The air at the border was heavy. The sky stretched out, endless and gray, while a tense, sullen silence weighed down on the land like a slow-moving fog. This was where Eden met the rest of the world, where dreams came to collide with harsh, unyielding reality. A place of hope, desperation, and heartbreak—a place where the dream of Eden became a mirage.
I had been stationed on Eden's border for nearly four years now, watching as families, young and old, made the long, arduous journey from Yi Ti, from the sprawling plains of the Joghos Nhai, all the way to this line in the sand. They came believing Eden was a sanctuary—a perfect world where no one suffered, where every need was met. They heard stories about our gleaming towers, our safe streets, the endless promise of a better life. They believed if they could just make it here, all the pain and suffering would melt away.
I loved my home; I loved Eden with a devotion that people sometimes called fanatical. But they didn't understand—Eden wasn't just a place. It was everything. It was safety, order, beauty. The Lantrun family ruled with strength and vision, making Eden an oasis in a desert of chaos. And I would kill to protect it. I had before, and I would again. But even here, in this place I swore to protect, there was something no one in Eden wanted to acknowledge—a dark, aching wound festering just beyond the border, just beyond reach.
Millions were here, right outside our gates, waiting. They huddled in tents or under makeshift shelters, their faces tired, their eyes sunken with hunger and despair. The camps stretched as far as the eye could see, spreading out in a hopeless sprawl. Children played in the dust, too young to understand, while their parents, faces gaunt and eyes hollow, clung to a frail hope that someday the gates would open. The stories had brought them here, but the reality kept them imprisoned. Eden was not ready. We could not take them all.
I remembered one day vividly. A mother—barely more than a girl herself, no older than twenty—stood in front of me, clutching a baby wrapped in a thin, ragged cloth. Her face was bruised, a mark of the harshness of these camps, where assaults were rampant, and no one was truly safe. She looked at me with eyes that held no accusation, only a plea. The baby was whimpering, too weak even to cry.
"Please," she whispered, voice cracking. "Just take him. Just my son. He has no future here. I'll stay, I'll do anything—just, please…save him."
I wanted to. God, I wanted to reach out, take that child, and assure her he'd have a life inside Eden's walls, away from the despair and suffering. But orders were orders. We had to keep the borders secure. I looked into her eyes and felt a churning sickness in my stomach. I shook my head. "I'm sorry," I murmured, barely able to keep my voice steady.
She didn't say anything more. She just walked away, clutching her child as if holding on to the last shreds of her hope. I watched her disappear into the mass of people, swallowed up by the sea of waiting, desperate souls. Since that day, every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face—her eyes filled with quiet acceptance, her child's small, fragile form. I wondered if they were still out there, waiting.
The only thing keeping us soldiers going out here was Soma. We'd pop the pills just to numb ourselves to the heartbreak, to dull the emptiness that gnawed at us from the inside. Eden had perfected a utopia for its citizens, but here, just outside, was where the illusion shattered.
And now, making things worse, Trinity Industries had moved in. The conglomerate had been granted permission by the administration to set up operations along the border, a decision left to the Senate. The Lantruns had been locked in the White House for months, rumors swirling of a family dispute—a rift between Orin, the High Inquisitor, and Taren, the High General. Mark was mediating the conflict, Clara was nowhere to be found, and in their absence, the Senate took action. They greenlit the entry of Trinity, undoubtedly influenced by the fact that many of them were shareholders. Now, the immigrants were drafted into sweatshops, building trinkets for the citizens of Eden, each piece a tiny betrayal of the dreams that had drawn them here.
For Trinity, it was a windfall—cheap labor with nowhere else to go, selling survival at a price. For the immigrants, it was a grim cycle: they worked long hours, barely earning enough to feed themselves, and bought supplies sold by Trinity at inflated prices. They had nowhere to go and no way to go back. They were trapped, their dreams of Eden reduced to cold, hard survival.
I thought about my son, safe in Londonium, living in the security and comfort I fought for. He didn't know what the border was like. No one back in Eden did. The sanitized version they saw was carefully crafted—Eden's moral high ground, the myth of generosity. They couldn't imagine this reality.
What would he think if he saw what I saw? If he saw children playing in the dust, dreaming of a paradise they would never enter? What would he feel if he looked into the eyes of that mother I had turned away, saw the silent plea there? He would never have to know that Eden's comfort came at the cost of others' suffering.
I missed my family, the small, cozy home we had in Londonium. I longed to be back there, to forget this place. But duty kept me here, bound to this line in the sand, this place where hope died daily. My heart ached, and I knew that I would carry this burden with me for as long as I lived. Because here, on the edge of paradise, I had seen the price of perfection. And it was steep.