I promise to finish this one.

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A black and white image of an eagle plastered over-top of the letters 'AU' lay directly in the center of an otherwise blue screen. A faint hum emitted from the old television set and promptly fell silent as the image changed to a low podium situated above a crowd of reporters and cameramen. A low tone rang through a loudspeaker in the corner and the reporters waited expectantly.
"Ladies and gentlemen," intoned an unseen announcer, "Your Minister of Defense, Martin Lambaut."
A stiff looking man in a crisp blue suit walked limply from the left side of the stage. He kept his eyes on the podium and only managed to turn to face his sea of observers after carefully shuffling through a large stack of papers and lighting a cigarette. He peered around the room for a moment, glancing at each reporter individually through narrow, beady eyes. Finally he cleared his throat and said in a gruff voice, "Good afternoon. I've called you here today with good news from the front lines. The conclusion of the drug war is nearly at hand. Crime rates are down, the prison population is at an all-time low, and our streets are virtually drug free."

Defense Minister Lambaut paused as every reporter on the scene took part in an almost uproarious applause at the news of this latest government success story.
"It's no wonder we elected to allow them such an extended stay in office," some of them thought happily. These reporters were no fools, they were the best of the best; the cream of the crop from all of the sixteen largest news corporations in the American Union. They were sent to this press conference with very specific instructions that had trickled all the way down from the top of the corporate ladder: listen to the Minister's report and record it word for word. No mistakes were to be made. Everyone remembered the political disaster that had followed the Phoenix mix-up of '42 (Richardson of the Murdoch Daily Post had meant to record that "things are in full swing down in Phoenix", but his mind must have been elsewhere).
Defense Minister Lambault dangled his cigarette droopingly from his mouth as he smirked into the cameras. He drew in a deep lung-full of smoke, exhaled, and said to the crowd, "Friends, the days of recklessness and ignorance are no more. Never again will we stand idly by as these criminals terrorize our neighborhoods, poison the minds of our helpless youth, and stifle the very freedoms that each one of us true citizens would die to uphold." Lambault held a steady gaze of utmost reliability and sincerity with one of the reporters.
"He must really love this country," thought the man.

Lambault continued on, "Now, in order to insure total effectiveness of our most recent strategies against these terrorists, a few changes will have to be made. Curfew will now be in effect at midnight, with the exception of a government authorized employment pass for those of you on the night shift. Any and all infractions will be dealt with swiftly and surely, resulting in..."
The Minister's warning was cut short as the image condensed into the center of the screen and flickered out of existence, leaving a silent black void in its wake. Across from the screen stood a young girl of about fifteen or sixteen, remote control in hand. She tossed the device onto the bedspread beside her, and proceeded to shake the young man nestled beneath the covers.
"Ty," she said, "you fell asleep watching the television again. It's almost time for work." Ty lifted his head groggily and peeked through half-shut eyelids at his younger sister.
"I'll be out in a minute. Thanks, Kristi." She smiled lightly and turned to leave. Two steps from the door she stopped and bowed her head slightly.
"How long has it been?" she asked quietly.
"Kristi," Ty replied hurriedly, "I haven't dreamt in over two weeks; it's under control. There's no reason to involve Colin in any of this, either. You know what would happen to me if the school master were to weasel that information out of him. Now can we please forget about it and enjoy our breakfast?" Ty smiled pleadingly and began to sit up.
"OK, Ty," replied Kristi, "I won't bring it up, but if it happens again you had better give me every detail of that dream. You know about as much about them as I do, and neither of us know what they meant yet. I saw a piece of an AU study-"
"You know better than to trust those studies," Ty interjected. "Not once did I experience the night terrors. I remember what the terrors felt like, and these were nothing like the terrors. It was... almost indescribable. I was out in a park-"
"What's a park? interrupted Kristi with a puzzled look on her face, head slightly inclined.
"A park," Ty said, "was an area devoted to nature: trees, flowers, animals, and all sorts of natural attractions."
"Animals, in the city?" Kristi rolled her eyes and began to stride towards the door. Before she stepped out, she said, "Sometimes I wonder about those books you read. Could people really have been so different?..."

