Stark White: Chapter One

Chapter One of my book-in-progress, STARK WHITE. Please send me feedback on this chapter and the chapters to come! I'm new to this. Thanks!

One.

Going to count the charter is never pleasant. Especially when you’re twelve, have a headache, and have spent the last few days tending to people your age that are experiencing a slow death from an incurable virus.

But there I was, at the Script House, slipping my TOUCH through the slot in the doorknob and waiting for the little light to turn green before entering. I stepped onto waxed wooden floors.

There was nobody in sight.

“Clara?” I called out tentatively.

I heard bare feet pattering on the wooden floors before I saw my best friend come into view. I hugged her. “Hi.”

“Hey!”

Clara is a tiny girl my age with ash blond hair and a pixie nose. We met through the Care Center when we were eight. We were sitting in the application line. I was crying, since that had been right after my parents got the virus, and she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. We’ve been inseparable since.

I frowned at her tiny, bare brown feet. “You should have your boots on. You could get the virus through a splinter.”

Clara sighed. “I got new ViroGuards at the Center store, Jessie. See?” She lifted a foot up to show me a dust-covered, transparent gel protector covering it. “I’ll be fine.” She pulled a face at me. “Don’t be such a worrywart.”

Despite myself, I laughed. “Okay, okay. Let’s get this over with.”

We linked arms and walked to the Charter Room. “I hate this,” I muttered. Clara shrugged in agreement. “The only good part is getting to see you. I only see you at, like, water breaks. But we’re not allowed to talk, so it doesn’t really count.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

I plucked at her sleeve idly and noticed its color and width. I looked closer at the rest of her outfit and realized that, unlike the gray-green tunic I wore, she was decked out in a full azure tunic with wide sleeves and dark blue leggings, the sign of an official student at the Care Center’s College of Defense!

I looked up at her suspiciously and saw her wide grin. Unable to hold it in any longer, I screamed and hugged her so tight she gasped for breath. “Oh my gods! They promoted you?”

Suddenly I paused. I held her away from me. “They promoted you, right?”

She nodded, still grinning. “I’m a Fighter now! Isn’t it amazing?”

I screamed again. “I’m so happy for you!”

“It’s incredible. The training is really rigorous, but it’s a LOT of fun.” We continued walking to the Charter Room and I listened to Clara babble about her new ranking. “We have electives, where we can choose any number of units to take. There’s archery, knife fighting, sword fighting, and spear-and-staff work. Those two are together because they’re kind of alike, but the class is divided up when they duel, apparently. You know Merylae? Yeah, she’s planning to major as a Spear Fighter.” I listened raptly. My headache had vanished.

“I take knife fighting and archery. Gods, Jessie, it’s so much fun. For knife fighting, we have this series of drills we do each day for warm-up and practice, and then we have our lesson, and then we spend the entire time dueling. The instructor walks around and gives us tips and advice.”

“Who’s your instructor?” I asked.

“Knife fighting has Star Alanna. Archery has Star Lucas.”

“Oh, you’re so lucky. Alanna’s really good. I had her for Beginner’s Healing.”

“I know. She’s great.”

We turned a corner and started walking down a very long hallway. “What’s archery like?”

“On the first day--”

“Oh yeah, when did you get promoted?”

“Only yesterday morning. I would’ve told you, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“What about your TOUCH?” I waved around mine. “They all have messaging systems.”

Clara shook her head. “They’re changing mine out.”

“Again?” I was incredulous. “Jeez, that’s like the millionth time. What happened to it this time?”

“It froze up.”

“Oh. Wait, again?”

Clara chose not to answer that. “Anyways, for the first archery class we each got our own tools and made our own bows. It was so much fun. I made a longbow. It’s back there--” she motioned with her chin towards the front desk. “It’s juniper, so--”

“Gods, isn’t juniper illegal? It’s so rare nowadays.”

“Not here, it isn’t. The government makes an exception for survival stations. They have their own greenhouse, just for feeding everybody at the Care Center.”

“Oh.” I was silent for a moment, then jostled Clara good-naturedly. “Know-it-all.”

Clara grinned. “But he showed us how to aim, and I got three bulls-eyes out of three on my first try.”

“Hey, look at you! Archery Master. You could totally get promoted to one.”

“Yeah, but I’m probably gonna major in Knife Fighter and be an Archery Backup. I can’t imagine being able to calculate precisely where my arrow’s gonna land if I do an arcing shot on a battlefield, for one. I’m too nervous that I’d hit someone on our side.”

“Mm,” I nodded. “There is that. But they should have a training unit on long-range shooting.”

As we neared the Charter Room, my stomach clenched. “Ugh. This makes me want to throw up.”

