Utopia - Caught Red-haired

Caught Red-haired

second in the Utopia series

“We see blonds and brunettes all the time, but where are the red-heads?  If you haven’t seen one around, it’s not simply a coincidence.  Only every one person in one hundred carries the recessive gene that causes red hair and merely two persons in a thousand actually have red hair.  Scientists have discovered that the gene that causes red hair is disappearing, and could be gone within a couple hundred years if something is not done now to stop its disappearance.

“The government’s new voluntary program aims to do just that.  Red-heads and other carriers of the gene from all over the city are gathering to participate in the propagation program.  Phillip Alexi, spokesperson for the program…”

“Nate, are you paying attention?  Do you know what you want?”

Nate turned from the TV and looked back at the overhead menu.  “Yeah, I’m here.  What are you getting, Amelia?”

“My usual,” replied the girl with a big smile.

Nate laughed, “You always get that.”

“I know, that’s why I always know what I want and you’re always standing here for ten minutes looking for something to eat.”

“I think I’ve got it now.”  The two stepped up to the counter together and ordered.  The employee went to go get their food for them and they stood at the counter.

Amelia leaned ‘casually’ against the counter and spoke softly, “Don’t look now, but that family at the big table has been staring at us since we came in here.”

The employee returned with their food and they went to get their drinks.  Nate sneaked a peek at the family at the big table.  Sure enough, they were being stared at.  The parents were at least trying to hide their amazement, but one of the kids was turned completely around in his chair with his mouth gaping.  “They must be from a different sector,” Nate remarked.

The two friends tried to get their drinks and get to a table before things got awkward, but one of the parents stood and approached them.  “We couldn’t help but notice your hair.” Their accent indicated that they were from the North Coast sector of the city.  “Are your parents red-heads, too?”

Nate sighed.  Things were about to get awkward.

“My dad has red hair,” the girl responded, “but my mom’s a brunette.”

“Oh, how interesting!”

“And neither of my parents have red hair, but they obviously both had the gene,” added Nate.

“So you two aren’t brother and sister?  I’m so sorry, I just assumed.  You do make a lovely couple though.  Did the government pair you?”

“We’re not a couple,” the red-heads replied in unison.

“We’re just friends,” explained Nate.

“Non-related friends,” Amelia clarified.

The stranger’s face brightened in embarrassment.  She muttered a few incomprehensible apologies and went back to her table to inform her family of what she had learned.

“Seriously, we look nothing alike, other than the hair,” Amelia exclaimed as they sat down.

Nate quickly compared the two.  Both of them had red hair, bountiful freckles, and the same pinkish-orange complexion.  However, his square face and sharp nose contrasted with her round face and button nose, her curvy body was nowhere close to his thin athletic build, and the translucent blue of his eyes was very different from the deep brownish green of hers.  “Yeah, I don’t really see a resemblance.”

Nate knew this was going to be a short summer.  It seemed as if everyone wanted to hang out before they all left for college.  When Nate got home, he had to move the stack of incomplete thank you notes for graduation presents off his bed before he hopped in.  Nate was so tired from the long day he’d had, but it seemed as if his brain would never shut off.  He kept turning over in his mind everything that had been going on recently with the government’s new program for red-heads.  Normally, he didn’t care too much what the government did, but now he was having to take a step back and look at it again.  Maybe the Grand Head had too much control over people’s lives.  Maybe that was why everyone lived in one big city – not to be environmentally conscious and let the earth recover from eons of scattered human occupation, but so that the world’s government could more easily control its people.

Thoughts such as these were dangerous, but Nate thought it was about time he think them.  He could not go on pretending that everything was right in the world.

Nate heard something downstairs.  He would have liked to assume that it was just one of his brothers looking for a late night snack, but it was too quiet.  He grabbed one of his knives and got up out of bed.  He heard the squeaky stair – whoever was there was coming up the stairs.  Then he heard the stair two more times.  There were at least three of them.  He waited by his door in case they came in, he would surprise them.

The handle moved and the door opened.  He identified the man’s figure, clothed in black with helmet, equipment, and exposed neck.  Nate slid his knife quickly up to the man’s neck and grabbed his shoulders.  Nate was intending to threaten and hold hostage, scare the burglars into leaving and maybe make enough commotion so that his dad would come to help.  The man was a little taller than Nate, and Nate would have had him except for a slight, almost involuntary hesitation.  Nate was not well-trained in hand-to-hand; but the man apparently was because before Nate could tell what happened, a sharp pain went up his arm and his knife fell to the ground.  A gloved hand suppressed a panicked cry.

A deep gravelly voice hissed, “Keep still.”

Nate felt a sharp pain in his neck and he began to feel dizzy and weak as the man kept him rigidly in place.  Deep purples and greens began to float in and out of the shadows and soon blended into unconsciousness.

