CHAPTER TWO: GOODBYE EARTH

I stare at the spherical object before me. It's like a faint heavy metallic egg with three strips of blue crimson moons.

It has a small semicircle division at the bottom. Dad presses his palm against the semicircle and the semicircle open, the door sliding up. This egg thing was the airlift they had being talking about all along. It was nothing like the usual airlifts that replaced planes, those looked exactly like planes only that they hand no wings, this, totally different.

The back room had a different roof from the rest of the bunker. It looked like rotational splits, I imagined they split when it opened then rejoined once it closed. I was never going to know I guess.

"What do you mean you aren't coming?" Mum asks again for the hundredth time since we entered the back room of the bunker.

"I will be right behind you." Dad lies and even though I know he is, I say nothing. I promised to say nothing. He needed to save the world. "I just need to clear a few things then I will take the other lift. He points at the airlift parked next to the one we are about to board in the backroom.

My mum throws her hands around him in a hug and his wrap around the small of her back.

"I hate you for all the lies, but I still love you so you better find you way to us as soon as you can." She tells him.

"I will."he plants a kiss on her lips and parts from her.

He says his goodbyes to Adam and Beth first then me.

"Hey bud." He says as he drags me away from the door of the lift. "Here." He says, shoving a watch into the pocket of my coat.

"What's this for?" I ask as I try to reach for it, but he shoves it down again.

"Always keep in on you. That's the only way I will know you are safe." He whispers.

He plants a kiss on my forehead then smiles at me. "Go now."

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell Hezz if anything happens to you, and he is still alive. I will kill him."

My dad laughs but I keep straight face. I wasn't joking, At that moment I felt every single word that left me.

I was sacrificing my father, the person who loved me the most in the world, to safe the remains of it, I was willing to sacrifice any other person who didn't see just bow big a sacrifice this was for me.

The door slides behind me when I enter the huge space with six beds one next to another, three on each wall.

Mum and Beth are already laying face up next to each other, each strapped in their own bed. Adam was struggling with his strap as he tried to lay down.

I climbed in the bed next to his and watched the way he worked his strap. I pulled on mine and copied him once he figured it out.

'All passengers ready. Four passengers on board.' A robotic voice spoke from the walls of the lift.

'EVATA AIRLIFT 901 ready for take off in 3,2,1.'

Silence.

Then a turbulence hard enough to knock me to the side of the bed even through I was strapped in went on for a few seconds, then it was back to a silent stream. We were afloat.

There was no telling we had arrived until the door slides open. It felt like two minutes, it felt lime we never left at all. None of us talked the whole assumed 30 minutes we were on board, it felt like we never had the chance at all.

I'm sure everyone had thoughts of their own, mine were focused on dad, the watch and where we were going.

I knew a man named Jose was going to receive us, and o assumed he was the one waiting at the door as he offloaded ourselves.

"Mrs Appiah." His Mexican accent wouldn't be as mistaken as his pale skin, he was Mexican.

"Jose Guzman?" My mum asked.

"A pleasure to meet you." Jose replies.

The room is filled with multiple airlifts parked side by side. Jose is quick on his feet, so I don't have time to take in every detail.

A door opens at the far end of the room and we walk out into a hallway filled with people in uniform, camouflage army uniforms, its only then I realize Jose is wearing one.

He salutes a few people who salute to him first as we turn a coner after another.

We meet another door and this time, he presses his palm against the sensor like my dad did at the bunker and door slides open.

I'm met with a sight beyond words as I walk into what looked like the basement of the facility.

Multiple airlifts, bigger that the one we came in, they looked like steel containers with crimson moons printed on them, at least twelve on each, six on the top and six on the bottom. The airlifts where attached to a stem like structure that stood in the middle, airlifts hanging to its branches in a clockwise manner. Layer after layer. It was difficult to keep count of how many layers it was, my neck ached at an attempt to see the top of the airlift tree.

"Sergeant!" He calls to a petite lady in uniform who jogs to us, then salute to the Jose. She's in cab 4," he points to me before turning to the twins, "cab 19 for them."

"Yes Sir. " The woman salute before turning to us, "follow me."

Beth and Adam begin to move but I seem to stay glued to the ground.

"Everything okay?" Jose turns to me.

"What about mum?" I ask.

He smiles down at me.

"Kwame said nothing gets past you. You have a keen eye, I thought he was exaggerating." Jose says," Your mum will board her own cab later on, we have a few more things to discuss." He tells he before patting my shoulder.

Its suppose to assure me, but something about the way his smile makes my insides turn in a very bad way but still, I follow the woman towards the airlift three.

We go round it and slowly mum looms out of sight and I finally look ahead without the urge to look over mum shoulder every two seconds.

The woman stops in front of a desktop at the foot of the stem. She punches the number 19.

The wheel of cabs somewhere in the middle spins the stop. A cab travels through an open space down the stem from the wheel in the middle and makes a perfect landing in front of us. A second later the door pushes in and it swings open to one side.

"The seventeen-year-olds." The sergeant says as she turns to the twins. They never old her their age but for some reason she knew.

They knew.

Beth comes around and hugs me. "See you on the other side kiddo." She says and I watch her white jeans disappear through the door.

Adam runs a hand in my Afro as he smiles. He goes off without a word, he just leaves, disappearing for the door slums shut and the cab travels back to its position. Its wheel which is more of a round ring with multiple airlifts turns again and the cab goes back to its original place.

I hear voice behind me, forcing me to turn around. There is a glass door a few meters from us and people immediately begin to feel the space behind it. A rail stand I'm the middle of the huge space. I notice that adults gather on one side and children on the other.

Right, we were separated according to age but it still didn't feel right.

"Who are they?" I ask as I turn to the uniformed lady.

"Residents of Portland and the surrounding cities, the rightful owners to the cabs." She said, her tone unpleasant.

"Then why are they there and not in the cabs." I ask.

"Because unlike you, their fathers aren't head of research at EVATA neither are they children of the higher ups."

I suddenly understood.

She meant I was here because of the corrupt system of the military and EVATA that favored the children of people who held higher status, but I didn't feel a blink of guilt either, my dad was out there saving earth, the least they could do was pay him back by keeping us alive.

"But they will board soon," she looks at her watch, they have 50 minutes till the doors open.

She punches the number 6 and the wheel at the top spins. A moment later my own cab lands at the bottom and the door opens. Standing before the door I see a demarcation. There is a top layer and a lower one. A few steps of steel stars separating the two.

I settle for the lower deck and ignore the stairs as I walk in.

The doors shut behind me and before I know it, the cab is moving upwards. The cab consist of six seats. Unlike the airlift earlier, the beds are gone and it's much darker.

The crimson moon's look translucent from afar but now that they are so close, nothing penetrates beyond the blue in them.

It's much smaller on the inside than out looks on the outside. On the other side of the cart is a bundle of water and packet of edibles across from each seat.

I sit down and I feel the cab stop, probably fixed back in its position. I strap in as I wait.

Boom my eyes begin to feel heavy and my body relaxes.

...****************...

I am awaken by the shaking of the lift. The turbulence even greater than the one I experienced earlier at the bunker. I look around and the cab is already filled up. Five other kids are strapped in their sits. I was so tired I never heard them board the cab.

The shaking gets more intense and I hold on to the straps of my belt. In a few minutes, we are moving and then there is nothing.

We are afloat. Off to the safe place.

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