When I woke up, I had tears running down my cheeks. I struggled to control my breathing. I looked quickly to make sure my friends were still there.
Ariana was still leaning against the faded blue wall. Her head was dropped down, and snores shook her body.
"So much for shifts," I mumbled, sitting up. I looked for Xavier next, but he wasn't where he'd been.
I jumped up. "Xavier?" I called, moving into the hall.
I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. The kitchen was empty, and the bedroom door was wide open. Xavier was nowhere in sight.
"Yeah," he answered, his voice low and tired. I turned to see him standing over the bathroom sink, splashing water onto his face. His shirt was damp with sweat, as was his hair. There were dark circles under his eyes.
"Are you okay?" I asked, stepping towards the entrance of the bathroom. I blinked at the light, but my eyes quickly adjusted.
"Yeah, fine," he said, wiping off some of the water on his face with his hands. He didn't look fine. "Just a nightmare. That's all." I didn'tbring mine up since his looked like it had to have been worse.
"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked.
"Thanks," he said. "But, no. I don't think I can."
I moved out of his way as he started to leave the bathroom. "Okay." What else was there to say? We both remained standing in the hall.
My entire body ached—from the burn just under my ribs, to the cuts that seemed to be everywhere, to my tight, overworked calf muscles. Turning my head sent a stab of pain through my neck, which was stiff from sleeping on the floor. I gently massaged it.
The lingering pain was strange. Damion had always been there to heal things. I'd felt initial injuries, of course, but I could scarcely remember a time when I had to heal on my own.
"Ari kept a great watch," Xavier said, shaking his head.
"We're lucky nothing happened." It was a good thing I'd checked the locks, or we could have been a lot worse than injured. My eyes flicked over all of our cuts from the glass. "Wanna help me look for a Med-Kit?"
"Sure." He nodded to the bathroom. "We should check the bathroom first."
"Yeah." As I moved forward, pain stabbed through my calves with each step. I wasn't used to so much running, and the cuts didn't help. My walk wasn't quite limp, but it wasn't balanced either. I was lucky the bathroom was only a couple steps away.
It was nearly bare, with white flooring and the same blue walls as the rest of the apartment. A small black sink and toilet were pushed against onewall, and a narrow, glass shower was on the opposite side, in the corner. A small, light-grey piece of cupboard surrounded the base of the sink, but there was no other storage to be seen.
We knelt beside the small cupboard, pulling the two doors open. Silver piping swirled down the middle of the space and into the floor. On one side, a few black towels had been stuffed in—which was good because I didn't feel like air-drying if we got to shower.
"Perfect." I reached into the other side of the cupboard and pulled out a small red box. I dusted it off, revealing the bandage symbol that was onall the medical kits and hospital signs. I clicked open the box, which was about as long as two of my hands pressed side by side.
A half-unwound roll of white gauze made a messy blanket over most of the Med-Kit's contents. Xavier picked the roll up from the box. Stray gauze hung down from It. It was almost as tall as his pinkie and twice as thick. He began to roll it back up, and I grabbed for the next item I saw.
"Someone had priorities." I let out a short laugh and tossed Xavier the MintPower mouthwash.
"Fine." He put it on the ground beside himself. "Don't have any."
"Hey." I put my hands up in mock surrender. "Not saying I don't appreciate it."
I picked up a small booklet. "Ooh. First aid and CPR guild." I slid it across thefloor to him. "Ari'll be all over that."
"Hey." He looked at the first page of the booklet. "There's stuff on burns and cuts too."
"Cool," I said.
Xavier picked up a white-and-red tube that looked like toothpaste. "Jackpot." He waved the tube in the air. Pain relief cream.
"Good," I said, letting out a breath of relief. He put it on the floor with the other things.
We ended up with a good array of supplies and quite a bit of burn gel.
"Do you have any idea how to use half this stuff?" I asked, as we began to neatly pack the contents back into the Med-Kit.
"No clue." He shook his head. "But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say maybe we shouldn't use trial and error." I picked up a couple small, paper wrapped rolls and read the front of the label.
"What even is ammonia inhalant?" A brief smile appeared on my face as I shook my head. I put more items away in the Med-Kit.
"A respiratory stimulant," Xavier said.
"How'd you know that?" I asked. "Chem project?"
Xavier had always had a niche for chemistry, especially when he got to blow things up. "I read the back of the label." He tossed one of the doses into my palms, and I put it in the Med-Kit.
