HER DEPRADATION

The United States, supposedly under threat of terrorism, has been put under a permanent state of Martial Law. Ruled by one man and his army, chances of escape are nothing short of narrow.

THE CAPTAIN SAT AT his desk, watching Alita carefully with amusement in his beady, soulless eyes. The silence, intensifying with each second that passed, making Alita more anxious to know what he was thinking, what he was planning. The obscurity and coldness of the room was almost unbearable, each breath Alita took was shaky and formed into fog the moment it exited her mouth. A fireplace, located in the far west corner, looked almost impeccable, still with that glint of newness that outshone everything else in the refuge. Alita wondered why he did not light it. Surely he was just as cold as herself, even if he did not show it.

 

The Captain must have noticed what she was thinking, for he suddenly chuckled and made his way towards the fireplace, his eyes drifting between it and Alita repeatedly. "Do you like it?" He asked, stroking the maroon-tinted bricks as if it were an adorable baby.

 

Alita shook her head stubbornly, but she had to appreciate the beauty of it, not to mention the fact that she did ache for some fiery warmth.

 

"It is a beautiful piece of artwork, if I do say so myself." His tone of voice sounded more like coo. "I built it myself." Ah, Alita thought in comprehension. That is the reason for his attitude towards an inanimate object.

 

"H-h-have y-y-you ever lit a f-fire there?" She asked without hesitation; anything to distract him from whatever he was going to do to her. Unless he planned to throw her into the fire himself, which was unlikely.

 

"Yes," the Captain confessed, though he sounded disappointed instead of proud. "But on a rare basis." Alita could not believe her ears. What use was a fireplace when you hardly ever used it? Just for show, she supposed.

 

Alita was about to voice her opinion of this when two very tall and masculine (though not as tall or masculine as the Captain) entered the room, wearing black shades and equally dark business suits, looking more like secret agents rather than anything else.

 

"Now," the Captain moved away from his beloved fireplace reluctantly, only to stand before the two black suited men, the three of them facing Alita. The shaded man to the Captain's left handed him a file - no doubt containing the contents of Alita's life. "Alpha-Eight-F -"

 

"My name is Alita." She interrupted calmly, squinting her eyes in annoyance at the trio.

 

The Captain looked taken aback by this outburst, wondering why on earth she would want them to call her by her real name. Nevertheless, calling someone by something so personal was unacceptable. "No, it is not. You are Alpha-Eight-Zero -"

 

Again, she interceded, getting angrier and more forceful. "My name is NOT a bar-code!" The more she struggled against the metallic bonds that held her to the chair, the tighter and more agonizing they were around her wrists and ankles.

 

The Captain smirked devilishly, still holding onto her file as he walked closer to tower over her. "Is that so?" His menacing tone caused her to regret ever bursting out those words. He opened the folder and skimmed through it, lasting only two minutes of silence before stopping at one piece of information he clearly deemed vital. "So you are seventeen. Birthday, tomorrow?"

 

Alita knew where this was going, but she was unable to lie. He already knew the truth, knew everything about her, even her family, though she knew no one but her mother and aunt - both of whom died that fateful day.

 

"Well, I'll be sure to have a present for you tomorrow." His smirk grew more pronounced.

 

"I do not want it." She practically begged with her eyes at him to have mercy. To not go through with what he was surely thinking.

 

"You do not have a say in the matter. But you should be thankful. I was hell bent on... 'disposing' of you today, but knowing the special occasion tomorrow, I have decided to let it slide." He acted as though he were a merciful God, a compassionate leader, but she knew he was far from it. He knew the reason he had postponed murdering her was for his own selfish desires.

 

And that reason, that desire, was none other than the opportunity to procreate.

 

That reason was the only thing stopping him from murdering everyone. The Captain was in want of a larger, stronger, more elite army. Though he wished to live immortally, it was not possible, so in order to keep the country - and possibly the world (who knew?) - in this state, he took the youngest females as soon as they reached eighteen, and forced them to procreate with him. It was his way of preserving this way of life, if a demented life at that.

 

And now it was Alita's time.

