The Supremacy

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
-Edmund Burke
 

Chapter One
We were the beginning, the first batch. We were the Testers. Our cells were small, dark, and the smell,
oh god
the smell. The putrid stench of death swam through the air like a torrent and we all knew it was just a matter of time before one of us joined the tributary.
We were not permitted to speak, ever. We were not permitted to move outside of our units. We learned to never defy the Keepers, but that was if we wanted to live… some of us didn’t.
The Keepers had various ways to keep us compliant. In most cases their means were never justified, they just enjoyed the bloodshed. Their favorite weapons of choice were their electric prods, glass batons, and smoke bombs. But those batons were by far the worse. They would splinter apart on impact, the shards digging their way by the hundreds into your skin, and that is where they would stay.
We learned quickly to never stand out.
The Keepers kept us twenty to a cell. Crushed together, living in our own filth and the lost ones who did not make it through the night, but those were the lucky ones. Those were the ones that no longer had to endure that life.
Meal times should have been a light in the perpetual darkness that was our lives, but they were the biggest torture of all; force fed through tubes was how we ate. It would have been suicide to object to the tube up your nose for those glass fragments from their batons would find their way into your stomach.
We were the first, the Testers. We were the food that sustained The Supremacy.
For us, life had not always been that way; we would have never allowed it. Everything happened slowly, The Supremacy only revoking small rights at first. Our guns were the first of many rights that were taken away from us. Most saw it as the answer to our criminal outbreak, some saw it as the beginning to the end. It was.
We were left defenseless against them. It was exactly how they wanted us.
In the beginning, we saw them as a god- send. The leading powers of the world and their countries were collapsing in on themselves. The majority of the population was starving to death. The economy had long since crumbled and jobs were nowhere to be found, unless you worked for the government.
We had lost everything. We were desperate, and all looked to our officials to help us, to save us from ourselves.
The Supremacy stepped in, seemingly coming out of nowhere. They were a government constructed task force designed to rebuild life and prosperity. They gave us homes, they gave us food, and best of all, they provided us with the healthcare most of us so desperately needed.
They opened up new schools when the bulk of the population could barely read. And we had jobs.
Every individual of working age had to present themselves to the Keepers, and all were given jobs, working for The Supremacy. For a short time, life was perfect.
We all lived comfortably in our new homes, our stomachs were full, and we had money to spend. We thought that the Dark Times were finally over. We were wrong.
I remember the day the Keepers first showed up in our city. They came by the hundreds, with their black robes and vacant eyes. I was young, but I was old enough to know evil when I saw it. I never trusted them, but my warnings fell on deaf ears.
As they took our weapons, they began stockpiling their own. Cameras were soon installed on every corner. We were told they were for our protection, but I knew differently. They watched us every second of the day. We were not free. We were caged animals.
They began rewarding commoners for reporting ‘crimes’, enlisting them time and time again to rat out potential threats. It was a witch-hunt. The Supremacy turned us against one other. We trusted no one, and when you trust no one, you cannot organize. We were islands unto ourselves, exactly how they wanted us to be.
My stepmother was one that praised the Keepers for bringing life back to our town, a town that was in shambles. Houses in our Zone were vacated long ago. The crime rate was so high that most turned a blind eye to someone being mugged, because that is what you did if you wanted to survive-- you stole. It was the only life I knew, but at least we were free.
The Keepers ruled with an iron fist, enacting curfews from day one. No person could be out past seven on any given night, unless on business for The Supremacy. Crime rates fell dramatically in just a few short months, I didn’t see it as a joyous occasion-- I saw it as murder. Criminals were jailed on the spot. Some might see that as justice, it wasn’t. Jail time only ended with your death. The use of one of their many weapons would have been more humane than what usually occurred, and that was starvation. We were given marks for our food, rationed out perfectly by The Supremacy, and they didn’t see a point in feeding criminals.
The schools built were boarding schools. The population was notified that once children reached the age of five their parents would send them away to be tested. Each individual child would be assigned his or her own career path with The Supremacy and be sent to train, or so we all thought.
The Supremacy didn’t start off taking the youngest children, no. They needed their Testers, and I was one of them.
I remember the day my number scrolled across our television set. Even before I saw it, I knew the time was coming near. We had all heard talk of The Supremacy taking their first group to be tested. My stepmother told me that they would start with the teens and work their way back until all that remained were the youngest children.
“
Erin
,” She huffed my name in exasperation, the soggy dish towel she once held in her hands finding its mark across my face, “I have told you a thousand times, the Keepers have to start from the older teens. They cannot take the younger groups until you have a place in the field.”
“But what if I don’t
want
to spend the rest of my life working for The Supremacy! What if I want to live simply, without all the rules and regulations; what if I just want to make my own way?”
“You would think you would be a little more grateful! Look around you and tell me what you see?”
I knew what she was referring to; my stepmother was the leading advocate for The Supremacy and their Keepers, the peacemakers. She looked out the window of our kitchen, watching her son as he played in the green grass that was now our back yard. It was a far cry from the mud trenches of my childhood. She wanted me to see him the way he was, but remember the way I had once been at his age, sick and starving, the same way he would have been if not for The Supremacy
“We have food, we have this home, we all have
jobs
. All thanks to The Supremacy.”
She wanted me to be grateful, but I could not find that in me. I wanted to be able to choose my own path, but that choice had been stripped away from everyone, not just me.
