The smell of hot and dry air fills my nostrils when the door closes. The dimly lit room is vast, bigger than four to five of my residences. Control tables line the walls, each with numerous glowing cerulean blue buttons and levers that decorate the walls like stars. There are bright screens over the control tables, and they show camera footage from the hallways outside the Control Room. Other screens have numeric data, graphs, and even blueprints on them, and my stomach drops because I suck at math, and I'm worried there will be some reason to use it.
I notice the biggest screen is showing live footage from the Hub. It's empty. Not even the guard I shot is outside the Control Room door, and I see the puddle of blood he seemed to have left behind. I make a mental note to use these cameras to my advantage. If Dally and I can see the guards coming before they arrive, that could save us precious time to get away.
On the other side of the Control Room is floor to ceiling mainframe computers that are blowing desert-like air into the space around us. I can already feel my back starting to drip under my jacket. The mainframe computers have many ports and disk entries, making them look more like a robot than a computer. They're the type of computer that stores anything from passwords to how to pump air through vent 1274.
Stores camera footage of a certain Air Purification hallway that houses the entrance to the bathroom...
These are the same computers that held the footage of the murderer.
Perhaps there's some way to figure out who deleted it.
Before I can step in the computer's direction, Dally blocks me by pawing at the bullet hole in my jacket. His dark eyes stare at it, a look of astonishment. His finger probes the spot, and I can feel the warm sensation of his skin on mine. "How?" He says.
"The reanimation serum allows me to heal myself." I blink at him.
"Did you know that before..." Dally's eyes drop. "Before they shot you?"
"Yeah," I nod. "I had no idea if I could heal from a gunshot, though." I look down at the floor and feel a tingle run through my body. It's just hitting me now that I could have died. All I knew was that minor cuts and scrapes could heal. But a whole bullet hole? I hadn't had the slightest clue. Honestly, I wasn't thinking. I just wanted to get in here so badly that I was willing to risk anything, even my life.
Maybe it's the fact that I have no future here in the compound that pushed me to risk everything. If those guards catch me, I'll be sent straight to the experiment table and will continually be poked and prodded at with tubes and needles. Even worse, they could actually kill me. They could decapitate me or remove my heart. They would do whatever it took to kill me. I would be known as the Traitor of the Year 2126.
Dally pats me on the shoulder, causing me to come out of my haze. "You had me shittin' bricks, man. You could have given me a heads-up before pulling that stunt."
I huff out a breath. "I guess I could have." He's right. I should have told him. I should have told him the second I saw him that I could fucking heal myself.
Dally's eyes flick down to the floor. Without looking up, he reaches out and pulls me into a hug. He squeezes hard. I can feel the fear he had for me in his hug. He holds me like he thought he'd lost me. It feels weird to hug him. I don't think we've ever hugged before. We've wrestled but never shown this kind of vulnerability. I squeeze him back, letting him know that everything's alright.
I'm the one ot pull back from the hug first. I look him in the eye and see a hint of wetness on his water line. He clears his throat while shifting the weight between his feet. "Don't worry about it." He says. "I just wish you told me. Getting shot could have been avoided."
"Yeah, probably." I sigh. "I just feel like everyone's out to get me."
Dally places his hands on my shoulder. "Why do you feel like that, man? I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that."
"I know." I push his arms off my shoulders involuntarily. "Paige—she just hurt me." I step toward one of the screens on the wall.
"So you cut off her father's hand?" He questions.
Frustrated, I slap the computer with the palm of my hand. "No, you don't understand."
I see Dally step toward me. "I would have done the same thing."
A shy smile creeps on my face. I try and hide it by saying: "Before we open the gates, I want to see if I can find out who deleted the footage of the murderer."
"Will we have time for that? It's only time before the guards show up with reinforcements." Dally says.
"I'll make time." I turn on my heel and approach one of the mainframe computers. As soon as I'm next to it, the hologram of a computer home screen appears in front of me. It's full of different files and data, like what was on the computer in room 32. I hover my finger over a file named: Security Camera Footage and push my finger into it. The program opens, and hundreds of files pop up on the hologram. The files range from Hub Camera 1 to Hallway Camera 87.
I feel my heart sink. "How will we find the right camera? There are hundreds."
I sense Dally walking up behind me. "Is there some way to look at the files that have been recently deleted?"
"Let me check." I scan the hologram, focusing on a file at the top that's named Deleted. I push my finger through it, and only one entry pops up.
It was dated three days ago. The day of the murder. "Huh," I say, my hand rubbing at my chin. "That doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't?" Dally asks.
"The footage was deleted only moments after the murder. How did the murderer enter the Control Room while the whole compound watched the doors? We were standing right there, and the only person to enter the control room was—"
"Paige," Dally says under his breath. "She couldn't have been the one who deleted the footage, could she?"
