As the sunlight seeping through Noah's windows waned, Emma and I cleaned the apartment.
I struggled to believe that Noah had caused all of this after I'd left. Pillows askew on the couch. Books flipped open to random pages on the floor. Even a food stain, something dark brown and sticky, covered a couple of feet on the kitchen floor.
Emma had taken the fall and cleaned that one up.
Noah's place hadn't been the cleanest before my arrival, but this was definitely something noticeable. As we cleaned, Emma explained that she'd witnessed one of his spirals before. Where he disappeared, leaving behind him a messy house in his wake. It was never too bad. Nothing was ever broken. But he wouldn't come back for days.
Perhaps that would be for the best.
I vacuumed a large pile of crumbs from the floor, and once again became brutally aware of my body. The way my hand gripped the vacuum handle. How nimbly I moved backward and forward on the carpeted floor. I was taller and desperately malnourished. They hadn't taken care of this one.
That likely explained why they'd taken my...my...my...
I couldn't think it. I had already nearly gone down another spiral, my thoughts drifting out of control. Panicked about what they were doing to her, no, to me. Who had me? Where was I? Who was I if I was not in myself?
Did I even exist?
My throat began to close and I focused again on vacuuming. Back and forth. Back and forth. Just get all the crumbs and everything would be fine.
And then I could do the stupid and desperate thing that I'd requested Emma help me with.
In comparison to all the other stupid, reckless stuff I'd done this past week, it really wasn't that bad. You know? I had to give myself some credit.
Did that mean it was a totally well-thought out, super-smart, mind-bogglingly effective plan? Heck no.
But it would get the job done. And I needed answers.
In order to comprehend my situation, I'd broken up everything into basic steps. Very digestible steps.
Okay, first step: find out what had happened to Asten and Ava.
Fact number one: Asten and Ava had not been at the trial.
I'd thought of some potential explanations after what Noah had said. He'd explained that they weren't the most "just" with their trials. What if Asten and Ava had intentionally not been brought out for the trial? What if they had been afraid one of them would have spoken up? So, they got two random actors to sit in their place.
Regardless, I'd seen the guards take the two people who were pretending to be Asten and Ava out the back left door of the trial room. I could only assume that the two of them were still in the justice building. Most justice buildings had some sort of holding area, right?
That was the biggest assumption I was making; that the two of them were being kept in that building. If that was false, then the rest of my plan would fall apart and I would need to come up with something else.
But if it were true, the two of them could help me figure out where Asten and Ava were.
Of course, I hadn't told Emma all of this. I'd simplified it down to, "I want to go back to the justice building because I saw something weird there."
Completely perplexed, she'd initially not given it a thought. She'd shut me down immediately, gotten annoyed with me for asking her to do something so odd.
But Emma was also surprisingly easy to bribe.
"Sooo, what if I bought you dinner? Or something?" I had offered.
"With what money?" she'd quickly retorted.
"I have some money," I'd replied. By that I meant that I'd stolen some of Noah's money from his drawer. I felt a bit guilty, but he had treated me so horribly when he'd left. I considered it re-payment.
Emma didn't bother questioning me further. She had just agreed that she was down for a spontaneous adventure and didn't really mind helping. As long as she was actually getting free food out of it.
We finished cleaning the apartment an hour after the sun had set. With some bills tucked into my pocket and wearing Noah's stolen gray cloak, Emma and I left his apartment and headed toward the center of the city.
"So, if you don't mind me asking," Emma started, as she strolled alongside me down the dark sidewalks of the city, "what happened to you?"
Immediately, flashes of the basement, of running out the door, of waking up on that table, came to mind. I shoved them down, like driftwood dunked beneath the surface of a river. "I signed a contract."
Emma side-eyed me. "Mhm. But what kind of contract?"
"They took my body and gave me this one," I stated. It was clear from just looking at me what had happened.
Emma went silent for a moment, sensing my discomfort. The streets were quiet tonight with very few stragglers wandering about. Occasionally, we'd pass a figure in an alleyway, and would hurry to avoid trouble.
"I don't know if it would make you feel better, but the first time is always the worst," Emma commented, voice nearly as soft as the sounds of the crickets that surrounded us.
"Really?" I replied. I slowed my pace. I couldn't imagine this getting any better the more I did it. Everything felt so ridiculously wrong. Like my limbs were in the wrong places. Like I'd lost some piece of myself and I would never get it back.
I wanted to be me again.
Emma nodded, her hood sliding back from her partially hidden face. "I didn't want to change either."
Her black hair escaped her hood as a light gust of wind blew past us. The chill sent goosebumps down my arms, making it's way to the middle of my back.
"What happened?" I asked her.
She halfheartedly shrugged, a jerky, unnatural movement. "I came here with my parents and got the chip as soon as I entered. Just like everyone else. The scientists told me that I could change bodies."
She paused, and even stopped walking for a second. "Well, actually they encouraged me to change bodies," she confessed.
She then resumed walking as if she hadn't just revealed something heartwrenching.
I didn't ask why. I could tell there was a pain there that was too sensitive. That she had already revealed too much for her liking.
A shudder ran through me at the thought of Emma, isolated and alone, on an operating table, being forced into something she didn't want.
Nobody deserved that.
It took us five minutes of walking in silence before we crested a hill and I saw our final destination. The place that would either hold the answers to get me out of this rut I'd fallen...or the place where I would get captured once again.
And whatever the outcome, I was ready. Because I was done waiting.
It was time to take action.
Author's Note:
Good evening and happy pride!
Here I am again, back with some more shenanigans on this book. Am I going to keep updating? Yes, indeed. I'm aiming for biweekly, will try to set a more ~certain~ schedule when a few things in my life wane down a bit.
It's great to be back and writing again. I read through most of this book the past few days and it's really made me realize how much of a passion I have for sci-fi and dystopia.
It has been a while since I've written sci fi. This is not a coincidence. I do think COVID unfortunately had a negative impact on my writing in that everything, all of a sudden, felt way too real. It was hard to write fiction when it felt like the dystopias I was writing about existed around me. And unfortunately, even post-COVID, those dystopias haven't necessarily ceased to exist. There are so many issues in today's society, that yes, it is difficult to write sci fi and separate it from all of the world's issues. Or to act like what I'm writing is entirely fiction because a lot of the time, it's not. A lot of the time, the issues characters face are quite similar to horrendous things happening in real life.
I say all this because I want to do better with my writing. I started writing this series in 2016, when I was still a literal child. I am now in my 20's. It is very weird looking back on my old writing, and sometimes a bit cringe for me. So, I'll be simultaneously and slowly editing this book as I add to it. Trying to make it better grammatically, plot development-wise, etc. Also, I am considering making some changes in accordance with what I've mentioned in the previous paragraph. To raise awareness of some issues in our society. To be cognizant of how my writing can contribute/interplay with those issues.
I'm also hoping to do something like occasionally researching some important charities and sharing them after chapters if anyone is looking for somewhere to donate to. So, since it's pride and I am a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, I recommend donating to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) https://www.hrc.org/, as they do a lot of work with getting fair legislation passed.
Thanks for following along for so long <3
Julia