Nila doesn't take her eyes off of Skye as her and the guard make their way to a door in the chain gate. The woman nods her head before setting off down a hallway away from the playpen of sorts and the guard unlocks the door. Nila is given a sharp shove inside and the door is locked back up.
"You're in here until four o'clock and that's it," the guard informs and strolls away.
Nila meekly scans around the crowded area, taking slow steps as she navigates through a variety of people experiencing a range of emotions. Some people dawdle around with no goal whatsoever other than to keep moving. Others shout nonsense and yank against the gates that keep them confined. As Nila continues her path to Skye, one of her feet steps on something too peculiarly solid and shaped to be the floor. She looks down to see she has stepped on someone else's foot, a boy's who sits upright in a fetal position against a table rocking himself lightly back and forth, and immediately retracts hers.
"Gah! Sorry..." she says softly.
Eventually, she stands across from Skye at her table. Mouth slightly ajar as she doesn't know what to say. Luckily, Skye's supervisor found something more important to supervise so it is just the two of them. At least that is what it feels like. The rest of the room seems to blur out in Nila's mind as she stands before her whistleblower. The girl stares back wide-eyed with a smile slowly coming to life on her small, pale, rosy face.
"I knew you'd come. I knew we'd meet again," Skye whispers.
Nila's chest heaves up and down as she struggles to find the right words to say. Instead, despite not having known the girl for long at all and for arguably peculiar reasons, Nila acts on impulse and grabs the girl from across the table into a tight bear hug. Nila squeezes her eyes shut to prevent herself from shedding any more tears.
"I failed, I'm so sorry."
"Shhh...you tried to spread the truth. You've seen it, you haven't failed," the girl comforts, patting Nila's back softly.
"Hey! Cut that out!" Brown Beard's voice bellows causing the two girls to almost jump out of their skin. Promptly, they separate and sit down at the table.
"But I haven't. Not everything. I feel like I barely know anything," Nila says helplessly, tilting her head to the side at her wise mentor.
"I think I have something that will complete the puzzle for you," Skye starts with a smirk. "They may think they have everyone in here dazed and confused but I have connections in here they'll never brainwash." Skye diverts her attention to an older man sitting in a corner behind Nila making soduku in the air with his finger. "See that man over there, with the grey spiky hair?" She points with a malnourished looking finger. "He used to make Holos in the factories for a living and his genius mind made this...." The girl trails off. She pins a few strands of blonde hair from out of her face and digs deeper behind her ear to pull what Nila could mistake as a big beetle at first glance out of her hair. Upon closer inspection, Nila realizes that it's the tiniest Holo she has ever seen. "A Holo capable of being hid easily that with," the girl drops her sentence midway again to poke her head towards a table of adults. "See that Latina woman with the curly hair? She helped program this Holo so it could receive data sent from Earth. We have friends down there apart of an organization we like to call Sanctuary. And on this, on this, lays the big secret you've been wanting to know."
Nila realizes that she has been in a trance all this time, studying the minuscule little box and looks up to be met with Skye's huge, doe-like, light-blue eyes that currently hold a unrelenting intensity to them. The girl takes Nila's hand, faces it palm up and places her cold hand flat on hers. She drops the Holo and quickly retracts her hand while Nila clenches the Holo in her now closed fist.
"I am entrusting this knowledge to you. Watch it in the bathrooms when you go to the toilet, they don't monitor you there. But you cannot let this get caught," Skye hisses under her breath, eyes twitching to and fro.
Nila obediently nods. Skye has helped her uncover so much until now, she'll do anything the girl says.
"Miss Haillin, time for your pills." An unfamiliar woman says from behind Skye in a sing-song voice. It must be Skye's supervisor.
Nila looks at Skye with eyebrows raised slightly as if asking what she does.
"Oh, yes," Skye says, turning around to give her supervisor a smile and turns back to face Nila. "Silly me, I'm not good with time lately. That'd be time for you too," she says to Nila with a beckoning hand gesture and the two get up from their table and walk to the counter with plastic cups in tow – courtesy of Skye's supervisor.
Like snails, they inch their way forward step by step as the line decreases.
"Swallow them," Skye murmurs in her ear.
"What?!" Nila hisses back.
"Swallow and then throw them back up in the toilets. That's what we do."
Reluctantly, Nila nods. When her turn comes, she does exactly as they agreed, grimacing as the powder capsules slide down her throat for the first time in what feels like years. The guards and onlooking supervisors seem pleased with what they see. An hour or two pass of Skye and Nila buying time, acting like your everyday Ward patients and being placid until four o'clock finally arrives. Nila's heart works overtime and her leg bounces triple time against the polished cement floor as she waits for either Peach Fuzz or Brown Beard to come collect her. Skye had already been taken back to her room a little while ago. Impatiently, Nila fidgets with the hair behind her ear, holding the ever-so-precious tiny black box.
Like a beautiful sunset after a dreary, rainy day, it is Brown Beard that she catches sight of walking around the corner towards the gate and Nila has never felt more excited to see that patchy, rice-ridden bush more. Nila is more than happy to oblige when he orders her outside of the gate and shoves her down towards the main hallway.
"Wait, I really have to go to the toilet..." Nila whines, stopping in her tracks to do a dance with her feet. "Please."
The man tilts his head back and lets out a long groan. Two fingers pinch the sides of his nose. "Fine. Of course you do. Follow me and be quick about it."
The bathroom is a far cry from the miraculous luxury of the one Nila got to enjoy in the hidden bunker Miss Megalla took the Draw contenders to only earlier this week. The sinks are ancient white porcelain, although, they aren't very white anymore having been coated in a build up of soap scum, toothpaste and whatever else people are putting in there. The tiles are riddled with moist toilet paper from one of the seven, 'quaint' toilet cubicles. Nila strolls past each one finally settling on the fourth which seemed to be the least clogged and used of them all. Nila shuffles herself inside and locks the door. She scans the ceiling above her for any cameras before pulling out the tiny Holo from her hair.
Nila holds it in two hands as if it were the most precious thing in the universe. The pitter patter of her heart has reached a dramatic crescendo as it dawns on her that this is everything she has wanted for the past two months. The girl bites her lip and musters enough courage to turn it on. A projection ejects into the air. All she has to do is press play.
So she finally does.
Her memory is pretty difficult to assemble from that point forward but what she can remember is her bewilderment when the video started with a pan over a series of surgical beds and ended with an all-too-familiar female voice saying over the intercom, "What are you watching, Nila?"
Nila's blood ran cold.
"You think you're safe here? We are watching everywhere."
Before she could blink, her toilet cubicle door was yanked open and two hands reached for her inside.
YOU ARE READING
After Earth's Fall | ✔ UNDERGOING CONSTRUCTION
Science Fiction"Humanity's pride and greed will be the death of us" In 2025 B.E.F that saying couldn't have been more than true. After a devastating nuclear explosion had scorched one side of the world, people were forced to leave their home planet to Mars. A few...
