Chapter 13


"I stole these photos from her office when I enlisted as a nurse to get you..five out of the Tower," says Friday, careful of what words she chooses to say. Knowing that the wound of Anna and Brice's passing might still be a bit fresh.

"This is absurd.." Nila mumbles as she looks through the photos.

There's one of Miss Chaucer riding a beautiful black and white horse. It's coat is white with a black mane and what sort of looks like a black star on it's forehead. Another one shows Miss Chaucer laughing on an amusement ride besides another woman about the same age, her hair flowing in the wind. Nila marvels at how carefree and jolly Earleen looks. It's almost as if they aren't even the same person.

"How is this possible?" whispers Riley, his head down, staring at the images.

Friday sighs defeatedly. "I'm going to try and keep this as minimalistic as possible and you three have to try to keep up, okay? There's a lot to this that you don't know." she says and glances around the table for some clarity and eventually gains some nods. "Okay. On Mars, you would've been made to take pills, right? Well those pills served another purpose other than fighting off diseases. They were made to enhance what you're capable of, though the effect is only temporary. Which is why you needed to keep on taking them. Every person has a unique chain of DNA. Some people are better at doing certain things compared to others..the whole reason of the draw was to weed out the best of the best. Who was the smartest, the most fittest etc-"

"But why?!" Kaitlyn interrupts.

"I'm getting there Kaitlyn," Friday replies in an annoyed tone. "How..how do I say this? The scientists of the twenty-first century were always on a quest to discover the fountain of the youth. One doctor, a close friend of Miss Chaucer's discovered this by playing with all kinds of cells from animal cells to human stem cells, stressing for years on a way to "press pause" on cells from dying off, so the cell is no longer a factory working overtime to produce cells but rather a holding cell for perfectly good DNA. For ages, his test subjects usually resulted in getting Cancer as in manipulating the animal's DNA, mistakes would be produced and therefore carry on. Until miraculously, it didn't anymore. Once Doctor Phillips was confident in his method, he met with a sixty year old, anonymous woman and committed a DNA Harvesting surgery on her. With whose cells exactly? I'd rather not get into that." Friday takes a pause, lifting her head to see all three children gawking at her, hanging on to every word to her luck. It's a miracle they haven't lost track of all the events yet.

"Anyway, it was a success. The woman saw results in under a week, rejuvenating from mole-covered and wrinkly to the appearance of a twenty year old. The woman remained as mr Phillip's confidant untils she saw any signs of deterioration. He only heard another word from her until sixteen years later. Hence, the draw on Mars. When the top five were picked and finalised, they would be sent down to the Medical Centre to be harvested. Harvested meaning, their new and improved DNA would be taken and stored in a freezer until either Miss Chaucer or one of her clients would come to pick it up. Her clients are usually upper class people looking to improve their physical abilities or maybe they want to live more longer! This is what Miss Chaucer usually picks, more years to her lifeline. This is possible since her employees are now capable (thanks to Doctor Phillips) of modifying a harvested person's genes into never dying off until about sixteen years. Sort of like how the immortal jellyfish is able to reset itself to its earliest state, however, not so naturally. That is the only reason why the draw happens every sixteen years. Please tell me you understand so far?"

As she looks around, everyone holds dumbfounded and vacant expressions.

"And..wh-why was...Anna all cut up?" Riley asks, his voice just above a whisper. Everyone's gone dead silent, probably trying to process what they've just been told. Nila swears she would be able to hear a pin drop.

"Eden doesn't believe in being wasteful. After harvesting, the person's body parts would be used for someone in need. Perhaps some famous football player needs a new kidney or a car crash victim might need a new foot."

"A new foot. How can they even do that?" Nila asks, sounding astonished.

"Surgeons can re-attach it before the skin starts to rot. Sort of like a gecko and it's tail," Friday replies matter of factly and Nila tries not to barf.

Nila catches herself having tears in the brims of her eyes but doesn't bother to wipe them away. "What about Brice?" she asks in a shaky voice.

"Brice wasn't meant to even be there so I guess, in Earleen's eyes, he was just an unnecessary extra. Besides, I'm pretty sure that on Mars they weren't very welcoming towards obesity, right? Well it's not any better down here." Friday says in a soft voice, her eyebrows furrowed in sympathy for the poor girl.

Suddenly, Nila shoots up like a rocket out of her seat. "Oh my God! They're treating Mars like a farm and us, their cattle! That's barbaric, cannabilistic! And-and, Miss Megalla, Mr Devlon, Gianna, Mars' leaders! They all KNEW! And they sent us down here to DIE!"  Nila starts to shout.

