"Wake up. Wake up." The voice is distorted. "Get up, now." They are shaking me.
"What?" I sit up and rub my eyes.
"It's time to get up." It's 905. "I've been assigned as your personal guard."
"Oh? I didn't know that I would have a personal guard."
"Prisoners usually don't. The only reason you do is because we are familiar with you."
"What do you mean?" I stand up and hold out my wrists. "Your going to have to put cuffs on me aren't you?"
"I meant the people who work here know you very well, and no, I'm not gonna put the cuffs on you."
"What? Why?"
"Why can't you just be grateful. I could put them on if you want me to." He turns around to grab them.
"No. I was just wondering why you don't think I'll run or-or attack you." I shift my weight from one foot to another. "Why do you trust me?"
"Because you are just like I was when I got taken here."
"Where is here? I just can't shake the feeling that this has to do with Brad or Vic or Rose in some way or another." I start to walk out the door but 905 stands in front of me without letting me through.
"Look, I can't tell you yes or no. If I could I would've the first time you asked, but 1 would kill me worst than 1002 would if you got away." He looks at the ground. "It's time for your training."
"Training?" I shake my head. "I will never work for this place."
"Then let me take you to 1. He's the only one who can change that." He starts to walk down the hall. Before I realize he's gone he is halfway down.
I start to run. "Wait!" Another girl walks around the corner and I run into her.
"What the hell?" She draws back her arm and her fist connects with my face. I reach up and touch my jaw. Then before I know what's happening she's on the ground knocked out and 905 is standing in front of me staring in awe.
"What did you do? She was the strongest girl that lived here and you, you just got here and you are half her size." 905 grabs my wrist. "No one else saw this?" I violently shake my head. "Ok. Let's go. Now! If you " He drags me down two halls and we finally stop in front of a room that had a white, bold 1 on the front of the door. "This is 1's room. You need to talk to him to get out of training."
1 opens the door and I recognize him immediately. "R-Rayne. What are you doing here?"
"Why aren't you wearing a mask like the rest?" I look him up and down.
"Because I don't need one. I'm not in any records so no one would know who I was anyway."
"So, are you still in touch with Josie?" I scoff.
"No, my clients talk to me once then never talk to me again."
"So your not here to kill me this time?"
"No. What do you need 905?"
"Ahem. She was wondering if you could take her out of training."
He waves his hand. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever."
"O-ok." He sounded surprised. "Let's go." He leads me back to my cell. "How do you know 1?"
"Josie, the mom of the family I was staying with, hired him as a hitman. To kill me." I look over at 905, he looks surprised or sickened, I can't tell which.
"That's what his other job is." 905 mutters as he drops his eyes to the ground. "That's what's paying for this place and us."
"Well, what do I do now that I'm not in training anymore?"
"You go to socialize."
"But I've only been here for a day."
"You've been here for three days."
I run in front of him to stop him walking anymore. "You mean to tell me that I was asleep for three. Three! Days and no one decided to tell me?!"
"Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't think that you would want to know." He holds up his hands.
"Why wouldn't I want to know?!"
"Because we kept you asleep with the Sleep Serum."
"Why?! Why?! Why the hell would you do that?!" I punch his shoulder.
"Ow! How are you that strong?" He rubs his shoulder diligently.
"I've been through a lot."
"True. The only reason that we did that was because we didn't know what 1 wanted to do with you so we let him decide your schedule."
"Isn't there like some type of committee or council that decides what I do, so that you don't have just one ruler? So that you don't have a tyrant and a person that thinks one way?"
"Yes, we have 3."
"What about 2?"
"We do not speak about what happened to 2." He looks at me with a burning intensity in his eyes.
"Ok. I didn't know that we weren't supposed to talk about 2. No one told me that." I hold up my hands.
"I'm sorry it's just a hard topic to talk about, she," He starts to tear up. "She was my mother. They made her drink a vile of poison that would kill her in seconds. And they made me watch, to show me what would happen if I betrayed them." He wipes a tear from his cheek.
"Hey." I rest my hand on his shoulder. "Please don't cry. I hate to see you cry."
"I'm sorry." He sniffles and starts to walk then turns around. "I'm not supposed to tell you this but my name is Austin Smith."
"Austin. Is there a place where we can go and no one, I mean absolutely no one will see us?"
"Umm. Ya the supply closet, why?" He looks at me inquisitively.
"Take me there. Now." He leads me down three halls ducking and hiding from guards the whole way. Once we are there I sit on a box with food in it. "Gimme your right arm."
"What?" He draws his arm closer to him.