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Any feedback would be nice. I'm enjoying the process of writing, but I'd like to know in which areas I'm especially lacking (and a kind word here and there certainly would not hurt ).

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It wasn't until two in the morning that Ty stepped out of the bottling plant and into the lifeless streets of the city. His steady footsteps broke the eerie silence in the confident rhythm of a twenty year veteran. Briskly along he continued until he heard a shout in the distance.
It sounded like a man screaming for help in a rather raspy voice. Ty rushed in the direction of the sound, down a dimly-lit alleyway between two convenience stores. There stood two men, backs to the street, towering over an elderly gentlemen of a scraggly, stretched-out figure. Sporting a long wiry beard, a pointed nose, and two bushy eyebrows, the man reminded Ty less of a homeless person and more of the mythic wizard characters he had read about in the stolen copy of Encyclopedia Britannica he had acquired through the underground black market. The man seemed to be unconscious, his bony cheek slumped into a small oil slick on the pavement.
"What's going on here?" demanded Ty, as the man's attackers turned to face him.
"Iz juz bizniz, kid," snarled the older man on the left in a thick metropolitan accent. He was of medium height and medium build, average looks and average intelligence, but he was the only man present with a ridiculously over-sized revolver tucked into the waistline of his pants. Ty caught sight of the weapon briefly before the man zipped his jacket mid-way and obscured the polished metal from view. "This old nut-case owes us a lotta bread, so unless you're volunteering to pay his dues, I suggest you head home and be grateful that you're not in such unfortunate circumstances."
Ty hesitated only momentarily. "How much does he owe?" he asked slowly, as he tried to remember how many credits he was carrying.
"Fifty-two hundred and seventeen."
"Look, I've only got twenty-five in bills. If I pay you, will you leave him alone for the night?"

The man seemed to toy with the idea in wordless contemplation, making no apparent indication of disagreement. Ty silently hoped that the night patrol would find the elderly man before these thugs decided to come back and beat him half to death. Better a few nights in the city lock-up than being left to the mercy of these violent criminals. "I'm going to have to lean forward," Ty informed the men. "The money's in my sock."
The man on the left grunted in mock disgust and muttered a few choice words but also managed to nod his head in consent at the same time. Ty knelt to his knees and felt for the bill around his ankle. It was just as he raised the money that he saw the lights.
A night patrol cruiser was stationed on the sidewalk across the alleyway, unevenly parked and door ajar as if it had been deserted in a hurry. Before Ty could utter a single word, he heard the footsteps emerging from the shadows against the far wall.
"Alright, guys," came a woman's voice from behind the attackers, "fun's over."
Ty glanced up to see a shapely female in a constrictive black uniform, and she was pointing a handgun at his face.
"All three of you," she said with authority, "on your knees, hands behind your heads, NOW!"
They reluctantly followed her orders, as Ty's eyes darted from the man with the revolver and the patrol-woman, who was now reporting in to central command and requesting backup to detain the men. She kept her distance as to allow all three men in sight at once. Ty was aware of her completely oblivious knowledge of the situation and debated with himself silently over the idea of warning her about the man's weapon.

Ty happened to catch his attention for a second, long enough to detect a manic glint of fearless determination in his eyes before his right hand shot into the depths of his jacket towards the revolver with lightning speed. Before he could even release the weapon from the grip of his belt buckle, however, the patrol-woman's small handgun had blasted a single, silent bullet into the center of the man's forehead, which wreaked all sorts of chaos in the soft interior of his brain and protruded rather violently out the other side. The woman hadn't hesitated even a fraction of a second. She had been trained well; she was to take any and all precautions necessary to insure her immediate well-being. She maintained absolutely no moral opposition to murder in self-defense.
The man's motionless body lay several feet from Ty's position as he tried to avoid the sight of the increasingly large puddle of deep amber liquid that permeated the area around the bullet's exit point. He felt a wave of powerful nausea sweep throughout his body but resisted the urge to vomit. This was the first time in Ty's short life that he had witnessed death first hand in any creature larger than a house fly.
The only acceptable portrayal of death on the television was one of educational purposes: displaying the effects of various illegal drugs and proving the legitimacy of the government's stance in the war on said drugs, their use, and the terrible consequences that inevitably followed any such use.

