as I snuggle my nose into it and I sleep.

“Do what you need to do.” A hard voice issues orders. The voice I recognize is the blue eyed man. It funny how you can recognize something from just a few short moments. To my left there is a constant beep-beep of something and my eyes are heavy. Something smells sharp and funny while something silky and soft covers my body.
A warm hand touches mine for a brief almost passing second before I hear the Swoosh of something else. Everything is foreign and crazy…yet I’m not so scared. I don’t feel anything but drowsy.
Why is that?
***
I open my eyes and the blue eyed man us sleeping in front of me. I finally get a good look at him now.
His blue eyes are closed as he reclines back in his chair, he has long elegant lashes that curl upwards, he has along nose that has many bumps in it like he broke his nose a lot, his lips have an elegant cupids bow that arches out like an angels wing, his chin has blond stubble on it and black hair pokes out from underneath his hat.
He opens his eyes then and I stare at him some more. His eyes are a light blue with a dark black ring around the edges. He has white lining his eyes mixed with some gold and green. They glitter in the light.
“Lieutenant? Sir…” I turn my head and a man stands there. I then look around the room to get my bearing and its just a plain white room with the bed I’m occupying, a brown flood, and white ceilings. That’s it. Nothing else.
“Yes?” The lieutenants voice holds annoyance.
“Sir we would like to ask you a couple of questions…” The man in the white coat looks scared. I giggle and the man’s over sized glasses flash as he looks at me a brief moment.
The lieutenant gets ghost of a grin as he stands up and stretches. He has long arms and bulging muscles. For a brief second I see the flash of white as his shirt reveals the skin of his hip.
They both walk to a spot on the wall and the man with the over sized glasses swipes something and the wall opened up and then shuts just as quickly.
Soon I hear shouting and over heated voices. I get up to go see what its bout and find that I’m strapped to the table with white leather chords that dig into my skin. I wiggle my feet and notice that they aren’t tied. At all.
I lift my leg off of the bed and swivel it around. Until a pain stabs my shoulder bad enough that I cry out in pain.
The door opens and both men come back in. The one with the glasses doesn’t look happy and the lieutenant looks smug.
“I have some questions of my own.” The two men both stop dead and look at me with raised brows. Then they look at each other.
The blue eyes man takes a seat next to my bed and touches my hand. Its warm and leaves a brief feeling of… Feeling of- I have no idea. I shake my head and think of something else. He was the one that touched my hand briefly when I was sleeping.
“OK. Couldn’t hurt. Go on.” Blue eyes says.
“Well….” I think of what I want to ask fist. And what I do ask is what I didn’t want to know. “What’s your name?”
Blue eyes looks startled a moment before he covers it over with a smile. “Lieutenant Nikko.”
“That’s your rank.” I point out.
“Nikko.” He supplies.
I think another moment. “Where am I?” Nikko looks at the man with the glasses and he nods.
“Your in a hospital.” I blink. My parents knew what hospitals were for a brief moment. They told me stories of child birth and sickness. They said that the hospitals were destroyed with the bombings.
“Who Is he?” I point my finger at the man staring at me hungrily.
“He is a Doctor. Doctor, Valdez.” The lieutenant puts the emphasis on the word Doctor.
The Doctor gives a little wave.
“What’s that?” I point to the machine at my head. Now the doctor answers. “That’s a heart monitor.”
“I don’t like the beeping.” I tell him.
“Suck it up.” The doctor says. I about bring my foot up and clock him one but a hand on my arm stops me.
“Doctor Valdez.” Nikko looks at the doctor and suddenly he’s tall and very scary. His eyes are hooded and his lashes cast scary shadows down his face.
“Y-y-yes Sir?” the doctor about quivers in his lab coat.
“Leave us.”
The doctor scurries out like his shirts on fire. Or it’s going to be set on fire.
I turn my head and look at the guy before me. He sits back down with a slump and his young shoulders sag.
“Why?” The words tumble out of my mouth. “Why now?”
He looks up at me with lined eyes for one so young. “What do you mean?” He’s whispering now to and I have a vision of two children cowering under a blanket at night afraid to be caught by our overprotective parents. I blink it away and try to form the words that I want to say.
“Why is it you trust me enough to let your guard down?”
“Because you should trust me.”
“And why the Hell is that?”
His blue eyes look strait into my own. “Because I know where your parents are. And they are starting a revolution.” Nikko looks strait into my eyes to make sure I pay attention to his words.
“A new beginning.” I want to cover my ears and eyes. I don’t want to hear the next part because…because...because I don’t want to have hope again. I don’t want to have to die again.
“A fresh start.” I died and it was hard to come back. And these words bring on the spark. The fresh fire that lights in someone’s eyes. And its so hard- so- so-so- so very hard not to want to trust this man. To hope. To dare to even hope about having a new start.
But the next words light that spark again. He rekindles it and the hope that I want to cling to so very much.
“A new world.” The spark is lit and he knows it. I close my eyes to show him that I don’t want the spark to be lit.
He touches my hand. “A new world. A free world.” I open them and once again-
The fire is lit, a flame is burning, and the hope is rekindled.
Hope is a dangerous thing.


A thing that can’t be trifled with.
It shouldn't be trifled with.