They grabbed me as I was checking the fish traps this morning.

It’s always my job to check traps, while my twin brother Jack tends the garden, and Dad milks the goats and feeds the chickens. We’ve had this routine for years— ever since mom died.

We’ve lived in our tiny cottage in the middle of the woods since Jack and I were small. It isn’t much, but it keeps us safe and warm through the harsh winters.

Dad says we lived in a big place called Boston before, and that the leaders forced us out to the wilderness with their “Dystopian, communist, fear-mongering bull shit.” I don’t really know what that means, but he says it a lot. He promised to explain it to us one day.

Now, as I’m shoved into a shiny house on wheels, I really wish he had explained it sooner.

I try to kick and punch and run to freedom, and I even got a few steps before large gloves hands grab me again. There are just too many of them.

They bind my hands together and force me into this long narrow shiny box. A smaller one on the side of me keeps asking me questions.

“Where do you live?”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Are there others?”

“Where are they?”

I can understand him, but I pretend that I don’t. There’s no way I’m giving up my family. So I stay silent and instead dart my eyes around the space, looking for weaknesses and ways of escape. But everything here is shiny and hard, and seemingly impossible to break.

I’m scared and cold, but I keep my cool. Dad always said that Rule Number One in survival is to keep a clear head.

The one asking me questions eventually gives up, and goes to speak to the older one in the front. He must be the dad.

Left to my own devices, I study my captors. All 8 are covered head to toe in rough clothing that is the same color as the dried river bed in the summer. Their hats look hard like stone, and they carry big black guns. I’d only ever seen Dad’s hunting rifle, but these look far larger and scarier.

Suddenly we are moving, and I can’t help but jump at the surprise. Then we are moving faster, and faster.

My stomach sinks. There’s no way Dad will be able to find me now.

The one at the front suddenly speaks into a tiny box in his hand.

“Commander, we caught a rogue teenager in former Allagash territory. She will not speak to us. We are not sure she even knows how.”

A pause.

“Yes, we checked the surrounding area for others and found nothing. It looks like she’s lived on her own for years.”

I sigh in relief. So they didn’t find Dad and Jack. Just me.

“She looks about 16.”

Wrong... I’m 14, idiot.

“We are taking her to the children’s facility in Sector 39 to be cleaned up and assimilated. She will probably have to start in the lower levels until she’s up to speed.”

I don’t know what “assimilated” means, but it certainly doesn’t sound good. The conversation ends abruptly, and now there is only silence.

The time passing feels like an eternity.

It’s only been a few hours but I already miss the trees and the streams. Why does the air smell so different in here? It’s suffocating.

In spite of my best efforts to not appear weak, I can’t stop shivering and I’m suddenly bone-tired. My knees fold into my chest as I lean into the wall of this odd moving house.

My eyes fall closed and I let the darkness take me away, unsure of what will be waiting for me when I wake.