by Alice Reeds
I pulled out from our hug just enough to look at her, the redness and puffiness of her eyes, the sad curve of her lips, the pink tint around her nose. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile, but she was far stronger than probably even she knew. And while I didn’t deserve to be here, neither did she.
“Since we’re on the topic of people to punch, can we put Carla on that list as well?” I asked.
She looked away and bit her lower lip, her eyebrows drawn together. “I hate her, or at least I want to, but it’s hard to hate someone you loved until like a day ago. I don’t even know who she is anymore. I don’t even know who I am.”
“You’re Fiona Jane Wolf, the smartest, strongest, and kindest girl I know.”
“Am I, though?” The corners of her mouth quirked up into the faintest little smile, though it faded away so quickly. “With everything they said, how can I even be sure anymore? Fiona? This Kellie chick? Someone completely different? Can I even trust my memories, all these things I remember so vividly, smells and pain, euphoria and distress…?”
“Stop.” It was easy to see that she was about to spiral down into some dark place, and I couldn’t let that happen. “Look at me, please.”
Fiona hesitated, her eyes falling closed as she took a breath, and then she looked up.
“It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day they’re just names,” I began and wished, hoped, longed, that eventually I would believe myself as well. “What matters is that we know who we are, where we came from, what we’ve seen, felt, lived through. I don’t know how they manipulated those videos, how they got our friends to lie, our parents to use names that aren’t ours, and really, none of it matters. I know you, and you know me.”
She nodded in agreement but didn’t say anything, the quiet taking over the space around us. Everything was off-kilter, but as long as we remembered who we were and stayed together, we’d be fine. If only we could be fine together somewhere else, somewhere far away from the Villa. There had to be a way. Maybe.
“Wouldn’t it be a shame if we’d get out of here,” I said sometime later, an idea manifesting in my mind.
Fiona blinked a few times, then narrowed her eyes. “You’ve got that look on your face. What are you thinking?”
“Escape. Then run as far and as fast as possible. Not like they can call the cops and fill out a missing persons report without blowing their covers, now can they?”
“True.” The smirk growing on her lips had to be the most satisfying thing I’d ever seen along with that glimmer in her eyes. “But we still need a plan.”
As much as I wanted to just up and go right this minute, she was right. We bounced some ideas around, then decided we had to wait until way after nightfall. Chances were good that the number of staff on duty was the smallest at night.
“What if they just shoot us on sight?” Fiona asked after a while. Sitting on the carpet, our backs against the frame of one of the beds, I took her hand in mine and squeezed.
“Wouldn’t that be a waste? Spend a few million and then just shoot us? I don’t think so. They need us alive.”
“As much as that may be true, I have a feeling we’re replaceable.”
She could be right. We were likely replaceable the way any other lab rat was, but we were also expensive, and I could only hope that even Briola’s resources were limited.
“They said it themselves, once we fail, they’ll sell us. So in a way they still need us as a source of income to bring in what they paid for us. Dead, we won’t be worth anything, not to them or potential buyers.”
Fiona dropped her head against my shoulder, a strand of her hair spilling across half her face. Carefully I pushed it behind her ear, earning me a smile, small but still there, a pretty sight.
“How sick and selfish is it that I’m happy that you’re here with me, that I don’t have to go through all of this on my own?”
“I don’t know,” I said a little hesitantly, “and I certainly can’t judge, since I feel the same. We survived the island, figured out the hallucinations, and made it this far. We can make it that little bit further. Together.”
“Together.”
…
There were no clocks in our room, so the only indicator we had of the time was the world beyond our window, the black sky, the moon surrounded by clouds. As much as I wanted to seek revenge on whoever decided to give the order to kill my mother, see the light fade from their eyes in return, fleeing might be just as good of a revenge as that. Screwing them over. All their efforts made pointless, a waste of time and resources.
I would never get to tell Leon what I thought, how much he disappointed me, how much he hurt me, betrayed me, but part of me suspected that he wouldn’t even care. He hadn’t cared what his words would do to us, his face so blank like a robot, a mask pulled across machinery, his voice so familiar yet foreign at the same time.
I should’ve left him to rot when I’d had the chance.
We waited some more, time crawling by, until we felt it was safe. Taking the only thing we had—the backpack—we were ready. How exactly we’d make it from our room, outside, through the gate, and off the property, neither of us knew. But, if they were stupid enough to leave our door unlocked, chances were that security wasn’t that tight, and I was sure we could overpower a small number of them if we had to.
Slowly, carefully, I opened our door without a sound. We had no idea what waited for us beyond the threshold of our room, or rather who, but we still moved forward. The hallway was mostly dark except for a few dim lamps along the wall, just enough light that you could see where you were going. The landing at the bottom of the stairs on the other end of the hallway, though, was illuminated a bit more brightly.
The closer we got to the landing, the more I focused on any sound I could pick up, or rather the suspicious lack thereof. Sure, there was the occasional groan of wood or some pipe, signs that the building was old, but there were no voices, no footsteps, no movement at all.
