Ezra
I've heard lots of screaming before- the panicked sound of a mother whose children are being taken away, the desperate cry of a man watching his lover with a gun pressed into her temple, the mournful weeping of a father finding out his daughter isn't coming home. Every scream is different, a work of art painted by a million individual fingers and unimaginable colors.
The sound that surrounds me in this moment can never blend perfectly with the unique shades of the painting. It is another color thrown in the mix, haunting reds and deafening blacks.
This scream is pain. Immeasurable pain.
The cold of a table seeps through my uniform, and I tug my wrists upward before I try to open my eyes.
"Oh, stop making such a fuss," a calm, cold voice says to my left, and the scream is muffled. "You're going to wake up Ezra. Let the poor thing rest. I'm trying to get the bullet out of your leg."
I let my wrists fall back on the table. Like lifting them up did me any good; the metal restraints stopped them from going too far. When my skin hits the table once again, it touches something hot and thick. Honey?
My heart races. Nope, not honey. It's blood. My blood?
I listen to a clock ticking somewhere in the room, masked almost by the muffled, helpless cries of whoever is being tortured next to me. A soft hum fills the rest of the empty space, joined by a suctioning sound. It reminds me of someone drinking out of a straw when the cup is empty.
"How much longer until his anesthesia wears off, doctor?" the same female voice from before asks, and the sound of heels clicking joins the motley assortment of noise.
"Any time now, Miss President," a male voice answers.
The sharp memory of where I was before rushes back in the form of a weight crushing into my chest. The president shot me. Square in the chest. Sarah lays beside me, screaming with colors of shadows.
I open my eyes, then. I made Sarah a promise. Playing dead isn't how I keep us alive until fifty.
"Speak of the devil," Murano says, and her shape appears beside me. I blink a few times in an attempt to clear the blurriness, but it's useless. Without my glasses, I can't see anything.
Murano stretches a hand out towards me and lets it come to rest on my forehead. I jerk my head away, but the quick movement sends a wave of nausea and blinding pain through me.
"How are you feeling?" she asks, and to my surprise, concern fills her voice. "You're lucky that I'm a terrible shot, Ezra. Two more inches to the right, and we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"Am I supposed to say thank you?" I growl. The words eat their way up my throat, sending new pain crashing through my lungs.
"That's exactly what I expect," she says. "So hurry up, and say it."
I scrunch my nose up at her and squint. It doesn't clear my vision, but it's the angriest face I can make when every inch of me is on fire.
"You can go to-"
Sarah's scream cuts me off, but the message gets across. Murano grips my chin with her ice shards of fingers and squeezes.
"Funny, because that's exactly where I plan to send you," she hisses. Her nails dig into my skin, threatening to crush my jaw.
The suctioning stops, and another blurry shape joins Murano. This one is also white but looms over her small figure. He holds something out towards me, and I tense up as my glasses slide over my face.
"Are you done with his partner, doctor?" Murano asks him as she lets go of my chin and struts across the room. I turn my head to see Sarah strapped down to a table beside me. Her skin is the color of snow, a shade it has never been before. Sweat plasters her butterscotch hair to her forehead, and her hands clench into fists at her side.
"Yes, ma'am," the doctor says, sitting back down on his stool beside Sarah's table. "I removed the bullet like you asked. The healing medication has been applied, and I just finished sewing the incision up. Are you sure you don't want me to give her any pain medication? Normally, I would give a patient a strong narcotic to ease the pain after the procedure."
Murano shakes her head.
"I want her to be alert for what I'm about to do," she says, smirking down at Sarah who has stopped screaming and resorted to soft whimpers.
"Of course, ma'am."
The president paces around Sarah's table. We both follow her with our eyes, and I catch myself holding my breath.
"Why are you still here?" Murano snaps at the doctor. When he stutters an answer, she just says, "Get out before you piss me off."
He trips over his own feet to get out of the room quickly.
Murano turns towards the computers at the end of the long room and slides open a drawer. Out of it, she pulls a wand-like tool. I recognize it from the orphanage raids. A scanner for trackers.
Without further explanation, she walks behind Sarah and grips her chip to jerk her face away from me. The president waves the wand over my friend's neck, tsk-ing as the machine doesn't make a sound.
She says nothing else as the process is repeated on me.
"No trackers, huh?" she asks as she puts the wand away. She draws a sleek, black gun out of the same drawer, returning to Sarah's head. Sarah watches in horror as the woman presses the gun into her temple. "I should have scanned you before the procedures. If you don't have trackers, then I have to assume you're over eighteen. I wouldn't have wasted my time fixing you if I had known I could legally kill you."
Sarah clenches her eyes closed.
I promised.
Death isn't an option. If she sends us to The Island, we have hope of rescue. There's no way of escaping a bullet. We've survived a life we weren't supposed to already. What's a few more obstacles inside the dome?
"Stop!" I cry, jerking at my restraints. "We're under eighteen. I promise."
Murano looks over at me.
"Why should I believe you?"
