Speakeasy #160 Bright Darkness part 1

“Tell me if you’re game”
Message received 9:34

I check my watch: 10:13
Two minutes before we get back to work. 
…so tonight then, I think…
I don’t need to think twice about this, she knows this is the only reason I stuck around in the first place. 

“I’m in”
…
Message sent 10:15

Just as the alarm rings. “Get back to work break’s over!” Bellows a huge voice in a stocky little man. 
It takes us a while to get back to work, we may be lazy but we’re organised so when it’s time to work the work gets done. Our team is effective but it’s leaking treason and treachery. Organised treason an treachery of all kinds in this mixing bowl, this cooking pot where the inside mixes and mingles an the outside see only how effective we are. 
Some people here have contact with the outside, it costs them precious food and occasionally clothes but in return they get news an messages from the revolutionaries. 
We are building a tunnel, a huge one, we were told it’s for a train but it was a lie. It’s huge, way too big for a train and it’s long, so long that some of us have forgotten what “outside” looked like. But we keep digging with our big machines. 
Not for long now though. 
What long ago was our own is taken. What was planet Earth is now a colony. N°58 to be exact. If you add up 5 and 8 you get 13. Some call it good luck for us. Others have called the revolution: 13. 
I am one of the few women to work in The Tunnel. At 19, I’m also the youngest. I’ve been here three years, I’m not afraid anymore, and I’ve lost the little innocence I had left. This is my third year and I’ve been accepted as part of the team. My thin fingers led me to the bombs. You need small hands to put together a good bomb, they’re needed to make good holes in the wall so the machines can go in and clear out the rubble. Like everyone else I did my part for this, I supplied the explosives I was asked for with an explanation of how they work, in my spare time I made frag grenades and smoke bombs and very big bombs with timers not unlike the ones I usually make. I won’t be using them. 
I’ve heard rumours, that The Tunnel is where they’ll put us all when they’re done with us, that the aliens three metres tall we’ve seen are only babies and the adults are giant worms that will live in this tunnel and we are the food, some people say they’re building a bunker and preparing to fight a full scale war. They’re just stories but I’ve seen people who believe in them as if they were irrefutable facts. 
I hope we never get to find out what it’s for. 
The aliens came five years ago, when I was 14. The Government was afraid and all nuclear weapons were fired and the battle lost. They didn’t even attack, they just showed how useless our weapons and when we had nothing left they came down and destroyed our biggest capitals to make sure we were disorganised and couldn’t keep attacking. For the next two years I was living in the rubble and I had joined a group of hungry but determined people. We were going to end this, but our hopes were too high and our resources too low, I was the youngest and less useful so I had to go. Then I heard about this place: work in exchange for food and shelter. But most of all the fact that people kept fighting. 
Lunchtime. 

“13 0400”
Message received 12:01

I don’t have much to complain about, my job’s not too hard on me and they make sure we have enough food. I have my own bed if not my own room and I get to be in a room with only women (the only women here). But I’m doing this for the others and to idealistically claim back our planet. I want to live freely. 
…
Bedtime
…
Phone rings
“Go”
Message received 04:00

This is just the beginning