Monday, 04 March 2047

  I haven't been able to update my notes for a while. So much has happened; I hope I don't forget a single detail. I'm writing this under immense stress.

  My week had been unremarkable — the usual routine: home, transport, early shower, machine maintenance, home again. Nothing out of the ordinary until the day I decided to walk, hoping for exercise and time to think. The night was clear, but the streets were teeming with patrollers. They stopped me twice, scanning my badge.

  "You are allowed to proceed. Take care," one said. The other didn't bother to respond.

  Perhaps they were searching for someone. These pathways were reserved for registered employees; anyone without a badge would be in serious danger.

  At the community fence, a small figure appeared at the entrance — a child I had never seen outside the gates before. Something felt wrong immediately.

  "Give me some water, please, kind sir," she said.

  She wore a ragged EIP uniform, thin and dirty and exhausted. My heart constricted, thinking of Samuel. Every instinct told me to help her, to contact Social Affairs, to get her back to safety. I passed my badge over the scanner and hesitated — and a sharp blow struck the back of my head.

  I'd been tricked. Consciousness slipped away.

  When I awoke she was pressing against my chest, pulling at my badge. I shoved her aside, hands trembling, and understood in the same instant what she was — not a child in danger but a child deployed as one, old enough to know what she'd done, young enough that someone else had decided she should do it. There was no time to sit with that.

  Dozens of marauders had poured into the compound. They smashed doors, set ablaze the houses they couldn't breach, dragged screaming residents into the streets. The pattern was terrifyingly familiar: men killed immediately, others beaten unconscious, women taken. Then they vanished before the drones arrived.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I ran to my house, forced the door, grabbed what I could — uniforms, boots, gloves, technical manuals, this manuscript. I stuffed everything into a bag and fled.

  The elderly were defenseless, beaten where they fell.

  Then the alarms blared. Drones arrived first, opening fire with the flat efficiency of a system performing exactly as designed. I was already outside the fences, driven by terror. Patrollers followed, their weapons adding to the chaos.

  When the gunfire ceased, I returned to assess the damage. Most residents were gone. A few remained, grievously wounded. I had blood on my temple — minor — but my arm throbbed with a deep, specific pain. Broken.

  "Send me to the hospital," I said.

  "The sick bay will suffice in your case," a patroller replied. I was guided to a small tent where a doctor examined the wounded.

  He confirmed the fracture. Panic surged.

  "I need to work. How can I operate machines with a broken arm?"

  "If you have ten thousand credits," he said, voice flat and without interest, "I'll send you to the hospital. Otherwise, your arm will be useless for work permanently."

  I agreed to pay. The patrollers herded me with the more severely injured — some stabbed, one pale and trembling from blood loss. I offered to donate blood. He nodded without a word.

  The patrol vehicles were unlike anything I had seen: sleek, angular, amber-lit interiors, drivers in mirror-polished helmets. Doors sealed shut behind us automatically. We moved through the streets in silence.

  Inside the sector hospital, everything functioned with the same merciless efficiency as the factory. Doctors checked vitals and logged details on central boards. Nurses moved in timed sequences. Patients were triaged without warmth, pain managed without acknowledgment. It was only my second time here. The first had been for our son's birth — a memory of sterile joy, now distant and almost difficult to account for.

  I paid the fee. A year's savings, gone. My arm was reset and fitted with a rigid immobilizer, the cold metal biting against my skin. Antibiotics administered. The entire process completed in under thirty minutes.

  The survivors were loaded onto buses, faces pale, clothing torn or scorched, hands trembling in laps. The interiors smelled of damp fabric and faint antiseptic. No one spoke. The engines hummed.

  I clutched my bag, my immobilized arm aching with every turn along the uneven route. Outside, familiar streets blurred past — and then stopped being familiar. Signs I recognized gave way to ones I didn't. Landmarks disappeared. The skyline of my community never appeared, replaced by concrete walls, industrial corridors, the occasional cold glint of drone patrols.

  The road stretched on, twisting through sectors I had never seen. The shadows outside grew longer.

  We were being taken somewhere we hadn't chosen, and nothing about it would be like home.