Chapter 1: Escape from Insanity
I am the Xatron. The words rattle around in my brain even as we leave behind the gray box that is me. Now that the barrier is gone, I know that I exist both here, in this body, and there, in that room. Human and Machine.
"Hope!" Lizzie shouts, pulling me out of my reverie.
I look up and notice a guard standing still, staring at us. At me. He opens his mouth as if to speak, and then closes it again.
I touch his mind, and pull in his most recent memories. Three people standing in front of him with brown, black, and blonde hair. They were the three escapees his boss ordered a search for. Sitting alone in the apartment in the morning staring despondently at his bowl of cereal; mourning the breakup with the last girlfriend. Her yelling at him, "You spend too much damn time at that jail! You don't even care enough about me to come home in time for dinner!"
I yank myself away and put up an invisible barrier. He only lost a couple of days of memories. He will be disoriented for a couple of days, but I did a better job controlling my eating this time.
"Don't worry, we are safe now." I smile at my two companions and stride past them. His memories tell me the way out of this jail that has held me for so many years.
"Hope, do you know where you are going?" Nathan's voice is hesitant. He sounds unsure of whether to be scared or complicit.
"Of course. Jacob entered here this morning, and I have his memories of today now." I am useful now. I am not just some brainless chick getting dragged along.
The barrier that protected me from my own memories is gone. The only barrier left in my mind is the one I created to prevent myself from feeling pain. I know its dangerous, and one day it will break, but for now I leave it.
Behind me my compatriots are slowing, exhaustion tugging at there ankles, so I slow my own stride down.
The memories lead me to a door that is easy to push open, the stairwell. Jacob liked to use the stairs rather than the elevator. Felt it was better for his health and fitness levels.
Guards are moving on the stairs a level above us heading upward. A sound and sight shield should protect us. I marvel at the strange little gray hands that I can see around us, enforcing my will.
This place is a monstrosity. The prison was fifty levels high, built to hold roughly 1,000 prisoners a level.
My level, called the Xatron level by the guards, was luckily on level 10. Only ten stories down to the exit. I raise a finger to my lips, and motion for silence the way I see people do in their memories.
It's so strange. I used to have no memories to call up, no past no future, and now I can view so many pasts. I can pull on their memories as if they are my own.
We creep down the stairs listening for the stop of guard boots. All I can hear is the slowly fading clomp of the guards heading up the stairs. Most guards probably take the elevator. Ray's memories inform me that he would take the elevator.
The door to the first floor opens easily into an area surrounded by a clear wall with a door to a large lobby area. There is desk in the middle of the lobby, and chairs around the clear wall surrounding the stairwell. Somehow we have to get through the door into the lobby.
One of the walls has small temporary cells made of metal bars. Two of the cells have people sitting on a bench in them. Four guards lounge near the cells in this lobby, and a woman in the guard uniform stands at the desk in the middle of the lobby. We will have to slip past all of these people.
