by Alice Reeds
“He knew what the possible outcome of his involvement could be,” my mother said, “but he was willing to do whatever Briola asked of him to keep you safe. I’m sorry things turned out this way.”
At the end it seemed like Joe really was a man caught in a bad situation just trying his best to be a good father, a good man.
“I wish he wouldn’t have had to die,” Ivy said, her voice quiet and unsteady. “While I hoped we’d make it out of here somehow, someday, I never thought I’d be an orphan when we did.”
Leon’s words suddenly echoed through my mind. “I don’t know what they did with him, where he is now, but last I heard he was just as alive as Gail.”
“About that,” I said, carefully, all eyes turning to me, “your father might actually still be alive.”
“What?” Ivy practically screeched.
I flinched at the sound, then blew out a breath. “Leon—my brother’s actual name—told us about it when we got the tablet from him. He said that what we witnessed was staged, so Joe has never actually been dead or in danger or dying.”
“You serious?” Wakaba asked while tears glittered in Ivy’s eyes.
“No point in lying about something like that, is there?” Fiona said, defending me. “If he’s alive and being held somewhere by Briola, once we crash these assholes, it shouldn’t be too hard to find him. In theory.”
“What if they kill him before that?”
Fiona raised her hands, palms up. “Just have to hope they don’t. The best thing we can do for all of us is survive and come up with a way out.”
“She’s right,” Alessia agreed. “I know this must be hard for you, Ivy, but I’m sure he’d want you to think of yourself first, remain alive, hopeful, focused, no matter how hard it may be. Once the time comes, we’ll find a way to locate him.”
She made it sound far easier than it was, but it wasn’t like we had much of a choice, especially Ivy. Dying in the Villa wouldn’t reunite her with her father, either. Briola wouldn’t be that kind.
“We don’t have much time left,” Fiona finally said. I hadn’t been paying attention to the time, but one glance at the upper corner of the tablet proved she was right. There were maybe ten minutes left until we needed to show up on CCTV again to avoid being caught missing.
“What’s your name?” my mother asked, a quick change of topics, swift and easy.
“Wakaba Orłowska.”
Alessia reached for something, a stack of papers perhaps. Our mothers moved closer together, their eyes skimming the pages, one and then another, until finally they found what they’d been looking for. “Are you from Michigan?”
“Yes?” Wakaba answered, unsure as though wary of what that meant, her name on their pages. I wondered the same but trusted that it probably wasn’t anything bad, nothing that could hurt us.
“Over the years we’ve accumulated a list with names of teenagers who may or may not be connected to Briola’s doings,” my mother explained and turned the page around so it faced the camera. So many names, so many lives potentially destroyed by Briola. “Not all of them have suffered the same fate as you, but chances are a good portion of them unfortunately did.”
“Do you know anything about my family?” There was hopefulness in her tone, but also fear, her voice a little unsteady.
“Are you sure you want to hear it?”
Wakaba nodded but remained silent.
“Your parents filed a missing person report and for a while they looked for you, but eventually they closed the case due to lack of evidence of a crime being committed. The final theory was that you’d simply run away, as suggested by your grandmother.”
How fitting a suggestion coming from the woman responsible for Wakaba being here.
“Some of the cases are similar to yours,” Alessia added. “Some about teens who went missing without anything pointing toward crimes, like they simply vanished, and then there are cases of tragic accidents or deaths with bodies that were never found or were deemed too mangled to identify by anything but their teeth or something else that could be faked.”
The lengths to which Briola went to keep their business running was revolting. Many awful things happened every single day across the world, I knew that, yet seeing it happen, being a victim, it made it so much more real. How could these people live with themselves, how deprived of morals and a conscience were they?
“One more thing before we go,” Ivy said just before we really needed to speed upstairs to try to avoid being caught, though we were certainly cutting it close. “Do you have a plan yet? To get us out of here?”
My mother grinned. “We’re working on it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Villa
“Miles!”
The sound of Fiona’s voice, the odd shocked quality to it making my name sound off, was enough to scare me. Putting the tablet aside—I’d looked around its system and coded out of curiosity while I let ideas marinate in my mind, ways in which we could potentially help our mothers and break the damn simulation—I crossed the short distance from my bed to the bathroom.
Inside I was greeted by heat and quickly dissipating steam. Fiona just stood there with a towel hastily wrapped around her body, revealing more skin than it covered, her hair gathered to one side and dripping water all over the floor, her back exposed and facing the mirror. What about her appearance made her call for me? Wait. While she had many scars, none of them were on the upper half of her back, and none of them were black.
“Look,” she said, her head turning enough to look at me and then at her own reflection in the mirror.