Ty marveled at the sheer power that lay in the ability to murder; power to decide whether an autonomous consciousness will continue to exist, or whether its individual components will be reduced to a useless state of inactivity and steady deterioration, effectively ending its tenure in this curious state of affairs we call reality.
Much fear and superstition surrounded the idea of death in this day and age, and people thought it wise to extend life for as long as it would last.
The old idea of a supernatural intelligence whose intent it was to guide humans into another realm of existence was long since gone, thoroughly surpassed by the heavy hand of scientific scrutiny and the all-encompassing body of knowledge it had inevitably produced. The few citizens who were even aware of the ancient concept of God were the curious minority who actively sought out information about the past by any means necessary; Ty was lucky enough to be one of them.
These were the thoughts that occupied Ty's mind in the short silence between the gun shot and the escalating wail of the patrol sirens in the distance.

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said in a gruff voice

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You could describe that way better. 

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before his right hand shot into the depths of his jacket towards the revolver with lightning speed

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Lightning speed =

You could easily throw in a great metaphor here.

Other than that, I like it a lot. 

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OneMoreRobot3021 said:
His hand shot into the depths of his jacket, pulling out a revolver quicker than a cock attached to a swollen bladder? Or, something? It's early, I'm stoned, shut up!

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Wow, I wish 8:45am was earlier for me. 

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Rough hands lugged Ty to his feet and shoved him heartily towards the nearest patrol-car. The officers' only words were sharp commands issued to the two: stand up, sit down, shuddup yafface!, and the only audible sound besides their footsteps was the faint, single tone of reassurance that rang from the small machine on the rooftop of the compact cruiser.
It was a ruddy little box, about the size of three delicious graham wafers, that looked like it hand been slightly dented from every angle imaginable. Exceptionally tall criminals, be warned. The machine projected a wide array of fine-tuned laser grids into each entrance of the car that the criminals were to be thrown through, which examined ones fingerprints, face composition, and dozens of other features to confer with AUCentral and reach a consensus on his identity within seconds.
Ty observed through several inches of bulletproof glass as the officers filled out a simple questionnaire-type, multiple choice list of felonies one might incur, including: provoking an officer to a stressful emotional state (the patrol-man chuckled to himself as he touched the screen to fill this box), littering in the streets (Ty presumed that they meant the dead body), and a multitude of conspiratory drug-related charges: conspiracy to purchase illicit drugs, conspiracy to sell illicit drugs, conspiracy to support the distribution of illicit drugs, etc etc.

"HEY!" Ty screamed as he pounded his fist against the slab of glass opposite from him, "I don't have any drugs! None of us had any drugs!"
"I did," volunteered a whisper of a voice that carried clearly in the silent, mobile prison.
Ty turned to observe his temporary cell-mate for the first time. He was young, probably in his early twenties, with a shaggy mop of black, unkempt hair and a familiar face. His expression maintained a hint of a grin, which grew into a broad smile as he watched the universally-identical wave of recognition sweep across Ty's face.
"Rich!" Ty exclaimed in surprise, "I haven't seen you in years! Not since I-10." I-10 was short for the tenth grade of intermediate, or secondary school, classes. The man he called Rich smiled absentmindedly as he appeared to be looking into a television set only visible to himself.
"I knew it was you," he said, "I recognized your voice."
"Then why didn't you say anything from the beginning, man? You could have at least explained to me what you were doing out in the streets so late, beating old men-"
Rich chuckled heartlessly and cut him off, "Look, Ty, that's how business is done these days. You always gotta give a warning before you give 'em the old one-two; this ain't the twentieth century. That old nut job will find a way to pay... if he remembers what happened. People can do great things when their life is on the line."
"How will he pay you if you're in prison?"
Rich laughed again in that cold, distant tone. "He didn't owe me a dime. I'm just another officer of the law, Ty. Except, the law I enforce is Mr. G's word."

