Obligatory Service
Conscription
The letter arrived on a Tuesday, as it always did for those approaching their eighteenth year. Mira found hers wedged beneath the door when she came home from her shift at the textile mill, the government seal already cracked where her mother had opened it, read it, and wept before sliding it back into the envelope.
She didn’t need to read it. She knew what it said.
You have been selected for National Service. Report to the Registry Office within thirty days of your eighteenth birthday to declare your chosen path: Military Conscription, Industrial Labor, or Civic Detention.
Three choices. Three ways to give a year of your life to the state. Three ways to break yourself for a country that had been breaking its people for as long as anyone could remember.
Mira tucked the letter into her jacket and walked to the old pump house by the river, where she knew Daven and Samir would be waiting. They’d made a pact months ago: when the letters came, they’d decide together.
The pump house had been abandoned for years, its rusted machinery frozen in place like the skeleton of some great beast. Daven sat on an overturned crate, turning a small knife over in his hands. Samir paced near the broken window, his letter already crumpled in his fist.
“So,” Daven said as Mira ducked through the doorway. “We’re all official now.”
“My mother cried,” Mira said, settling onto a pile of old grain sacks. “She didn’t say anything. Just cried and went to bed.”
“Mine too.” Samir stopped pacing. “My father told me to choose the mines. Said at least I’d come home every night, even if it was coughing up black.”
Daven snorted. “My brother chose the mines four years ago. He’s twenty-two and can barely climb a flight of stairs. The company doctor says his lungs look like charcoal.”
“But he’s alive,” Samir said.
“Is he?” Daven’s voice was sharp. “You should see him, Samir. You should see what alive looks like when you’re spending it drowning in your own chest.”
Silence settled over them. Through the broken window, Mira could see the distant smokestacks of the industrial quarter, their plumes rising into a sky that never quite cleared.
“What about the army?” she asked.
Both boys looked at her like she’d suggested they set themselves on fire.
“The casualty reports came in last week,” Samir said quietly. “Forty percent losses at the northern front. Forty percent, Mira. That’s not a war. That’s a meat grinder.”
“At least it’s quick.” Daven’s joke fell flat even as he said it. He looked away. “Sorry. That was stupid.”
“It was,” Mira agreed. “But you’re not wrong. The army is a year if you survive. The mines are a lifetime of dying slowly. And prison...”
“Prison means no future,” Samir finished. “No trade license. No government work. No travel papers. You come out clean and whole, but you spend the rest of your life in a box anyway.”
Mira pulled her knees to her chest. “So we’re choosing between three different kinds of death.”
“We’re choosing between quick death, slow death, and living death,” Daven corrected. “Those are our options. That’s what our great nation and its Glorious Leader offers its children.”
“Keep your voice down,” Samir hissed, glancing toward the door. “You know they have listeners everywhere.”
“Let them listen. What are they going to do, conscript me harder?”
“They could take you for the front lines instead of supply duty. They could send you to the deep shafts instead of the surface teams. They could put you in isolation instead of general population.” Samir’s voice cracked. “There are always worse options, Daven. Always.”
Mira watched her friends, these boys she’d known since childhood, and saw the fear they were both trying to hide. Daven with his anger, Samir with his pragmatism. Both of them masking the same terror that sat cold and heavy in her own stomach.
“I’ve been thinking about my sister,” she said.
Daven frowned. “Yara? She did her service three years ago. Army, right?”
“That’s what we told people.” Mira hesitated. “She was supposed to report to the barracks on her birthday. She never showed up. My parents told the neighbors she’d been assigned to a distant post, that she couldn’t write, that communications were restricted. But the truth is we don’t know where she is. She just vanished.”
Samir had gone very still. “Mira, if you’re saying what I think you’re saying...”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m telling you about my sister.”
“Deserters get executed,” Daven said flatly. “Their families get investigated. How is your family still...”
“I don’t know.” Mira pulled the letter from her jacket, staring at the seal. “I don’t know how any of it works. I just know she’s gone, and no one came for us, and sometimes I wonder if maybe...”
The door creaked.
All three of them were on their feet instantly, Daven’s knife out, Samir positioning himself between the entrance and Mira. The light from outside was fading, and the figure in the doorway was just a silhouette, tall and lean and utterly still.
“Relax,” said a voice Mira hadn’t heard in three years. “It’s me.”
Yara stepped into the pump house, and Mira felt the world tilt beneath her feet. Her sister looked older, harder. A scar ran along her jaw that hadn’t been there before. But her eyes were the same, dark and knowing, with that spark of defiance that had always gotten her into trouble.
“I’ve been watching you three for weeks,” Yara said. “Waiting for the letters to arrive. Waiting to see if you’d be smart enough to question the choices they gave you.”
“Yara, what...” Mira couldn’t finish the sentence.
“There’s a fourth option.” Yara’s gaze moved across all three of them, weighing, assessing. “It’s harder than the army. More dangerous than the mines. And if you’re caught, it’s worse than any prison the state could put you in. But it’s real. And it matters.”
She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded piece of cloth, spreading it on the crate where Daven had been sitting. It was a map, marked with symbols Mira didn’t recognize, covered in handwritten notes.
“The resistance needs people who can think,” Yara said. “People who can question. People who are willing to fight, not for a state that treats them like fuel for a furnace, but for something worth believing in.” She looked at Mira. “I came back for you. But I can take all three of you, if you have the courage.”
The silence stretched.
Samir was the first to step forward. Then Daven. And finally Mira, reaching out to grip her sister’s hand.
“Tell us everything,” she said.