*Grunts
"That was a really eventful last night, a bit too eventful for me." Ezra remarked as he woke up. He was still contemplating yesterday's attack, trying to make sense of these seemingly random and uncoordinated attack patterns. It was as if the killer wasn't after anything and just wanted to cause mayhem, slaughter and suffering for the people of the settlement.
Ezra streched a little and then went out of the barracks. Exactly 5:00 a.m. He really needed to get his mind off that murder mystery and what better way to do it than to head to the food supply area and realize it was his turn to make, or rather deliver breakfast to his fellow space slaves.
"Well I guess any food is better than no food at all." Ezra said to himself as he begrudgingly started walking to the food supply area. He heard a deep yet still loud enough to be heard across a whole country voice shouting from the barracks "Come on Ezra move your skinny ass a bit will ya, we do only get half an hour to eat breakfast, and I think y'should know that as well as I do by now.
" *sigh, Yes captain Rush I know. " Ezra responded.
Ezra started to pick up the pace and reached the food supplies after 5 minutes of waking up. He picked up the "food" from the container which was in fact only a bunch of nutrient cubes.
These cubes were used as military rations when they were first invented. An easy, efficient, cheap and mess free way to get all the calories, nutrients and water that your body needs quickly in case of war, or widespread hunger. Later it was also used to feed prison inmates. And you only needed to consume two of them every day.
Meanwhile Ezra was returning with the nutrient cubes to his fellow slaves still thinking about the attacks and pondering what kind of creature is capable of such slaughter, since for all he knew they were the only living beings on this barren wretched planet.
"Here's your food guys, I already ate mine on the way." Ezra said.
Everyone took one nutrient cube and passed the rest on. They gulped it all down in an instant. Which is what you'd expect for breakfast the size of a sugar cube.
"Alright then let's grab our tools and be on our way. Rookies you'll go to the soft part of the desert, Ezra I presume you already know where you're going?" The captain asked.
"Yes sir I'll go to the medium desert with my team."
"Good and I'll take my men and go to the rocky desert. Now move it we can't afford to be late!" And everyone went off at exactly 6:00 a.m.
As each team made their way to their own designated part of the desert Ezra started thinking:
Dammit what a waste of a life am I living here. Am I doomed to live every remaining day of my life on this planet to pay for a stupid government's mistake?! I am not wrong for speaking the truth, yet when I did, I was exiled and sentenced to live my entire life here as a slave on a faluire of a planet. A place constantly thunderstorming everywhere, without even an metre of green land anywhere. A place where everything I always do is mine this stuff-this energy source, that I don't even know the name of and...
Meanwhile Ezra and his group had reached their designated mining spot at exactly 7:00 a.m. to start the daily grind of hammering their pickaxes into the ground with full force until they struck something that sounds like glass and that something was very common here. And that is the energy source which they needed to extract out of the ground, without destroying it, throw into their sac and then reapeat. A.K.A mining.
Ezra took his shirt off, revealing his muscular upper body, a body just like the ones of greek sculptures just a bit thinner, with a V-shaped upper body, a six pack, muscular chest with a lot of resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger's chest but less inflated, a wickedly muscular and well defined back, strong, sturdy, thick, full yet flexible arms and wrists and shoulders that look like their own shoulder armour.
He and his crew started mining at 7:00 and didn't stop the work until 12:00 p.m. During that time thoughts kept crossing his mind like "protecting the people yeah right as if what a world government you are." and "it's not like your system was so flawless in the first place!" or "haven't you had enough of this bullshit Ezra, don't you want your freedom, your revenge?"
During the break (from 12:00 to 12:30) he wasn't keen on talking, not that he was ever the talkative type but still. And all the way until the end of the mining session he was furious, those thoughts wouldn't stop and he couldn't focus at all.
At 3:00 p.m. they finished mining and started to head back to the settlement. The thunderstorms on this planet even though they were constant and never stopped, which made seeing a lot more difficult, seemed to be getting worse somehow. But all the crews made it back to the settlement just in time, at 4:00. At 4:30 it was time for the second nutrient cube of the day for everyone, which Ezra had to go fetch again.
From 5:00 to 6:00 they would take a quick break to do whatever they wanted as long as they didn't leave the confines of the settlement. Most of the inmates would take a quick nap, but Ezra just sat on the ground today without doing anything else for a full hour, these thoughts were really getting to him.
Then they go training next to the barracks from 6:00 to 9:00 under the captain, which was arguably the toughest part of the day, even tougher than the mining seesions for Ezra, he would always come out of those sessions with his snow-white hair turned gray but it didn't lose it's signature look, Ezra's hair was separated at the two thirds mark, it took the form of check marks on both sides and was very sharp around the ends.
His face well carved face with high cheekbones, little face fat, and a very strong jawline would always come out even more dirty and filled with rubble than at the end of his mining sessions and he'd be very brittle and unable to move any muscle in his body properly, he always described the feeling after those training sessions as being a "living corpse".
After those training sessions everyone went to bed exhausted and struggling to catch their breath at exactly 9:00 p.m. Ezra's dark brown eyes couldn't be more tired and they shut very quickly.
This grueling routine was his life for the past three years and three months as punishment for what he had done against the government just like every other one of his fellow slaves. They were all sentenced to mine their lives away on this planet nicknamed "Lilith".