Sordea: Book I of the Great City IX Series

By Tiara Dias

Cassiopeia Malahki, an 18-year-old girl, falls prey to the unjust and inhumane system of her society, due to lower social standing. A society ravished by a long war and divided by a great wall where the rich command from within as they relish in the plentitude of luxuries of the Great City while the poor obey from the other side in their misery and poverty with forceful work and degrading treatment. Forced away from her home and sold as an object to the unfeeling and cruel upper class, Cassiopeia has to endure a torturous cycle of injustices and humiliation. In the midst of all the abuse and degradation, she struggles to hold on to her dignity, made worse by conflicting feelings that arise with the unlikely relationships that form in her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398451032

Tiara Dias

Tiara W. Dias is a young Angolan writer living in Hungary for her university studies. She has been an avid reader from a young age, having been pulled into the passion when she read the book by the French author Antoine de Saint- Exupéry, The Little Prince. Her writing journey started in her teen years, and having a vivid imagination, creative fiction is her genre of choice, though she can be found writing non-fiction, poetry, prose and short stories as she explores various themes, writing what she wanted to read growing up as well as putting her deepest feelings onto paper.

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About the Author

Tiara W. Dias is a young Angolan writer living in Hungary for her university studies. She has been an avid reader from a young age, having been pulled into the passion when she read the book by the French author Antoine de Saint- Exupéry, The Little Prince. Her writing journey started in her teen years, and having a vivid imagination, creative fiction is her genre of choice, though she can be found writing non-fiction, poetry, prose and short stories as she explores various themes, writing what she wanted to read growing up as well as putting her deepest feelings onto paper.

Copyright Information ©

Tiara Dias 2023

The right of Tiara Dias to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398451025 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398451032 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

First and foremost, I thank God. Secondly, I thank all the friends and family that not only supported my dream of becoming a writer but also served as inspiration for most of my writings as well as motivation to keep going when I felt like giving up.

A special thank you goes to none other than my mother. My number one fan and greatest supporter who held my hand, held me up, motivated and pushed me to fulfil my potential. With much love and gratitude, I thank you.

Prologue

Years and years of war, corruption and chaos have brought us into today’s society. A society where the financial classes in which you are born define your future, where the rich command from within the walls that enclose the great city while the poor obey from the other side. A society where human life on the wrong side of the wall is worth little more than the life of a rat, and so, treated as such. We who live in the sectors outside the wall are referred to as Sordeos and Sordeas, while those who live in the Great City are the Dignus.

Because of social, economic and political conflicts, the world’s governments fell apart, leaving only the governments of the strongest countries on each continent. The governments that remained in power became Unio Potens, the union of the powerful. Together they decided that the only way to end the conflicts was to build a thirty-five-meter wall around the cities in the hearts of the countries to separate the social classes. Unfortunately, after the construction of the walls, the governments had no way to sustain the needs of both sides of the wall, so the rich within the wall devised a program that exploited all resources from the other side of the wall to their benefits. And that’s how the market came to be.

The market is a worldwide organisation controlled by governments, where diversity of merchandise are sold to the highest bidder, such as narcotics, rare plants, organs and women of low society, that is, the sordeas. The sordeas taken are unmarried girls who upon turning eighteen they are collected by the guardians to be brought to the market and eventually be sold. An unfortunate yet real fate.

They say that on the other side of the wall, there is a paradise full of green plants, pure blue water, huge houses and so much food that they even lay down at night with no gnawing hunger, education goes all the way to university, women are free and jobs are not as hard as ours. While here, in one of the many villages on the outskirts of the Great City, we struggle, suffer and work for a slice of bread and moderately clean water. Our forced reality is working from dawn till dusk in order to receive our weekly pay; crumbs that barely serve to feed ourselves. From the age of fifteen, all youth are removed from the Youth Education Centre and put to work in the mines, the slaughterhouse or the farms.

I work on the farm with my mother and my father works in the mines, my younger sister still has another year in the Education Centre but then she will work alongside our mother and me on the farm but even having three workers in a house seems that all the effort comes to nothing.

Now, the year is 2210, and the world keeps descending into ruins. At least for those of us born on the wrong side of the wall.

Chapter I

Nothing…

It was as if I was filled with a void.

At a moment like this, it would be natural to feel fear, anger, sadness, any emotion, however, I feel absolutely nothing while watching everything that goes on around me.

From my mother who is sobbing in my arms with the prospect of losing me, her firstborn daughter, to my father who is holding back tears in an effort to appear strong before the women under his care. My sister is huddling in a corner of our little living room crying silently, she has never been one to show emotions that made her look vulnerable. A lot like me. It’s as if my senses are numb.

I could have tried harder! I could have tried harder! Mama sobs.

Don’t say that, Mama. It was my fault; I shouldn’t have rejected them, I whisper in her ear.

