Maddy kept her lips tightly sealed as Carter explained the situation to the others. He had switched seats with Mia and was now sitting next to Logan, who was still driving the car, eyes always focused on the long road ahead of him. That left the three girls squeezed next to each other in the back seats, Maddy trapped in the middle, like a sandwich.
"So the police were outside her house?" asked Logan, processing the information.
"Yeah, and I think some officials from FROST as well," answered Carter.
Maddy just watched the dialogue between the two boys in silence, biting her full lip and tapping her fingers against her thighs.
"What did you hear exactly?"
"They said they will arrest all of us because it's against the law to not get vaccinated or something. Then they'll vaccinate us by force most probably, and then FROST will run some tests on us. Oh, and that guy from today, the one I punched? Yeah, I broke his jaw, so maybe he'll want to press charges. He was sent to the school by FROST."
"Great. Anything else?" asked Logan with irony, as if this wasn't already more than enough.
"They..." started Maddy, and everyone turned to face her, hear her out carefully. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, then said: "They said that the Assistant Director of FROST, Harper Max, I think... They said she wants to speak to my mother about me. So if she wanted to talk to my mum, then we just have to assume she'll meet all of our parents, right?"
"Shit. We're screwed," said Sia, voicing everyone's thoughts in those words of hers.
"So what, the cops are in front of our houses too?" asked Mia.
"I guess so. I wouldn't take any chances. It's too risky to go and see for ourselves," said Carter, who was facing forward. "You guys are lucky I called you before you had gotten to Sia's house."
"That's true. But hey, I wanted to ask you, why the hell did you park my car in the salvage yard, man?"
"I was just there yesterday."
"In the salvage yard? Doing what?" Logan raised a brow at his best friend.
"That's none of your business."
"Well, it is if you had my car."
"Then you shouldn't have given it to me," Carter's lips curved into a gloating half-smile, an unexpectedly friendly one.
Logan scoffed at him, but said nothing.
"Hey... What do you know about FROST?" The question slipped Maddy's mouth before she could make any second thoughts on whether she should ask or not.
"Not much," answered Sia, leaning her head against the front seat where Carter was sitting. "Just that it stands for Federation of Remedial Organisations and Scientific Testing, and that it was set up in London when the virus first broke out. They're the ones who invented the vaccine. They said they'd run some tests on us after we get vaccinated, like Carter said, and conduct some experiments. They have labs all over the world. They basically control the world at this point."
"Why would the police get involved?" wondered Mia out loud.
"I have no idea. And why the fuck would one of the highest-ranking officials of this FROST organisation want to speak to our parents?" added Logan.
Maddy's head was a mess, her mind a maze of entangled thoughts and hovering question marks.
"By the way, you're out of your mind, girl. You really jumped out the window! And smashed the windscreen of a cop car. I mean... I didn't think you'd be such a badass!" exclaimed Sia, elbowing Maddy on the arm.
She laughed nervously at that. "I didn't really understand what I was doing. I was just being reckless."
"Well, the line between 'brave' and 'stupid' is sure thin," commented Mia, looking at her nails with a snobbish expression.
Maddy's smile vanished into thin air at once. The girl clenched her teeth, trying to fight the urge to punch Mia straight in that cute little nose of hers.
"Anyways..." interfered Sia, preventing Maddy from punching a hole in Mia's perfect face. Sia sighed, her smile fading, suddenly gloomy and desperate. "Shit, you guys. What are we gonna do? We just got ourselves into trouble, and maybe for no reason. I mean, most of the students didn't have any side effects, right? Their organism absorbed the vaccine just like any other."
With the eyes of her imagination, Maddy saw Clarke's upper arm, in the flesh. Her hair stood on edge.
"We're not gonna get anywhere with all of this..." continued Sia. "We're just five kids against the police, against FROST, against the whole world at this point. We have no proof that this vaccine is toxic. We're... powerless. Maybe we should just go back and-"
"That girl might've died back then," cut her Mia, her voice colder than ice. "Maybe she's actually dead right now as we speak. What were we supposed to do? Just stand there with our hands tied and risk the same happening to one of us?" She raised her voice, so immersed in her own thoughts, so trapped among them.
The car sank into a moment of quietness.
"What does all of this mean?" asked Logan all of a sudden. "I mean, think about it: they could just vaccinate us tomorrow, like they will vaccinate those students who didn't come to school today. So why make a mountain out of molehill? And what if that girl died back then? What does this vaccine even consist of, like-"
"Are we really sure it's just a vaccine at this point?" Maddy's voice was a low whisper, eyes fixed on her thighs. "I know what I saw. That wasn't just an innocent vaccine that provides protection against the virus. This is something else."
She could feel everybody staring at her, drilling holes into her skin.
"What do you mean?" asked Sia, looking as oblivious and naive as a little girl.
