14

RC45

The signs engraved on the walls were his only freedom. She knew the 9 m² that surrounded her by heart. She had walked them up and down for the past fifteen years. Each sign represented a day spent in this cage.

These lines had first been very thin, barely small lines on the wall, but over time they had become deeper. They reflected the anger she sought in vain to express.

His story was ultimately very commonplace on this planet. She was born to two slaves who had been selected for breeding. Her mother had certainly given birth to a child every year until her body could no longer support anything.

From birth, she had been examined, in order to detect the slightest of her faults. If she had failed the tests, she would have been thrown into the common grave that stood in the middle of the closed quarters of the slaves, as a daily reminder of their inferior condition.

Then during childhood, the exams had continued, in order to determine his class. On RC45 the slaves were organized into five classes: soldiers, scholars, craftsmen, farmers, and the last class… the services.

The first two classes were the most sought after by slaves, so they had a slim chance of being freed by their master one day. But the places were limited, because of very complex admission criteria and the male slaves were often privileged. The most diverse class was of course the service class, but also the most dangerous. A slave could overnight be a sexual slave, then a prey during a hunting game. The average life expectancy was two years.

Ariana would thankfully not be one of them. She cried with joy when she learned that she had grown too big to fit in. She belonged to the year of conception which had produced very high quality slaves. But smaller women were seen as easier to subdue. That was why she watched with tears in her eyes as her sisters were taken away to be sold to brothels or new masters.

With her 1.70m, she would certainly be bought by a landowner or a craftsman wealthy enough to procure a slave.

But that idea had become obsolete when she began to tower over male slaves. She had reached 1.80m at the age of fifteen.

Now the foremen looked at her suspiciously and immediately increased the surveillance around her. From one guard, it had grown to four.

She had even thought that they would rather kill her than try to sell her.

Today, she celebrated her sixteenth birthday and would have the chance to be registered in the slave register as a gift and then she would receive a mark that would define the class to which she would belong.

The bedroom door opened to reveal the four guards. She got up and walked with them without showing the slightest sign of resistance. She knew what happened to the most rebellious.

They stopped in front of a low house with a red roof. We could see on the facade a dilapidated panel on which was inscribed " registration office ".

In the center of the room, an elderly man sat behind his desk. His only task was to register slaves in the register. She joined the line and waited her turn. Slaves first had to register their fingerprints, give a lock of hair to keep track of DNA. They were then taken to another room to receive the mark. Ariana watched as slaves of all ages and genders strolled by. She rarely met their gaze. She saw hope in some people. They were those who bore the marks of soldiers, scholars. But the most painful looks to see came from those who had just learned that they would be joining the service class. Their eyes were blank. She spotted one of them, dragged across the floor by his guards. He collapsed when he heard the news.

When it was her turn, she walked over to the desk.

“Put your right hand on the table.

The man kept staring at his screen. Ariana noticed that he never lifted his head like it was the only way he could find to put a barrier between himself and the life he had just condemned. Because it was indeed a life sentence.

She pressed her hand to the fingerprint reader and anxiously watched it scroll by. The man's hand then moved towards his head and unceremoniously tore out a few strands of hair. She didn't flinch, used to the pain that her masters had imposed on her from a young age with no regard for her thoughts. The guards were also very sensitive to the slightest movement on her part and could apply painful electric shocks to her at any time thanks to the implant placed inside her body since childhood. She herself did not know where it was, lest she think of removing it to escape.

— Door No. 5.

The guards led her to a hallway where a dozen doors were lined up.

Door No. 5 automatically slid open to let them in. She looked apprehensively at the operating table and the syringe on a tray.

It was the moment of truth: she would now know which class she would belong to until the end of her days. A surgeon walked up to her and motioned for her to lie down.

The softness of the sheets surprised her, but her attention was quickly turned to the syringe the doctor held in his hands, its opaque color did not allow him to see the tint of the liquid which would determine her status.

"Tie her up!

One of the guards attached leather bracelets to her wrists and ankles.

The doctor then bent down to observe her face more closely. One of his gloved hands opened her left eye, examined it for a few moments, then inserted the needle. It would release a so-called intelligent serum into the iris which would serve as an identity document, a localization system. He would become the marker of his class, but also the symbol of his enslavement.

Ariana tried to resist at first and focus on something else, but soon she started shaking and screaming as the needle sank deeper and deeper. The operation only lasted a few seconds. The liquid smeared along the iris as if it had a will of its own. She felt a sharp pain in her eye as new connections were made, until she only felt tingling. She then blinked repeatedly in an attempt to erase the irritating sensation.

The doctor then signaled to the guards to untie her. When it was done, he handed her a mirror.

She observed her face for the first time since her last medical visit two years ago. Her features had become more refined, but her hair still looked as indomitable. Her eyes, however, caught her attention more, her brown-colored right eye now contrasting with her left eye. The iris had taken on a blood-red hue and the pupil was surrounded by a golden line that turned on itself.

For the first time since her sisters left, a thin smile formed on her face.

She was going to be a soldier.