Free BEFORE by Dawn Rae Miller

about missing the assessment?
    “Everything is fine. The State is investigating.”
    “Ping if you need anything?”
    I nod and she goes back to scribbling on her paper. Like me, she hates writing. Unlike me, she’s never really learned to do it, so she always has to borrow my notes. Which means, she doesn’t pay attention.
    At the front of the room, Mr. Proctor rambles about the Long Winter. Not even a security breach can save me from that. He seems to think that the easiest way to recover from a nerve-wracking attack is to bore us with history. I don’t see why we even continue to cover this subject. Everyone understands the “Order and History of Society.” Every year, it’s the same class with the same information. If you don’t know it by now, there’s really no hope.
    Mr. Proctor’s voice fills my ears. “Ice and snow covered whole continents, destroying livable surface and resulting in a fifty-year war as people migrated. Over half of the world’s population vanished.” 
    I don’t need to pay attention, I have it memorized. How the Center, once known as Africa, is only a tenth of its former size; and there were more countries than I can even fathom, instead of our five great societies. How these societies would have destroyed one another if my ancestor, Caitlyn, hadn’t succeeded in aligning them under a common cause: to preserve humanity. 
    I follow along as Mr. Proctor taps the wall screen behind his desk, illuminating each society on a map. 
    Tap, flash. The West, where we live, shaded green and stretching from our northern cities of Ottawa and Calgary to the southern city of Austin, appears on the wall screen.
    Another tap. The East, covering an area that used to be called Asia glows a soft blue.
    Tap, Tap, Tap – the South, the Center and the Islands appear.
    One more tap. The North – not a really a society anymore other than in name, just an ice covered land mass once known as Europe. Only a few hold-outs still live there.
    Mr. Proctor superimposes an image of the world over the ancient map. “The world was vastly overpopulated and spread out before the Long Winter.”
    I write the word “Sensitive” on one of the thin blue lines on my paper. Such an oxymoron. It implies a delicate state. But that’s exactly what they’re not. Determined to bring humanity under their control, they unleashed the Long Winter on us—their final act after a millennia of plagues, earthquakes and famine—and nearly decimated the world’s human population.
    Luckily, the Founders discovered how to identify the chromosomal abnormality in Sensitives. Most are found during childhood and fitted with irremovable red wristlets that track their every move. Sensitive Enforcers find the rest—those who roam free and hide in the shadows, not in the guarded settlements on the outskirts of major towns. Because no one knows how to fight magic, our Enforcers must catch them off-guard or overpower them. 
    But one thing remains the same for both groups: they absolutely cannot be allowed to breed. 
    I scan through my book until I locate the images of historical Sensitives. Sometimes, in old books, they’re called witches. But that was before we discovered what they had—extra senses. Then their name was changed.
     I tap a page to zoom in on one. They don’t look anything like the group who attacked Beck and me. The ones today, other than not wearing a mandatory wristlet, looked exactly like us—normal people. Well, if you ignore the woman’s crazy eyes.
    The image in my book fades in and out beneath my fingers. I flip the page and find Caitlyn Greene, my ancestor, surrounded by the rest of the Founders, smiling at me from the depths of time. Other than our chestnut-colored hair and small stature, we don’t look anything alike. In fact, with her wide eyes and full mouth, she looks more like Mother—or even Kyra—than me.
    How did this woman muster the courage to confront such a dangerous group? She wasn’t much