"Label of what?"Ariana asked, appearing in the doorway. She yawned loudly. "Why'dyou guys let me sleep like that?" She rubbed a hand over her neck.
"We found a Med-Kit,"I said, gesturing to the box. "All sorts of presents in here for you."
"Like what?" she asked, sitting cross-legged beside us. There was hardly any room to move in the small bathroom.
"Lots of ointments," Xavier said. He slid the box over to her.
"And a booklet about treating stuff," I said. "Thought you'd like that."
"Yeah," Ariana said, smiling. "This'll be, like, perfect since we're all cut up and stuff."
It didn't take long to disinfect all the little cuts and gauze the larger ones. We even figured out how to treat my burn from the electrocution wand, then bandaged it up.
All the medicine in the world couldn't fix our hunger though. We needed food. If we were going to find a way to earn credits to buy food, we needed new clothes and soap. Which also cost credits.
"We could try and get a food-stick," Ariana said. The government handed out those sticks to poor people who registered, and they could use them in place of a cred-stick to get a certain value of food products. But that wouldn't work for us.
"We can't," I said, dismayed. We really were on our own. "Government would see us register."
"Right," she said, frowning. She sighed. "I'm starving already, and those meal bars are gonna have to last awhile."
"And I don't think asking is gonna work for food," Xavier said. People didn't even talk to their neighbours, so it wasn't likely they would just be willing to share their food, especially since most people here wouldn't have much.
"Maybe we can try and get jobs fast?" I suggested. "How long could we go without eating?" Not long, probably, and most jobs paid bi-weekly.
"We couldn't get hired looking like this," Xavier said, gesturing to all of our ripped-up and bloodied school clothes. "If we tried, they'd probably call the police thinking we're cranked."
"There has to be someway we can get the clothes and food we need," Ariana said, her tone optimistic. "I mean, we only need a little bit, just until we find some kind of jobs."
"What if..." I really didn't want to finish the thought. We'd done so much stealing already, and the people here were so bad off. But were any of them at risk of starving to death? They could at least get government aid, as small as it was. And we wouldn't take enough to really hurt them. "We could try and find a way to get a couple creds from one of the apartments."
"I dunno," Ariana said, looking unhappy with the idea. "This isn't a rich area or anything."
"We'd only need a little," Xavier said, considering it. "Just enough to print some cheap outfits and soap... Maybe a bit of food."
"And we could maybe do a couple apartments," I said. "So we wouldn't be taking too much from anybody."
"Well, if we only take a little bit..." Ariana said, reluctantly. She frowned and seemed to be looking for another idea. "I guess we don't really have another choice."
"How would we do it though?" I asked. Doors automatically locked when closed, so it wasn't as if we could just wait for people to go to work.
"I could set off the fire alarm," Xavier said after a moment. "Don't the doors unlock in case the firefighters need to get in?"
"Yeah, they do,"Ariana said, nodding. "And that would get everybody out of the building too."
Our postures were slumped, and our expressions were miserable. We had to try this. There was no other option, but that didn't make it suck any less. We took a minute to stew in our decision.
Xavier left the apartment, and we waited for the alarm to blare. Red light and wailing noise washed over the building, and within seconds, the quick movement of feet could be heard in the hall.
We waited for the shuffling to cease, and I peeked my head out the door. The hall was clear. Xavier must have already ducked into another room. I motioned for Ariana to follow me out, and then we split up, both going to a different room. I checked repeatedly over my shoulder; somebody could come back any second. I creaked open the white wooden door of my chosen apartment and stepped inside.
The apartment had the same layout as ours. The walls were coated in vibrant blue paint, and the people who lived here had furniture to fill the space.
The bedroom was simple, with the same blue walls and a white double bed in the centre. A black dresser with gold trim was standing against the wall, taller than me. I pulled open the top drawer, revealing bundles of grey socks. I moved them around to check for credits. My dad always kept his valuables in the top drawer of his dresser. There were usually more valuables than socks in it. In this one, there were only socks. I pushed the drawer closed, then opened one after the other. Nothing of value.
There was an air vent just to the left of the dresser. I stepped in front of it but couldn't feel any air. I put my hand up parallel to it. Nothing was coming out of it. I dug my fingers under the rim to pull off the metal vent. It took a couple seconds, but it eventually came off. I tossed it onto the bed before peering inside.
