The Citizens must obey, for the Community has procured
a protected environment in which fear is evidently nonexistent.
To conduct yourself in an unprofessional manner would
be an act of rebellion, punishable by death.

-Laws of the Community, page 4

~~~~~

She is alone.

To be quite fair, that's how she is most of the time, but on this occasion, it's different. There's a slight chill in the air, more than usual, turning her bones to icicles. Goosebumps burst through her skin, creating prominent mounds on the dark terrain.

Three of her friends are gone — her only friends.

Even back at home, in the Incipiens Province, there was no one to support her when she cried, or even when she received a low grade on a math test.

Her parents were negligent messes, always bantering about how to handle accounting and who has custody over the child in the divorce.

It's not my fault, she had told herself, but it didn't block the grief and guilt from making their way into her brain and molding it to fit their rapacious plans.

Searching around for the predators she's so sure are probing the area, she steps forward, accompanied by a surge of faith in the form of a gust of icy turbulence.

Wind bites her cheeks as she treads through the snow and into the outside world, ducking her head to avoid the sharp, metal fragments that still cling to the gaping hole in the dome surrounding her hypothermic form.

Out here, it's slightly warmer, though the void has been open for a while now, allowing the tropical air of the outside Province to collide with the frigid air of the setting she was enclosed in for over four daunting weeks.

"Kora Damon?" a person asks, shouting through the deafening volume of the scene, heavily wrapped in a slightly puffier version of her coat.

"Yes, that's me," she can barely croak out — her lips are chapped, while her throat is dry from dehydration; Kora had learned not to consume the snow after the tragic incident that had befallen her friend, Thana.

That was the first of three.

She passed on the first day of thirty-one, leaving the rest of them bewildered and hungering for vengeance.

Once they met each other inside the area, they began to grow thirsty, so Thana instinctively suggested eating the pure, white snow layering on top of the ground. She demonstrated by scooping the frozen substance into her hand and shoving it into her mouth comically — she then started to thrash wildly, falling to the earth in a petrified state. Kora tried to halt her motions, for she knew not to trust anything the Community forced her into, but it was too late.

Somehow, Kora decided Thana was rather fortuitous. After all, she had escaped the consternated adventure of the remaining three.

The second rushed in rather unexpectedly. No one knew what had happened to Valdis, only that the rain had seemed so pleasant until she tasted of it greedily. Lefu was intent on doing the same, but Kora held him back with the last bit of strength she possessed. Soon, Valdis fell down dead after complaining about tremendous stomach pains disrupting her movement.

Lefu was the last, rendering Kora completely alone. At first, it was presumed that the lake water was adequate for swimming — Lefu had no intentions of drinking it after what had happened to Valdis and Thana, rather take a plunge into its murky depths for amusement when the first sunny day occurred.

Kora and Lefu were smiling messes, twirling around in the sunshine like people who had never experienced color before. The sun rays beamed down upon them, returning the color to their cheeks and the feeling to their hands. They hadn't seen such light in a long while, but they constantly pleaded for it to come. It was a grand celebration when it finally did.

Lefu knew what the liquid had done to Thana and Valdis, therefore avoided letting it slide into his mouth and down his throat, but he had no idea how it affected his skin, the wonders it would perform.

A few seconds after diving head first into the lake, cries erupted from him as he thrashed around wildly. Welts began to rise on his ebony surface, obliterating his beautiful complexion that Kora had known so well.

"Something's wrong with the water," Lefu managed to say, which, looking back on it, seemed to reflect on his personality so precisely.

"Excuse me, Miss? You look a bit pale." The person lifts the back of his hand to Kora's cheek, evaluating the amount of algidity that had collected not only on her face, but in her mindset. When he removes his fingers, his nails leave a trace, leaving a miniscule slit behind, drawing blood. "Oh, I'm so sorry," he says, realizing his mistake and the impact it had.

Frost adheres to her skin, chilling her whole body, even the part stuffed inside the puffy winter coat circled around her torso.

The fur-lined hood was designed to deflect the nipping feeling of falling snow against the wearer's ears, but all through Kora's journey, the harsh wind found its way around, dancing around her epidermis.

"I've been in freezing temperatures for a month. How do you think I'll look?"

The fact that Kora's mordancy traveled with her through the rough terrain is a comforting thought to her.

"You're the Evaluation Candidate, right?"

"Whom else?"

I step through a gigantic aperture, and you assume I'm someone different than a Candidate? How many people do you see around here every day crashing through the gaps of a dome?

"The Director instructed me to collect the Candidates and bring them to the headquarters located in Epistylium. She said there would be four of you, but I wasn't informed on the details of this year's Evaluation, so I suppose that's all right."

All right? My three best friends were brutally murdered by her twisted creations. It is not "all right".

Kora follows the man through the desolate city, winding through the buildings like she used to do in her horseback riding classes before she was drafted here.

She recalls the way her black curls would bounce when she spurred her thundercloud-colored horse, Czar, into a shaky trot, but now, they only rest lifelessly on her shoulders.

It appears as though the Citizens have deserted in a certain amount of time, hurried out of the city like their life was somehow in danger — understandable, considering how the Community conducts their experiments and general life.

Bitterness drills through her stomach, a trait her mother said was a mirror image of her name, even though "Kora" has a slightly different meaning. She, however, never understood why someone would name their child "bitter", as if their presence is unwelcome; her mother went through nine months of agony to have a kid that she named something so caustic as that.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the person says, a frown creeping on his face, but Kora can tell that he's faking it.

He's as loyal as they get — volunteering to assist in charity work, offering their name to manage things with the Community in any way they can, constantly flaunting their love for their government; they crave interaction like a wolf craves meat. Those kinds of people never understand how truly horrifying the Community's grafting nature is.

They call themselves earnest, wear it like a name badge, but they are merely accentuating their perverse tendencies, tendencies that Kora scorns.

If I ever become the Director, I will make sure no one has to endure these trials. That's my word. And I will deliver.

Twenty-four yearslater, however, fate had a different plan for Kora Damon.

~~~~~

A/N: how did you like it

please leave a vote, comment, share, etc. thanks so much, hairy manchildren

~Dakota