Utopia

Part 6

6.

   It’ll be fine, I tell myself as I follow the boy down the hallway. I’ll take a few clips with me, stay out for a few hours then I’ll come back. I’ll be in quarantine for a little while, they’ll disinfect me and it will be like I never left. I want to feel the rain.

   “What?” the Outsider boy stops, I hadn’t realised I’d spoken out loud.

   “Nothing,” I tell him quickly, glad when he turns back around again so I can train my focus on the back of his head.

   Soldiers go outside sometimes… but then soldiers die. Am I ready for this? Doubt fills my shoes with stones and drags down every footstep. I want this, I do –it’s just hard to process that it is actually happening. How can this be happening?

   They’ve picked a good time to come; everyone has either clocked into their afternoon shift at their respective Trades or are halfway through the third lunch shift in the dining hall. The hallway is completely empty and for that I’m thankful. If I’d seen anyone they’d have stopped me and I’m not entirely sure I want to be stopped just yet. Not when I’m so, so close.

   I’m almost not surprised when the boy leads us to the gardens. This is the place that I’ve always felt closest to Outside. Sometimes I’d come to just sit on the bench, close my eyes and pretend I was really there with the sun on my face and breeze combing through my hair. Sometimes I even let myself believe it was true.

   The door is still sealed off with a force field but the boy is quick to find the scanner on the wall. With his back blocking my view I can’t see what he does but the next second the field fades off and he strolls right through the door. I scamper after him just before the field beams back at full power.

   “Hey,” I call him. “Hey how did you do that?” He ignores my question.

   “Watch,” he tells me, gesturing towards the centre of the room where the last of the group balances on the back of the bench like tightrope dancer I saw in an Arts performance once - except the Artist was as small as my pinkie finger and this boy is triple her size. Still, with her balance and grace he manages to leap from the bench to hang onto the skylight which has been prised open.

   “What do you think you’re doing?” I gasp, glad that I’ve already put on my clip. “The Sickness, it’s going to get in!” It’s one thing risking my own safety by going out, but there are innocent Fielders that could be affected by this.

   “The door is guarded and from the looks of things the room is already under quarantine, it’s fine,” he says calmly as if I’m way overreacting. Easy for him to say when he’s immune to the virus.

   He points at the boy pulling himself up from the skylight and onto the roof. For a moment his body eclipses the sun, casting a shadow over the light. The image from earlier bursts to mind, the shadow just before I got Tapped – I should have known.

   “Can you do that?” he asks, looking at me with an expression that says he highly doubts it.