Chapter 14:
I couldn't wait to show Nea what I'd found. This might be our big break, the thing that got us out of here. Above me, on the wall, was something more precious than gold: a hand hold. If I could reach the piece of metal that served to hold up the massive light, then I would be able to pull myself up on top of it. A long time ago, Nea and I had realized that we were never going to escape the Compound during the day, and to get outside at night we were going to have to hide. Since then, we'd done nothing but search for hiding places. Until now, we'd found nothing even close to good enough.
Searching the courtyard with my eyes, I saw her. The brunette girl stood near the sparring mat with two dark skinned boys. Nea had been making a lot of new friends and it scared me. She was the only person I had in this hostile, new place, not that I'd be here for much longer. Despite what I told the brain doctors, I did still believe that my mother would come to save me, no matter what they said. She'd told me that bad people told lies. So, I knew that they were lying when they told me she'd stopped looking.
In here, Nea was the only friend I had. Well, not counting Denis, the strange six year old I'd talked to a few times. Something told me that I wasn't going to see him again. He'd just been shipped off to psy-ops. I shivered at the thought.
“Nea,” I whispered, as I approached her. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
She turned to face me, annoyance in her eyes. “Can it wait? Me and Rion were about to get our turn on the mat.”
Her words stung. Couldn't she see how important this was?
“You actually want to practice during break? What's the point of sparring now when they're just going to force us to do it in training?”
“Hmm... I don't know.” The boy known as Rion sneered down at me. “Maybe because we want to do well at something.”
Nea looked at me out of the corner of her ice blue eye. “Just get out of here Jaylee.”
Suddenly, I was infuriated. Was she just acting like this to impress the older kids?
“You wouldn't tell me to get out of here if you knew what I had to say.” Nea was looking down in embarrassment, but I just kept talking. “I think I found a way for us to escape!”
As soon as I'd said it, I slapped a hand over my mouth. It had come out much to loud. What if someone had heard me? The second boy let out a stifled laugh and Rion raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” he said, “not interested. Now why don't you run along and play hide and seek with yourself, like you were.”
It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what he was talking about. But when I did the reaction was immediate. How dare Nea tell them our plan? She couldn't have known if they were trustworthy, and obviously they weren't. Even so, I felt a hot blush creeping into my cheeks.
“Nea?” My question came out as more of a squeak.
She shrugged, embarrassed. “Sorry Jaylee, but you really have to grow up.”
Behind my eyes, I felt the burn of tears, making their way to the surface. Suddenly, I felt anger different than any anger I'd felt before. I'd trusted Nea! I'd trusted her! With a growl, I lunged forwards, my hands reaching for her throat. She flinched back and held up her arm in defense. I tried to reach past it, still going for her neck. Rion grabbed my arm, ripping me away from her. Then, with a shove, I was on the ground.
Their laughter burned my ears, as I dug my nails into the hard packed dirt. The hot sun beat down on my back and I felt nothing but frustration. Was it really worth it? Escaping this place? What was waiting for me out there? A mother that didn't care, a life of normality? I was kidding myself when I thought I could get out. Others must have tried. I'd just be killed. Rion was right, if I didn't want to be deemed useless and murdered, I was going to have to be better than everyone else. But what about everyone else? I didn't want to think about it.
“You okay?” The voice took me by surprise and my head shot up.
A blond boy stood over me, his golden curls sticking out in all directions. He looked to be about my age. Accepting his hand, I allowed him to pull me to my feet. Still slightly disoriented, I stared at him strangely.
“I'm Ian, nice to meet you.”
He beamed at me and his happiness seemed slightly misplaced.
“Jaylee,” I said, attempting to smile back at him.
“I'm sorry about your friend,” he said, looking over his shoulder towards Nea.
His words brought back the feelings of betrayal and uncertainty, and I bit down on my lip to prevent the tears.
“Yeah... me too.”
Ian placed a hand on my shoulder. “No, I really am. I've seen it happen before. This place brainwashes you. It turns fighters into that.” He gestured angrily towards the group on the sparring mats.
I looked up at the boy, really seeing him for the first time. His chin was bruised and his lip puffed off to the side, but his green eyes still gleamed with intensity.
“I know what you mean. It's like they're turning into robots.”
This time I was not surprised when the floor collapsed out from under me. With the last words I'd uttered, I'd felt an amazing sense of closure. It had just seemed like the natural place for the flashback to end. Although, I longed to return to the sun filled courtyard in which Ian had saved me from myself. I remembered, without having a flashback, that Ian and I had been special in some way. In here, my memories were so close, it frustrated me that they were just out of reach.
I was about to attempt to find another earlier memory, when I realized I wasn't stationary. I was moving, being pulled by something through the blackness of my mind. Suddenly, I saw what I was heading for. It was like my mind had sensed what I really wanted to know. Ahead of me was a picture of Ian, beginning to descend down the stairs. I knew the context of the photo right away. We were heading to the site of an unexplained bombing, to see if we could find our friends.
“You coming?” Ian snapped me out of my daydream.
“Yeah... sorry. I don't know why I stopped.”
“That's fine, but first thing's first. How the hell are we going to get there? There's no way we have time for the subway.”
“Simple.” I ran a few steps forwards, so I was standing beside him. “We're going to jack a car.”
“Sounds simple enough.”
Ian vaulted over the banister and landed on the ground. A few stairs down, I followed him.
“Do you have anything in mind?” He raised an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged. “No GPS. Preferably tinted windows.”
“You make it sound like we're going to have time to look.”
