Distant Shores

My best friend and I were transported to a post-apocalyptic world where women were a vanishing species.
Here, the men gave us the best food and protected us with their lives. After a while, my friend didn't want to go back.
This is paradise, she said.
But as I watched the men who guarded us day and night, a chill crept down my spine.
I knew that no kindness in this world comes without a price. And I knew that no matter the era, the male's primary instinct is to reproduce.

1
By the time I fully grasped our situation, the Enforcers had already slipped inside the apartment Vivian and I shared.
There were eight of them. Clad in black uniforms, they stood like shadows in the dim light—young, silent, and cold as ice.
After a long moment, two of them broke away from the group and headed toward our separate bedrooms. I feigned sleep, my heart hammering against my ribs, praying it was just a routine patrol.
But a cold dread in my gut told me otherwise. They were here to make us conceive.
I’d overheard the doctors that morning during our physical examinations.
"Their physical condition is extraordinary. The Citadel hasn't seen specimens this healthy in twenty years."
"We've already identified eight candidates with high genetic compatibility."
"If all goes well, we'll have new life by this time next year."
"God has finally shown us mercy."
There had been other women at the examination, so I hadn't realized they were talking about Vivian and me. After the check-up, we were moved to this place—the Spire, the only building in the Citadel with a view of the world outside the walls.
On the table, alongside our daily rations of beef, milk, and bread, were two perfect, gleaming apples—a luxury reserved for the Citadel’s elite. The common citizens scraped by on corn and sweet potatoes. Though Vivian and I were classified as civilians when we arrived, we were given these precious foods.
I knew the Citadel operated under a strict system of apocalyptic rationing: you get what you give. We were receiving something precious, which meant we were expected to give something precious in return.
Vivian and I had nothing.
Nothing but our bodies.
Vivian picked up her glass of milk, as she always did, and stood by the window, gazing out at the vast, desolate landscape. The sunlight bathed her, making her fair skin glow. She looked like an angel, pure and serene.
I just stared at the food, my stomach churning with anxiety.
"What's wrong?" Vivian asked, her brow furrowed with concern.
I told her what I’d overheard. "This place is a nightmare, Viv. We have to find a way back home. Fast."
She was silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. "Chloe… is it really so bad here?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Bad? The apocalypse had raged for a century. The ecosystem was shattered, the climate hostile, food was scarce, and the walking dead roamed the earth. This place was hell.
But she continued, "Here, we have food and shelter. We don't have to worry about finding a job, or paying off a mortgage. No one hurts us. Everyone cares for us, looks after us. For me… this is a paradise."
I shook my head. "No kindness comes without a price, Viv. There's always a reason, always a cost. Women are rare here. Our bodies, our wombs—that's the price."
Vivian brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. "But Chloe," she said quietly, "back home, didn't we have to give our bodies and our fertility, too?"

2
The man entered my room and stopped at the foot of my bed.
I recognized him. His name was Jax. The son of the Citadel's former Commander. The coldest, most ruthless Enforcer. Rumor had it he’d killed his own parents when he was just ten.
The first time I saw him, I was struck by his looks. The next second, the barrel of his gun was pressed against my forehead. Vivian and I had been at an amusement park when a sinkhole opened up beneath us. I was still wearing my gray-blue contacts from that day.
Gray-blue eyes. The mark of the Infected.
Jax had mistaken me for one of them. The misunderstanding was cleared up, but he never stopped despising me. Hated me for being a human who would decorate her eyes in the color of the enemy. Yet, the Citadel had assigned him to be our guardian. He was a man of absolute discipline; he followed his orders, even if it meant protecting someone he loathed.
The feeling was mutual. Plenty of people in the Citadel hated him. They called the Enforcers the dogs of the elite, and Jax was the most loyal, most vicious of the pack.
He stood there, a silent silhouette. I heard the metallic click as he unbuckled his belt.
I was right. He was here for the Pairing.
I dropped the pretense of sleep and sat up, pressing the small knife I'd hidden to my throat. "Get out," I said, my voice low and steady. "Or I'll die right in front of you."
I had sharpened the blade myself. My hand trembled slightly, and the edge bit into my skin. A warm trickle of blood traced a path down my neck.
I was gambling. Gambling that he couldn't, and wouldn't, let me die.
It worked. Jax froze. A flicker of confusion crossed his face, as if I wasn't supposed to be awake.
The milk. I hadn't drunk my milk. Vivian, not wanting it to go to waste, had drunk mine too. That's why she was already sound asleep. They had drugged us. And right now, another man was in her room.
"I said get out," I repeated, pressing the knife harder. "Take all of them with you."
But in a blur of motion, he snatched the knife from my hand and clamped his other hand over my mouth. I struggled, but it was useless. For the first time, I understood the raw, hopeless disparity in strength between a man and a woman, especially a man like him—the most skilled fighter in the Citadel.
Tears of rage and despair streamed down my face. I would not be forcibly bred. I bit down on his hand, hard. The coppery taste of blood filled my mouth.
He didn't even flinch. But he didn't move to hurt me, either.
A voice crackled from his comms unit. "Major Jax, what's your status?"
He glanced at me. "She's awake. Uncooperative. Attempted self-harm."
"Acknowledged," the voice replied. "Abort the mission for now. Don't let her hurt herself."
"Understood," Jax said.
He released me. I shoved him away and scrambled off the bed, intending to run to Vivian's room. But he caught me, throwing me back onto the mattress.
I thought he was going to defy his orders. "What," I sneered, "is the Commander's dog going to disobey his master now?"
He looked down at me, his eyes hooded. Without a word, he unbuckled his belt, but this time he used it to tie my hands to the headboard. He gagged me with a strip of cloth, then pulled a chair over and sat facing me.

