345.A.E (After.Earth)
The sun, or what was supposed to be the sun, hung in the sky shining down onto a city big enough to be a country.
This was the seventh compartment.
It was almost the size of a small country, with an estimate of over 500 kilometers.
This compartment was home to 1.33 billion people, with 10 different towns and over 35 villages surrounding
the towns.
In the outskirts of one of these villages, up on a hill, was a cottage.
Not big, but it was the right size for a family.
Down the hill was a girl running up the hill towards the cottage with a smile on her face.
The "sun" was shining on her beautiful face, which made her seem even more beautiful, with the wind passing through her long black hair.
It was so shiny and straight it would make any lady jealous.
She seemed out of breath from afar, but anyone who was close to her would see she looked so refreshed as she ran up this hill.
As she got closer to the cottage, she could see a figure that stood beside the entrance of the cottage.
This figure was almost identical to her, with the only difference being how pale and weak this figure seemed.
As she got closer, she could now see the beautiful blue eyes that made the figure stand out.
Although she had brown eyes, this didn't make her any less beautiful.
She got close enough to see the cracks on the walls of the cottage, which made it seem older than it actually was.
As she made her final step up the hill, she heard a soothing voice welcome her.
This was the voice of her twin sister Lyra as she offered a cup of water to Elara, who seemed out of breath.
Elara took the cup and started drinking the water.
It had a weird taste but was not harmful to the body, and since this was basically the best they could get in the 7th compartment, she couldn't complain about it.
Lyra: "How was the town?"
Elara, in-between gulps, hastily responded: "Same old, same old.
The streets are still filled with people who are barely living.
If staying in dilapidated buildings and surviving on the crumbs of those at the 5th compartment could be called living."
She felt refreshed after taking the last sip from the cup.
Elara, thinking of how to ease the tension after her response, quickly remembered something and looked back at Lyra with so much excitement.
She told her about the news she had heard from one of the locals in town.
According to the local, the gates are expected to open up in the next three days.
This news was enough to put a smile on Lyra's pale face.
To an outsider, this kind of news wasn't one to be excited about because the only times those gates are ever opened is when the assemblage needed people to mine on planets for materials that cannot be gotten on the ship.
They forced people's fathers, sons, and cousins all in the name of working for the assemblage.
Over half of those men never make it back to their families.
More than half of them get killed from radiation exposure on these planets, and the rest are either used as bait for the creatures on those planets or are forced to work themselves to death.
But to the sisters, this news meant that those citizens of the 7th compartment who were fortunate enough to get work as the Maids or even test dummies for members of the assemblage in the 5th compartment were allowed to come home for a week or two, and their mother was one of these fortunate people.
She was hired as a maid for a member of the Ashford family branch in the 5th compartment.
This wasn't a prominent job, and the pay wasn't all that good, but it was more than enough for the family of five.
After passing the cup, Elara entered into the cottage.
The inside wasn't all that fancy.
In fact, there was nothing that stood out in the living room.
All that was in the room was two worn-down chairs, a center table which was a substitute for a dining table, and flowers over at a window to the right side of the living room.
To the left side of the living room was a staircase leading up to the rooms.
In a split second, she was up the stairs heading towards one of the rooms.
She got to the door and opened it with so much strength it almost broke in two as she walked into the room.
She saw a boy, his back facing her as he stared out a window.
This boy looked nothing older than 13 with short golden brown hair.
He looked short for his age but still more mature than his peers.
As he turned to face Elara, she saw his beautiful blue eyes which made him look elegant like a noble from the books her mother read to her and her sister when they were younger.
But with this handsome young man staring at her, all she felt was an urge to punch him right on the face, as this was her elder brother, "our protagonist."