“What, the--? Yeah, I know. And it’s really sad, looking at all the pages. I can’t believe they used leopard hide for the cover.”

I was silent. I hated this part of the day--having to flip page by page to look at the names and ages of all the dead. I hated having to think about the people we’d lost. I hated looking at the room, empty except for a pedestal on which the giant book lay. I hated this virus. I hated this disease, how it had spread across the entire globe.

Which reminded me.“Have they found the answer from her yet?”

Clara looked at me. She knew who I meant. “You didn’t read the news today, did you?”

I shook my head. “No, I overslept. I didn’t have time.”

She took my TOUCH and activated it, then grasped my index finger to press it against the scanner. My screensaver popped up and the default voice recognition program fired. “Daily paper,” Clara intoned. “The Skyline Herald.”

The headlines for the daily paper bloomed on the screen, and she handed the Terrestrial Othernet Ultrasound Communication HoroFinder back to me. I looked at the first line dubiously, then in shock.

SAMANTHA SHOULTER HAS ESCAPED PRISON IN WASHINGTON D.C.

I looked at Clara. “But they’ve...they’ve shut down her lab. She can’t do anything else. She’s got nowhere to go.”

Clara shrugged. “I’m not saying I know what’s on her mind.”

“Oh my gods…” I scanned the article and was not reassured--All state security agencies and police systems are doing everything to locate her. Civilians are not to be concerned.

Which did nothing for my worries. Shoulter was going to be impossible to track, I knew it. She was a mastermind who’d gone too far--in the game of hide-and-seek, she would always be seven steps ahead.

I looked at Clara, who looked back gently. She knew how I felt--both of our sets of parents had been taken away from us by the horrible smallpox epidemic that Shoulter had--accidentally or purposefully, no one was sure--unleashed. Clara, though, had been three when her parents had fallen...while it had happened to me four years ago.

We arrived at the giant metal door and I stashed my TOUCH back inside my dark blue pack. “Ready?” Clara asked me, and when I nodded, she turned the silver doorknob and pushed the door open, hard.

It slowly opened and we entered.

The Charter Room hadn’t changed. Not even cobwebs had formed--the room was checked daily and thoroughly cleaned.The bright white walls hurt my eyes, but that was normal. The only thing in the room was the Book of Records.

We approached the pedestal. I nervously swallowed, then gestured to it and looked at Clara. “Should I, or…?”

She nodded at me to do it. I made a half-hearted face at her, then unlatched the cover and opened it up to the piles of decrepit parchment inside.

Dust flew into my face and I sneezed, hard. I couldn’t stop. I bent over and retched, but the dust had gotten in my nose and the more I sneezed, the more it tickled. Clara slapped me on the back, and I got semi-control again. Sniffing, I gave her a thankful look and returned to the book. “Aw, gods…” I wrinkled my nose and tried to catch my breath… “I hate when that happens.”

I pressed my finger against the metal band at the bottom of the page, and it turned. Again...and again...and again. Press, turn page, wait. Press, turn page, wait.

The reason why I hated doing this was because, inevitably, I’d come upon my parents’ names.

Press, turn page, wait…

“Oh, you do it!” I burst out as I turned to plead with Clara. She shook her head. “I can’t. The book is temporarily programmed to recognize your fingerprint now, remember?”

I looked at her.

“Come on,” she said gently. “I know what you mean. But we already alternate turns at the book. I can’t do anything more without the permission of the Council. C’mon. You can do this.”

I pressed the metal band with my index finger one more time.

There they were, at the top of the page.

Clarisse de Fira Stark.

Jacob Stark.

Inked into the pages. Dead. Gone.

I wiped my eyes and jabbed angrily at the metal band. Again, faster. Finally Clara caught my wrist and motioned to the empty page in front of me. I slid the stylus out of my TOUCH and wrote, digging into the parchment: October twenty-sixth, twelve thousand and twelve.

Elena Marchan.

Jack Dubois.

Samson di Angelo.

Margaret Bruce.

I slammed the stylus into my TOUCH and heaved the book closed with a giant thump. “There,” I choked.

There was a brief moment of silence. Then Clara gave me a hug.

“Don’t worry, don’t think about it,” she murmured. We turned to go.

And then it happened. The air filled with an infernal screeching. I activated my TOUCH instantly and we looked at the screen.

A message in bold blue letters flashed on the white tablet: An infection has been discovered within the Center. Report to the Protection House immediately and arrange yourselves in an ordered fashion along the walls.

We stared at each other. And then we ran.

Reviews

[Craig2591]

Very well written. You gave just enough information to make me want to know more.