I wanted to point out to him that there was no ‘American Redwoodtown’. There were very few of his kind left.

“And this manifesto, this All Kind philosophy, do you think it will work?” my mother asked.

“Of course it’s not the whole solution, but I think we can all agree it’s a start. It’s a new way of thinking that takes race out of the equation.” He swiped his palms across each other, as if he were slapping dirt from them.

It sounded earnest, but it was too simple to even an eleven-year-old. Could we really leave all the prejudice behind?

“See, if we embed people with ID, we can always keep track of them. We can control where they go and when. No one would get through a gate to the next ring without us knowing, without us specifically okaying it. And if we shuffle the races between each town, we can start healing the human genome. Slowly start to rid this world of the racial markers that only cause fighting.”

I started to wonder if he was a scientist. He certainly tried to talk like one, albeit a lazy one who used buzzwords to get people interested but didn’t know much about the specifics.

“I already have the go ahead from Este and Poltinov; I just need your signatures…” He looked to my mother and the black man. “And then we can get out of this hell hole.”

I remember thinking I didn’t like the way he spoke to my mother, like they were friends, when really, they had been fighting each other for years. Killing each other’s citizens. But I also knew everyone was tired of the death.

The American was energized, his hope and enthusiasm intoxicating.

The black man spoke again. “So, who has control?”

“That’s the beauty of it, we all do. We remove the notion of countries and races… and we rule it together.”

The word ‘rule’ stuck in my mind long after the American had stopped talking. I knew that word. That word did away with democracy.

The ground trembled, and people steadied themselves on furniture or each other. They didn’t pause their meeting. Even though a ceasefire had been negotiated specifically for this gathering, some renegade groups had ignored it and were carrying on. The window was a view to sunlight trying to penetrate clouds of dust. The pictures of a green, fresh world were tantalizing, almost impossible to resist.

“How will you get people to come?” my mother asked distractedly as she held up a glossy photo of a stream running over rocks covered in moss, and giant trees shooting to the sky. I wanted to step into the picture and never look back.

The American nodded solemnly but it was overly dramatic. You could tell his excitement outweighed any seriousness.

“Well, you’ve all read the reports. Our planet can no longer support the current population. I’m sorry. I wish we hadn’t made such a mess of things, but now we have to think about the survival of the species. It’s too late to save everyone. We must look to the future.” He didn’t seem sorry, but he was right—the damage was done.

My mother flicked through the report, running her finger along the black text until she found the part she was looking for and stopped.

“But this number, President Grant, eighty thousand, can’t be right. Is that really all we can take? And how can we possibly select those people?”

To think the world’s population had been in the billions. Now we were down to a few million, and he was asking us to reduce it further.

“We don’t make the decision; they will be randomly selected. And as for your first question, if you were given a choice between life and death, what would you choose?” His mocking laugh made me angry, and I squeezed my toy until one of the side mirrors broke off.

With that statement, everyone started arguing. The noise in the room was deafening as desperate voices collided with one another. I crouched down on the floor and played with my toy Transformer, running Optimus Prime into my mother’s advisor’s foot repeatedly. He didn’t seem to notice. I was used to the arguing. For months, they had been debating what to do. Then the American showed up in Brazil a couple of months back after escaping the Chinese bombing of the US. Now, they were just arguing about something different.

They went on and on and round and round in circles, trying to push their own agenda, trying to say their people had more of a right to exist, to go on, than the others did. Finally, the American stood on a chair and told them to be quiet. And for some reason, they did. He seemed to have magnetism that made everyone listen to him.

“People. People. I don’t mean to push you, but the decision’s already been made. We are going. Construction has begun. You can stay here, but I guarantee you won’t last a year. The world as we know it is over. The Woodlands embodies hope, a way forward. Join me, join us.”

He spun a stack of papers towards my mother and President Sekimbo. And I watched as, with a deep sigh, my mother signed the death sentences of hundreds of thousands of people. All to save me. To save her family.

We didn’t realize at the time that it was too late for us, and for most of our population. Radiation killed. Insipid, it ate at you from the inside out. My mother and father went first, my sister died shortly after, and now I was all that was left. The sickly and the dying were not permitted to migrate to the Woodlands. As I had been at a remote boarding school for most of the war, I escaped their fate.

President Grant flapped the papers in front of my face, urging me to hand over control to him. Although he wasn’t really president anymore, his country was gone and he wanted to adopt mine. He promised me he would take care of my people, but I didn’t believe him. There was no ‘my people’ or ‘his people’, that was the point of the Woodlands. But I was only seventeen. I would do as I was told because, although it broke my heart to do it, I couldn’t lead. I couldn’t do anything.

How did I get here?

It wasn’t a miraculous stroke of luck. Some pointed finger that knocked us into our places and forced us to walk forward.

Every minute I gained, I fought for.

I slogged out this life through a lash of ice and drag of pine. I swam to the other side of the river of blood and kept myself.

Everything that’s happened to me, good or bad, I earned.

I am not wanting.

I am wanted.

Which scares me most of all.

ROSA

The lost ones are holed up inside me. They might want to be free of my pocked and scarred chest. But right now… I need them more than their right for peace. They give me the strength to carry out my very simple plan.

…to live.

The too-bright light rustled me, my consciousness struggling to keep up with my surroundings. The unfamiliar feel of cold metal pressing into my back, a coffin full of my own breath, and the drag of blood on the glass shoved me to alertness.

One word floated around inside my new brain—pills. My thoughts flew aimlessly like someone had opened a case of live butterflies into my skull… if… you don’t do… something… in the next… fifteen minutes… you’re going to… die… again.

I pulled the words together and my hand tightened around the powder-crusted pills that burrowed into my palm like they knew, just as well as I did, what my fate would be if I didn’t find a way to swallow them in the next few minutes. I clenched both my fists tightly, trying not to look suspicious. But how do you do that when a Superior is peering at you with sharpened eyes? When you appeared from death?