She’d do anything to mask her big hazel eyes, still wet with youth and ready to expose her.

Because Rosy has to pass. She has to get through the Gate of The Wise and reach the pool. Rosy knows passing is the only chance her mother has. It’s also quite possibly the most risky thing a youth could attempt in Kerelblu. And so, quite possibly the last risk Rosy will ever take.

She pulls her mother’s vial from her pocket and slips the chain around her neck whilst staring at her frustratingly youthful reflection. Rosy adds more contour, deepening the forehead lines on her smooth face, whilst checking the weather on her neuropad.

The Ancestors are on her side: 19c and clear. She could get away with sunglasses. 19c is just sunny enough to make them feasible. In fact, any fledgling Elder would be wise enough to protect their eyes from the UV rays that seek to harm them.

“Rosy Elia Clarke you can do this. You can reach the pool, fill this vial and heal mother. You have to do this. May the wisdom of the Elders past and the Elders present guide you.” She says confidently to her reflection. She isn’t buying it, but at least she sounds convincing. She doesn't look it though. Rosy resents her smooth skin, a signal of the value her telomeres and blood hold to the Elders.

Rosy takes a deep breath and suppresses her childish reservations as she grabs the trimmer. She shaves back her hairline just half an inch, letting more tears fall silently with her hair. But Rosy still looks too young. She dries the wet lines trailing her cheeks and focuses on adding crows feet, smile lines and bags under her eyes. Stepping back to look at her reflection with fresh eyes, she sighs. Better, but still far from enough.

Rosy has a brainwave. She visualises the acne she’d foolishly complained about a few years back, then uses an eyebrow pencil to draw scars and sunspots in the same pattern, hoping it will be natural enough to mask her cursed youth. Rosy knows her value was yet to be decided. She knows her safety depends on the fact that the Elders don't yet know her value. She also knows her wrinkleless face makes her a walking gold bar to the Elders, one they may soon convert into a form they can use. 

Until then, Rosy is kept restricted to the darkness to slow her aging. Her food is carefully portioned and monitored; her exercise regime is determined by a longevity algorithm and she's made to stick to it whether she feels like it or not. Only the Elders are allowed to feel like doing or not doing something, and do it… or not do it. Autonomy is granted only to the wise. The Wise Elders who have it all. Yet they want more. Endlessly more. And so does Rosy. Today, Rosy will take what she wants.

Rosy slaps her cheeks to redden them and stares in the mirror. The makeover is as good as it's going to get. With the glasses, Rosy reckons she can pass. She has to. Rosy paces the room and suddenly thinks about how it will look as she approaches The Gate.

She can't walk like she's walking now, not if she wants to survive. She hunches over and practices her gait. It had to be wide, slightly uncomfortable yet dignified.

Rosy's mother walks with great effort, a poor example. Rosy has to walk like the Elders she sees at the clinics, the ones who direct her to the mandatory platelets donation pods. The ones who have everything. 

She practices the Elder walk, pacing as though her knees and lower back are growing increasingly uncomfortable. But she isn't sure she has it right, so she sits by the window to watch the Fledglings walk by in all their glorious freedom.

That’s when Rosy notices her mother’s old research pouch on a shelf by the window and has another brainwave. She shoves it under her shirt and looks in the mirror. Once adjusted to pad out her hips and belly, it works. The padding easily adds another decade to her youthful form. A third brainwave strikes and Rosy adds some tubing to the opening of the sac and feeds it down her sleeve. This could change everything.

Rosy has calculated her chances of success at 12.5% and the benefit of success at 76% so she feels cruel, ashamed. She should believe there to be a 100% benefit in saving her mother’s life. But the reality was her mother kept her in Kerelblu. There were other towns out there. Other communities built on different foundations. There were places where she could be seen as a person with potential to create her own future, not a resource to fill the Fountain of Youth for the good of the elders, and, so they said, thus humanity.

Rosy knows that if she had a worse mother, or no mother, she may have been better off because she wouldn’t be in Kerelblu. 

But Rosy’s mother was the best of them all. She’d kissed Rosy’s cuts better; sung her to sleep when she was scared; snuck Rosy her favourite meals every single week without fail, regardless of the rules. Until she failed. Until the illness got into her bones. 

Rosy loves her mother and she sometimes wished she didn’t, because she loves herself too. Just as her mother had taught her to. And because she loves her mother, Rosy can't listen when her beloved mother tells her to leave Kerelblu. Or when she says it's futile folly to attempt to save her. Rosy knows her mother is right. But the 12.5% is worth it to her. Even if it means a future in Kerelblu, which is really no future at all.