The name stood out in Ty's mind like a dirty-diapered baby at a cocktail party. Mr. G happened to be the most prominent and most sought after drug lord in the city. He was notoriously famous for his ability to elude police and escape the authorities in a humorous, yet harmless manner.
"Me and Nick caught up with that old punk in the Pub tonight and he thought he could get away through the back alley. Mr. G generously offered this man the opportunity to 'pass' drugs on to his friends, and so long as the dough made it back to him, everyone would wind up with a fair share. The guy doesn't have a dollar to his name, and by the time we found him he'd eaten, snorted, and smoked the better part of a ten-thousand credit stash. Anyways, the baggie I busted him with is what got me busted. Sorta ironic, isn't it?"
Ty looked as confused as ever. "If you had the drugs, what right did they have to take me away? They didn't even ask us for our names!"

Rich indulged one last time in his hollow, baritone laughter and turned to look Ty in the eye. "You haven't been watching many of the public announcements, have you? They've been passing the laws that allow this kind of thing for years, but they present it to the public in terms that everyone can understand: war, us vs them, law-abiders vs nasty criminals, and people feel safer for it. Create a fear and systematically destroy it. Make people depend on you to keep them safe, not just from things they think they should be afraid of, but from things that you think they should be afraid of. That's one reason we're in this car."
Both men looked forward into the glass: one, a nervous wreck; the other, seemingly calm. The remainder of their short trip was spent in silence, until they pulled through the large, iron gates of the City Penitentiary.

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A thin shaft of light shone from the small rectangular window in the corner of the room and rebounded off of the low, shabby table in the center of the floor, illuminating the cold, grey, concrete slabs that leered at Ty from every direction. Two of the four walls sported long, deep fissures that emanated outwards from slight indentations in the rock face, as if a large bag of meat had been repeatedly used as a makeshift ramrod to no avail.
Ty's breath quickened as the immovable structures filled his vision, looming above, below, and around him, slowly inching forward to embrace him in their lifeless grip. Standing, he moved quickly to the window, the hint of warmth its sunlight promised, and the welcome flow of clean air that trickled in through the space between each rusty iron bar.
Ty breathed deeply, gratefully accepting an alternative to the stank, musty stench that lingered throughout the remainder of the cell. He briefly considered the prospect of attempting to identify the various stains and smears that decorated all six sides of his cubicle, but opted instead to examined the vertical barriers blockading him from what appeared to be his only connection to the outside world.
However, just as his hand hovered within only several inches of the bars, a low, clear voice resonated from behind, "They're electrically charged," it said, "if you're thinking about trying to pry them apart."

Ty jerked his hand away from the window as he started in surprise and turned to face the source of the warning. Despite the fact that the voice had appeared to be emanating from one of the shadowy corners of the cell, Ty's gaze soon fell upon the stern, expressionless face of a man seated in one of the spindly-legged chairs pulled up to the table.
"Please, sit down," offered the man, gesturing toward the empty seat. He watched as Ty peered cautiously at the chair, then back towards the window, as if weighing his options carefully. "Don't be stupid, boy," managed the man in-between bouts of uproarious laughter, "your options from here on out are few and far between. Any semblance of choice you may have harbored in your past life has long since vanished; it's for the best that you learn this quickly and remember it daily."
Ty reluctantly sat and finally managed to find his voice, "How did you get in here?"
"I didn't enter the room, so much as I was already here." The man met Ty's puzzled gaze with an uplifted finger, pointing towards the portion of the room that his speech continued to float down from.
For the first time, Ty noticed a faint green light attached to a small black box, which was nestled away in a distant corner of the ceiling.
"That," said the man, "is where my image is being projected from." And to prove it, he thrust his hand below the table as both men watched it vanish.

