"Oh- look. She's not dead after all."

She clutched her throat, gasping, drinking the cool air into her lungs ravenously. A face appeared between her and the dingy ceiling above. She recognized an expression of concern.

"She hit her head so hard though. Hey- hey are you still with us? Can you talk?"

She didn't know. As she looked around the room words appeared, fizzling to life behind her eyes. She had to focus to catch them. Door. Feet. Inside. Pain. The thoughts scrambled around and then found the correct area to process in her brain. "Yes."

"Do you remember what happened? We heard there was a rock slide but we don't know how that could have happened- no one else got hit."

Did she remember? She shuddered as a memory filled her.

----

Heat spewed out from inside her, viscous as boiling honey. There was no air. No air at all. She couldn't move. What- who held her in place? She struggled but the heat burned more brightly with every twist of her head. She was going to burn alive. No. She wouldn't die like this. She refused. She could fix this. She must fix this. The heat washed back. She could hear the angry roar behind her fading as a mist of other voices rose around her. One was the same, over and over. Come to us, come to us, come to us. But if she focused, she could hear others.

Come to us

I'm scared! Don't let me die of this disease!

Come to us

I have to live on- please please

COME TO US

Anything. Anything for my freedom. I cannot die in here!

Dirt everywhere. In her eyes, her nose, her mouth, pressing on her from all sides. So cold. All but her face. Something warm oozed onto her cheeks.

I cannot die in here!

----

She blinked.

"Opal it's an easy question. Do you remember or not?"

"Opal?"

A snort. "Even if she's alive her brain is broke."

"I'm Opal?" She sat up. The first face smiled at her and its body scooted away to give her room.

"Yes, your name is Opal. I'm Kait- that's Spark. We're both happy you're alive."

"Actually, I'm just shocked."

Words were coming back to her more quickly, along with a pounding headache. She looked down. Hands. Messy. The nails- her nails were broken in places, dirt ground into the beds and into the calluses and scratches too. She rotated them back and forth, curiously. Kait offered her something. A cup. She sniffed. Water. Opal swallowed it down in three gulps and wiped her mouth.

"No but really that hit she took should have killed any normal person."

"Stop. You're being rude."

"I'm not." Spark's dark eyebrows lowered. The word flashed in Opal's mind. Annoyance.

Opal took in her surroundings now. This was called a house- or at least a cabin. A building. It was barely a room. There were other small thin cots like the one she sat in. Two had other people, both looked unwell.

"Where am I?"

"The infirmary. I was about to take you to the morgue though."

"Spark!"

"Oh." Opal considered this word. Morgue. "Well, I'm not dead so I won't let you."

Kait grinned at her. "Are you ok if I do a few checks on you then? Lift your arms... like this."

Opal lifted.

"Good. Keep them there. Ok now stick out your tongue. Like this."

Opal followed the rest of her commands easily enough even when she asked her to stand on one leg. Other than a headache, she felt completely fine. She said so. When she reached up to push hair out of her face her hand came back sticky and wet. She looked at her palm in surprise. Kait picked up a cloth and began to gently try and clean the blood from her hair.

"Well- if she's alive I got nothin' to incinerate." Spark looked supremely disappointed about this. "You better come back out to the trench with me."

"She needs to recover a little."

He pointed Opal. "She's recovered! Other than a little dumber than before. Hell, that will probably make her a better worker anyway. We don't want anyone to notice she's gone; they need to know her injury was exaggerated."

"Opal, he's probably right about going back." Kait offered her another cup of water. "But if you feel woozy or anything, come straight back to me." Opal stared at her ears; they were shiny with metal. Kait brushed her hair forward. "Ok??"

Opal nodded as though she understood and turned to follow Spark out.

The brightness of the sun hurt her eyes. The wave of dusty heat slapped against their faces as they exited the tiny building. For a moment she couldn't move. Spark paused, giving her a once over. "Are you going to stand there?"

Opal trembled at the memory of the burning coming from inside her but managed to continue. The land was strange, red and black dirt. Nothing to be seen, just crumbling buildings shimmering under the sun and the occasional shadow of someone walking past. She looked up. The sky was too bright- almost purple, but the air appeared misty. Ashy. She jumped as her barefoot landed on a sharp chunk of rock.

She wanted to ask questions. Lots of questions. Spark didn't seem like the best one to ask. Although he was waiting for her to catch up whenever she lagged behind to rub her temples or look around, he glared each time and twisted the bracelets around his wrists.

Their destination, the 'trench' appeared to be just that. The edge dropped some 15 feet with an uneven stone pathway leading down. She could see dozens of people, all youngish, trudging back and forth dragging piles of ugly gray roots.

A question had to be answered. She pointed. "What's going on?"

"What's going on- I... do you really not remember anything?"

"No."

"So, you don't know what happened."

"No."

"Do you know why you are here?"

"No."

"Do you know where you are?"

"No."

He frowned. "Ok. What do you know?"

"I'm Opal, you're Spark- Kait is back there, and I injured my head. Somehow."

"Do you know the year?"

"No."

"I... well it doesn't really matter. It doesn't take much of a brain to do. Ya digging up the modified root produce and separating it from the trash. The protein potatoes right now. And you put them on one of the sleds there if its food and that big box if it's not. And that's it."

Opal frowned. "That seems boring."

"Big talk coming from a girl who doesn't know what planet she's on."

"Earth. I'm on Earth."