The town bell rings. Rosy pulls her sunhat on, places her shades carefully on her face and leaves the apartment. It's now or never. 

The walk to the Gate of The Wise is familiar and short. Rosy has been making the journey every Saturday since her Harvestings began right after her thirteenth birthday. She has six years of experience with the route. But this time she had to take the winding path; the one reserved for Elders and fledgling Elders alone. And she has to do it confidently enough not to raise suspicion. 

Rosy makes her way slowly across the arid landscape, pretending to admire the artificial trees as she’d seen Elders do from a distance. 

She passes the gates without alarm. Rosy’s heart rejoices as she approaches the pool and begins to fill the vial. She lets the tension escape from her jaw as she embraces the feeling of triumph. Her shoulders drop and she can't help but smile.

“Nice try squirt. You’ve got enough plasma,” a guard says from behind her. Rosy freezes. Her lungs are iron weights in her chest, heavy and useless. Breathe, she wills herself, breathe.

Rosy’s brain races through her options. She can fight or she can run. Both require more energy than she has left after the last Harvesting. The guard would beat or catch her without effort. Rosy has youth on her side, she is valuable to them. She’d yet to be chosen for the Donor Tract or the Fledgling Tract, meaning she her status was in limbo. They couldn’t really harm her… but if she gets caught, she’ll be forced onto the Donor Tract. There’d be no way back. She’d never see her mother again once she entered the Fountain chambers. It was unlikely her mother could survive without her, but Rosy knows she wouldn’t even want to. She knows her mother is only just clinging on to life because Rosy has refused to leave her.

Rosy’s mother had been on the Fledgling Tract when she discovered her pregnancy. It had never happened before and things were put into place to ensure it never happened again. But luckily for Rosy’s mother, by the time the bump was visible, it was too late to demote her. She’d already been introduced to the Elders. 

So they hid her instead. Rosy’s mother was given a special new role, one that required long journeys into The Outside to investigate and confirm the Knowledge collected by the Elders drones. 

Pointless work, work that aged her. They couldn’t keep Rosy’s mother from the Fountain whilst she was healthy, but they could ensure that she lost her youth and vigour fast enough that she’d struggle to access it. Rosy’s mother was entitled to the contents of the pool, if she could reach it. Which she couldn’t because of the work that stole her health. 

Rosy knew her mother to be happy; the only Fledgling or Elder allowed to have a child and raise her. She considered this a sacred blessing not to be taken lightly. 

The Breeder Donors raised children before returning to their posts, but by 12 they were on their own. Rosy had 18 years of love and nurture. She had training on how to make the Fledgling Tract. But the Harvestings exhausted her. Those and the secret extra sessions she’d been doing at home to help her mother. Rosy wasn’t sure she could run for long enough not to be caught.

She looks up, stands slowly and smiles at the guard, battering her lashes. “I believe there’s been a misunderstanding, I’m on orders from an Elder. Top secret.”

The guard frowns, but he doesn’t raise the alarm.

“Which Elder?”

“Conrad.” Rosy could have kicked herself. Conrad is the most dangerous Elder by a mile, the one who sent her mother on the expeditions, the one to avoid at all costs.

His eyes widen. “Move quickly,” he says.

Rosy nods and kneels by the Fountain once more. She fills the rest of vial, and used the tube in her sleeve to fill the sack she’s hidden. She walks away as calmly as she can. Once out of sight of the guard, she speeds back towards her house. She had enough to heal her mother. But now they had to leave Kerelblu, and fast. 

She rushed through the door and grabs her go bag. “Mother, mother! We have to go.”

“Go where my darling?” Her mother’s calm voice rang back.

“We need to leave. Quick. Get your needle first. We need you strong.”

“Rosy… what did you do?”

Rosy ignores the note of panic in her mother’s voice. “It’s in your bedroom drawer right?” She pulls it out and adds the vial. Before her mother can say anything, Rosy shoots it straight into the port on her chest.

“Rosaline? No. You didn’t? No? How could you risk yourself like this?”

Rosy smiles. Her mother’s cells are regenerating before her eyes. It's working.

Suddenly the door thumps with banging. Rosy’s smile drops. Ignoring her mother’s shouts, she turns on the doorstep monitor. 

Conrad.