3
In the suffocating silence of the night, the rhythmic creak of the iron bedframe in Vivian's room was brutally clear.
So were her soft cries. They were supposed to be cries of pleasure. She was meant to be asleep, but now she was lost in a drugged ecstasy. It seemed the milk contained more than just a sedative.
And there were still six other men outside. The doctors had said they were all compatible candidates. I didn't know if they were all supposed to take a turn. A wave of guilt washed over me. I should have prepared her.
After an eternity, the sounds from her room finally stopped. I heard muffled voices, and then the man led Vivian away.
Panic seized me. The moment Jax untied me, I demanded, "Where are you taking her?"
He didn't answer directly. "Your current state will only agitate her. You'll see each other again when the time is right."
I asked the others, but they ignored me. For the first time in the two months since we’d arrived, Vivian and I were completely separated.

4
They put me in isolation. Even Jax, my constant shadow, was gone. The door was locked.
I picked up a chair and hurled it at the window, but it bounced off. The glass was reinforced, unbreakable by my strength. The Spire, once a vantage point, was now a cage in the sky.
I refused to eat, terrified they would drug me again.
After a day and a night of this, Jax appeared with an old, white-haired man. Hope flickered within me. This was the man who had stopped Jax from shooting me when he thought I was Infected. I didn't know his title, but his bearing and attire suggested he outranked Jax.
He smiled kindly. "Is the food not to your liking? Tell grandpa what you want to eat, and I'll have someone make it for you."
"Let me and my friend go," I pleaded, thinking he was my savior. "We can work for our food." I told him we had both studied bioengineering, that we could contribute to the Citadel.
The old man listened patiently, then patted my head. "Child, your work is to bear children."
I stared at him, my hope turning to ash. I thought a man like him, so full of wisdom, would understand. That he would know childbirth should never be forced.
He gestured to Jax. "Is Major Jax not to your liking? He is the most handsome man we have, and his genetic compatibility with you is the highest. But if you truly cannot accept him, you may choose someone else. Your feelings are what matter most. We will respect your choice."
I backed away slowly. "I will not be a breeding machine. I would rather die."
The old man's smile never wavered. "As you wish." He calmly ordered Jax to remove all food and water from my room. Not a single crumb, not a single drop.
Jax hesitated. "All of it, sir?"
"All of it."
Jax looked like he wanted to protest, but he said nothing. It didn't matter to me. At that moment, I truly believed death was better than this.
But in the days that followed, they gave me nothing but a small cup of corn juice each day to keep me alive. The windows were sealed with steel plates, plunging me into absolute darkness and silence. At first, I could bear the hunger and the blackness, clinging to memories of my old life. But the hunger grew, a fire scorching my stomach and throat, becoming unbearable.
By the seventh day, my consciousness began to fray. I thought I heard Vivian crying, begging someone to save me. I dragged myself to the door, my weak hands slapping against the cold steel.
It felt like an eternity before a pair of leather boots appeared in the sliver of light under the door. The light was so bright it seared my eyes.
I clutched at the boots. "I… I agree…" I rasped.
A bowl of plain white porridge was placed before me. I grabbed it with both hands, gulping it down like a starving animal. I had thought my will was as strong as a revolutionary martyr's, but a single bowl of bland porridge brought me to my knees. I knew then that they would have let me starve to death. In their world, procreation was more important than life itself.
When I finished, I finally had the strength to look up. It was Jax. His face was as impassive as ever.
"You'll hurt your stomach eating so fast," he said, his voice flat.
Another man who came with him scoffed. "I thought you were tough. Couldn't even last seven days. There was once someone who…"
Jax shot him a look, and the man fell silent.
The old man had come too, along with several other candidates for the Pairing. He smiled that same kind smile. "We respect your feelings. You may choose one that you like."