A garbled voice cut into the unconsciousness, “…wake up, please.  Is it you, Nate?”

At the mention of his name, Nate jolted awake.  He sat up and immediately slammed his head hard.  He fell back on the hard surface on which he had been sleeping.

“O, be careful,” the familiar voice warned.  “It’s close in here.”

“Who are you? Where are we?”  Nate looked into the semi-darkness at the girl beside him.  Flashes of orange streetlight came through slits beside him.

“Nate! It is you!  This is Amelia.”  Amelia extended her legs and moved to a lying down position right next to Nate, and while this was somewhat awkward, it seemed to be all she could do with the space available.

“What’s going on?”  Nate asked while trying himself to decipher what must have happened after they drugged him.

“I don’t know, they drugged me.  I guess they’re taking us somewhere.”

The two fell silent and listened to the noises on the road.  They heard someone moving around above them and saw headlights.  Soon the noises began to fade and the street lights became less frequent, the only sound was that of the engine.  They slowed to a stop and then accelerated again and the street lights were gone, only the dim red of the tail lights of their own transport remained.

“I think we’re outside the city,” Amelia whispered.

Nate’s heart skipped a beat at the thought.  He had never been outside the city, and even Amelia, who he knew had travelled extensively within the city, had never been outside the city.  Sobbing came from above them, they were not the only two there.  Nate began to feel fidgety and his senses heightened.  A great siren screeching of bugs and frogs harmonized with the rumbling engine.  The smell of Amelia’s shampoo was soothing above the smell of fear from the people who were unseen around them.  Dawn light began to highlight the outskirts of the city behind their barbed wire wall over toward the horizon and illuminate the grey metal interior of their box.  Amelia’s damp hair on his shoulder tickled and her arm against his was now less awkward and more welcome.

A series of jolts ensued and it seemed that they were at their destination, because the box opened and the morning sun poured over them.  Nate stood, then turned and helped Amelia to her feet.  He held on to her hand, more for his own comfort than for hers, though she may have needed it, too.

“Direct your attention here,” commanded a man a short distance away from them.  He wore the regalia of a Scientific Research Corps officer.  “Welcome to Camp Propogation.  You have been chosen as some of the best specimens of your genes to participate in our program.”  Amelia immediately dropped Nate’s hand and from habit they both side-stepped a little away from each other.  “You will now be directed by these guards to your respective orientations.”

A group of SRC members began regrouping the confused red-heads, and soon Nate was separated from Amelia and marching into a low-lying building.  The small group of red-headed males was led into a room with another small group of guys of various hair colors.  They were seated in front of a podium and projector screen.  Nate was sitting next to a talkative man with short brown hair who had volunteered for the program and was sharing how lucky he thought Nate was to actually be a red-head and how he wanted to honor the memory of his red-headed father by spawning more like him.  Nate began to feel as if his face might be turning green.

A dark man with thick glasses took the stand and began a presentation of all the programs at the camp.  Nick really did have a sinking feeling in his stomach now.  He was not listening any more, but he knew he could not make it through this alone.  He lowered his head into his hands and prayed; prayed for strength to do what was right.  This place was not right in so many ways.  All the things he avoided at school, things he had been taught to not even think about, magnified and focused in a way very difficult to avoid.  He could no longer just dodge the subject, this was something he would have to take a stand against; the only problem was he didn’t know how.

The group was now being directed out of the briefing room.  Nick followed, striving to keep his ears unreceptive and his eyes inattentive.  They were soon in a room with lots of posters and screens on the wall.  He couldn’t help but notice the pornographic nature of all the media.  Their guide’s voice droned on, “This is one of the many programs available to male members of the camp…”

Nate’s breath now came heavily through his nostrils, his eyes narrowed, and a hot rage boiled up within him.  There was nothing right about this, he refused to be a slave to their evil project.  Grabbing the monitor nearest him, he tore it from the wall with a strength he did not know he had.  The disturbing picture vanished in a crash of sparks and glass.  “I won’t participate!” he shouted.  “You can’t make me.”

Strong hands grabbed each of Nate’s arms and the scientist conducting the orientation said, “And this is an example of what happens to anyone who tries to disrupt or discredit the camp by going against the established rules.”

“The cage,” continued the scientist.  Nate blinked in the bright sunlight.  “This is the established punishment for any disrupters.”  A high wire fence surrounded Nate and separated him from the rest of the camp.  “Right in the center of camp, the offenders serve as example for those who see them.  The sentence is twelve hours of daylight long.  If one’s sentence is not complete by sundown, he will stay in the cage overnight and resume the punishment in the morning.”  The group moved on and Nate was left alone, in the dirt, his shirt discarded, and in plain view of every building in the camp.  A few inhabitants passed, dressed in grey uniforms, but not much happened.  The summer sun beat down, and Nate began to see the severity of the punishment.  Twelve or more hours in a cage by himself he could stand.  Twelve hours without shade?  That was pure torture for someone with Nate’s complexion.