"She freaked out when Mr. Smith accused me of the murder, so she couldn't be the one who deleted it. Her reaction wouldn't have made sense. Maybe one of the guards that pulled her into the Control Room deleted it."
"Could be," Dally's hand rubs at his chin, and I can hear his fingernails scratching against his facial hair. "Or Paige's reaction was on purpose. She could have done that to make you believe she was on your side."
I feel my hands go clammy. What if Paige was the one to delete the footage? How can one girl do so much damage to me? She's already lied about Mr. Smith and my mother's relationship and her father forcing her to befriend me; could she be lying about this too? Her track record proves that she is, and honestly, I'm starting to believe she's just a big fake.
I kissed a fake. I almost had sex with someone who's been deceiving me for years.
I feel the bile rise in my throat.
"Anyway," Dally clears his throat again. "We are opening the gates, or what?"
"Oh yeah," I snap out of my daze. My eyes look around the room, scanning all the screens. The biggest one to my right shows pictures of five metal doors, each with SUSTAINED written in big, bold letters. I walk up to it, feeling itching in my throat. Are these the gate doors? Is this what I've been looking for this whole time? My eyes travel down to the control board in front of the screen. The table has five red buttons encased by plastic covers that are locked into place. An ID fingerprint scanner is in the middle of the control table and between the red buttons. It flashes green, casting a faint glow onto the plastic coverings of the buttons.
"Dally, I think I found it," I say, my finger grazing over the plastic cover of one of the buttons.
"What do we do?" I feel Dally's breath against my cheek as he looks over my shoulder.
"I think these buttons are for the gates. Like this one," I point to the first button, which has the number 1 printed in solid black lettering. "Is probably for gate number 1."
Dally pulls on number 5's plastic covering, but it doesn't budge. "How do we open them?"
The green thumbprint scanner glows again, and instantly, I know what I must do. "I need the hand."
Dally reaches into his jean's front pocket. With a sallow look, he pulls out Mr. Smith's hand, its fingers locked in place by tense muscles, and passes it over to me. Its skin is cold, but not a regular cold like ice or winter's frosty air. But a cold you can feel is caused by death. It's a heavy cold, like how concrete feels on your back on a stormy day. The skin doesn't feel like skin anymore. It feels like silicone, like a mannequin's hand. The sharp nub of bone sticking out of the wrist makes my mind flash back to the crack it made when the knife sliced through it.
With shaky hands, I hold Mr. Smith's index finger between mine and my thumb. I can feel the bone through the flesh, which causes a shiver down my spine. I press the finger's pad against the scanner, and the green light flashes, making my eyes squint. The scanner beeps, and all five plastic button covers open in unison.
"Here we go," I glace at Dally. He gives me a quick nod as if permitting me to continue. I press the first button, and the gate on the screen lights up. I do the same with the other buttons until all five gates blink red. Then, a lever pops up from the table, making me jump back. The small screen on the lever flashes yellow, and the word PULL fills the screen.
Without hesitation, I grip the lever and pull it.
The female voice that bellows through the speakers in the ceiling makes me leap out of my skin.
"GATES 1 THROUGH 5 HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED." The lights on the walls begin to strobe red, and my heart hurdles into my throat. "WARNING." The voice says. "GATES WILL OPEN MOMENTARILY."
Before I can move, the screen in front of me flickers red. The gates have black Xs slashed across them. The voice speaks again. "WARNING. MOXIE WILL POWER DOWN."
"What's that?" I hear Dally yell over the alarm.
"It's what helps us breathe down here!" I can barely hear my voice, and the beeping is so loud that it makes my eardrums throb.
The voice speaks again; this time, I feel it rumble through my chest. "WARNING. THE ATMOSPHERE IS AT A DEADLY TOXICITY LEVEL. GATES WILL NOT OPEN."
"What?" I say, but I doubt Dally hears me. I look at the screen, and a countdown appears. "MOXIE WILL POWER DOWN IN 30 SECONDS." The voice says.
I feel the blood drain from my face. Power down? Why is it still powering down if the gates won't open? I frantically search the control table for a button, a lever, or anything that can turn the MOXIE back on. I run across the room, my heart feeling like it's about to beat out of my chest, and I look at the other screens for something.
"MOXIE. . ." I say under my breath as I search. My eyes focus on the screen showing the live footage of the Hub. I swallow hard when I see people, not just a few, but dozens. Everyone's come out of their residences. I can see the flashing red lights in the Hub through the camera, and I bet they can hear the blaring alarm too.
But just as my ears get used to the alarm, it stops. My eyes snap to the other screen across the room.
3
2
1
The female voice speaks again. "MOXIE HAS POWERED DOWN."
I look at Dally, and I can see the fear in his eyes as he speaks. "How much time until we all suffocate?"