I turned away from the sight of that happy baby boy playing carefree in the yard. It hurt too much.
“Look at what they did to Dad.”
“Your father abandoned us!” She screamed, her clenched fist hitting the table with a
thud
.
Talking about him always sent her into a fit of rage. She didn’t see him as I had. To me, he was a revolutionary. He didn’t want to live caged, prisoner to our new leaders, he wanted to be free. He wanted
us
to be free. “He could have stayed.” She continued without missing a beat. “We could have been a family. But he wanted more, and look what that
more
got him.”
It got him killed. My father was one of the first ‘criminals’ the Keepers had executed. He tried to run, to find us a place where we could live free from the iron fist that was our new lives. He didn’t make it, or at least that was the story they told us.
Every week the Keepers sent out letters to all the residents citing the names of those that defied them. We knew he was dead the minute one of the many Keepers that patrolled our unit showed up at our door. 
I let out a shuttering sigh, trying not to cry as I had done every time I thought of him. She always reminded me of that. Any time I mentioned my father, she reminded me of his abandonment. She resented me because I was his child, not hers. She saw so much of him in me and she hated me for it.
The day my father left was the mark that ended my happy childhood. Corina soon remarried, and she and her new husband put me to work. She no longer saw me as her stepdaughter, but as the child of the man that left her. And one way or another, there would be atonement.
It got worse after her second husband died.
“I know, Corina. I’ll get my things ready and head out to the square.” I was tired of fighting with her. I was tired of fighting, period. The only choice I had was to bow down to whatever The Supremacy had in store for me. My stepmother was of no guidance to me, she loved her Keepers for the life that they had given her, but to me that was no life at all.
It was a waste of time to fight with someone that only saw good in the darkest of creatures.
“There’s no need to pack anything.” She beamed at me, her thoughts changing course like the turn of a page. “A Keeper has already sent for your things, all you have to do is show up ready to be tested. Come here.” She pulled me snugly to her chest one last time. An outsider would have seen this as a show of affection, but it wasn’t. She used the close proximity to spout her hatred. Holding onto me served one purpose, which was to feel me tense as she spoke. She lived for that reaction.
I didn’t know it was The Supremacy’s plan for that moment to be the last time I saw her.
“Maybe you can make something out of yourself yet. End those stupid dreams that your father planted in that stubborn little head of yours.”
I wish I could have done more, said more, but doing so would have gotten me imprisoned for treason. I had to accept my fate, whatever fate The Supremacy had in store for me.
I pulled away from her and tried to hold in my tears. If I cried in front of her, she won. I watched her eyes flicker in delight, knowing that she had gotten to me. She was a sucker for a reaction, but I was no longer that frightened little girl that lost her father. Corina was not evil; she was broken. I knew what she was doing, why she had done what she did to me for so long. I should have felt sympathy for the woman, compassion for the one that loved my father-- it was the only logical emotion that I should have felt, but I felt none. I hated her for loving her Keepers as if they were our guardians that protected us from evil. They were the demons, but she would never see it, her eyes were shut too tight.
I hated her for wanting to send me away. I blamed her for things that were not even her fault.
“Can I say goodbye to Trent?” He was not my blood, but that didn’t stop me from loving him as if he were.
“Oh, Erin,” She raked a shaking hand through her hair for the umpteenth time that morning. “Saying goodbye to him would cause too much trouble. He is too young and will not understand. You will see him soon.” She added, her attention shifting to watch her son played outback. “Holiday break is only three months away.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” But she had never been more wrong. I would never see my baby brother again.
He was three the day I left for the Farm.
I left her home feeling betrayed. It took everything in my power not to run for the forest, but I knew they would have caught me. Their unmanned drones scoured the Zones for any they thought were trying to run, shooting them down with nothing more than a game controller. I knew they would find me and my future would have been behind bars, my only aspiration being death.
I was half way to the square when the pit formed in my stomach. I was sure I was going to vomit. The uneasy feeling was not from nerves, I was far from nervous. The sinking feeling in my stomach was from hate and anger. I loathed The Supremacy from the first day they showed up. I seemed to be the only one, well, the only one besides my best friend John.
We would spend nights atop our apartment building cursing the Keepers for their laws, the ones that kept us indoors after sundown. The laws that forced us to act as one, dress as one, live as one.
If we could have safely run together we would have, but running would have been a death sentence.
Even so, it never stopped us from dreaming.
I could feel him coming up behind me. He was the only one that was brave enough to walk so close to me. After the new laws were enacted, I made it a point to keep most at bay. All their talk about the ‘gods’ that were The Supremacy made my skin crawl. John was the only one that held the same detestation for them that I did.
“We can still make a run for it, Rin.” His voice came quickly in my ear. It would have been treason if anyone heard him say those words, death on the spot.
“It’s too late for that.” I whispered back. “Besides, I think your mom would rather have you home for Holiday than visit your grave.”
“So we are just going to let them plan everything out for us? That’s the life you want?”
“Come on, John. Give me a break. You know that this is the last thing that I want, but I’d rather not be
killed
. So what other choice is there?”
“To run with me.” He stated matter-of-factly “
Please
. We can take care of each other. We already know how to hunt and fish. We can live off the land.”
It wasn’t the first time he had talked to me about running. The first day The Supremacy made themselves known, I found him on the roof of our apartment building concocting a plan. He could have left. He had no one stopping him, but I couldn’t leave Trent to grow alone with his awful mother. How ironic that I was now leaving him anyway.