by Joni Bing
It was a struggle to wake myself up. I tried to force my imagination to lucid dream as a ploy to wake myself but nothing worked. Then, I tried to scare myself awake with visuals like the diseased looking doxies that always hung out on the streets at night or Josh's eyes after he got high. Nothing would open my eyes. Then, I thought about what happened and where I could be and my eyes shot open to a large neon blue lit room. My throat closed up, and my mind raced but no thoughts filled it. I tried to look around but couldn't move my head side to side.
My eyes roamed the room and stung like someone had drugged me to remain asleep. They were blurry and I guessed the thick milky liquid running down my brown face was the cause.
Suddenly, the chair ascended closer to the ceiling. I looked straightforward and a row of tall shadows stood in a glass covered dome with bulky controls clutched in their hands.
“Standard position marked.”
“Elevate her.”
My eyes grew in size and I yelled in revolt as my body clung to the icy-cold metal platform moving me upward. That's when I realized what was going on. I wasn't drugged to stay asleep for science testing or even to later be killed. I was being skinned. I looked over at the tips of my fingers and eyed the stinging slits in the tucks under my perfectly trimmed nails. If I remembered the rumors correctly, I woke up just before they started the process.
“Don't do this! No!” I shouted as the platform neared a bulky silver machine attached to the ceiling. “Hey!”
Blades and needles spun from their gauges out of the machine, and a circle of small precision knives extended from either side appearing like claws spinning toward me. It reminded me of something else I heard stories about. Something about a process called scalping. It was the removal of the human brain and insertion of a prosthetic one. At that moment, I knew exactly what their intentions were for my future. They didn't want to take my life, they wanted to control me so that I capture others. If I didn't escape, they would transform me into people just like them.
“Hey!”
The shadows looked up from the controls and it actually surprised me. Had they finally heard me or had they finally decided to pay attention? A device that felt like a robotic claw sunk its cold harsh teeth into my back and my body felt sewn to the platform. I could feel the claws forcing me down and all of a sudden, electric shock surged through my system. The pain it sent through me caused strobes of light and darkness to cloud my sight. My body tried to flail from the sudden weakness but the pain of the restriction was so great that the only action my body would process was rising to escape and contracting from the failure. I'd say it was the worst pain I've ever experienced, but I'm not sure if the next two times after were any better or worse.
I growled as I grew more frustrated. There had to be a way, there's always a way to escape. Now, I could feel the knife on my skin. It was suddenly so close. I looked around. The shadows were smart enough to strap me down by my ankles, wrists, and neck, but they needed to keep my forehead free for scalping. What they didn't think through was how crazy and risky their experiments would react.
This is how I, Bleu Dalton, escaped my first capture.
First, the knife neared me, two inches and counting away from my forehead for the first incision. I didn't waste any time once I realized there was no stopping the process by pleading for mercy. Plus, I'd seen plenty of Old Nation horror movies-before they were completely banned and destroyed-and did NOT plan on ending up like those hopeless girls who get so scared of the killer in front of them that they can't think and die. So, I sidebutted the bulky machine and sent it twenty feet clear from the platform. The warm blood flushing from the side of my forehead flowed down my face and I could feel myself wanting to fade away. I shook my head to remain conscious and turned down my hearing on the shadows ordering me to “keep calm and Follow through.”
I grew even more frustrated, realizing the only outcome my smart idea had left me with was a bleeding head, throbbing headache, and even tighter hold from the claws into my back. Plus, the shadows tried to move the machine backward and it flipped to its death into the unknown that I'd become all too familiar with in the future. Traumatized, I started to cry hot tears which cleared my vision just in time for me to watch the blood from the side of my head flow to my left wrist's restriction...and free me.
“Keep calm! Don't make a move!” “We're calling someone to help you!”
I didn't listen. If I didn't listen to my mom, which I was sure they knew, I wondered what gave these people this hope that I'd listen to a word they said, especially after waking up moments before they killed the Bleu Dalton that I had been my entire life. At that time, for the past seventeen years.
Still, finally, I figured out the secret to my escape: my blood. Totally unexpected solution, if I must say so myself, but there was something in my blood that disintegrated the material in the restraints. After weakly sliding my free palm into the puddle of blood, I slapped the restraint still holding down my right wrist and watched it melt before my eyes. Only this time, because the shadows pulled the restraints tighter around my ankles and remaining wrist, the melting material leaked onto my arm before I could pull it away fast enough. My ears could no longer block out the shadows ordering me to keep calm immediately and wait for the Nation Resourcers—we called them NRs—to help me out. I believe that was partly because, at the same time, they were constricting me even tighter to the platform.
I knew who the NRs were before I was captured. The people in my crowd told stories about how cruel the NRs were when they would capture you and then would thank the stars for Mass Protection. The stories scared me; mainly because I had no idea why people were getting captured, or if I was next, and then they found me.
My ankles throbbed and I heard my blood pulsing through my veins. I could see my ankles blushing red even with the blinding white lights that the shadows turned on above me burning my eye sockets. I kicked my ankles against the restraints until I heard something crack, and somehow, by the force of some crazy unusual luck, it wasn't the bones of my ankles.
