One Year Later...
Bianca was sitting at the same table she had sat with Vance at a year before. This time she was alone with her thoughts and a roll of lit smoke weed.
Over the last year, the group's wealth and numbers had grown, but she had felt the group's morals slipping. The group used to never indulge in drugs, but after finding a stash of smoke leaf joints, the group had started indulging themselves in the drug liberally. Then there was the decision to start using captured prisoners to work in the mines. It was easy to rationalize, busy prisoners were less likely to escape, but it all seemed like a slippery slope.
She looked at the room that she and Lovell used to share and felt extremely depressed. After a lot of effort, she had found a stash of decent enough medicine to bring Lovell back from crypto sleep and help him fight off the plague. But things were never the same after he woke up. Lovell became paranoid, jealous and abusive. The final straw came after he went beserk and started hitting her. After that, she had broken things off. Lovell had moved on now, unsuccessfully trying to woo the few other women in the colony, and he hadn't challenged her de facto leadership of the group...yet, but they were never going to be friends. From then on he was just another rival.
She also thought about Vance. A few days after Adel had confronted her, Adel found Vance's dead body near a toxic barrel. There was nothing to suggest it was anything other than accidental toxic poisoning, the wastelands could be treachorous like that, but Bianca remained suspicious of Adel, who seemed mostly interested in looking out for himself. She wondered what kind of person he had been when Burnham was a glitter world. No of them ever talked about their old lives much. It was kind of an unspoken rule of the post-apocalypse.
After Vance was found dead, Lucky accused Adel of murdering Vance and then Lucky took off. That bothered Bianca deeply. Being hospitable to guests was something that was extremely important to her. It was what separated this group from the cannibals, fanatics and war criminal, or at least that's what she thought.
Bianca's train of thought was broken when Hannah, a former WIC prisoner turned recruit, came into the dining room.
Hannah: "There's another group of refugees seeking shelter, what should we tell them?"
Bianca was sitting at the same table she had sat with Vance at a year before. This time she was alone with her thoughts and a roll of lit smoke weed.
Over the last year, the group's wealth and numbers had grown, but she had felt the group's morals slipping. The group used to never indulge in drugs, but after finding a stash of smoke leaf joints, the group had started indulging themselves in the drug liberally. Then there was the decision to start using captured prisoners to work in the mines. It was easy to rationalize, busy prisoners were less likely to escape, but it all seemed like a slippery slope.
She looked at the room that she and Lovell used to share and felt extremely depressed. After a lot of effort, she had found a stash of decent enough medicine to bring Lovell back from crypto sleep and help him fight off the plague. But things were never the same after he woke up. Lovell became paranoid, jealous and abusive. The final straw came after he went beserk and started hitting her. After that, she had broken things off. Lovell had moved on now, unsuccessfully trying to woo the few other women in the colony, and he hadn't challenged her de facto leadership of the group...yet, but they were never going to be friends. From then on he was just another rival.
She also thought about Vance. A few days after Adel had confronted her, Adel found Vance's dead body near a toxic barrel. There was nothing to suggest it was anything other than accidental toxic poisoning, the wastelands could be treachorous like that, but Bianca remained suspicious of Adel, who seemed mostly interested in looking out for himself. She wondered what kind of person he had been when Burnham was a glitter world. No of them ever talked about their old lives much. It was kind of an unspoken rule of the post-apocalypse.
After Vance was found dead, Lucky accused Adel of murdering Vance and then Lucky took off. That bothered Bianca deeply. Being hospitable to guests was something that was extremely important to her. It was what separated this group from the cannibals, fanatics and war criminal, or at least that's what she thought.
Bianca's train of thought was broken when Hannah, a former WIC prisoner turned recruit, came into the dining room.
Hannah: "There's another group of refugees seeking shelter, what should we tell them?"