I didn't answer him, instead moving forwards, my eyes scanning the building's parking lot. He was right, there were slim pickings. The best I could find was a car, so old that GPS wasn't an option, with windows so dirty the looked like they'd work as a tint. I tried the handle, just to check for a car alarm, and I was about to call over Ian, when he yelled my name.
“Jaylee! Come look at this.”
Hoping that his yell related to a car, better than the one I'd found, I hurried over. He stood with his arm propped comically against a dark green Jeep. I gave him a look, but secretly I liked it.
“GPS?”
“Nope. No tinted windows either, but they've got something in them to help block sun. It's a bit better than nothing.”
He was right. It was a lot better than what I'd found.
“Good enough. I'll get started on it.”
I'd just begun to examine the lock when I realized I was missing something.
“Looking for this?” Ian held out a thin, metal tool.
Taking them from him, I smiled in thanks. I hadn't even noticed him grab them. Popping the lock was automatic, I'd always been better at the technical stuff than Ian. Hot wiring the car was going to be a bit more difficult, but I knew I could manage.
“Need any help?” Ian peered down at me from the drivers seat.
I mutely shook my head. Focusing in on the tangle of wires, it was like I was back in the Compound. A few snips here, a few snips there. I hadn't gotten rusty at all. The car rumbled to life beneath me and Ian let out a whoop. Pushing me out of the way with his foot, he pressed down on the gas pedal.
“Have you ever heard of waiting?” I asked, as I pulled myself up onto the passenger seat.
“Nope, not when there's a chance that Kyle and Dale could be out there.”
“No arguments here.”
Now, away from Audrey, I did have the chance to vent my feelings about Emme. Ian was probably thinking the same way. However, I refrained. I'd only briefly met the girl. Who was I to be making judgments? If Audrey cared about her, so did I. I just found it unsettling how she'd slept in my bed each night. I knew that we were nothing alike, yet I felt a slight tinge of jealousy. For what, I had no idea.
Ian swerved in and out of traffic, causing me to wince. We were just lucky it wasn't rush hour. The last thing we needed was to catch police attention. I wondered what they'd make of two fifteen-year-olds racing through the city in a stolen vehicle.
In my lap, the phone vibrated.
“What is it?” Ian cast a quick look in my direction, but turned back to the road just in time to run a red light.
Squinting at the tiny screen, I read the message aloud. “Audrey's just checked in. Shay's not down at the corner store.”
“From Julian?”
I nodded. “He must have gotten the first computer shift.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, except for the honking of the horns that surrounded us. I was excited, and not just by the possibility of seeing my friends. For the first time, we would be on the outside looking in. We'd get to see what the rest of the world saw, when they looked at the living hell I'd grown up in.
The choking tower of smoke came into view before anything else. It billowed upwards, hinting towards the size of the explosion. If this was really Shay, he'd gone above and beyond. The good thing about robots was, they didn't think of the consequences. I felt slightly guilty for still thinking of Shay as a robot, but it was hard to change my brain's built in reaction to the boy. Although, now that I'd gotten to know him, I'd realized that he wasn't all that bad.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Ian grunted, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “We might not want to go all the way to the building.” I felt my hopes fall. “Try to think like you were the one escaping. Where would you go? What would you do?”
“That shouldn't be so hard,” I said, turning my head to peer out the passenger window.
What had I done with my freedom? When Denis returned my memories, the first thing I did was look for the things I knew were there, like Sophia. I'd went back to the only place I'd known before the Compound.
“Shay will probably try to head back to us, but first he'll probably hide and try to wait out the commotio-n...” I trailed off, as my eyes locked onto their new target.
Nea.
“Get down!” I hissed, pushing Ian's head with the back of my hand.
He hunched his shoulders, and I ducked down completely. Of course, he still needed to see the road. If Nea was here, that meant guards were as well. They might be looking for the escapies, but our faces weren't exactly unknown among the Compound officials.
“What is it?” Ian asked, moving his head up a little so he could pull into the slow lane of traffic turning off to the left.
“Robot. If she's here, I'm guessing she's not escaping.”
“You think they let her out to help look for the others?”
“She's old enough now, she's probably part of the guard team.”
I slid to the floor. Using my new angle, I was able to see out the window.
“On the other side,” Ian whispered. “It's Darren.”
Darren was another robot boy. This was bad, they were closing in. On the roof of one of the building's, I saw a crouched, black figure. We were surrounded, the only chance we had now was not to be noticed.
“Drive naturally,” I hissed up at Ian. “You stop hunching, and I'll stay on the floor. We can't call attention to ourselves.”
Ian did as I said, continuing to inch along in the agonizingly slow line of traffic.
“If they're all here, that means we can't be far off,” Ian said, trying to be optimistic.
I nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on Nea. Her ice blue eyes scanned the sidewalk, not the cars. They didn't expect anybody to have stolen a vehicle, yet. The man on the roof had moved, he was heading to the other side of the building. Breathing a mental sight of relief, I began to inch my way around the side of the seat.
“I'm going to the back, just keep driving.”
“Mhm.” Ian nodded.
Pulling myself up onto the back seat, I peered out the window. Ian, ever so slowly, turned through the intersection and onto an equally crowded side street. That's when I saw it. A flash of red, disappearing down an alley.
“Stay right here!”
Before Ian had a chance to respond, I threw open the door, racing to where I'd seen it disappear. It was Shay, it had to be. Darting in between the buildings, I kept my hand on my weapon, just in case. Suddenly, someone grabbed my throat and I was thrown to the ground.
I kicked out, hitting my attacker in the groin. He doubled over, curling into a ball.
“Nice to see you too Shay,” I grunted, rubbing my neck.