Tomorrow's Prison

Hey! This is Fennec and Shrike's entry in Sandstorm's writing contest with partners. Tips/constructive criticism are appreciated! 
==Whose POV by who?==
Rose's is by me (Shrike) and Ruth's is by Fennec. Just letting you guys know.
==Chapter 1==
"Rose!"
Rose's eyelids snapped open. Her teacher in water filtering class, Professor Walton, was standing over her with a frown on his face. Rose cursed herself mentally. Of course. She'd once again dozed off during class. Honestly, sometimes she wondered if she carried some sort of huge spell that made her eyelids as heavy as iron at the most inopportune times.
"What?" She groaned. Once again something she didn't exactly love about herself- her lack of respect. She tried to think highly of other people, she really did--- but something in Rose's mine always viewed other humans critically, and faults that made her dislike them stood out more than good qualities to admire.
Professor Walton's face wrinkled, clearly appalled by Rose's behavior. "Young woman, you'll respect your elders. This is what- your eighteenth warning? One of these days you're going to break my patience."
You already have, Rose thought snarkily, though she was smart enough not to say that outloud. Instead, she knew she should apologize, but she instead bit her tongue and nodded primly.
Her teacher growled slightly, then went back to the front of the room, satisfied, though barely. He opened his mouth, closed it again, trying to regain his composure, then tried again. This time he was successful in resuming the lecture, although Rose wasn't listening any more intently then she had when she'd been asleep. His bland voice was about as intriguing as the buzz of honeybees. Not that there were many of those left in existence now that the air and water were barely usable. 
Rose fidgeted absentmindedly with her pen. Honestly. Why did they have to learn about water filtering in school? Why not just math and science and history, the way people used to, before they polluted the earth to the extent where they had to filter air and water? Why just give up, when they could try to find a solution?
She felt something slide on top of her desk. She looked at the top and realized it was a note. Paper was also rationed, and the paper was tiny, as was the writing. She had to squint to read it.
Why, sis? Why do you always get people mad at you?-Ruth.
Rose couldn't help but mutter something under her breath. "I don't know, maybe it's a talent of mine." She scribbled the words on the sheaf and flicked it back to her twin sister.
Ruth picked up the paper, squinted and giggled. Rose could always make her laugh, and the same was true vice versa. 
"Students." Professor Walton said in his especially monotone voice- and his normal voice was already lugubrious- "dismissed. Go to your air maintenance class now."
Rose bit her lip, and clenched her fists underneath her desk. Hot fury coursed through her. She always hated this part- where the teachers decided to just boss them around! No manners. No kind tone. If you wanted to ask a question, they gave you a vague answer at best. You weren't supposed to have new, good ideas- you were only allowed to build on the existing ones.
And that was the problem, the huge, massive, impossible-to-ignore problem with the System.
Except it looked like it was much easier to ignore for the adults.
==Chapter 2==
Ruth sighed as she sank into her bed, dropping her school bags on the floor. School has been beyond boring, as usual, and sometimes she wondered if it would ever get any better. 
She closed her eyes and lay there for a moment, letting some of her weariness slide away. The metal door to the room slid open and Rose walked angrily to Ruth's bed, throwing her bags across the room and onto her own bed.
Ruth sat up with a groan as her sister sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. 
"Its just SO unfair! I HATE this stupid System!" Rose growled, hands curled into fists. " Why, why can't we just have a little freedom? I mean, HELLO, we're human beings, not animals that need to be trapped in a cage! "
Ruth looked around warily at the steel walls of the room she shared with her sister. You had to be careful about what you said in the System. Even in your own quarters, anyone could be watching. Anyone could be listening. Ruth still remembered Rose's old friend, a rebellious girl called Alice. She had always rebelled in small ways, purposefully making little but meaningful mistakes in class and constantly trying to come up with a plan for how to escape. One night, her mother had come round to Ruth and her family's quarters, tears streaming down her face. Alice had been heard complaining about the System and talking of blowing it up. According to her mother, the System officers had come almost immediately. 
Alice had been taken. No one knew where they took her, though Ruth reckoned they had taken her to start working early, helping run the city she hated so much. The cruelest punishment for such a rebellious girl.
After that, Ruth made her sister promise not to be too rebellious (it was impossible to quench her rebellious spirit entirely) and never let them take her away.
Ruth would never admit it, but she would break apart if her sister was taken. 
That had been almost a year ago. And now Rose was in danger of running straight into the same kind of trouble.
"Rose!" Ruth hissed, her forehead creased in worry. " You can't let them hear you say that! "
"Its not like they can do anything about it! They'll never take me like they took Alice. Besides, that was ages ago-"
"Only a year ago."
"But we're stronger now! We can fight them!"
