Chapter 4

In the end, I retrieved my hidden portions and handed them two packages.

"May I ask where your husband went?" I inquired.

"I don't know. He must have run away with his mistress."

However, there was nowhere to escape to. Nonetheless, I said nothing further.

We parted ways, and I resumed my journey to the Border. That's where wealthy people discarded their old vehicles. But I had to be cautious not to approach the wall too closely to avoid being killed by the NSS (National Surveillance Service).

At times, I thought Prime Minister Pachis was taking her "protection" of citizens too far. We weren't permitted to be close to the wall. The government cited safety reasons for this regulation, but I suspected there was more to it.

"Why would they confine us if the outside is really uninhabitable? If they have been truthful, they should not be concerned about us going out. Nothing proves a point better than showing the truth. But the Prime Minister seems to want us to remain in the dark," Aidan once said.

Even though it was in my own home, it was hazardous to criticize the government, but Aidan was so exasperated that he could not keep it to himself any longer.

A loud metallic sound echoed from nearby. A row of NSS soldiers stood right in front of the wall, dozens of them perched on top. Each one had their gun trained on me.

They had uniformed black cloaks covering every inch of their body. Their masks had a glowing Y letter. It wasn't Y, though. It was the ancient language, the Greek symbol of the letter G. The masks had no valve around them. There was no lump on their back or anywhere on their body indicating an oxygen tank. It was unlikely they could guard the wall 24/7 without a significant oxygen supply.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" I asked one of them.

Instead of answering with a simple yes or no, or at least a headshake, they loaded their machine guns. I raised my hands. "Alright. Alright. Geez, what unfriendly civil servants." And I thought they should 'serve' civilians. I stifled my thoughts, knowing that they might actually kill me if I spoke out.

Next, I began to search the junkyard, where a wide variety of vehicles were scattered about. Most of them were old and rusted, as the good ones were usually still in local dumpsters, waiting for scavengers to claim them.

But I wasn't here for a whole vehicle.

Instead, I disassembled a particularly ancient one and gathered some of its parts, stowing them away in my bag.

***

There were several water sources in Genesis, or what used to be Genesis, where I could find Okaxon. One of them was located in the Copper Zone. Aidan had mentioned that it used to be a lake, covering a relatively large area. He had learned this from ancient books.

Although Aidan had received an education as the son of government officials, the school didn't teach him the history he wanted to know. Sometimes, I envied the Bathory twins, who could learn whatever they wanted, based on their assessment results. Nadia, who had excellent analytic skills and a keen interest in numbers, was directed to the science discipline. Meanwhile, Aidan, whose physical skills were extraordinary, was directed to the combat discipline.

As such, Aidan was mostly taught the history of the army.

He often sneaked into his parents' library at home to read ancient books. While the act itself was not forbidden in Genesis, it was looked down upon unless it was for research purposes.

Anyway, that's how he came to learn about this lake.

I crouched down near the water's surface. Aidan said it used to be in green color, so clear that you could see what's at the bottom. Now I could only see mud and soggy brown dirt.

Kkkrrr...

The sound of a large vehicle stopped me midway. Half of my body remained hidden behind the wall as I watched a government tank come to a stop. Two men in thick white overalls jumped out and started their Residential Routine Check (RRC), a monthly population tally that began in the Copper Zone and extended to Zone A. They counted the bodies lying on the streets and took them to a special place to be burned, as Aidan had told me. Then they visited homes to count the living and the dead.

Squinting, I realized that some unusual events had been occurring recently.

The most recent RRC was done less than a week ago, and I had not even fetched the weekly rations yet when RRC made another round of tallying. Apparently, I was not the only one confused by this occurrence.

"Haven't we already done checking this month?" an officer said, his jumpsuit a little too big for his size.

"It's an order by upper management. Do you want to defy their order? Go ahead and get your head cut then," his friend retorted.

"Hey, chill! What I'm saying is, why do we have to do double rounds? My wife is suspicious. She heard about husbands leaving their wives. She must be scared that I'll be one of them."

The other man scoffed. "Why should she believe in gossip?"

"That aside, don't you find it strange?"

"I don't know!" he sounded annoyed. "Let's just get this over with and go home. The kids are waiting for me."

They both disappeared into Zone E. I wanted to know what was going on and what they had found. So I waited around until they came out.

After waiting for a while, I saw the officers come out of the gate two hours later. They appeared exhausted, with droopy shoulders and heavy sighs.

"How can people disappear so quickly? The number of dead and living don't match up with the total population count. Maybe my wife was right about husbands leaving their wives," one of them said. It was the man with too big of a jumpsuit on.

The other officer replied, "Where would they go? This is the only place where humans can live. Your argument doesn't make any sense. Let's just finish this quickly. I don't care about it."

Another piece of news about missing people. The wealthy woman who attacked me with the boy had mentioned her missing husband. Then, there were the dependents, who probably had never even held a knife, also telling me that their husbands had left them. And now, this.

Even if it had become a trend for husbands to leave their wives, where would they go? Just like the spiteful officer said, there was nowhere to go. If the missing people had escaped to other zones, the RRC officers would have known about it.

I had to talk to Aidan about this, but first, I needed to gather the dirt for my mom.

To be continued...