Finally, I had broken free and only remained imprisoned to the platform by my back. I felt the platform lower and heard faint footsteps near the room. Those steps, though they appeared to be my death wish in that moment, turned out to be my final step to freedom. I shifted my weight back and forth and side to side, in an effort to loosen the steel wires holding the platform in place as the shadows continued to lower me. I thought at first to wait for them to lower me yet a greater common sense warned me against that idea. I knew that I couldn't trust them no matter how much they continued telling me that everything would be alright as long as I cooperated. I knew that the moment they let me down, the NRs would be right there to capture me again. I knew by pushing myself forward that I would have the head start I'd need to push through them and race to the nearest exit.
I continued to sway wildly on the platform until it broke free from the chords hoisting it up. My insides sunk when the platform tilted from sole gravity until the airborne feeling from the fall took over next. I glided through the air from the great height I escaped and all I could think was This is it.
I lifted my trembling body from the ground the very moment packs of NRs raced into the room. Before I could prepare myself to make a run for it, I was tackled and crushed. I don't know what I was thinking, believing that I'd be able to take down almost a dozen NRs. My eyes flashed open as the second part of my planned escape crossed my mind. Oh, that's right. The impossible.
First, I kicked the NR holding me down in the groin with my raised knee. I don't remember any specific features about his face, but will always remember the gold tooth that shined in the top front of his mouth. He fell beside me and knocked over two more. The sad part about the future: the authority figures who were supposed to protect us were just as lethargic and dumb as the Followers who sincerely lived day to day abiding by their ridiculous rules. I lifted myself from the ground and used my fists to knock out a NR on my left then my right as
I fled the room.
Then, the platform just dropped from my back. A rush of weakness and cold raced down my spine and sent me racing straight into the right wall outside the door. The last four NRs came for me, but after taking a much needed breath, I had enough energy built up to clock the middle one. The NRs on either side of him grabbed my shoulders and I used their strong hold on me to lift myself in the air, grab for the bloody silver platform at the entrance of the room, and knock them out with my arms' hold on it in a horizontal angle. I dropped to the ground with the idiots and the pain racking around my back took a trip to my stomach, leaving it with an after burn that almost forced my insides to regurgitate my lunch.
I took deep breaths after struggling to catch any breath moments before and rose slowly from the ground, pushing my body toward any way out. My balance straightened, and I finally felt stable enough to race from hall to dark hall, fighting off the NRs securing the area with the platform. After five halls of racing and fighting, I could breathe the air of the free. Finally, I reached the outside.
I knew better than to hesitate yet I found myself wondering if I should keep the platform with me as a weapon. I threw it back quick into the building and ran towards the first sight of light I found outside the building. Streetlights lined every inch of the near empty roads-Central Union had a curfew of one a.m. during the weekdays and three a.m. on the weekends-and I'd never been so happy to see those stupid poles. I walked down the streets in a rush past cold-tired gray faces, and kept my head up to look unsuspicious.
Then, this annoying breeze ripped through my entire body. I looked down to figure out why and realized then that the only article of clothing keeping me from public nudity was a black full body jumpsuit that was ripped through in all of the places that the claws and constrictions held me down. I squirmed as the meaning behind my change of clothes hit me. Someone in that Nation Resources building, maybe someone I had passed or fought before escaping, saw me naked and ripped everything I had left of my old life-my PD, my house key card, everything-from me forever.
I walked on though. It was better this way. Every step I took away would work out better for my future, I just knew it. I kept walking and wondered what it was that suddenly got into me-or was already there-that convinced me to walk toward a personally untraveled place instead of taking common streets and corners back home where I was guaranteed safety. Then again, close to home was where I was captured. The horrible truth about my current situation was that going home meant getting recaptured and facing even more violent procedures of skinning than what I almost experienced.
I shook my head, trying to destroy my imagination's endless scenarios of what could potentially happen if I didn't find a good place to hide for the night and clung the loose black suit blowing in the wind to my shivering skin. I turned a dark corner and could feel trouble rise around me. Footsteps filled my hearing and the quickness of the steps inferred that whoever was charging toward me didn't care that I was on to their stalk. I didn't turn though. I remembered the ON horror movies. Every time a character turned around that would start the chase like turning around was a signal from the character to the bad guy that they were ready to die. So, I just kept walking. I was not about to cue the bad guy to chase me. Still, the footsteps grew faster and closer in sound. Trying to seem oblivious to the steps, I continued to walk coolly and forced my mind to think about something other than being recaptured or the afterlife as I side glanced the rum colored building beside me to catch a glimpse of the figure walking behind me in its reflection. The glimpse revealed the figure to be a guy. He was tall, dark, and wore nothing over his eyes to protect his identity even though, from the looks of his appearance, he was a fugitive like me. Yet, he was fearless. I respected that.
Before I knew it, before my feet started their runaway without a message to my brain, he grabbed my shoulder. He was closer than I thought. I tried to shake him off-the guy I know now as Lary—but his grip was unescapable. He lifted me into his arms and I fought him hard to escape, screaming to the top of my lungs for help that would never come.
“The fight to survive is over for you. Soon, you will live.”
That word again. That same word Tenter used before Muller sold me out. I didn't fully understand the meaning of the word. I went to a live concert or two with Josh and Marty when we were in pre-YA before. That was the only “live” thing I could relate their words to at the time because the concept of living was nonexistent in my world. People of the Nation survived.
Funny thing is it took a fall to the ground from his arms for me to realize that I actually believed him. Somehow, he convinced me that he was trying to help me. Of course, it would be a long time down the road until I would realize the full devastation of my decision. A black hearse pulled up as he lifted me back into his arms and in an instant, I blacked out. If he did have plans in mind, I didn't plan on being awake to see or feel them.
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