"Now, to business," he said, and a chart appeared in mid-air above the center of the table. "Outlined here are your many transgressions, including the books seized from your apartment and the propaganda pieces in your... dream journal." His upper lip curled in a sneer at his own mention of the journal. "I'm required to inform you that your assets have been taken for auction, your position at the Reeds & Co. bottling plant has been filled-"
"What's going to happen to my brother and sister?" Ty interjected as he leaned forward in apprehension, eyes wide with terror.
"Ah, yes," said the man, "I was just getting to that. As I understand it, the parents are deceased, yes?"
Ty shifted his gaze to the floor and nodded almost imperceptibly. "I was seventeen," he whispered, "and it was an accident."
His words had hardly seemed to leave his own mouth, yet the box in the corner must have picked up on them because the holo-man glanced knowingly into his eyes with a cruel smirk playing at the edges of his mouth. When the man spoke again, his tone revealed no hint of emotion, "Your siblings will be cared for in separate homes, their names will be changed, and they will be forbidden to contact you. We can't afford the likes of you any leeway to corrupt our young minds with your filth."
Ty made as if to object, but found that he was unable to form words with his mouth. A pungent smell had tinted the air and burned his nostrils as he continued to inhale. The image of the man was swimming in Ty's field of vision now, as if he were looking at him through a rainy windshield.
The holo-man continued to speak, but Ty understood few of the words, "...cell...remove...new home." And with that, he seemed to be finished.
Head swaying, Ty managed to witness the man flicker out of existence before losing consciousness and slumping to the cell floor.

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"...breakfast will get cold," floated a familiar voice into Ty's awareness as he felt a hand gently shake his shoulder.
He was sprawled across a standard sized cot in a cell similar to the 'interview' room, albeit much smaller. There was only floor-space for one to stand, and at the moment that position was being filled brilliantly by his old pal Rich.
"Finally up, I see," Rich observed in a chipper tone. "Come on, let's get some grub before it's all gone."
Unaware of an alternative option, Ty accepted the invitation and followed Rich out into the artificial light streaming in through his cell door. Stepping out of the shadow of his den, Ty noticed several men clad in plain blue jumpsuits walking briskly towards a door labeled 'Mess Hall'.
The structure containing their cells was of an impressive size: dozens of floors stretched upwards and downwards, each floor appearing to host well over one hundred individual sleeping quarters. The narrow walkway supporting the men provided two choices in opposite directions: 'Mess Hall' and 'Employment Center'.
The two men joined the procession towards the mess hall door and pressed through it into a much smaller space housing a concrete staircase. The steps curved around a narrow shaft of empty space in the center of the silo.
Looking down towards the distant concrete base, Ty tried to imagine the size of a mess hall that might accommodate these multitudes of men, and whether it had a building of its own. His suspicions were proven correct as the two men reached the peak of the stairwell and entered into the short, straight tunnel ahead.
Sunlight filtered in through the thick glass walls of the passageway, illuminating the concrete floor and the surly faces of passer-bys.
Ty peered through the iridescent barrier, wondering as he did so how many attempts had been made to escape through a shattered window. Very few, he decided, as the sheer magnitude of the prison-complex stared fiercely back at him.

Dozens of seemingly identical buildings, each with their own glass-paneled tunnel, curved around an exceptionally large structure centered amongst them. Each of the buildings resembled a small skyscraper, if skyscrapers were constructed of thick-walled concrete and completely devoid of doors and windows. Beyond the inner circle lay an outer circle; this too was comprised of identical buildings, each connected by a single tunnel to its counter-part in the inner circle. No two buildings in the inner circle were connected, but every building reached inwards into the mess hall with one hand and outwards into its twin structure with the other. The shape of the buildings and their connections resembled spokes in a bicycle wheel, with the mess hall in the center.
"Long way down," Rich stated matter-of-factly, jarring Ty's attention away from the awe-inspiring view. "Pretty incredible, isn't it?"
Ty shrugged off the question to ask one of more practical value, "Each building leading into the mess hall, are they all living quarters?"
"That's right, and each building past those is full of equipment like in the factories back home." Rich met Ty's surprise with a chuckle and said, "Yeah, just when you think your working days are over. They'll probably land you with a job you've got experience in. Where have you worked?"
"I supervised an automated assembly-line designed to screw the caps on bottled water." Rich cringed visibly. Ty ignored him, "What do you mean by 'they', anyways? I haven't seen a single guard since I've been up."
"Oh, you'll see them eventually. They tend to minimize contact with prisoners. Probably a budget thing."
The two men now stood in front of the door on the far side of the tunnel. Rich turned towards Ty with a grave expression set on his face and said, "This is important: when we step through this door, you do as I do, you keep your head down, and you keep your mouth shut. Got it?"
There was no trace of humor present on either of their faces as Ty nodded solemnly and both men waded in to the flood of light spewing forth from the open doorway.

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