“Your tattoo.”
“Yes! They really had just covered it somehow,” she said, her left hand reaching over her shoulder to touch one of the slowly reemerging edges of her triskelion. “Holy shit.”
As though pulled by an invisible string, I approached her and raised my hand, my fingertips just barely touching her skin, pale turning into pitch black. I couldn’t feel the edge between the tattoo and whatever it was they used to cover it. As intriguing and ingenious as it was, my curiosity piqued by the question of just how they did this, the fact that it was slowly starting to dissolve felt like a ticking time bomb. When numbers reached zero…
“They kind of suck at making things that work and last, don’t they?” Fiona half asked, half commented, without taking her eyes off our reflections in the mirror. Absentmindedly, I traced the path of a droplet of water down her back, along her spine, to her towel just at her waist.
“Our time is running out,” I said, my own voice sounding not quite right even to my ears, lost in thought, like an echo.
“Possibly,” Fiona said, “but what exactly does it mean? The fact that it’s washing off?”
“My best guess is they didn’t anticipate that we’d stay sane enough to feel like showering once or twice a day.” Or that we wouldn’t last this long.
Fiona smirked ever so faintly. “Fuck their water bills.”
I couldn’t agree more.
“So you think it’s kind of like an hourglass? Once the top has emptied, we’re done?”
“I hope not.” I touched the now revealed pieces of her tattoos again, the edges between cover and ink. It didn’t rub off, but the substance was obviously faltering.
“How will they know it’s coming off, though?” she asked. “We found no cameras here.” Even so, she tugged her towel up and tighter around her.
“Maybe it’s just another one of their side trials they’ll check on once we fail, or magically succeed?” I suggested.
Her mouth twisted. “It’s almost like a metaphor, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“As we slowly try to figure out how to break out, my tattoo found a way to do the same—it’s breaking out from the cover it was hidden beneath.”
“Interesting way of looking
at it,” I said with a small smile. “But, speaking of breaking out, I think I might have an idea.”
She raised one questioning eyebrow.
“We should try to contact our mothers to ask them for their opinion.”
“What happened to the whole thing about how it’s too risky to contact them at night because the chances of getting detected will be higher?”
She was right, but needlessly waiting would be a waste of time. If my idea was bad, we’d lose half a day I could use to think of something else instead, and right now losing time simply wasn’t something we could afford.
“If we keep it short, we should be okay.” It wasn’t the most convincing argument, I knew. “I want to ask them if they heard from Leon today, too. I didn’t see him anywhere. Did you?”
She shook her head. “Are you really sure this is a good idea?”
Maybe? “Yes.”
“Fine, just give me five minutes so I don’t look like a wet, cold rat anymore.”
Chuckling, I left the bathroom while Fiona started to wrap her hair in another towel.
Back on our bed, I grabbed the tablet again and opened Message. My fingers hovered over the digital keys, my mind going over pros and cons, all the consequences that’d wait for us should we get detected. Still, I went on and typed three words:
ARE YOU THERE?
Chances were neither of our mothers were even close to the computer they used to talk to us, had other things to do. A minute passed and then another. Briefly the sound of Fiona attempting to blow-dry her hair filled our room, muffled but still quite loud. Another minute later, a reply came in.
YES, EVERYTHING OKAY?
JUST NEED TO TALK.
It probably wasn’t the kind of message our mothers wanted to read, but I’d already hit send. The bathroom door opened and Fiona emerged, her still damp hair up in a bun, wearing loose gray sweatpants and a shirt I was pretty sure was mine judging by how large it was on her. She smiled almost a little shyly as she noticed me looking.
“Ready?”
Instead of answering she checked if our door was tightly closed—it was—and then sat down next to me, her legs folded underneath her. Swiftly she tapped the call button on the display.
“Something wrong?” my mother asked. Alessia was wearing thick black-rimmed glasses. I was pretty sure they were Prada or Gucci.
“No, no, everything’s okay,” I said but then added, “Mostly.”
“Meaning what, exactly?” Alessia pressed.
“Here’s the thing,” Fiona began and quickly told them all about the tattoo, keeping the story as short as possible.
“That doesn’t sound good,” my mother said, echoing our opinion on the matter.
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed, “but I have an idea that could get us out of here and also potentially get you all the evidence you still need against Briola, if it works out the way I want it to.”
“If it’s something that would put you into the direct line of danger…” my mother said but trailed off, the meaning hanging in the air between us.
“What if we purposefully failed our simulation?”
“What?” Alessia, my mother, and Fiona said in unison, their tone ranging from shocked to something that sounded like a hidden no.