Spark wrinkled his nose. "Whatever." He headed down the crude stone steps and Opal decided her only choice was to follow.

She had been right. It was boring. And difficult. The roots of the potatoes were thick and fibrous. She had to twist around and around to release one of the ugly plants. And she had to dig to find them. There was lots of trash too of all sizes and shapes and no good way to pattern the digging. Luckily her callused hands seemed to remember most of what to do. But she didn't understand why. For some reason, her mind kept coming back to the idea that this was not the kind of work she did. This was beneath her. Her face was covered in liquid. The word came to her. Sweat. Gross. She paused, wiping her face to take a look at the people around her. Ages. Young? She tried to find this memory somewhere. Teenage? Some were smaller too.

They all were covered in the same dark red brown soil that coated her own hands and wearing the same clothing. Uniforms. She noted that although the clothing was the same, some of them were wearing additional items. Everyone seemed to have something around their neck. For the majority of the kids, the necklace looked like it was made of metal fluid. A few of them looked to be a bit sturdier. She looked to Spark's and realized his stood out. He also had those bracelets along with a necklace, and now that she looked, he had them around his ankles too. Five each but one looked different than the others- rough, thick, and not as loose. She examined the others and noticed a few had additional things. It occurred to her that some of Kait's earrings also looked like the material Spark had around his wrists. Opal ran her hand over her own neck and felt both relieved and disappointed to find she wore only the simple fluid necklace.

A piercing noise filled the air just as the ashen sky began to darken above. Opal covered her ears. The kids all stopped their work, some of them groaning with exhaustion, some dusting their hands off and beginning to talk to one another. Opal waited for Spark to tell her what to do but he'd disappeared in the crowd.

She followed them up the stone steps but at the top they all started breaking into smaller groups and heading towards different small red-brown structures. Opal paused. She understood. They clearly had designated areas, but which one was hers?

"Opal?" This voice sounded timid.

She turned to see a tall grimy girl standing with her hands clutched together. There were ribbons of clean skin down her face. Her eyes were blood shot. Crying. She'd been crying.

"You're alive!" A new voice now. Another girl threw her arms around her. A hug. She was actively crying. Opal's arms came up spontaneously to pat the other girl's back. Once again her body remembered what her head didn't. A second later the girl pulled away to stare. Her lower lip was still trembling.

"How are you alive?"

"I... don't know."

"Yue said you basically got your head caved in when you tried to climb the wall, that there must have been a hollow from digging you didn't see."

"He embellished, clearly." The first girl was wiping her face, scowling.

"Promise me you won't try and escape again."

"I..." Opal looked back and forth between them. She had no memory of these two. Only, a faint, very faint, tugging in her stomach. She decided lying would get her nowhere when they obviously knew her very well. "I'm sorry. I don't remember anything."

"It might not be permanent." One of the girls- Opal now knew her as Gray, was nibbling on the corner of some greenish block. It smelled wet but broke into dusty pieces. "My older sister read me a story once about someone who got amnesia. It was a romance story but still, I think it was based in fact."

"Gray's sister got to go to school. Big shot in the family. Do you remember, Opal?" Opal shook her head.

This tall girl with the brown eyes was called Ermine. As far as Opal could tell from the two girls' story, they'd all been friends since they were first loaded on the crates and sent to the farms for 'work'. They'd gone to one of the worst options.

Kids went to the trench farms either because they'd gotten in trouble, someone had gotten a reward for sending you here or most likely because there were just too many people being born. Hard labor, archaic labor. No machines- whatever those were- to help because apparently these domes were supposed to be demolished and no one wanted to waste time making a machine for an outdated form of agriculture in a trash heap. Gray had ranted about this for a long while. If you did your work well though you got to go to a 'central city' or even a 'suburb'- whatever those things were. If you were lazy or made trouble something bad happened neither one of them seemed to want to remind her of. Opal also gathered that she was around 18 years old, although a lot of the kids here didn't know or lied about their ages. She'd been here a little over two years but she was having trouble measuring how long a year was.

Opal's head was spinning with information, but something still felt... off. The girls seemed sincere. Opal didn't know why she felt so sure she was able to judge that about them, but she still felt like she wasn't getting the entire story.

Gray and Ermine also looked anxious every time she asked any questions that started with 'why'.

Opal picked up her own 'food' and tried to take a bite. It hurt her teeth. She had to turn the corner sideways to grind it off farther back in her mouth. It was dry, too, but the flavor turned out to be decent, although Opal still couldn't give a name to what she tasted. Once she got enough saliva production to actually chew it seemed to grow exponentially in her mouth. At one point Gray had to stop her from biting off too much at once so she didn't choke herself.

Ermine was telling a story about a boy who got so frustrated with a root today that he tried to use his teeth to tear it out of the ground. Opal half listened, she was running her fingers along the edge of the necklace.

"Why do we have these on?"

Gray frowned. "To keep us from running. There are sensors to stop us. If you try for any of the roads, it will choke you until... you pass out and then you get brought back in."

"Then how was I going to escape?"

The girls looked at each other. "We don't know."

-----

fun fact of the day: Xoloitzcuintli or Xolos or naked doggies were/are used 'medicinally' like hot water bottles. So if you had arthritis or tummy cramping cuddling a nakey dog would help.

Unsure why we aren't doing that all over the world but anyway hope you enjoyed reading!

Yes expect this to continue its fun and we're in a pandemic LET ME HAVE THIS. thnx :)