5
I still chose Jax.
He had the highest genetic compatibility with me. The old man might have offered a choice, but he was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Besides, the female doctor who examined me earlier had explained the reality of the situation.
"Pairing with the highest match is better for your body," she had said. "If a lower-match candidate fails to impregnate you within two months, he will be replaced. They will keep replacing them until you conceive."
"Why not use artificial insemination?" I'd asked.
"Because technologically conceived infants all develop fatal illnesses around the six or seven-month mark. Only natural gestation is stable."
"Do all the women here live like this?"
She shook her head, her expression grim. "Not all of them. Some women… can no longer bear children."
"Because they're too old?"
She didn't answer. She reported to the old man that my body was too weak from starvation and I would need several days to recover before the Pairing. He refused. She sighed and turned to me, her voice low. "Major Jax isn't a bad person. Since you've accepted this, try to accept him. It will be easier for you, and better for your future." Her sincerity was genuine. She must have lived through her own version of this hell.
The room was empty except for Jax and me. He was cleaning his handgun. I stood by the window, looking at a white building in the distance. It was the building we had appeared in front of when we first arrived. I had tried to get inside several times, searching for a way back, but it was always sealed off.
I had surrendered to the present, but I never planned to stay here forever. I had to find a way into that building.

6
After my shower, I lay on the bed. In the quiet of the night, I could hear faint sounds of lovemaking echoing through the Spire, from the bottom floor to the top. It was like an inescapable web, suffocating me.
Jax lowered himself onto me.
The pain was sharp. I needed a distraction. "Did your last Pairing partner have a child?" I asked.
His hands gripped my waist. "She died."
"How?"
"Infection."
"Did she conceive before she died?"
"No. We had never even met."
He looked at me, and his amber eyes held no desire. Only instinct. The primal instinct to reproduce. He didn't even take off his shirt. The stiff fabric of his uniform chafed my skin. His gun was still in his hand, a symbol of his constant vigilance.
I stared at the cold moon outside the window and prayed for dawn.
This went on for three nights. On the morning of the fourth day, the Citadel's alarms blared. The Infected were attacking. Jax wasn't supposed to be on the front lines, but the situation was critical. He was needed.
My second-highest match was left to guard me. He was young, no older than seventeen or eighteen, and as silent as Jax.
"What's your name?" I asked.
His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his cap, but the tips of his ears turned red. "Ethan."
I smiled. "That's a nice name."
"Th-thank you," he stammered.
As I got up to dress, he turned to leave. I stopped him. "You don't have to be so formal. If I'm not pregnant in two months, you'll be the one in this bed with me."
He froze. "The Major… his compatibility with you is the highest. You will succeed."
"Who knows. I hear a lot of them fail."
"N-no. The Major is very… capable."
"This isn't about being capable." I walked over to him and looked up into his eyes. They were beautiful, and filled with panic. His breathing was shallow, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
I'd pushed enough. "I'm hungry. Could you get me something to eat?"
"Of course." He practically fled the room.
It was then that they brought Vivian back.

7
Vivian threw her arms around me, her eyes filled with tears. "You're so thin," she whispered.
"Where have you been?" I asked urgently.
"Just on the floor below."
"With who?"
"A few other girls, and…" She bit her lip, glancing toward the door. I followed her gaze and saw the man who had entered her room that night. I hadn't seen him clearly then, but now I recognized him. He was Landon, the son of the current Commander.
It was strange. Why were all the highest-compatibility candidates the sons of the elite? It was even stranger that Landon would agree to a Pairing with Vivian. He was notoriously arrogant, looking down on commoners and even advocating for abandoning them to conserve resources for the elite. It was laughable. Even with less than three hundred thousand people left, this Citadel was still rigidly divided by class.
"You've been with him this whole time?" I asked.
Vivian nodded faintly.
"So you know what's been happening to us?"
"Yes."
"And you're willing to go through with it?"
"Willing or not, I can't change anything." Her personality had always been one of quiet acceptance, a result of being orphaned and raised by relatives.
"We're best friends, Viv. I'm not leaving you here alone," I said, my voice firm. "If I find a way back, you're coming with me. Right?"
She nodded. "Yes."
A sliver of relief washed over me. Ever since she'd called this place a paradise, I had been terrified she would actually choose to stay.