"Just gimme it." I hold out my hand. He gently places it in my hand. "Tell me everything you know about this." I study where it is and where blood vessels are.
"Like I told you it shocks me when we try to take it out and it tracks where we are. It sends whether we are alive or not to the main headquarters."
"Where does the shock come from?" I look up at him.
"The main thing itself. There is two cords connected to my heart that leads to it. It shocks me when it's going to be removed unless a code is inputted to my controls. Which is a single control among thousands."
"Yours is 905 I'm guessing." I look back down and turn his arm over.
"Well, yeah. That's common sense." I look up at him in disbelief. "Sorry. I realized that I sounded mean."
"Anyway. So if I cut the wires before I took the square out would it shock you?"
"No. It couldn't, theoretically." He looks at me with a bothered look.
"What?" I look back down at his arm. "Is there any way you can get surgical tools?"
"Yeah. I guess I could."He looks away.
"What? What is it?" I say kind of annoyed.
"If I get caught it will spell death for me. They would kill me instantly, no questions asked."
"Austin, I believe in you." I put my hand in his. "You know this place like he back of your hand. You can do it."
He looks at the time. "We have to go. You have to get lunch." He leads me back to the main area. "You have to meet me here when your done."
"Ok."I look around and see thousands of people, none of which I know. One group of girls turn and look at me. I notice the one I punched in the middle of the group. They start to walk over.
The one I punched steps forward. "Hey. Your Rayne, right?" I slowly nod. "I know about you. We all know about you." She takes another step closer. "I want you to join us. You won't be messed with if you do."
"I just don't know any of you, or trust you, and if you know my past you would understand why."
Another girl comes up behind me and places her hand on my shoulder. "Come on Clara, leave her alone. She doesn't need to be with a group like you."
"Oh. Big bad Maxine come to help?" She stares at Maxine.
"Back off. I've beat you before I can do it again." Maxine starts to walk away, taking me with her.
I pull my arm away. "Who are you and why should I trust you?"
"I'm Maxine, Max for short, and you should trust me because I just saved your life. You never trust them."
"I mean I wouldn't have anyway. I knocked out the one who was talking to you."
She looks at me with wide eyes. "Jesus. You are really lucky that I saved you. She would've killed you."
Now that I look at Max closely I start to notice more about her. She's wearing Victorian Steampunk glasses, denim overalls with one strap loose, a white shirt underneath, black shoes, she has her red hair up in a messy bun, she's pale with freckles all over her face, and I can see a black bra strap. She takes off her glasses to clean them, I can now see her piercing blue eyes. "Your beautiful."
She stops moving completely except for her eyes, they slowly move up from her glasses to my face and chuckles. "No, I'm far from it."
"No really. I wish I looked like you."
"Whatever." She starts to blush. "Anyway. This is my home." She puts her glasses back on and gestures to the huge room we are in. It has scraps of metal and pieces of paper that has scribbles on them, sometimes pictures, diagrams, or equations. There's a rusted metal counters around the edges and a twenty foot one in the middle. There's a pile of plastics of all kinds in the far right corner, next to that a pile of glass, and next to the glass a pile of metal. There's pipes lining the tops of the walls along the top and bottom.
"Is this like your cell?" I look around in awe.
"Yeah. They let me live here. They trust me." She walks over to a cabinet and pulls out a key. "This key is my life." She walks over to a full length mirror and inserts the key into a little hole that I would've never saw if she never put the key into it. She wraps her small fingers around the edge and tugs it open. She ducks behind it and disappears. I walk around to the mirror and move it a little. It's on hinges, like a door, it leads into a tunnel that Max is waiting for me in.
"What does this lead too?" I step into the tunnel and start to follow Max.
"My workshop. Only you and I know that this is where," She turns around so fast I run into her. ",so if you tell anyone I will make your life a living hell. I love this place and I don't need a newbie ruining it for me."
"Then why show me?" We start walking again.
"Because I feel like I can trust you." She opens another door that looks like a mirror on the other side. I walk in and see a plethora of supplies. Everything from nuts and bolts to more sheets of metal and glass. There's one big project in the center of the room.
"What is that?" I point to the mass of metal and glass.
"It's a vehicle that I'm making." She walks over to it. "The top opens up. They thought that this room was completely sealed. I found this tunnel a month after I got here. There was a bookshelf with book about how to work with glass and metal, since I had nothing better to do I read them. All of them. Three months later I found myself building this." She climbs onto a step stool and opens the dome, glass hatch on the top of the vehicle. She gestures to me to follow, so I do.