Prisoner 0004C

After Aliyah's failed Extermination

We entered the Hull amid yelling voices.

The first girl who had left the Extermination Sector, the blond one, seemed to be having a fierce argument with wolfish Category A boy from my failed Extermination.

"-regardless of whether they'll come or not, which they will!" the boy was yelling at her, face flushed in anger.

"Oh my fucking God! We have a chance at freedom! We should take it! We'll die if we just stay here!" the blond girl was retaliating.

"Woah, someone's already got their panties in a knot." murmured Hallie besides me.

I turned to agree with her but Hallie was streaking forwards.

"What's going on here?" she shouted in a commanding voice up at the group of arguing teens.

Everyone turned to her at once and gaped at us.

"Well, why don't you tell us," the brutish, evil-eyed boy from Category C who had lined up behind me was saying. "Since you are the only fuckers who weren't Exterminated."

"I think we can agree that no one has any idea what happened, not even us," Hallie responded coolly, crossing her arms.

"Do you always let your girlfriend talk for you?" a quiet voice came from behind the crowd. Pushing forwards, prisoner 0001C walked forwards until he was right in front of me. Everyone silenced at once.

"What do you mean?" I asked indifferently, once I had regained my speech. The boy was right up in my face.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because your prisoner code was the only one they mentioned in those alarms." a smirk playing at his lips.

He was right.

"Yeah, true! What's going on?" the blond girl streaked forward, pushing past Hallie and that big brute of a boy who seemed to be sizing each other up for a fight.

She snatched at my arm as if to check that my prisoner code was indeed the one mentioned in the emergency alarms.

I wrenched my arm out of her grasp and her nails racked down my wrist.

"Ooh, feisty one." She grinned wickedly at me. I suddenly noticed how pretty the girl was, with her pale skin, long blond hair and dark arching eyebrows.

"I don't know why my code was in those alarms." I glared at the blond girl and the smirking boy in return.

Regaining the crowd's attention, Hallie murmured to me. "They are right though, Aliyah."

At this, the blond girl gasped dramatically.

"Oh, how quaint! They're already besties and everything! On a first name basis even!" she squeaked, clasping her hands together in mock adoration.

"But-but that's against the Rules." A bespectacled boy muttered from the crowd of prisoners.

Turning to him, the blond girl snarled, "We know that, dumb ass. The Punishment chips are broken, just like the Watchers and everything else in this God forsaken prison! We're free, so instead of moping around and getting to know one another why don't we smash our way out of here and voila- freedom!" she finished grandly, hands wide spread and twirling.

Much applause met the end of her speech, but almost immediately the wolfish boy responded.

"That's not such a bad idea, you know? Telling our names, I mean. I can't be prisoner 0018A forever."

"And you won't be. The minute we get out of here you can be whoever you want to be. But for now, I think we should just focus on escaping because the fuckers that locked us in here are probably well on their way over here already." The blond girl turned and sighed in exasperation at him. "So let's get a move on!"

"In case you haven't noticed, love, that's concrete. Solid, impenetrable concrete. We're not smashing down nothing." The smirking boy said quietly. Although his voice was hushed and soft, he had certain domineering control over the rest of the prisoners that couldn't be denied. Perhaps it was because of his status as 0001C.

The same idea must've occurred to the blond girl because she rounded on him immediately.

"You know this place the best- you've been here the longest. So, tell us, any way to escape?" a manic glint was shining in her eyes. This girl seriously wants to leave.

0001C remained his irritating smirk pasted on his face as he responded slowly and infuriatingly. "Sorry, but I've followed the exact same routine as the rest of you idiots, just for a longer time. I'm no help. Don't get me wrong though, I'm really digging this whole 'flight for freedom vibe' you've got going on. But I reckon the only one with any helpful information is 0004C."

The crowd turned back to me and waited for my response.

"I don't know anything!" I said glaring at the smirking boy but he just shrugged.

"Okay. Okay. Everyone split up. Try and find anything, just anything that might help." The blond girl yells, a note of hysteria in her voice. She knew as well as any of us that time was running out.

No one moves.

"We need to think rationally-" begins the wolfish 0018A cautiously but the blond leader girl rounds on him immediately.

"Oh, shut up! Don't you idiots want to get out of here? Do you not want to live?"

The brutish boy coded 0003C steps forward, raising his hand as if this is a class.

"Sorry to interrupt but does no one else hear that?"

Everyone quiets down at once and listens.

An eerie sizzling sound is coming from one of the corridors.

"What is-?" the bespectacled boy begins to mumble but is shushed by a chubby girl beside him.

The eerie sizzling begins to sound at a higher pitch as if it is growing nearer. A broken Watcher suddenly hovers out of a nearby corridor. Its camera lens is cracked and it floats along at a sluggish pace, occasionally dropping dangerously low to the ground before righting itself. Pulsing, red words flash across its broken side.

Hallie lunges forward and snatches the Watcher from the air.

"What the hell?" she mutters, her big brown eyes widening as the pulsing message sinks in.

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." the blond girl rolls her pale blue eyes and lunges forward, snatching the Watcher out of Hallie's hands.

She glares at the pulsing red words as if each and every letter has caused her some deeply personal wrong.

"And the bitch said she didn't know anything." she growled before turning the broken, feeble Watcher so that everyone can read its message.

Projected off the surface of the Watcher in a pixelated holograph, like the seal of the Organisation, was four words.

Four earth shattering words.

The smirking boy beside me read the message aloud, his usual bored and purposeful tone shaky.

"We are coming, 0004C."