By the time the sun was past its zenith, Nate was a noticeable red color.  The camp began to stir as the people emerged from the buildings.  Nate heard his name, called in a soft shaky voice.

“Amelia!” he shouted and stood.  “I’m in here!”

Several heads turned to look as Amelia turned in circles to find him.  “Nate!” she cried and ran towards him.  “This is horrible!  Why are you in there?  What’re we going to do?”  She was trying so hard not to cry, but Nate could hear the tears stuck in her throat.

“I broke a TV.”

Amelia burst into tears, “They’re gonna make me find someone to make me pregnant, and I don’t want to be pregnant.  I want to go to college, and I want to go home!  I want to find someone who loves me, not someone I have to mate with.  This is so wrong!”  She flung herself at the fence and Nate caught her.  He pulled her in and held her, as best he could through the wires.  Her tears practically sizzled on his burning shoulder.  He was scared for her now, more than he’d ever been.  She was more trapped than he was.

“Is there a way out?”

“I don’t think so.  I have to find someone I like before tomorrow night and if I’m not pregnant in a month then they choose someone at random!”

Though that wasn’t what Nate meant it gave him an idea.  “A month will be plenty of time,” he whispered.

“What?” Amelia pulled herself out of Nate’s arms.

“You trust me, right?” he asked, grasping her by the shoulders.

“Yes,” she was quite confused. “Of course I do.”

“Tomorrow night, choose me as your preferred mate and I’ll do the same.  Then,” and his voice became barely audible, “we’ll plan our escape.”

Amelia gasped and smiled.  Then a concerned look crossed her face, “You’re sure we can do it in a month?”

“We have to try.”

Nate spent the night in the cage, but was released before noon the next day.  He received his grey uniform.  It was a tight cotton shirt with three different colored stripes on one sleeve and slack-like pants.  He and Amelia spent the day moving from shadow to shadow, scouting for possible escape options.  They went together to the office and filed the voluntary pair form.  They received a key to their very own room, which was on the third floor of the south-western dormitory.  A window looked out at the fence and the forest beyond.  The room was furnished with a queen sized bed, a couch, and also had a full bathroom with a huge tub.

First order of business was to get Nate’s sunburn taken care of as best they could.  Then they argued over who slept on the bed and who got the couch.  Nate decided that Amelia should get the bed, but Amelia made him agree that he would sleep there when he had to serve time in the cage.  They also discovered that night that the food was infused with a chemical that caused a feeling of sexual attraction and they should avoid being under its influence at the same time.  It was a difficult evening, but they eventually got to sleep, and they slept in well past breakfast time.

They soon began their planning.  Nate and Amelia spent hours outside walking around the compound, looking for weaknesses in security, drawing plans in the dirt, and making friends.  Nate was best at talking to people and getting to know them quickly and thoroughly.  They began to include their friends in their plans, and would share it with them.  Their friends would exclaim that it had never been tried before, warn them of potential dangers, and volunteer to help.

He and Amelia continued working out their plan, and Nate was impressed by Amelia’s attention to detail in plan-making and in observation of the security.  She noticed the guards who were actually reading, and she noticed the ones intently watching for trouble.  She also observed and explained how the guards were changed and when.  As they would lie in the dirt and plan, he often felt satisfied just watching her think.  It was beautiful to see her thought patterns come out so clearly.  They were jumbled at times, but they always made sense.

The most enthralling thing was the way she smiled.  There was a different smile for every occasion.  The grin and flush of red in her cheeks for a personal compliment, the wide open laugh when he messed up something, an eye roll and smirk for a bad joke, and best of all when she would smile when they were working something out or just relaxing against the side of a building in silence.  That smile was the most amazing because it was simply her, nothing flashy or funny.

It wasn’t that Nate hadn’t noticed these things about Amelia before, it’s just that they now seemed to carry some meaning and attractiveness.  He was a little worried that the chemicals in the food were starting to get to him because Amelia seemed to, in a word, shine.  Even in a crowd of other red-head girls, some much prettier than Amelia, she would be the one he would notice.  Her mop of curly hair and brown eyes that reflected the gray of her dress stood out and made him want to be closer to her all the time.

“Alright, it’s been a week since we stirred up any serious trouble and I think we’re almost ready to go.”  Amelia was lying on her stomach, staring at a drawing in the dust.

Nate was lying on his back, pretending to be staring at the sky.  “Amelia,” he was watching the way the breeze flicked Amelia’s curls out and how they would spring back to their natural position.  “Do you feel like the chemicals in the food are staying in our system, building up and making us all love-crazy?”