8
I fell into a routine, biding my time, waiting for an opportunity. During the day, I took my medicine and ate my meals. Vivian and I would rehash the details of our arrival, searching for any clue. At night, I lay on the narrow bed and endured Jax.
Vivian adapted far better than I did. She learned to navigate Landon's arrogance and his temper.
Ten days later, my period arrived right on schedule. The doctors were disappointed, blaming it on my previous starvation. But their spirits lifted soon after.
Vivian was pregnant.
The Citadel erupted in celebration. I didn't understand the euphoria until Vivian told me she was the first woman to conceive naturally in almost five years.
The situation was far worse than I had imagined.
"No one has gotten pregnant in five years? Why?" I asked, shocked.
"I don't know the details. Only that around the twentieth year of the apocalypse, it became difficult for women to conceive. The numbers kept dropping, until five years ago, when it stopped completely."
"It has to be the environment." When an environment becomes hostile, the first thing animals do is stop reproducing. Humans were animals, too. But humans had other means. So the Citadel had tried artificial insemination. When that failed, they developed the genetic compatibility Pairing program. That clearly hadn't worked either. The harsh new world had changed women's bodies, making them reject pregnancy.
Vivian and I were different. We were from another time. Our bodies were untouched by this world's decay.
The fact that the Spire was filled with women, all enduring men night after night despite five years of failure, meant one thing. They weren't just here for breeding experiments. They were here as outlets for the men's desires. This was the apocalypse, after all. The Citadel maintained a veneer of civilization, but beneath it, the law of the jungle prevailed.
And in the twisted dance of procreation and lust, women bore the entire burden.

9
Because Vivian was pregnant and I was being compliant, we were granted the freedom to move about the Spire. I explored every floor, searching for an escape route, but every level was guarded, the doors forged from reinforced steel.
Ethan saw my probing and misunderstood. "You don't need to be afraid. This is the most secure facility in the Citadel. Once the doors are locked, not even the Infected can get in. Even we can't get out."
"What if there's a fire? We'd all be trapped."
"That won't happen. In a fire, all the doors unlock automatically. But there are no open flames allowed in the Spire."
I feigned disappointment. "So I can't even go outside for some fresh air?"
He nodded. "You're too important. We can't risk anything happening to you."
He was right. In a world of men, a lone woman was in constant danger.
I met the other women confined to the Spire. Most were young and looked exhausted. They were curious about us, crowding around Vivian.
"You're so lucky, getting Paired with Major Landon. I'm stuck with brutes and old men."
"I just want to get pregnant so I don't have to deal with so many of them."
"I want to get pregnant so I can eat meat. I haven't had meat in so long."
"Let me touch you, for good luck."
They reached out to touch Vivian's belly, their eyes filled with desperate hope. Only one older woman scoffed. "You think having a baby makes you a queen? You'll see. You won't even know how you died."
"You're just jealous," another girl shot back.
"Yeah, you're old and used up. You're about to be sent to the labor division, so you can't stand to see anyone else succeed."
The woman's gaze swept over them, finally landing on Vivian and me. "Jealous? You'll understand one day. This world was meant to end. You shouldn't be trying to force it back to life."
I wanted to ask her what she meant, but Jax and Landon arrived. The chatter died instantly.
Landon glared at Vivian. "Didn't I tell you to be in your room at four?"
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her away. Jax didn't reprimand me, but he punished Ethan severely for failing to keep me on schedule.
"It wasn't his fault," I said, trying to defend him. "I lost track of time."
Jax was unmoved. As Ethan was led away to receive his punishment, he shot me a grateful look.
Back in our area, a doctor was drawing Vivian's blood. It would be sent to the labs for research, to find out what made her different. If I conceived, I would face the same fate. Vivian hated needles. Her face was pale, her eyes squeezed shut.
"Major Landon, why don't you comfort her?" the doctor teased.
With a child on the way, Vivian would be bound to Landon for life, her purpose to bear him more children. They would only be separated if he died.
"If she can't handle a little pain, how is she going to give birth?" Landon sneered.
I went to Vivian and took her hands. "Don't be afraid. It'll be over in a second." Her trembling subsided.
Landon laughed. "What a touching display of sisterly love."
"Took your two eyes this long to figure that out?" I retorted.
He shot up from his chair, furious that I dared to talk back.
"Don't," Vivian cried, jumping in front of me.
Jax stepped forward, placing a restraining hand on Landon's shoulder. Landon snorted and stormed out.

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