The sound of a chair scratching against the floor makes us jump, we look up and see my father making his way, with heavy steps, towards us. His huge arms envelop us, and the almost inaudible sound of his cries reach my ears but even that doesn’t incite any feeling in me.

Right now we’re waiting for the guardians to take me to the city. Yesterday was my last day to get married because today I am eighteen years old, and I will be put on the market and sold like a head of cattle. They always come once a month to collect the sordeas, according to the legislation, and we have to go to the village square for the collection.

Sorry, sorry, Daddy repeats over and over. His voice is now completely different from the strong, deep voice I’m used to hearing. His lamentations make me sink even further into his chest.

We have to go, my sister, Lyra, announces with a trembling voice.

Daddy squeezes me a little tighter before reluctantly letting me go. The sight of his tear-soaked face and his red-rimmed eyes cause my heart to tighten. Suddenly, emotions fall upon me like a pile of bricks. I feel everything now, but nothing beats the feeling of regret.

Regret because I thought I would find love and rejected all the boys who had ever tried to approach me simply because I did not like them ‘that way’ because I believed that I would not be able to love them and now I will be someone’s property. What a foolish, naive child I was.

My mother takes my cloth bag where I have some home keepsakes, a little slice of bread and an apple. Clothes aren’t necessary, they say, we’ll be provided new clothes upon our arrival.

Daddy opens the door of our little house and lets all three of us through before he closes the door. We begin the short walk to the village square, my eyes focused on my feet covered with dirty, worn-out shoes, as I avoid looking at anything else. It is always like this. On the seventh day of every third month, the families of the eighteen-year-old girls accompany them to the square where the squadron of guardians dressed in black armour await the sordeas beside their black cars and trucks with their heavy black weapons. On this day, we are given the day off from work so that we can say goodbye to our dear ones. The only spec of humanity that those damned dignus allow us and as if we don’t suffer enough, with the countless illnesses that we cannot cure, the forced labour that we have to endure starting at the tender age of fifteen for a measle weekly pay, and the precarious conditions in which we have to live, we must also accept losing our dear ones. The torment never ends.

As we walk to the square, I remember my father talking about the Archaic Times, the best time to be alive, as he’d say even though he was a child during The Hundred-Year War. The times when there were more than a hundred kinds of coins, a time when the world had hundreds of independent countries and thousands of languages, when there were thousands and thousands of books and they were for everyone, rich and poor alike, we could all get education equally, just had to have the determination to do so. Some of his stories seem credible, others don’t. He believes that there was a time when the market was illegal when women weren’t forced to marry before eighteen when governments were against the trafficking of drugs, organs and women, but I learned that they were simply sources of profit for private companies. He also says that the walls were the cause of the conflict and misery we live in today but I learned that walls was, at the time, the only way to end them. He says there were millions of animal and plant species in the world, a lot more than what we see today, yet I have never learned about that. It seems unlikely, and if it were true, they would have taught us about them at the Education Centre. When I heard him talk about how governments had a justice system for all and were less cruel, I think, Does he make up these stories to give us hope?

Has the world ever been better than this?

Why did it change then? I never thought much of his stories until now that I have to face the consequences of our societal laws.

The square was already full when we arrived. Mama takes my hand and squeezes it lightly. I look at her and she softly smiles. I know it’s just to comfort me because I notice how unstable she is yet, I return the smile no matter how slight it is.

Don’t worry, Cassi, maybe it won’t be as bad as they make it sound, Daddy tries to comfort me by stroking my arm and kissing my forehead.

His words do nothing to comfort me because I feel nausea rising and the tears accumulating in my eyes. The crowd of families about to be torn apart, all upset and crestfallen, worsens my panic and fear.

In front of us are the damned vans that will take us away from our homes and our families. The guardians, as always, are equipped with their intimidating weapons except one that instead has a booklet in his hand. He’s the only one without the black helmet that hid the guardians’ faces from public view. From where I am with my family, I can see that his hair is black with some white highlights, his face narrow and half wrinkled, probably from the tiredness and stress he must go through in everyday life, but despite the wrinkles, he still seems to be a handsome man. Regardless, they all look sophisticated in their uniforms unlike us who are dressed in dirty looking, over washed, torn up rags. "Attention all SW045 Sector residents, the call for the sordeas begins now.

Upon hearing your name, proceed to one of the vans behind me. Your name will be called no more than three times and if you neglect to present yourself, you will be viewed as a fugitive from the law which is punishable by up to 15 years in federal prison, unless the reason is related to your health or state of physical disability. Now the call will begin, the guardian without the helmet says with a monotonous tone.

Black, Kelly…

Boris, Amanda…

Carlos, Katalina…

The girls all walk with their heads down and tears in their eyes. My heart beats stronger and stronger with the call of each name.

Fare, Inna…

Before I could process what I was doing, I threw myself into my father’s arms and all the tears I had managed to hold until then burst.

