Awake

Chapter Forty-Seven - The Final Plans

Puck finally broke the silence that had been weighing heavy in Jonathan's office.

"So it's all over?"

Jonathan sighed deeply. "Maybe. I don't know. We don't have the key card. We probably can't just explode a door designed to keep the whole world out. And all the equipment for surviving above ground is gone."

Carmen let out a wild yell and smashed her fist into the wall. Nobody made a move to stop her.

"I'm going up anyway!" she shouted. "I've got to! I don't care if there aren't any stupid suits! I don't care! I've got to see the sky again! I'm going up there whether you like it or not!"

To everyone's surprise, it was Sandy who responded, getting to his feet and looking around.

"We're all going," he said, as though there could be no argument. "All six of us. Aren't we?"

"What?" Natalia stared at him. "Don't be ridiculous! You can't go up there and die!"

"Yes, we can," Sandy told her. "We've already died once, remember? I'm not living out the rest of my life without ever seeing the sky again, not when we got so close. We're all doing this."

"I think you're all missing the point," Jonathan said, quite calmly. "It's not about whether we're willing to risk dying. It's about whether we can actually open the door in the first place."

He felt curiously settled. He had his answers now, and maybe they weren't the ones he wanted but that couldn't be helped. They were there and solid. People had died today, his mother had died, but that was detached and irrelevant. They weren't people he would or could mourn for.

Jonathan's world had narrowed to a few simple points, and a strange kind of certainty. They couldn't get out. But they were going to anyway. The only thing that mattered was drawing the line between those two points, one that invalidated the first and made the second possible. Lines were easy to draw, in the end.

"Even if you can find a way," Natalia argued, "you can't just go on a suicide mission. All of you? No. It's not acceptable."

"Natalia," Miriam said, her voice soft and kind, "listen to me. That's not your choice to make."

"You don't understand," Nigs agreed. "You've never been outside. But we have. We know it. We remember it. And we've spent weeks down here, terrified and cramped and craving the air, the sun, the sky, the sea, leaves, trees, real life, the real world. We're claustrophobic. We're dying down here. We can't live like this forever."

"Of course you can," Natalia cried, her eyes wide. "You always have! People have for centuries!"

"You don't understand," Sandy shook his head. "You can't understand. This place...it's too small. The ceilings are too close. There's nothing that's not human. You don't even realise how lonely you are, with the only living things you've ever seen being other human beings. You have no idea what it's like, to suddenly lose everything. There's not even a pot plant to remind us that we're not all alone in the universe."

"You're telling me," Jonathan said, slowly, "that you've all been feeling the same? All five of you? About what this place is like for us?"

"You'll have noticed that people don't often share their feelings around here," Miriam remarked. "Or, if they do, it's all at once and in screaming rage or helpless sobbing. But we're all feeling the same. Of course we are. We're human."

"I don't want you to do it," Natalia articulated, as though the words had not been clear enough before. "I don't want you to go up there and die on some whim of yours. I don't want it."