"Well, you know. The police and FROST getting involved from so early on... The nurse getting possessed over vaccinating us... That man using force to keep us there... That girl that might be dead... The other boy who got a seizure... It's not normal. Something just doesn't make sense in all this," noticed Maddy.
"She's right, you guys. There's something else going on. Something deeper," agreed Logan.
Silence fell like a veil inside the huge, expensive car. It was getting darker outside, a breathtaking twilight taking over the high sky in crimson and yellow hues.
Maddy sighed deeply. "So what are we gonna do now?"
No one answered for a while; until Carter turned around from his front seat to face her, and his lips opened to say: "Run." He looked dead serious, and it intimidated her. "For now, we have to run."
"We can't run forever," whispered Maddy, gazing straight into his eyes, a blackness darker than the night itself.
Carter sighed. "I know that. But for now, it's all we can do if we don't want to get arrested."
"How would they even arrest us? We're underage," noticed Sia, hand on her chin in deep thought.
"Soon we won't. A few more months, and after New Year's we won't be minors anymore." Carter scratched the back of his head. " Not in the eyes of the law."
So that was it? She'd just drop out of school on her last year and quit her whole life, abandon her mother and... run? She didn't even know those people she was in the same car with, and, frankly, she didn't want to get to know them either. She just wanted her life back. Her boring, monotonous life. That was by far the worst day of her entire existence. What was she doing there? She didn't belong there, in that car, with those people. Her mum must've been sick with worry, and maybe she was even talking to that Harper Max in that very moment, perhaps in a mundane, cold interrogation room, or hopefully at some elegant café over a warm cup of Earl Grey, her favorite tea. Maddy fought the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes, biting her tongue. Now was not the time.
"We can't be the only ones who didn't get vaccinated, right?" she thought out loud, turning slowly to meet each gaze in the unfamiliar faces she was in the same car with.
"There's others, too. There must be," Logan answered. "But that doesn't really help us in any way, does it?"
They all sighed in sync, as if they were in a choir.
"No, it doesn't," agreed Mia.
"Where are we going?" asked Maddy, trying to appear rational.
"I have no idea," answered Logan. "We have nowhere to go anymore."
His words felt so real, breaking into her head and making the air chilly and cold all of a sudden. A tremor ran through her body. The windows were still open, too, which didn't really help. She shivered at the piercing cold wrapping itself around her exposed legs, her palms hasting to rub her arms. She had left her sweater in her locker at school, and, although it was all but comfortable, she really missed it now that the biting cold seeped under her thin shirt, chilling her bones.
"Are you cold?" asked Sia, looking concerned.
"No, I'm fine," lied Maddy, still rubbing some warmth into her shoulders.
"She's clearly cold. Just give her my sweater, it's at the back," said Carter.
"I said I'm fine," hissed Maddy, pissed at his bossiness.
"Look, you can play it brave and strong all you want, princess, but if you catch a cold your immune system will grow weak, and that means you'll be vulnerable and more prone to the virus. And since we're not vaccinated, if one of us gets infected, we'll all die. So put the bloody sweater on."
As much as she hated him, she couldn't deny the truth behind his words. She turned around curtly and grabbed a black hoodie from the back of the car, her movements filled with resentment. She couldn't really see clearly in the dark, but it looked dirty and stained. She ignored it.
She holed up under the rough cotton fabric, pushing her hands through the sleeves and pulling the sweater lower on her thighs. It was huge. She had to pull the sleeves up, and its length reached right above her bruised knees, covering her mini skirt entirely. She inhaled his scent. A bit of sweat, mixed with a manly, faded cologne, and... something else that she couldn't really define; all she knew was it smelled familiar. She felt dizzy, intoxicated by the smell.
He smells nice, commented her subconscious, and she wanted to slap it with all her might.
God, Maddy, stop.
"Why is your sweater in my car, dude?" asked Logan, smirking.
"Oh, you know... it was a long night last night." Carter returned the smirk.
Maddy felt nauseous, wishing she could tear that hoodie off of her body right there and then. She felt like screaming.
Yeah, that's what it smelled like that you couldn't define: sex. Her subconscious laughed at her, mocking as ever.
She really wanted to slap it.
No. It smelled familiar, she just told herself, and could feel a hot red creeping up her neck, but she just looked outside the window, embarrassed at her own thoughts.
Familiar? Don't be stupid, Maddy.
"You guys are idiots," scolded them Sia. "Logan, don't you have anything to eat in the car? No snacks?"
"Snacks? Holy shit, Sia, you're a genius! There's some Jaffa cakes and Hobnobs and crisps in the glovebox!" Logan was shouting like a little kid, radiating with happiness at the prospect of food.
Carter reached out for the silver dashboard over his footwell and opened the latch on the glovebox. He took out a packet of Jaffa cakes, some slightly crushed Hobnobs, a pack of Walker's crisps-also mostly crushed-and a mushy Lion bar.
Maddy's stomach rumbled, her mouth watered.
"Time to eat, everybody!" cheered Logan.
[A/N]
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