 

But, of course, with everything, there were always problems and consequences. A woman, perhaps, engaging in sexual intercourse with the Captain, who did not fall pregnant after five tries, would be killed. However, a woman giving birth to a daughter, well... Only now was allowed to live. The only acceptable thing was for a woman to birth a son and nothing else.

 

The male babies were then cared for by specific males who were not deemed fit enough for battle, and so for making it up to the Captain, they taught and trained them until they turned eighteen, prepared to fight against not only the prisoners, but also anything that might come from the outside.

 

Alita shook feverishly, panicked as to what lay ahead of her tomorrow. The stories she had heard of the women who had befallen pregnant to the Captain had been hard to comprehend, and the fact that her time was soon was even more terrifying than anything she had ever heard.

 

"Masters Elliot and Nichols, please escort..." He paused to send a worrying grin at Alita, "Alpha-Eight-Five-Zero-Sierra to the isolation room. You are not to let her out until I - and only I - say so."

 

"Yes, sir." The two men said uniformly, and suddenly, the shackles that had entrapped Alita disappeared into a hidden compartment. But before she could even contemplate running out the door, the suited men had grabbed her by the elbows and pulled her out of the room and down the same hallway, further into its hidden secrets.

 

There were only three other doors, not including the Captain's quarters. Alita had no idea what was kept inside the two that she passed, though the door looked exactly like that of the ones in a psychiatric ward, pure white painted wood and a small screen to peek through.

 

Before she could verbalize her question as to what was inside, they three came to a stop at a completely different, yet identical door. Sure, it was pale white and possessed the same screen to peek through, but the metal door had clearly been scratched and indented many times from the plentiful prisoners it held there.

 

Alita dared to struggle against their holds, she pleaded for help in a booming voice, but no one came to her rescue. In fact, she was all but ignored.

 

The door screeched in protest as one of the men opened the door, revealing another dark, terrifying room which emanated death. What this place was - what it had been since the day of the army's takeover - was more than a prison, more than a cell for an insane person. It was worse than anything you could picture because there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. No bed to lay on, no toilet or sink. There was nothing save for four walls, the concrete floor and a window that was no more than the size of her hand.

 

Had Alita not already been through hell and back, she would have sworn this was it.

 

The cold passed her and flowed right out the door, like a supernatural spirit, a ghost of some kind, had been wandering the room for centuries and had only just been set free. Though, why a room with hardly any cracks for air to pass through was so very cold was beyond her belief.

 

Goosebumps ran alongside Alita's limbs and the hairs on the nape of her neck stood on end, tickling her.

 

The two men placed one hand each on either of both her shoulders and propelled her body forwards with as much force as possible, almost causing her to collide with the opposite wall. Alita, discomforted and feeling demoralized, took one last look at the fluorescent lights that filled the walkway, and one more look at the two black suited Siros, before all light vanished, save for one minuscule sliver which outlined the metallic door and seeped through the screen.

 

Though she had never been inside this room, she had been in many others. Not rooms quite as blood curdling as this, but daunting nonetheless. Inside the other room, down a different corridor, where she was forced to remain contained in for two days each for her half-yearly checkup, she would sit quietly without resistance.

 

But now, as she sat in the center of the room with her knees up to her chest and arms around her body, all she could do was cry and scream for help. She did not want to be here, not in this dark, horrific room which she felt she would die in before the night was out. She wanted to hurl herself at the door, to crawl her way through the walls or the floor, any way to escape. She was terrified of the darkness. With a large amount of people, she was better, but here, alone, with no one to attend to her cries... It was nigh unendurable.

 

But she was to spend the entire night there, no matter how much she begged otherwise, Alita knew that she would not get out until daybreak.

 

And tomorrow would only be worse, for Alita still had to endure the wrath of the Captain and his adulterated desire to spawn males for an army. She did not think she could handle it. Being nearly six years old at the time of the army's takeover, she had hardly begun to live; she had not many experiences, least of all what it would be like to engage in sexual intercourse with someone she loved. And now, it was being taken away from her by this monstrous creature that was their leader.

 

Worrying into the late night, Alita wept and wailed, huddled into a fetal position, eventually falling into an uneasy sleep.