"Where are we headed?" Amiah asks once we've hit the main flow of traffic. Sky is already turning green, pressing his forehead to the cool glass.
"East of the city," he answers, his shaky tone draws Amiah's attention. She spares one glance at him and grimaces. Reaching over, she pops open a compartment set in the front of the vehicle.
"There's a package of anti-nausea pills in there," she says. Sky fishes them out with a grateful grunt. He pops two little round pills out of their tin foil barrier, then passes the package back to me. "Okay, now, there are a million roads headed east out of this place, so I really need you to be specific."
"It's, um... roads... " A frustrated groan escapes Sky and he strikes the doorframe open-handed. He doesn't know the way to the Compound, neither of us do. I press my knuckles to my teeth, and for the first time since charging out the door, the spark of rage-fueled fire in my stomach begins to flicker.
Amiah stomps on the brakes and wrenches the car to the side of the road, sending us all crashing against our seatbelts. The car is barely stopped when she throws open the compartment between the front seats and fishes out a miniature newstab.
"This place was on the news a while back, the lab the Americans attacked, right?" she asks, pulling something up on the newstab screen.
"That's the one," I say, easing back into my proper seat. Her fingers fly over the screen, tapping here and there too fast for me to catch what she's doing. In thirty seconds she has a map up on the newstab screen and is grinning triumphantly to herself.
"Got it." She passes the newstab to Sky, flips a switch beside the steering wheel, and rockets back onto the road. "Okay, now save that image to memory, wipe the browser history, and disconnect the newstab from everything."
"Why?" Sky asks, already pressing buttons to get the image saved as the car lurches across several lanes of traffic.
"Because what I did for that map is illegal as hell and the police will stop us from getting to the Compound."
Sky taps with more speed. At the first red light we hit, Amiah snatches the newstab from him and pulls up the image of the map.
"Where did you learn to do this?"
"Old job," Amiah answers tersely. The light turns green, she drops the newstab in Sky's lap and hits the gas, she spins the steering wheel with alarming speed, and I throw my hands out to brace against the seats. I don't want to be tossed out of this forsaken contraption before we get to the Compound. "Map says we're sixty minutes away from the Compound. So we'll be there in twenty," she says, then burns through a red light.
With twenty minutes of racing hearts and close brushes with fatal accidents ahead of us, I lean back and try to keep all of my self inside my skin. It's difficult, especially in the silence, and the knowledge that we're headed straight for the Compound makes it a hundred thousand times worse.
"Hey," I tap Sky's shoulder. He turns in his seat to face me, eyebrows up. "How's your hand?"
The eyebrows go down, but he doesn't answer right away.
"It's fine," he says at last.
"No, how bad is it?"
He looks away and sets his knife in the cupholder next to Amiah's gun. Sighing, he runs his hand through his hair and gives a half-hearted shrug. "It's shattered, but it... it doesn't hurt much," he admits at last.
My fingers find the edge of the burn scar of their own accord. The action is becoming familiar, habitual almost.
"Were you serious when you told Dieter to kill you?"
YOU ARE READING
Ash and Cinder
Science FictionIn the year 2181, Russia began human experiments. Kidnapped or sold off by their own families, the kids of the Compound know only one thing: They belong to the Whitecoats. Hendrix 'Trick' Sanchez and his little sister, Elle, have been in captivity...