Prepaid credit chips. They were scattered along the bottom of the hidden compartment, varying from 20 credits to 300. I stuffed a couple low-value ones in my pockets. If my friends and I each grabbed a couple, it should be enough to get us some clothes, and maybe some soap.
I quickly scanned the cupboards, checking to see if there was a stock of meal bars. There were, but the supply was minimal. I decided to leave it. Ariana or Xavier would probably find some.
There was a faints scuffling in the hall. The residents were coming back. I picked through the thoughts of people entering. They were still by the front doors. I had to take my chance getting out now, or I might not get out at all.
I crept to the door and rested my hand on the silver handle, my heart beating quickly. What if I got caught?
I listened for any thoughts coming to the door, which was hard when so many people were cramped in the hall. From what I heard, there were people really close, but nobody was coming inside yet. Before I could overthink things, I turned the knob. I slid out of the apartment, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when nobody saw me.
The crowd was thick in our section of the hall, and I merged in. Despite my odd appearance, nobody glanced twice at me. Not a lot of people paid attention to the world around them, outside of their VirtReels and holo-watches. Everyone was probably in a rush to get back to their false realities, away from the people in the hall whose names they didn't know, despite living in the same building.
I can't believe we had to evacuate, and there wasn't even a big fire, a man thought, as he used his chubby elbows to push past others.
I found Ariana and Xavier in the crowd once I was close to our apartment. We reached our own rooms without anyone noticing us, though I got a few more bruises from being elbowed by those rushing back to their homes.
Inside, Ariana collapsed against the door with a dramatic sigh. "Let's, like, never do that again." She stood up again and peered through the small rectangular slit window in the door. "Do you think anyone saw us?"
I tugged her away from the window. "They're gonna see you if you keep staring like a creep," I said. "Come on, let's put the stuff on the counter."
Xavier had already dumped some meal bars on the white countertops. I fished into my pockets, curling my hands around the cool chips. They clacked loudly as I placed them on the counter. Ariana and Xavier did the same. Ariana had even found mini soaps for each of us, which meant we couldshower today. I hadn't counted the credits, but it looked like wemight have enough to get by until we found some work. If we found some work.
"I hope the people from the apartments don't notice," Ariana said, looking down at what she'd gotten. She flicked her purple eyes back up to me. "Do you think I took too much?"
"It's fine,"Xavier said, his tone reassuring. "They can get help if they need it. And nobody will risk calling the cops if they notice. The police will just think they're cranked."
The sad truth was people in low-class areas struggled to afford much and received little respect for their jobs. The resulting need to escape meant that tons of people in these areas suffered from D.R.D. The police were more likely to assume people had gone crazy than to believe acouple of low-value items had been stolen.
"Yeah," she said, nodding. "You're probably right."
I put the credits into a neater pile, counting them. There were about five hundred total, which wasn't a lot considering a single cheap shirt would probably cost us almost a hundred. Then I looked at the mini-soaps.
"So," I said, "who gets to have a shower first?"
I didn't care all that much. I'd get a shower eventually, and it hadn't been long since mylast. It may have felt like forever ago that we'd been at Xavier's aunt's, but it hadn't even been two days. I left it up to Ariana and Xavier to see who could go first.
"You ready?" Xavier asked her. He held up his hands to play Earth, Fire, Water, which would decide who got the first shower. "You know you're going down."
"Yeah, whatever." She rolled her eyes. "Let's hurry up, so I can have my shower faster." They each put a fist on top of their palm.
"Earth, fire, water!" they both shouted.
"Ha!" Xavier tapped his three fingers over her curled fist. Why would she pick Earth? Did she really think he wouldn't pick fire? "I win."
"Three outta five?"she asked.
"Nope," he said. He scampered to the bathroom and locked the door.
"You suck," she called. Though he couldn't see, she stuck her tongue out. The sound of water raining down from the tap was Xavier's reply.
Ariana and I walked back to the living room. We sat beside each other, against the wall at the back of the room, the door in sight. We were silent for awhile, listening to the water.
"Do you remember when I showed up at your house?" Ariana asked. Her voice was faint, almost drowned out by the sound of the shower.
"Yeah," I said."It's not something I'd forget."
