Chapter 2

One thing I notice about Antarctica: There's not much of a day. It's night all the time.

Me and Mayday's families choose to stay in the same block of houses, our apartments right next to each other. We choose the top floor to get a good view.

We're within walking distance of the ray shield. When we look out from the windows of our apartments, we can see it, the light from the moon shining on it, otherwise unnoticeable to the naked eye. Soldiers guard it. That'll make it hard to explore the terrain outside.

I notice that the apartments that we stay in are less well-furnished than the ones in the central area. And a lot less well taken care of. But, considering that I lived in a bunch of tents stitched together in one tangled mess, I can't really complain. Better to have a stable roof over my head than one that threatens to fall with every movement I make.

At least it's convenient to hangout with Mayday. His family's apartment is just a few steps away from my family's. 

After my family and I finish setting down our things, I immediately head over to Mayday's apartment. I only see his brothers and his parents there. I don't get to see Mayday's brothers very often, but I know there's five of them and they're all older than him. It must be hard to have 6 mouths to feed at home. It's already hard enough to feed one kid in my family. That one kid's me.

When Mayday's parents see me walking in, they tell me that Mayday's out, and I immediately go to look for him without saying anything, leaving the door open behind me.

The city is bright. Corners of buildings are illuminated by lights. The markings on the road are lighted up. A stark contrast to outside the ray shield. Outside's dark. 

Downstairs is crowded. Adults push past each other as they try to make their way towards the central area. Probably to get jobs. I catch sight of my parents amidst the crowd, but I make no move to alert them of my presence. 

One adult runs into me and the force knocks me to the ground. I can feel the rough black dirt-like substance that covers the ground scraping my knees.

"Watch it!" the adult shouts before running off, and I glare at him.  I get up and dust myself off, blood oozing out of the scrapes, and I wipe it away with my saliva because that's what I always do.

Why would they make the ground out of this substance? It's so easy for someone to injure themselves like this.

I keep a lookout for Mayday. And if I know him, he's probably in a place where no one would bother him. He likes the quiet. Back in the Dome, we used to hangout at the places close to the ray shield. No one goes there unless they want to experience the full-blown heat of outside.

I head into alleyways that are close to the ray shield, hoping to find Mayday there. I gave him my knife after our last scavenging trip, he usually cleans it for me. Maybe I'll hear the sounds of him scraping the blood off my knife. I don't know. My hearing's fairly decent.

Maybe Mayday's gone home. That's unlikely though. He doesn't usually do that until it's really late out.

And as expected, I soon hear the sound of rock scraping against metal. I follow the direction of the sound, and soon enough, I find Mayday leaning against a wall in a dark alleyway scraping blood off my knife and sharpening it. He doesn't need to look up before he knows I'm here. He can tell by the sound of my footsteps.

I lean against the wall next to him as I watch him scrape the blood off my knife.

"How long?" I ask. He knows I'm referring to how long he's been cleaning my knife.

"An hour," he replies, not looking up at me. 

"You know you don't have to do it for that long, 10 minutes is enough to get the blood off," I say, looking up at him. 

"And 1 hour's enough to get it completely off and sharpened," he says, handing me back the knife. It's even sharper than the day I found it. I turn it around in my hands, and then spin it, throwing it up in the air and catching it by the hilt. Then I sheath it into one of those metal sheaths for knives that I found on a scavenging trip not too long ago. 

Mayday smiles slightly when he sees me throwing my knife up in the air and catching it. He's seen me improve over the years. How I've accidentally cut myself a bunch of times trying to do that. Now I can do it almost flawlessly. 

I kind of want to hug Mayday for spending a whole hour sharpening my knife, but I know he doesn't really like physical contact, so instead I just give him a downwards nod of respect.

"You wanna go to the ray shield and scout ways to get out?" I ask. Mayday nods in response, and we run silently through the alley and emerge on the other side. 

We're still some distance from the ray shield, but the rest is open ground. We back up against the walls of the alleyway, taking care not to make a sound so that the soldiers guarding the ray shield won't notice us.

3 soldiers stationed from where I can see. One's sleeping. The other two look tired. Probably from being on duty the whole day. Mayday and I stand there for a while, looking for any disturbances or glitches in the ray shield. 

Nothing. It's stable. Not like the one back in North America. There were holes in the shield. So much easier to sneak out. 

After an hour or so of observing, waiting, for any possible way of getting out, we head back to our apartments for the night. I'm depending on Mayday to know the way back, because I forgot the way when I was looking for him.

Luckily for both of us, he knows the way back. He's got a good memory. 

Pure, unclouded moonlight fills the empty streets as Mayday and I walk through them. I look up. It's a full moon tonight. And somehow, tonight's moon isn't red, it's white instead. It looks so much cleaner. I stop for a moment to look at the moon, and Mayday keeps walking, knowing that I'll definitely catch up.

He's right of course, and after a few moments of analyzing the darker patches on the moon, I run to catch up with him.

"Took you longer than usual," he says, eyes fixated on the road ahead of us.

"Oh y'know, just distracting myself from that thing in the morning," I reply, not wanting to specify what "that thing" in case anyone's watching us, no matter how unlikely it may be.

Mayday nods, taking the hint. We'll discuss it tomorrow when we're amongst the crowd. We could try to look for some jobs tomorrow, just to earn some extra income, although we probably won't be able to get any, considering we're home-schooled, our parents passing them whatever limited information they managed to learn from our grandparents. 

When we reach back to our apartments, I give him a downwards nod before heading through the door. I don't get questioned by my parents where I was, they already know I was at the ray shield looking for ways to get through. That's what I did back in North America. That's how I met Mayday, actually. He mistook my footsteps for a guard's, and literally threw a knife at my head. Good thing my reflexes were fast and I managed to dodge though. The knife only sliced my shoulder.

When he found out he threw a knife at a 13 year old girl, he wordlessly went out to the flooded ruins and tried find something to wrap up my bleeding shoulder. Obviously, I came along with him, and we managed to find a mostly intact Hunger Games hoodie, he cut off the hood to wrap my shoulder. 

"Do you come out here very often?" I asked him, and he was a bit hesitant to reply. "Yeah. Every day."

Then we didn't speak for the rest of the day, just scavenging for things that we could use or sell for money. 

From then, we went out every day to the flooded ruins, and he slowly warmed up to me, speaking a bit more and cracking a few jokes here and there. We're a good team. Mayday's good with directions, and he taught me how to throw knives and use one in close combat. I'm the one who could had slightly heightened senses, slightly better than his. My hearing, eyesight, and sometimes smell. I could smell explosives in some of the flooded houses. That's when I knew not to go in them. 

Then when I found a blaster pistol and trained myself with it, I taught Mayday how to shoot it. The one piece of information that my parents passed down onto me was how to shoot a rifle and pistol. Line up the front sight with the back sight, and then aim at the target and shoot. I've gotten quite decent at it, although Mayday's still better at knives. He beat a fish to death with the blaster once.

I lay on the floor, the bed reserved for my sleeping parents. I stare up at the ceiling for a bit, before opening the window to get some fresh air and staring up at the moon again. It's gotten a bit red, like things are getting back to normal. 

I look across at the ray shield and down at the soldiers guarding it. A few of them are sleeping, but still standing up. I don't notice much, until the moonlight hits just the right spot, I see a small hole in the ray shield. Not big enough for adults to fit through, but definitely big enough for me. I don't know about Mayday. Maybe he can get through with a few burns.

I'll tell him that in the morning.

For now, I close the window and lay back down on the floor, closing my eyes and trying to get some sleep.

The uneasy feeling in my gut still hasn't gone away.