The Last Few Dollars

Chapter 5

But there's nowhere for me to hide, nowhere to go, and I just keep running and running and-

"Gotcha!" A yell from behind me makes my already pounding heart skip a beat, and strong arms wrap around me and I fall, unable to catch myself. A terrified scream tears itself from my throat as I thrash wildly in the person's grip, panic filling me and making my legs kick out at any angle I can. My nails scrabble uselessly at the arms confining me, and as a hand moves to cover my mouth, I bite down on it - hard.

"Ow!" A familiar voice yells, and I realise that Harper must have caught up to me, and that it was him that grabbed me. I haven't been let go yet, though, and I don't stop struggling until he finally releases me. When he does, I get to my feet again, and briefly consider running before I decide against it. Knowing that Harper is faster than I am leaves me with one option.

I shift my weight slightly, preparing myself to knock him out and then leave again, but he obviously recognises the move because he changes his stance to match mine.

"You can't outrun me, so what makes you think you can outfight me?" Harper says with a smirk, before he turns serious. "Where were you going to go?"

"Away from you," I say flatly. "I don't want to be around you right now, so why won't you just leave me alone?"

"Because you're my friend, Chlo, and you owe me - I saved your life by breaking you out of the cells-" here I shudder - "and you're yet to save mine, so-"

"So I'm not allowed to go anywhere until I've paid off my debts?" I laugh. "You're worse than the government, you're no better than them!"

"At least I'm letting you live!" Harper yells back. My vision is turning red again, and I can't think straight.

"Maybe it would be better if you just killed me now! Or if you can't do it, take me to the guys that gave me the notes for breaking into the greenhouses in exchange for sex! Or even the government - take me back to them and let them kill me! Maybe you'd be better off that way, and I wouldn't have to worry about paying you back because it would be like you never saved me in the first place!"

There's a pause, the tension thick enough to cut, and then-

"Well maybe I shouldn't have." Harper's voice is cold, empty of emotion, and I fight the urge to take a step back.

"You know what, Harper? You're right. You should have left me to die. You should have just let me be killed by the people who are hunting us left, right and centre, and then we wouldn't be having this conversation, you wouldn't have to live with the regret, and you'd never find out that, before you decided to act the way you did, I was planning on going back in the morning and giving Thunder the information so that we could try again, so that we can all survive, but I'm not going to now. You don't deserve it! No one else would have done what I did to get this-" I shove the paper in his face -"so without me, you wouldn't even have the possibility of getting it! Maybe you should think about that before following me again."

And with that, I turn on my heel, and head off towards, well, nowhere.

---

I don't sleep well that night and wake up with a stiffness in my limbs that's unfamiliar to me. Maybe it was the cold, pressing in on me from all sides, or maybe it was the lack of company (I desperately don't think of that company's name, all too aware of the sharp ache in my chest), but I'm not sure what caused my sleepless night, so I don't spare it much more thought as I move about during the daylight hours I have open to me, all the while turning over that blasted paper in my hands.

Time away from, well, everyone else, hasn't made my decision any easier to make. But while keeping it to myself would definitely boost my odds of survival, my mind has been moving in a darker direction, towards a large-scale defiance of the government, in an attempt to change the way we live. Not a revolution, not by a long shot - we haven't got the numbers for that, by any means, but some sort of a show for them to prove that even those of us with no money to our names have worth to them. And in order to achieve even a small amount of movement in that direction, I need as many allies on my side as I can.