Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Fantasy
ISBN-10: 152097728X
Type: Fiction
ISBN-13: 9781520977287
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
The fight for freedom is an never-ending battle
When the Kakus, a totalitarian government, destroys Fenesia's home and kills her parents, they have no idea that they have made her a lethal weapon and their worst enemy.
The Kakus rule with impunity, dividing their people into classes—some having more rights and privileges than others based solely on physical attributes. However, the people rise-up. And Fenesia, whom had once been privileged, rises with them after losing her home and parents. She becomes a warrior to be reckoned with, yet she questions the rights and wrongs of war and killing.
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Who would you die for?
The sound of explosions crashes around me. It takes only a minute to register in my mind what has happened, that we are under attack.
When I turn around to face the dancing white veils of smoke, darkness and fire in its wake, I see Father lying face down on the cold hard ground.
“Father,” I call out as I run towards him―Anicey not far behind!
I feel the thunder of my heart, for a storm has been brewing; it hovers over our heads like a rabid Nighthawk taunting and playing on our fears.
We hide like diseased fugitives, fit only to exist in a dark. . .dark place beneath the earth. Nevertheless, it has landed, only to destroy everything and everyone I have ever cared about.
“Father, Father!” I cry out once more.
Anicey and I both drop to the ground when we reach him. He is on his belly, face down, bleeding from his back.
Mother! I just remember that she is still inside. I hear Father murmur, desperately trying to force the words from his lips. Father is alive! He is alive!
“Sara, Sara,” he calls out with a weakened voice.
“Father, don’t move,” I say, my voice unsteady, breaths, short and uneven.
Anicey looks on quietly, her body quivering as I attempt to pull the shard of glass that is wedged in his back. I pull it out slowly, and he groans. The bleeding begins to flow more profusely now.
“Anicey, I want you to press hard; press hard to stop the bleeding, just like they taught us in Health class.”
I place her hand firmly on the wound. The blood immediately squeezes through and around her fingers.
She winces.
“Don’t move it,” I tell her.
Mother is still alive; I tell myself. She has to be alive; she’s protected by concrete and steel, which had survived the nuclear attack. So, why wouldn’t she be alive?
I rush towards the cellar, with every step being a test of my sanity, and a test of my own breath, or the lack of it.
I am near now.
There are pieces of our home strewn all over―a reflection of what is left of our lives, our family. I step over pieces of burning wood, broken glass, and blocks of concrete. Flame and smoke dance in the wind. I look down at what is now a mangled mess of concrete and burning branches. A tree has fallen and is lying across the wide hole in the ground that was once our safe place. I can’t see mother! I must get closer! I scream in my mind. I inch my way beneath the tree and into the cellar. There, I see a leg sticking out from beneath one of the metal shelves, which must have fallen on her during the attack. I feel a quickening dread travel through me, rendering me almost breathless, as if the life has been knocked out of me. I cough. The thick smoke is beginning to overwhelm me. However, I can’t let it stop me from helping her. She is still there, alive! I keep my eyes focused on, moving even quicker towards her.
“Mother, Mother!” I call out, but she does not answer. “Mother!”
My body trembles harder now. My heart throbs with anxiety and pain. I clear the smoky, burning path I take to reach her, scorching my hands, eyes burning, lungs caked with smoke, struggling to breathe. With a fervent desire for my mother to be alive, I quickly remove the shelf away from her body; the pain is unbearable as the hot metal burns my flesh. I scream because her leg has been severed from her body.
I stand there frozen in disbelief. My body trembles even harder as tears flows freely down my face. My mother’s eyes are so brilliantly blue, just like Anicey's. They look motionless up at me. Her face is partly covered in black ash; there’s a long gash spewing with blood and ash across it. Her hair is no longer snow-white; it is instead, a smoky gray.
“Mother.” I weep softly, but she does not hear me. “Mother...I love you.” She begins to fade away before my eyes, in a wave of fog and light. And I begin to feel my body drifting. Drifting away on a soft cloud of thin air, where all is silent in a world, and nothing else exists, just an empty void of light.
“Mother,” I call reaching my hand out to touch her. But soon, I see nothing but white, bright, but translucent, yet, nothing can be seen through it. I try to force my eyes to look into it. To see what is beyond, the impossible, the unimaginable. With all my efforts, I see Mother and Father smiling down on me.
Father is holding my hand. I can almost feel his warmth. I try to call out to them. Tell them how relieved I am to see that they are all right. Then, I remember that I had lost them that day. That dreadful day.
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