Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88673 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
The door bangs closed just as I hit my head on the floor, and everything goes black.
CHAPTER 2 - RIGGS
When I come out of the shower, I’m talking myself into the idea that this job is going well.
Being sent into Disciple, West Virginia, to set up surveillance on the town and going up against the new security force Jim Bob Baptist hired to protect his Revival isn’t going to be a disaster. It’s going fine. I’ve spent the last three weeks putting up dozens of discreet cameras and no one has even looked at me twice. Of course, that was August when the Revival was every weekend and it’s September now, so the tourists only come one weekend a month, which means it’s much harder to blend in. But the job is basically done. All I have to do now is make sure everything’s working and troubleshoot any bugs.
I deserve this shower. I earned the right to squat in this empty house. No one else is using it, and I’ve been paying attention to it all month. It looks like it’s in the middle of being renovated, but there have been no workers here since I started watching. Not a single one.
So yesterday, I moved in. If no one else is gonna enjoy this place, I might as well help myself.
And anyway, I’ll be out of here in three days and no one back home will ever know that I stayed here a few nights instead of the woods. I mean, why should I camp out in the fucking forest, roughing it in the mud, when this perfectly good mansion has nothing better to do than give me shelter?
This house was the ideal solution for what could’ve been a very unsatisfying ending to a very stupid job. And I can use the perfection right now. Because the last six years of my life have been dark, depressing hell.
I can’t go back to those tunnels. I won’t go back. I’ll do anything my father tells me to do in order to never go back.
Despite spending the last six years in the deepest, darkest hole of a prison imaginable, I’m not a fuck-up. I come from a good family. A really good family with Colony roots that span two hundred years. I was educated, and privileged, and given all the best opportunities growing up.
Which is what got me in trouble in the end.
Every kid who is born into an upper-class family in the Colonies gets told the truth when we collectively turn eighteen on June first. But up until then, we all think the world we grew up in is all there is.
It’s not true. As nice as they can be, there’s more to this world than underground cities.
There’s sunshine, and grass, and trees, and oceans. Not to mention women.
And men. Like Collin Creed. Who was not the reason I went AWOL, but he definitely played his part.
But of course—if you run, they hunt you.
So they caught me and I’ve spent the last six years in prison for it.
Not prison like they have up here with cells, and guards, and shitty food. A Colony prison is nothing like that. There are no cells. There are no guards. You get sent to the tunnels and spend your days and nights drilling and thinking about nothing but dirt, and rocks, and darkness. You’re so deep underground you don’t even get to see an access shaft until you’re ninety days out from release.
I about lost my mind. It’s not so bad if you’ve never felt sunlight on your back before, but everyone who gets sent to the tunnels was a runner who got caught. All of us knew what we were missing down there. There weren’t even overhead lights, just headlamps. Everything was a shadow. I lost track of time. The stress of being underground again gave me nightmares and at one point, I was thinking about giving up.
I think they wait for that moment and then they pull us out and explain that we all have jobs to do, and we’re all important, and they are sure we’ve learned our lessons. They tell us what disappointments we are to our fathers. Wouldn’t we like another chance to prove ourselves to be honorable, and loyal, and dedicated to the Colony? Wouldn’t we like to go back up top to work? Only this time, we will be good, obedient Colonists and complete our assignments and return home.
Just the thought of being back up top again was enough to make me promise them anything.
Anything.
I can’t go back to those tunnels. I won’t go back to those tunnels.
And now I won’t have to because this job is basically done—early, I might add—and even though I’m squatting in an old mansion, I’m gonna get away with it. No one down below will ever find out that I didn’t camp in the woods and bathe in the river like a good little Colony worker.