The Confined

12. Ego (Part 1)

I was going to meet my parents for the first time in my life. I had never wanted to find them. I had never wanted to meet them. I never even wanted to see them. But I had no choice. If I was going to save Violet's parents, I needed as much help as I could get from the RL. My parents were the only people I knew. I didn't know if they would help me or not, but if they had the least conscience inside of themselves about throwing their child away, I thought they would willingly feed me and give me shelter for at least a night. I didn't expect much. I only wanted a safe place with a roof to sleep through the night if it takes me a couple of days to rescue Violet's parents. I didn't need their love.
I wouldn't take it if they gave it to me anyways.

2302. 04. 20

The heavy door slammed behind me. I started sprinting with all my strength as two policemen were on my tail yelling viciously. The cap that I took from Finn's sack hid who I was, but it didn't make me invincible. I wasn't an athlete, but I wasn't that bad at running. They were following me with a good ten yards between us. If I could just get past the great walls, I would be able to mix into the people and they wouldn't be able to find me without searching through the RL. The RL would descend into chaos if the police from the Confined went around looking for a runaway.

I was five yards away when someone from behind yelled at me. Someone's voice I recognized too well. Finn. I stopped and slowed down. He slammed into me just in time as I turned around.
"What in the world are you doing?" He grabbed me and pushed me hard. "You running away? To where you coward? You have somewhere to go?"

I glanced behind, but both of the police officers were knocked out on the floor. We only had seconds before the alarms would start blaring and more police would be flooding out, on the search for us.
"We have to move. I'll explain later." I quickly dismissed his angry attitude towards me as if it wasn't much of a big deal. It wasn't much of a big deal to me right now; getting out was way more important. "The police will be here any minute. Move!" I smacked him on the back.

"You're going to need to have a good excuse for doing this. I'm putting my whole family in danger, just by following you into this mess," he grunted. We both ran along the route to the great walls with a bunch of right turns and left turns to the end of the path, where there was a door that was locked electronically. "Great. Now what are we going to do? It's unlocked by handprint," he grumbled.

I grinned. "You don't know me yet," I said and set to work. I carefully reset the handprint locks by shooting the laser through the memory chip. I pressed my hand to the device, which immediately responded with a click and a "Reset."

Finn looked startled. Then he laughed and the door opened to reveal what was inside. There were three policemen there and Finn and I set to fighting. Finn took two and I took the rather weak-looking one. Like I said thoroughly before, I am a terrible fighter. But this time, I'd proudly like to say that I beat him.

I ran to the farther guy and lashed a clean kick that snapped his jaw backwards in surprise. He stumbled backwards and leaned on the wall. I quickly advanced on him and punched him in the stomach. Unfortunately, the guy had something in his suit. It was like hitting a brick. The guy showed an evil smile and counter attacked me by throwing a jab into my gut. I winced but ducked when he tried to hit my face. I took out my pen and clicked the knife out. I swung it all around, trying to buy some time. He backed down and then I caught him. I punched him square in the nose and when he bent down I slammed my elbow on his head. He sprawled on the floor.

Finn was watching all this of course. He'd probably made those guys unconscious in ten seconds. "Not bad," he shrugged.

We kept going until we finally met the great walls. They loomed over us, their great shadows fading our bodies' colors into faint gray. Crows cawed in the distant sky above us, but just over the wall there seemed to be birds singing melodiously as if they knew that it was a much better place on the other side of the wall. We walked around the wall so quietly that no police would possibly be able to hear our footsteps. The walls were so huge and there were only two gates that connected the RL to the Confined area, and if I knew correctly, there was supposed to be one just a few dozen yards away.

Tiptoeing slowly down the wall, we were very careful not to touch it. It had the most sensitive of sensors so that no one would be able to climb the wall without being caught. The wall was too high to climb anyway, I'd given up on that from the start. The only way out was through the gate. This was the only time of day for the Confined to go out into the RL to work. There were lots of jobs that led to the RL, but few people attained them. Usually women were able to get through because women were given jobs such as milk delivery or house cleaning where people couldn't afford expensive robots. Even in the RL, there were people who weren't able to afford expensive robots that would clean their houses. They were the people who were in danger of falling to the Confined area. Women in the Confined were much cheaper labor, so they were hired to clean people's houses. The workers that commuted from the RL needed a specific ID card which the police would scan to let the person in.
We didn't have one of those. But we did have an awesome pen. And a brilliant plan.

"Get in line!" a policeman said as he tried to get the people gathered into order.

The people listened at once and stopped what they were doing to file in a line. We jogged up to them and stood at the back. My hands were sweating so badly that water started to drop from my palms. When all the police were busy, scanning IDs from the first row, I got to work. I aimed my laser right at the CCTV lens that was facing me and it instantly blew up. Everybody screamed and covered their ears as the loud pop rang through the wide gateway. The police looked up as they were surprised to see that the CCTV had exploded. They had never exploded before.

They had to check up on the camera. But if they didn't let us through the gates, the RL wouldn't be happy about not getting their milk on time. The police had no choice but send all of us in.

We walked in while some policemen watched us for any suspicious behavior. The other policemen were taking a look near the camera.

"Hey. You two on the back. Stop." My heart stopped beating and I turned around.

The world seemed to slow down. The policeman was ready to catch me. Ready to beat me up and throw me into jail. He was walking towards me. He was going to hit me until I was unconscious. He was going to drag me to the Confined hospital. He was going to paralyze me. He was going to suffocate me with questions of why I had wanted to go the RL. I didn't want that. My heart pounded every millisecond while I thought about spending the rest of my life in jail.

I was about to admit that I wasn't supposed to be here, when the policeman said, "You a milkmaid?" He snickered and the other policemen burst out laughing.

That's when I realized that I'd won. I'd fooled them. I had made it through the gate and finally to the RL. They couldn't catch me easily here. I was free to do whatever I wanted if only no one would report us as suspicious men who smelled bad.

When the gates opened I turned around and hollered, "FOOLS!" to the policemen.

We dashed out into another world.

✡

The sky was bright. The sky was blue. The sky was beautiful.

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Ego has finally set out on his journey to save Violet's parents!
What do you think about this chapter?
Do you think Ego's parents will welcome him?

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