I wished for it to be a good sign, but my gut told me it likely wasn’t.
We stopped at the end of the hallway, our backs against the wall, our bodies hidden in the dark, or so I hoped. Peeking around the corner, I saw nothing to our right, just the stairs leading up, but to our left was a man sitting in an armchair, reading a book. Blueprint by Charlotte Kerner, a translation from German I’d read in its original language, because my tutor recommended it to me. It was about a clone, and something about this guy reading a book like that in a place like this felt very wrong.
“What should we do?” Fiona whispered.
“The only thing we can.”
Sneaking past wasn’t an option, too much open space, only one way leading past that guy. Perhaps we’d be lucky and he was so occupied with his book that he wouldn’t notice until it was too late. Just this once I wanted luck to be merciful, give us a second or two, anything.
The book hit the floor with a thud, the sound catching me off guard. I almost tripped over my own feet halfway toward the stairs. Before I could react, the guy was onto us, just a few feet away, the gun on his hip sending my mind and heart into overdrive.
Useless, endlessly useless.
Fiona reacted first, her entire demeanor changing. Gone were any traces of fear or tension I’d seen on her seconds prior, replaced by something far calmer, calculated, prepared through endless hours of training. The guy was a bit taller than her, though heavier, hesitation evident on his face. His eyes widened when Fiona closed the distance between them, her hands on his shoulders, her knee in his stomach, his body crumbling onto the floor like a groaning wet towel.
Taking my hand, Fiona pulled me toward the stairs. Blinking myself back into focus, I followed, glanced at her as we took two or three steps down at a time, and noticed the small smile on her face. Soon we were on the ground floor, our footsteps echoing across the marble.
“Hey!�
�� a voice called out from somewhere to the right. My head instinctively flicked toward the sound. Two guys stood halfway down a hallway, their eyes widening as they realized we weren’t out for a midnight stroll.
“Go, go, go,” I urged Fiona.
Just a few more steps to the front door, a few seconds to open it and get outside, and a few more to go down the stairs. My lungs ached, my heart beating erratically, my mind racing, and yet I didn’t stop running. If anything, I ran quicker. Fiona’s hand remained tightly in mine as she kept pace with me.
We could do it. We actually had a chance to make it. Freedom was fast approaching, the gate rising in the distance, so close—
Boom.
Was that a gun? My heart nearly jumped into my throat and out of my mouth. Still, we didn’t stop. It had to be a warning shot. They wouldn’t really shoot us; I just knew it. They couldn’t.
The next shot followed, the bullet knocking up dirt when it hit the ground, just barely missing me. Too close. We weren’t going to make it. Out of breath, I stopped running, and Fiona jerked to a stop as well. Every fiber of my being dreaded turning around, looking at them, and yet, I couldn’t say I regretted running. Despite knowing she’d protest, I pulled Fiona behind me, acting like a shield to her in case they weren’t done shooting, and focused on the people standing a dozen feet away from us.
“There’s no use putting up a fight,” the one standing in the middle said, the voice deep and menacing.
“Yeah? Why?” I challenged. “Are you going to shoot your assets?” Full of adrenaline, my heart raced with anger and fear alike. But I was so done with this shit.
“You think we won’t?” He almost sounded amused.
“After paying so much for us?” I said. “No. I don’t.”
People getting shot and withering in pain was something I’d seen plenty of times on TV, read about in books, yet I never thought about just how much getting shot would actually hurt. I might’ve gone my entire life without knowing it, but as the shot rang through the air, the bullet making contact with my arm a fraction of a second later, it felt like nothing—at least at first. Shock, I knew, but it faded quickly, replaced by a pain so searing I could barely comprehend it. A strange warmth trickled down my arm.
Fiona moved, said something—to me or the guards, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand it, the sound muffled as though I was underwater, my head and ears filled with cotton. All I knew was the pain. Two more shots were fired, followed by a sensation reminding me of a needle piercing skin and flesh, and then…nothing.
Everything went dark, the pain gone, all my thoughts ceasing.
Chapter Eight
Freighter
The farther we went, the darker our surroundings turned. Eventually the wall to our right gave way to a staircase, tight but mostly intact, none of the steps missing, the banister still attached. How long had this thing been abandoned to be in such a poor state?
“How promising,” Fiona said quietly, against the backdrop of our footsteps echoing off the metal walls and steps. They were made of some kind of stiff, thick mesh, dark with little polished spots indicating where they’d been used most. “If a bear is waiting for us upstairs, I’ll quit. I can’t take that all over again.”
“At least this time we’ll know it isn’t real.”
Another memory tried to move into the forefront of my mind, but I couldn’t see it clearly.
The bridge turned out to be a big room with most walls at least halfway up made of glass that surprisingly wasn’t broken or cracked. A big helm stood to our left, overlooking the central part of the ship. To our right were different instruments and panels, torn-up maps, and tools of some kind.
“A cargo freighter,” Fiona said, standing in front of the windows, her eyes on the mountains of colorful shipping containers outside. Some looked like they’d been on the ship forever, with rust running down the sides like dried blood, while others were newer. On most, the company logos and names were gone, eroded by the ocean salt and wind.