"Nila..calm down. Maybe they didn't know?" Kaitlyn says and she reaches an arm out from the wheelchair she's sitting on and grazes Nila's arm, only for a second until Nila starts to pace back and forth. Looking very deep in thought.

"They did." Friday suddenly blurts out and Nila stops abruptly in her tracks.

"What?"

"All authoritative figures that have anything to do with the draw are told that there will be executions if they do not cooperate with Eden and keep their methods a secret. Miss Chaucer can make anything happen. Especially mysterious, unexplainable deaths with the click of her fingers. Even if she's a whole light years away from her target," Friday states and rolls her eyes in disgust at her last sentence.

There's a long silence before anyone decides to say anything.

"How come the rest of Mars can't come down here?! Whatever they've done, they've blocked out the radiation. Why do they even need us? Why not just use their own population? They've got seventy-million anyway-" Riley mutters.

"Riley! They're still people," objects Kaitlyn.

"The radiation is blocked out from their high-tech anti-radiation panels. Really, they can rid the entire Earth of radiation if they wanted too but they choose not to as they want to keep their population in one place. They use the population on Mars because they're more interested in maintaining their current population rather than adding to it. I can tell you more though, I'll have to give you a little bit of a History lesson."

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"As of 3:25 am, June 11th, the second largest nuclear bomb was initiated from one of Russia's army bases by an unknown terrorist after a dispute between world leaders was not resolved and his request weren't met. As I'm speaking, our world leaders are meeting in the White House to try and come up with a solution for us to escape possible global atomic annihilation. The radiation is spreading quickly and Africa has already been affected. Australians are now preparing to evacuate the country. From yesterday to late last night there were twelve robberies and about six recorded riots in Brazil, Afghanistan, Russia and America. Approximately 2,012 people have been taken into custody from the riots and there were 248 causualties. People are being urged to evacuate as soon as possible to China, where you will be directed to China's National Space Administration headquarters and be told to await further instructions. This is Jennifer Carson on 9 National News. Goodnight everyone and may God bless you all."

"Mrs President! Look this way!"

"Miss, what do you have to say about Russia's ownership of the nuke? And why did the Koreans hand it over?"

"Will we all die?!"

Reporters scream their questions and push their flashing cameras into Miss Chaucer's face. She hides her face from the lenses with her hand and keeps her head down as she walks up the stairs to the White House. Once she was finally away from the blood thirst journalists, she flips her hair over her shoulder confidently and turns around.

"I assure all of you that we will find a way to deal with this. The human race isn't going to go extinct just yet." she answers though it still doesn't shut them up. With that, she spins on her heels and heads toward the large front doors of the White House and walks through to get to the conference room, where all the other government officials would be waiting.

When she arrives at the dark, double doors of the conference room, a formally dressed lady scurries over and helps Earleen take her navy blue button up coat off her shoulders and offers to take her bag.

"Wait," Miss Chaucer says abruptly and slides her hand into her bag to pull out a small handheld gun before handing her bag over. Miss Chaucer hides her gun in her white blouse. The woman takes her bag and stares at the gun doe eyed but doesn't dare say anything about it. She gives a quick, sweet smile and mutters, "Miss," before quickly walking off.

Miss Chaucer pushes open the doors and strolls through calmly to see everyone standing up in attention, waiting for her arrival. As she walks around the circular conference table, she shakes their hands and says some greetings to acknowledge their attendance and finally takes her seat at the front of the table. As does everyone else.

"This meeting is officially commencing. I'm glad all of you were able to make it as it seems we've got a very stressful issue on our hands. I'd like t-"

Suddenly, the representative of Russia bolts out of his seat with a perplexed look on his face. "Unfourtunately, my father was too ashamed to show his face in this room so he sent me as his ambassador instead. I-I can't express this enough, that my father had absolutely nothing to do with the initiation of Bomb A769 and he would never try to wipe out-"

"Mr Vulkenstov. We know that this is in no way your father's fault. Please calm down so we can begin," states Miss Chaucer and the ambassador of Russia brushes down his suit and slowly sits down, looking a little bit more relaxed.

The conversation in that conference room lasted for about sixteen hours before anyone agreed on an decision. At some point, the conversation turned into an argument and got heated to the point where the prime minister of Japan even suggested killing off the population in the Southern Hemisphere and burrowing underground, which sent the other diplomats in to outrage.

Eventually they all came to an agreement on something.

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