Indus, Gabriela…

I don’t want to go, Daddy, please. Don’t let me go, please, I beg desperately holding on to his shirt.

I’m so sorry, baby, he whispers against my hair.

Jackman, Lilia…

Please! I keep crying and begging.

"Malahki, Cassiopeia…" My heart stops. I can’t let go of my dad; I don’t want to let go of my dad. My name is called for a second time and my father forces me to let go. My mother and sister hug me and we all walk together to the truck.

Good luck and know that we love you and we’ll see you soon, says my mother and planted a kiss on my cheek.

I love you too, my response comes out so low that I hardly even heard the words.

I feel one of the guardians roughly pulling me from my family and throwing me into the truck full of girls crying and sniffling, some clinging to their belongings and others to the girls next to them.

Looking out, I see my mom and Lyra on their knees in the middle of the street crying hysterically with my dad hugging them. Seeing my family in that state is torture. I look away, I can’t see them like that anymore.

About fifteen minutes pass by and eleven more girls enter before they close the truck doors. My tears have stopped by now, leaving my face marked by the dry tear trails. The van starts moving, shaking us all the way.

***

It’s been a long time since we left the square, I can’t say exactly how much but I know it’s been a lot. My legs are numb, and I try to move them a little, but there isn’t much space. At last, I feel the bus slowing down, I can hear voices on the outside, but I can’t decipher exactly what they are saying. We started moving again and stopped after a bit. The door opens, and we are ordered to get out. I look around and see hundreds of girls standing still waiting for their next instructions just like me. I also see the wall a few meters behind us. We’re inside the Great City IX.

We’re in a sort of centre, I notice the various white buildings and a dome- like structure right in the centre of them and black trucks around us. We’re standing at the entrance of the dome building. Suddenly a siren rings, giving us a fright and the face of a blue-eyed blonde woman, dressed in a prim light blue blouse appears seemingly out of thin air. She looks about my mother’s age, her loose hair reaching her shoulders. She looks impeccable.

"Good afternoon, ladies, and welcome to the Domus, your new home for now. She smiles showing her white, perfectly aligned teeth, My name is Clio Estevan and I am the director of this centre. Here you will be prepared for life inside the city. The first phase of the preparation is hygiene and medical assessment where we will examine your health and physical condition and you will be given a series of vaccines necessary for your health and your adaptation to the atmosphere within the Great City." The image of the lady changes to a demonstration of a girl, I have no idea if she is a dignus or a sordea, but she’s smiling as a doctor examines her.

The second phase is the familiarisation with the areas of the city and dignified customs.

The image changes again for a group of girls, sitting in what appears to be a huge classroom, four times larger than those of the Education Centre in my village. At this stage, you will learn the names of the most important areas and places in the city, as well as be familiarised with the terms, customs and ethics of the dignus.

The image changes again, showing several places, beautiful buildings, people talking and laughing with each other—even plants! One place full of plants, another full of books and another full of blue and pure water masses. Subconsciously, a smile opens on my face as the images change. My eyes widen, and for the first time, I feel… happy? No, maybe relieved. Yes, that’s right! I feel relieved to know that this experience won’t be as bad as I thought, as Daddy said.

I look around and see girls with expressions similar to mine… Shock, relief, happiness. They’re finally giving us a chance at a good life.

…the third phase will be vocational training for your future owners. Images of women cleaning houses, playing with children, selling food come up on the screen. The smile that had lodged on my face fell after the use of the word ‘owners’. I look down as I remember the real reason for being here because they were preparing us to be property.

The last phase will be the extraction where you will be arranged and taken to the Central Market for auction. During your stay, you will be accompanied and advised by women designated as Godmothers. If you have any questions, you can go to one of them. Each group of 10 sordeas will have one Godmother. The image of a large, black building and a group of women dressed in sophisticated clothes appears before returning to Director Clio who smiles modestly.

The rules of the Centre will be given after the completion of the first phase in a booklet provided by your Godmothers and you are obligated to read and memorise it. Breaking any rule is punishable, and the punishment given will depend on the severity of your actions and the level of the rule broken. The Director’s tone changes to a gloomier and more serious one before she smiles her perfect smile again. For now, this is all the information you’ll need. Now you will proceed to the first phase. Good luck.

And so, the Director’s image is replaced by the white building’s glass panels. Some girls have lost their smiles, while others still have traces of them. What the Director said at first seemed too good to be true. I don’t know why I got carried away but for a moment, a single moment, I felt that I would finally be seen as something more than a sordea, a piece of garbage coming from the other side of the wall.

Hey, we gotta go, a girl elbows me, pulling me from my thoughts, and I begin to walk towards the entrance where the guardians are waiting.

I turn my head to the side and see that the girl is pale with curly red hair and blue eyes. Her cheeks