“No.  You changed the subject.”  She began to erase her drawing from the ground.  “I’ll create some trouble and get those supplies we need, then the next dark night we should be set to go.”

Nate hadn’t been paying attention, “Go? What supplies?”

Amelia gave him a cold look.

“Ouch, just kidding!” he lied.

She rolled her eyes and smirked like she always did, then flipped onto her back and stared up into the sky.  Nate moved closer until their elbows were touching.  Out of the corner of his eye he watched a slight smile flit across her face.  Her chest rose and fell rhythmically with her breathing and her eyelashes flickered.

A look of consternation crossed her face, “Why do you ask?”

“Why do I ask what?”

“About the chemicals, are you ok?”

Nate thought she might have seen signs of his crush that he wasn’t sure about, “Yeah, I’m fine.  I’m just concerned about the long-term effects.”

Amelia sighed.  “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.  It’s not like I’m going to fall head-over-heels in love with you.  We’re just friends.”

“Of course,” Nate felt a twinge of disappointment, but forced a smile.  “Just friends.”

That evening as the shadows were beginning to lengthen, the siren sounded calling all inhabitants to a general assembly.  It was a rare occasion and many were confused.  Nate feared the worst.  He tried to blend in with the crowd.  If this was about Amelia’s raid, then they would want him, too.  He passed several friends who tried to ask him if this was related to the break, but he kept his head down and continued moving toward the center where the announcer was.  Nate found a spot behind a couple of taller guys so that he could see without being seen.

Amelia was tied to one of the posts at the corner of the cage, but outside of the cage.  The head security officer stood beside her.  Her wrists were secured above her head and her feet barely touched the ground.  Nate immediately reflected her fear with an anger that tensed his entire body.  He wouldn’t have been able to unclench his fists if he had tried.

“This camp has seen an unprecedented amount of disorder and disruption.  This girl, Amelia Dacroi, and her mate, Nathanial Soar, have been the main instigators behind this commotion.”  Guards at the back of the crowd searched for Nate.  He stood a little closer to the two who served as his shield.  “We intend to make an example of this one to show you that disorder will not be tolerated.  This time we will use a punishment much more fit to her crimes than the cage.”  A huge tattooed man with a scruffy red beard and buzzed hair stepped up to Amelia.  “Meet Jones ‘Mauler’ McLytle.  He was relieved of a life sentence on the RCCP rice farms when he volunteered for this program.” Sweat trickled down Nate’s face.  The RCCP rice farms were reserved for only the most inhumane and violent prisoners, serial killers and rapists.  “It is to be his responsibility to punish Miss Dacroi.” Guards formed a circle separating the crowd from the announcer, Amelia, and the grizzly recruit.

Mauler McLytle approached Amelia, blocking her from Nate’s view.  Mauler took a step back, grunted in anger, and then lunged toward Amelia.  She let out a scream.  It was more than Nate could handle.  “Amelia!” he shouted, and lunged down between the two guys in front of him and also between two of the guards.

“Help!” Amelia screamed, and all hell broke loose.

Following Nate’s initiative, several other guys rushed the circle and began fighting with the guards.  It took the guards by surprise and several got through.  Soon about four of them were pulling at Mauler McLytle.  Nate rushed straight for Amelia.  Around them the guards tried to fight off the prisoners and a large-scale riot started.  Nate tore her restraints from the pole and they sank to the ground together.  Her skirt was torn all the way up to her hip, her shirt was hanging off her shoulder, her wrists were bleeding from the cuffs, and her lip was bleeding from the Mauler’s brutality.

Nate tried to pull her in, but she pushed him away and curled into a ball.  He tried to fix her shirt and put his arm around her shoulder.  “Are you alright, did he hurt you?”

She looked up at Nate.  “I got them.  I’ve got the supplies.  The genetics lab is ruined.  I’m not too hurt, just don’t hug me, my shirt’s messed up.”

Nate backed away and sat next to Amelia, a good six inches away at the nearest.  The riot raged on, with the guards being beaten to the ground.  All this he had started.  Why did he do it?  To get home?  Because this place was so wrong?  Those were his motivators at the beginning, but now he realized that it was something else.  Maybe this was it all along.  He loved Amelia.  It irritated him that they were always just friends.  Her beauty in planning the escape and carrying it out had won him over.  He now saw that he had to be her courageous one who jumped through the guards to take on Mauler.  No sane person would have done that.

He took her hand and led her through the crowd, throwing a few punches as he went.  Some of the rioters were on their side, outraged at the brutality of the camp.  Others were just enjoying the fight.  More guards had joined and they were beginning to gain control as Nate and Amelia slipped back to their dormitory.

He looked at her dirt and tear-streaked face and knew that no matter how strong she was, he had to be stronger; no matter how smart she was, he had to help her and be smarter; and that no matter what happened, he had to get her out of this horrible place.  No matter the cost.

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