Ruth felt a lump in her throat. She wanted to fight, she wanted it desperately. Behind the quiet, careful person that was the Ruth everyone knew was a fighter, a rebel. But she couldn't let that side show; she wouldn't! It could hurt her, and it could hurt her family.
"Ruth... We have been stuck her for our whole lives. Fourteen whole years! We need something else, we need to live properly!" Rose gazed at Ruth with pleading eyes.
"If we rebel, we might not live at all. No one knows what happened to Alice. Most people have forgotten her. Do you really want to be forgotten, wiped from society, even if that society is this System? " From the broken look on her sister's face, Ruth knew she had struck a weak spot.
" Fine. We'll stay here. We'll live here for the rest of our miserable lives. " Rose turned her head away and stared down at the white carpeted floor. 
"Sis, I don't mean it like that. I just..." Ruth took a deep breath and lowered her voice, laying her hand on Rose's arm. "We will do something about this mess. Soon. But not now. I can't lose you, Rose. You're the only thing that's kept me sane with mother... Like she is. We have to stay safe."
Rose twisted round to face her with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. But then they darkened once again. "But are we really safe right now?" She murmured, before rising from the bed and trailing out the door. 
And Ruth was left with her heart aching. Because she already knew the answer to that question.
No. They weren't.
==Chapter 3==
Rose walked around the back garden.
Well, it wasn't really a garden anymore. It was more a flat plateau like cobbled area with the rare grass blade. It was grey and brown and black, just like everywhere else now. Rose had heard the stories of the older people--- of a time where garden meant explosions of flowers in incandescent hues, thickets of grass abound, trees loaded with blossoms in the spring and fruit in the summer. They were like fairy tales to her, but everyone said they were real. That it had been a real time. 
It was hard to believe.
But years gone by, when Rose and Ruth had been maybe five, they had. They conjured a land within their imaginations in their heads, a land where Earth had icy caps and temperate rainforests and serene blue seas. 
As time passed, Ruth hadn't wanted to get in trouble for imagining the world. People might think it was a rebellion of sorts, she reasoned. She'd abandoned the garden world.
Rose didn't care. Even though recently her visits here had grown more sporadic, it was still her go- to place to think and hatch plans. 
She sang under her breath. It was an old tune, but she loved it. She'd forgotten the song name.
My tears are always frozen
I can see the air I breathe
But my fingers painting pictures
On the glass in front of me
Lay me by the frozen river
Where the boats have passed me by
All I need is to remember
How it was to feel alive
She smiled slightly. "Rough irony." She muttered to herself. It was a perfect example of what others were like--- just willing to obey the President and by extension, the System.
Silent things
Violent chase
We are dancing again
In a dream, by the lake
Rose sighed. She traced her fingers in the air, drawing imaginary sketches. Of places beyond comprehension, but she knew they were. They had existed on the earth before.
Of polar ice caps, of white furred bears scampering on the floes. Long extinct species. Polar bears, they were called?
Of sparkling rivers and lakes, with explosions of colorful coral. 
Of verdant forests, the canopies casting eerie shadows on the woody floor.
Of fluid, crisp wind sweeping across exotic grasslands 
Rose sighed. "So beautiful, so distant and vague, but so lost forever."
They were replaced by other, ugly, polluted, grey things. And she didn't need to imagine them.
She just had to open her eyes, look around and take it in.
[A/N, the song Rose sings actually exists. It's Winter Bird by Aurora.]
==Chapter 4==
Ruth tucked her sketch pad into a drawer beside her bed. A half finished sketch of an eagle filled the page she had been drawing on for the last half hour. It seemed majestic and regal, just like Ruth had heard eagles were like... But it still didn't feel right. 
She had always been told she was a natural artist, but her drawings always looked wrong to her. The reason was there, at the back of her mind. Ruth had always loved to sketch animals and nature, and that was why it all looked wrong. 
Despite the simulations and occasionally being told about the creatures that once lived almost beside humankind, Ruth didn't know the detail, the pure wildness of the things she drew.
There was nothing she could do to change that though. Was there?
She closed the drawer and made her way out of the room, entering a corridor with screens covering the walls. A simulated window was visible on one wall, with not-quite-lifelike birds fluttering on the other side of it.
Ruth had never liked the screens. They made things feel so fake, as though everything in Ruth and Rose's lives was untrue, all lies. Which, in a way, it was.
"Are you out there, sweetie?" A voice came from a doorway on the opposite wall to the fake window. The doorway emitted a bright glow and the salty vinegar scent of aspirin. Ruth straightened out the furrow in her forehead and went into the room.
"Ah, Ruth!" Her mum smiled and came over to stroke Ruth's head. "How was school? Did you make any new friends?"
"It was fine. Not today." Ruth had long ago learned to go along with what her mum said. Of course, she hadn't made 'new friends' in years, and sat at the back of class with her one friend, Sophie, most days. She had tried to explain to mum, but had quickly figured out that seeing the confused, lost look in mum's eyes when Ruth or Rose told her that those sort of things just didn't happen to them anymore was more trouble than it was worth.