My door had buzzed over and over within the span of a few seconds. I'd run over to see who it was and found Ariana standing there. Dark lines had dripped down from her eyes, like she was melting. Water had filled her eyes. Her hair had been frazzled, and there'd been no shoes on her feet. What had caught my attention most was the bright-pink mark on her cheek, roughly the size of a hand.
"Come in." I'd ushered her into my house, closing the door behind her. I had brought her over to the couch, rubbing her back.
"I can't go back." She had stammered while, more water poured from her eyes.
"You'll never have to," I had told her. Ariana's parents had always been horrible to her, but they'd never, to my knowledge, hit her before then.
"I'm a freak," she'd sobbed, making it hard to understand what she was saying.
"No, you aren't." I'd left no room for debate. "I don't care what they told you."
"Can normal people do this?" She'd looked at her hands. A blue light had flickered in them for a split second before disappearing. She'd seemed startled by herself.
"When did that happen?" Up until then, only Damion and I had manifested our abilities.
"Today." She had sniffed again, wiping her sleeve across her nose. "She tried to...to hit me, again. It stopped her." Ariana had been crying more heavily by then.
"Your parents just let me live with all of you," Ariana said now. "They did so much for me, for all of us."
"They loved you." I looked down at my knees. I didn't want to talk about them.
"What if," she said, "it was my fault?"
I looked up at her. Her eyes shimmered with tears. "It wasn't your fault, Ari."
She shook her head, wiping at her eyes. "Your parents called the cops," she said. "I put your family in danger when I came to your house."
My parents had finally had grounds, and they'd called the police on hers. They'd been arrested and had said all kinds of things about Ariana. They'd told the police she was dangerous, wrong. The police hadn't seemed to think anything of it.
"How else would the Takers have heard about us?" She started to stumble over her words again.
"That was a year ago." I tried to be reassuring, but I wasn't in the best place either. I didn't want to talk about what had happened. "They would've come earlier if it was something your parents had said."
"I just... What if it was?" she asked, quietly. "What if they're gone because of me?"
I looked away. "It wasn't your fault." The water stopped running in the bathroom. "You should go have your shower."
Despite my poor comforting skills, Ariana seemed a bit more at ease. She nodded and stood. "Yeah," she said. "Okay."
Xavier opened the bathroom door, steam stepping out with him. He and Ariana switched places.
"God," she said when she reached the small bathroom. She turned around to face him."How hot did you have the water?"
"Hottest it goes." Since Xavier was made of fire, he couldn't be burned. It was the opposite actually. Heat energized him, made it easier to use his powers. "Have fun."
She huffed, closing the door behind her.
He sat down beside me. His hair was still damp, with pieces falling across his forehead, but everything else was dry. He'd washed his clothes, but they were dry too.
"Good idea," I said, gesturing to the light-blue shirt that rested against his cleaned skin.
"Thanks," he said. "But we should probably ditch the school uniforms soon."
He was right. We needed to appear old enough to have this apartment. It was amazing the superintendent hadn't noticed.
"Yeah," I said. "We need to find a printer, get some clothes."
"Did you see how many creds we have total?" he asked.
"Only about five hundred." I sighed. "It might get each of us a shirt, but we can't get pants too." The pants we all wore were plain, light-grey dress pants. They would be fine to wear without arousing suspicion.The shirts, however, would be recognized instantly with the school-crest set below the collar.
Xavier ran a hand through his hair. "We're gonna need money to keep living here."
"Yeah," I said."How do you think we can work? We're not exactly in the CareerPath program any more." The government assigned people their careers, so how could we find work?
"Most of the Service jobs aren't part of the CareerPath," he said. "We'll have to hope we can find something."
The people here, the ones who worked in the Services, usually had to find their own jobs since they weren't deemed essential by the government in any field.While it might have sounded like more freedom, none of the jobs were good, and none paid nearly enough.
"Right." I slumped against the wall. I could never follow my dreams of being a biologist like my father. Would the rest of my life be full of crappy work hours and little sense of purpose?
"It won't be so bad,"Xavier said. He gave me a small, reassuring smile. "With all of us working, we should be okay."
"Yeah," I said. I pressed my lips firmly together and tried to smile back. "I know."
Maybe we would be okay, but I wasn't sure we would ever be good.
***Brief Note***
Thank you so much for reading! It you liked the chapter, I'd really appreciate a vote!
Also, I'd love to hear what you think! Feel free to contact me, or drop a comment! :)