"Look me up in the database," I blurt. "Ezra Jackson. I'm sixteen years old. Her name is Sarah Jackson; she's my older sister."
The woman lowers the gun and moves towards the computer again. It powers up at her touch, and the sound of clicking fills the silence. Sarah's eyes meet mine as I look back at her. Tears brim her eyelashes.
I promised.
I've never used the alter-egos before, but I programmed them into the system hours after Jordyn was captured. If she could be taken, there was no hope for someone like me, and being eighteen, I had to do something to avoid the stage. I look sixteen as it is, and Sarah resembles me strongly enough to be mistaken for my sister. Riku is in the database, too, under another fake last name.
"Well, isn't that funny," Murano says, stunned. "There you are."
I glance down at her and see the two pictures I uploaded of Sarah and I.
"I wouldn't have actually shot you, of course," she says, not turning to face us. "I need you too much for that. It's nice to know who I'm dealing with, though. Two orphans, the children of two technologists. Interesting."
I glance over at Sarah, wondering if she minds that I used my parents' real identities in the files. For authenticities sake, I had to lie as little as possible. Everything in there is true except our ages, names, and Sarah's parents. I look back down at the president, noticing she has changed the screen on the computer. I can't read the fine print from this distance, and the black screen hides the red lettering atop it.
"Now, here's the fun part," Murano says as she opens another drawer and pulls out a spool of wires. "Memory Alteration Technology gets me excited."
There's nothing either of us can do except watch as she unrolls the wire, walks towards us, and sticks the ends to our forehead. I shiver as she pushes my messy hair back and attaches two different plastic circles to the front of my head. She sticks two more onto the base of my neck and then takes a step back.
"Here's now this will go, Jackson siblings," she says, taking a seat at the computer again. Her nails click against the keys as she types rapidly. "I'm going to slip into your head and erase all memories that I don't want you to keep. Your case is going to be a little different.
"You see, I want you to recognize Jordyn. I want her to know where she came from after, who abandoned her after she was captured, and who she is dying because of. Her and that little friend of hers deserve to suffer mentally when they remember the deaths they caused.
"So, you're both going to keep your memories of who you are- names, backgrounds, personalities. Instead, I'm going to erase your hope. I'm deleting this insane idea that there's an escape from my perfect design. Instead, you'll believe that Thomas isn't coming for you, that he's abandoned you like he did them.
"The Island will kill you within a week, and Thomas' inner forces will all be gone. Hard to continue fighting when you've lost the things that mean the most to you. I'm surprised he's made it this far after all I've done to him."
She falls silent, and I wonder just what else she's taken from our leader. Four out of five children out of his inner circle. His home. Is that what happened to Jordyn's mom?
"Why are you doing this?" Sarah whispers, her voice trembling at the effort.
"Doing what, sweetie? Haunting Thomas?"
"Well, yes, but I meant targeting children. Why us?"
Murano leans back in her chair.
"You aren't going to remember this conversation in an hour, so why not," she says with a shrug. "After the war, there arose a force out of the Plains, a rebellion. I was very young at the time, the youngest person to ever run for presidency. By all pre-war law, I was too young. The leader of this 'rebellion' was also young, barely twenty.
"His entire force was made up of scruffy teenagers with wild ideas about how the world should work. He ran for presidency, too, and when I won, Thomas was upset. He targeted my family first- my parents, siblings, grandparents. All found dead in their homes. Then, he went after my friends. Within five years, I was absolutely alone. Yet, I wouldn't resign.
"I swore then that I would get rid of this rebellion as revenge for Thomas' bloodshed. For my family's sake. I destroyed the Plains first, hoping to smoke them out of hiding. Then, I introduced the Execution Laws. Every few years, I lowered the age, weeding out more and more of Thomas' rebels and cleaning out the United States while I was at it."
"Why teenagers, though?" I ask.
"Because it's easy to grow foolish ideas in the malleable minds of young people. The idea that there's a better world out there than this? It's insane. The world is a mess, Ezra. I'm trying to clean us up. I'm trying to protect us from the fate we're destined for. I can't do that if I have a bunch of children ruining everything! Burn the ideas while they're young, and they will grow into perfect adults that will help me accomplish my goals."
"And the prisons?"
Murano laughs and pushes a button on her keyboard. A red timer starts counting down from sixty seconds.
"Fear is a powerful thing, Ezra," she says. "Someone has to be the example. If I can't lower the age more, then I have to control the youth another way. My reform facilities can only hold so many at a time. So, I built the prisons to build terror, to ruin the dreams of children on the streets, and to let you all know what happens when you don't do as I ask."
She stands up and walks over to us. The clock says thirty seconds.
"You can't escape the future, Ezra. Yet, how it all plays out is up to you and I. It's either my future or yours, and what do you know of the dangers we face? Nothing. All you know are the realities you face in every moment. I can see the bigger picture. My future is better, and we will get there."
The clock reaches zero, and the world around me goes black as lightning fills my body.