"Well, that's lovely." Mum removed her hand from Ruth's golden hair and ambled over to the sink, humming softly. Ruth ignored the clattering of her mum washing already clean dishes and took some coupons from a small table. 
"What are they for sweetie?" Mum asked absentmindedly.
Ruth smiled at her gently. "Food vouchers." She answered. "I'll see you later." 
Ruth returned to the corridor and went through their quarters until she was at the exit. The coupons were for food rations, so not quite vouchers... But almost. Ruth and her sister often had to lie to their mum. She was confused about most things, and lots of the time thought they were still living in the world her mother, Ruth's gran, had told them about. 
A world without the system. A world where we could be free.
Ruth's head dropped just a little lower than it had already been. 
She missed Gran and her tales. Gran had died a year and a half ago, and already Ruth's memories of her were starting to fade.
But the stories she had told the sisters as they grew up were still there. And as a tiny smile flickered across her face at the memory, a thought flashed into Ruth's mind.
Gran would want us to be free. She would want us to escape. If you really loved her... You would do something about this mess. She always wished it could all go back to how it was.
So why won't you fulfill that wish? 
==Chapter 5==
Rose grabbed the railing of the school stairway, steadying herself before she fell.
"Whoa!" Ruth yelped, running to her side. 
"I'm fine." Rose grumbled. She loved her sister, but sometimes she could be a bit of a worrywart. 
Ruth snorted. "You sound awfully grumpy for someone who concussed themselves that way when they were five."
"I hate you."
"Love you too!" Ruth replied. "See you at lunch!" She hugged her quickly before turning heel and jogging to her class. 
Rose twisted her hair around her index finger, thoughtful. On rare days like these, underneath Ruth's quiet veneer, her real sass shined through. 
She sighed and turned to walk to her first period class. Thursdays were the worst. She had water filtering first thing in the morning, and the day didn't get much better from there.
She jogged towards her classroom in the most unenthusiastic way the world had ever seen. Her mind began to wander. Yesterday she had begun to have the merest ghost of an idea forming at the base of her skull, little more than a dreamlike fragments. 
As she jogged, it continued to bloom, more and more adding on to it, like a garden slowly blossoming over time.  
Sadly, the side effect of having genius ideas was that you didn't look where you were going, this making you prone to running into someone.
Rose ran into someone.
She yelped, backpedaling. The impact was a whole lot stronger than usual, meaning that she had either been traveling at a much faster pace then she'd thought, or the person she'd bumped into had. Or both. Probably that, Rose guessed, as she got up and and analyzed her.
It was Ruth's friend Sophie.
Admittedly, Rose had never really had a high opinion of her. Nor had she really hated her. She just… sat on the fence. 
"God, Rose." Grumbled Sophie. "Look where you're walking!"
"It's not like you were!" Rose retorted. She wrinkled her nose at Sophie. Slightly shorter than Rose, with chestnut hair and flashy grey eyes, she didn't look like much, combined with her petite, almost elvish features. But Rose knew her well enough to know she was capable of seeing through the lies of the most silver tongues, and better at debates then most political leaders had been, at least before the President usurped them all and took over.
Sophie smirked. "Fair."
Rose sighed. Of the twins, Ruth had a reputation for being less fiery. Well, that was only one of the many words, but they were all variations of that same word. "Sophie, get a move on. We're both already late by at least five minutes, and you know our school isn't exactly lax on punishments."
Sophie blinked. "I'm not in a hurry."
Rose frowned. That didn't sound right. Sophie was never late for class. "What?"
"Didn't you hear? The President is paying a visit. He's inspecting the kids and addressing the grown ups. No class for the first two periods."
Rose hissed. The President. Her arch enemy, whom she had never met. But that didn't make her hate him any less. He was the one responsible for forcing the system on her. For quenching rebellious minds. 
"We're supposed to stay in our classrooms quietly." Sophie said. 
Hah. Thought Rose.
In what universe will I obey that?
==Chapter 6==
Ruth tapped her fingers on the desk impatiently as she waited for something, anything, to happen. 
Stupid president. 
She glanced up at the clock, ticking slowly in the silence. Only five minutes had passed since they came into class. 
The girl next to Ruth shot her a sour look and hissed softly. 
Ruth stopped her tapping and twisted round to look over at her sister... An empty seat in her sister's place. 
"Shoot." Ruth muttered. Of course Rose was going to choose today to miss class. Of course she was going to try to spite the president in some way. And of course Ruth was going to be caught up in the trouble.
She put her hand up reluctantly and put on a slightly troubled expression. "Miss, I feel sick..."