“Not to be pessimistic, but that piece of info doesn’t really help us much,” I commented, a bit disheartened. “And still no people anywhere to be seen or heard.”
While I was glad we didn’t find any bodies, new or old, the lack of people in general was beyond unsettling. But it kind of confirmed my suspicion that the metallic crashing sound was most likely just the ship itself. How could a freighter of this size be abandoned like this, adrift in the ocean without anyone noticing it and pulling it toward the nearest harbor? Or whoever owned it claiming it back?
Speaking of which, where did the crew go? Did they get up and leave from one day onto the next? Or had someone made them leave…the bullet holes certainly pointed toward that option. But why would someone clear a freighter of its crew and leave it behind?
Fiona put one hand on her hip and then threw the other up in the air as though grasping for words, then finally said, “Maybe the panels and abandoned books or whatever they are will offer some answers. Something on this floating piece of junk has to be helpful. Like, come on.”
“We won’t know until we check.”
Crossing the room, I went back to the right side, while Fiona stayed on the left. I worked my way from one end of the paneling to the other. There were different screens, none of which turned on—some with small cracks running across them, others covered in dust—metal keyboards and different lines of numbers next to handles and small valves. Feeling brave, I turned one and then another, but neither did anything. The ship remained quiet.
“Is it in any way helpful that we’re heading more or less northeast?” Fiona asked after a while. “Depending on where we are, there isn’t much in the north, besides glaciers, ice water, and other North Pole shit.”
“If we’re somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico we could reach one of the southern states on the coast, and if we’re in the Mediterranean Sea, there’s Italy, France, or Spain, potentially also Greece. Or we could be in the Indian Ocean and hit India. Or, yes, we could end up on the North Pole or the ice sheet around it.”
Fiona snorted a laugh. “Thanks, Google Maps.”
“What? You asked, and I answered.”
“You’re flexing.”
“Does that word even apply when we’re talking about something without monetary value?” It was such a pointless discussion, but I wished we could go on like that forever, ignore our problems and talk about nothing important. But we couldn’t. I raised my hands in mock defeat. “Fine, okay. The answer to your original question is, while it’s interesting to know in which direction we’re going, it’s not really helping much.”
“Too bad.”
Moving farther along the paneling, I came to a small table with books and ripped papers strewn across it, some loose pages lying on the floor next to it along with a broken mug. I crouched and picked up some of the bigger pieces of light green porcelain, some of them painted with letters or words. Carefully, so I wouldn’t cut myself, I fit them together, making out what the letters spelled.
World’s Best Brother
Leon.
A flood of memories and images overtook me. His easy smile, a saddened expression, bits and pieces of different conversations, his booming laughter followed by words spoken in anger, others more seriously as though discussing something important. Leon standing on a yacht, in a private jet, a completely white room, and a modern mansion, sitting in a car, and lying on the floor. I couldn’t make sense of half of it, some of the images foreign, like they weren’t something I had lived, but I couldn’t explain where they came from, how they fit into his life or mine.
Where was he? He’d been with us at some point, hadn’t he? In some kind of villa…was that right? A headache formed, intensifying from all sides.
Leaving the broken pieces behind, I stood back up and looked over the pages, tried to see if any of them said something useful. Some had l
ists of different values, heights, and sizes, and others of names of different shipments and contents, mechanical parts, or crates full of fruit, dating back years. Something about all of it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t figure out what. Was it the dates? The sizes? They were in kilograms and meters—metric system. Not American, then, but knowing that didn’t really help much. What was the issue? Why did something so benign as a cargo manifest seem strange to me?
Oh…it wasn’t what the words meant. It was the words themselves.
“Could you take a look at this?” I asked, and turned toward Fiona. Leaving behind whatever she’d been looking at, she walked over and took the page from my hand.
“What exactly am I looking at, or looking for?” she asked. “Like, if this is French or something, you know I don’t understand any of it.”
“It’s not.”
“Italian?”
“Negative.”
Looking up from the page, that confusion from earlier creeping back onto her face, she narrowed her eyes at me. “What then?”
“Polish,” I said, though the word came off more like a question than an answer, hesitation ringing in my voice. “A language I’m pretty sure I don’t know. And yet I understood all of it.”
Silence.
“Does that mean the name of this thing is also in Polish?” Fiona pulled me across the room to where she’d been standing before.
Silver letters spelled out: “CMS Katzengold,” I read aloud.
“Kaz-what?”
“It’s not Polish, it’s German,” I said, frowning. “Why’s the name in German?”
“Beats me.”
“None of this makes any sense whatsoever. Somehow, we went from some kind of island to floating around on a German freighter with papers in Polish. I just don’t get it.”
“Or were we in a villa?”
“A villa?” I asked, surprised she’d had the same thought as I had a moment ago.
Fiona waved her hand around as though trying to find the right words, express the answer with movement alone. “I don’t know, there are these memories I can’t place, and some seem to be from a villa-type place, maybe.”