The teacher looked at it briefly, unconcerned. "Cope with it."I
Another thing Ruth hated about the system. The lack of concern the teachers had for their pupils was horrific. She had often told herself that if she had to choose one of the limited job options in the system, she would be a teacher, just so she could be one of the few people that ever showed some kindness to their pupils.
So the teacher wasn't going to let her off that easily. But she had to find Rose, before she got into serious trouble... 
She slid out a tiny pocket knife from her school dress and sliced off a small chunk of her hair. Then, taking a deep breath, she slipped some into her mouth and swallowed it until it was stuck in her throat. 
Ruth's eyas watered and she began to cough, then retch. The class turned to look at her in disgust and her cheeks turned a furiously embarrassed fuchsia. 
Just as the teacher looked up in annoyance, Ruth retched again.
And threw up on the floor.
"RUTH! What will the president think of your disgusting behaviour? To to your quarters. I will expect you in class an hour early tommorrow, but for now you must leave before the president sees just how horrible little rats like you can be!" The teacher snarled as the others watched, some with expressions of pity and some with disgust written all over their faces.
Ruth nodded weakly and staggered out of class. Once outside, she hurried to the toilets and rinsed her face, taking a long drink from the water fountain to rinse out her mouth.
"Youre not in your quarters." Sophie walker over to Ruth and began to wash her own hands, which stank of puke. Ruth could guess that the teacher had made her friend clean up the mess. 
"Sophie, listen, Rose is in trouble...I don't know what she thinks she's doing, but she's going to do something to the president... "
Sophie looked at her with concern. "You can't stop her, Ruth. You know that."
" But... " she trailed away. It was true. Her sister couldn't be stopped. Not now, when she had the chance to do what she had wanted to do her whole life.
"Its not just yet dream, is it?" Sophie pressed as if she could read Ruth's mind.
"I cant, Sophie! It's not who I am!" Ruth felt her stomach lurch and she began to feel faint.
" Yes it is. " Sophie said coolly. "You know you want to fight. No, you're not as outright as Rose. But you're still a rebel. In here."
Sophie pressed her hand on Ruth's heart and smiled at her.
Maybe she was a rebel... Maybe they could fight back... Maybe Ruth had been wrong just to hide all her life.
Suddenly, the door crashed open and Rose collided with them at full speed. "Hide! Quick! They're coming!"
"Who? " RUTH and Sophie asked, almost simultaneously.
"The president!" Rose hissed as footsteps began to near them.
==Chapter 7==
Rose slunk through the hallways carefully, keeping an eye on all parts of the corridor, just in case she was caught. Unlikely, as everyone else was in their classrooms or quarters, as  far as Rose knew, but she wasn't about to take any chances.
She frowned. She'd seen the President on screens before, but he was always dressed up and serious looking. Would he be now? 
Rose shook her head. Logically, he would be equally formally dressed for an inspection. He would look reasonably the same, she guessed.
Of course, if she was wrong, she was screwed.
She sat. Had this really been a good idea? She had no idea where the president was, if there was anyone with him… it seemed that Rose had once again let her impulsiveness get the better of her.
Welp. Too late now. It wasn't exactly as if the teachers wouldn't interrogate her in any way if she sauntered back into the classroom.
Her options were that, finding the president, and sitting here the entire inspection.
Honestly, she wasn't sure which one was the best.
She ran her fingers through her golden hair. "Stupid." She muttered. Stupid her, running headfirst into reckless situations.
She sighed and looked around. No one else was in the grey stone corridor as far as she could see.
Wait.
She tilted her head at an angle, pointing her ear out. Was it just her, or did she hear the  unmistakable dry sound of loafers pounding on stone?
Rose shook her head. She had to be imagining it. What were the chances that out of hundreds of hallways in the massive high school, the President would pick a random hallway in the middle of the school where fourteen year olds dwelled.
She dismissed it, but a voice kept pulsing at the base of her skull. It was called her instinct, and Rose tried to never ignore it.
Well, today couldn't be an exception.
She looked up, scowling, and her face drained to the color of chalk.
Standing just about six feet away from her was a man in a black suit and a neatly trimmed goatee.
Standing next to him were two bodyguards who looked like they'd lifted weights their entire lives. 
Rose yelped and scrambled to her feet. This was the President. She knew him from the screens.
"What are you doing there?" He asked, his voice deathly calm.
Rose's eyes blazed and she ran. She ran from the President and his bodyguards, and the eerie aura that surrounded them.
She ran to one place she knew---hoped---he wouldn't follow her to.
The girls bathroom.
She slammed the door behind her, but not before she heard running steps.
Growing closer, horribly closer. Not slowing, growing more rapid, if anything.
She turned and saw Ruth and Sophie there, and her face registered her shock. "Hide. Quick! They're coming!"
"Who?"
Rose barely had time for the words "the President" to slip out of her lips when the door behind them swung open
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