“Hear me out,” I said, and then waited for them to nod before continuing. “If we fail the simulation, that would immediately land us on the to-be-sold list, right? That’s awful, no questioning that, but maybe we could use it to our advantage.”
“What kind of advantage could we possibly gain from being sold on the dark web?” Fiona challenged.
“It’s a place where everyone is a no one, everyone and no one exists, so who’s to say Briola would figure out if, surprise, one of the potential buyers would be the two of you.” Neither of them said anything. “If you were the ones to buy us, nothing bad would happen to us, right, we’d ‘legally’ be released from this hellhole, but, at the same time, it would give you the chance to document the process, gather info to use against them. As far as I’m aware, human trafficking is highly illegal in most places across the globe and you can’t call this anything but that.”
“You’ve really thought about this,” my mother commented quietly, her brows pulled together in concentration, her wrinkles a little bit more visible.
“Not to sound like a scaredy-cat or anything,” Fiona said a little hesitantly, “but that sounds awfully dangerous, and risky, and like it could go wrong in a million different ways.”
“See, while I’m fully aware of that, it might be less dangerous than trying to literally break out. Chances are they would simply shoot us.”
Both our mothers pulled grimaces at that. We hadn’t told them about the time we actually tried that and how I did get shot, and I planned on keeping it that way. If they knew, it would only make them more hesitant to consider my plan.
“While it may be less dangerous than reenacting Prison Break, how would we even fail the simulation in the first place?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.
“We don’t even know how or when the simulation works,” Fiona continued.
My mother spoke up before I could. “You should ask Leon about it.”
“Speaking of whom,” I said, completely diverging from the topic at hand, “have you heard from him recently?”
The two of them frowned, confused. Alessia shrugged while my mother said, “No. It’s been a day or two since he last pinged us, his way of letting us know he’s okay that leaves the least traces behind. Why do you ask?”
“I haven’t seen him all day, and I’m concerned about what that could mean. He’s always been around before.”
“I don’t think it’s a reason to worry,” my mother said, “so stay calm for now. Sometimes this would just happen. After Briola contacted him years ago, we didn’t hear from him for months. Surely it’ll be the case this time as well.”
She sounded reassuring, but her words didn’t really reach their mark with me. Maybe I was overreacting, even if only internally, but how could I not? I didn’t want to lose him all over again, especially when I didn’t even have the chance to properly apologize for what I said.
“I really hope so. But, on the off chance that this isn’t the same type of situation as the other ones, it means only that time is running out even faster. First the tattoo and now Leon—if he’s in danger, we have to do something, and we have to do it quickly.”
So much was at stake, the risk so high regardless of what we’d do. As much as I wished that their threat was just another fake bear, I knew it wasn’t. So many teens suffered the same fate as we had, others were suffering right now, their minds damaged or in the process of being damaged irreparably, and if we didn’t stop this machinery, who would? Thanks to our mothers, we had a unique opportunity to bring an end to it all, even if it meant risking our own lives.
“Well, as much as I’m still on the fence about this whole idea,” Alessia began, “it’s the best idea we have so far. I’ve always suspected money would be involved one way or another. Knowing the right people and having years, you’d be surprised how much you can acquire. As for the simulation…” She looked at my mother.
“Leon told us a little about it; maybe it’ll be helpful enough to achieve our goal,” she said, though she didn’t sound enthusiastic about any of this.
To an extent I could understand it, both her sons trapped far away from her. And while she could watch, she couldn’t intervene or help, which couldn’t be easy. Not that our perspective was any more desirable.
“Before your first simulation,” she said, “he looked around the coding of the implants and simulations and did something to it. He said they didn’t notice.”
Wait. Wasn’t there something about this in our files? Berlin simulation showing signs of interference, outside or inside. Possible error i
n formula or coding. Source and cause, to be determined.
What if they realized that the most likely source of an outside interference was Leon and were now investigating him? They had to know that he would be more than capable of doing something like this, but how great were the chances of them finding actual evidence against him? Did they even need any? If the Villa had IT personnel, weren’t any of them just as qualified as Leon? Surely, but he was the only one with a personal connection.
“Okay?” Fiona asked a little impatiently.
“According to him, the simulations happen at night when you’re asleep, and you can supposedly influence the version of you that’s in it by, in a way, transferring a piece of information from your awake self to your simulated self.”
“That just sounds like straight-up bullshit, just saying.”
“Like the simulations being a thing at all doesn’t as well?” I pointed out.
She tilted her head to the side and nodded, a vague agreement.
Ignoring the two of us, my mother went on, “In theory, whatever you think before you fall asleep can become something the other you knows as well.”
After we ended the call, our mothers settling on We’ll think about your plan, I knew I couldn’t just leave the Leon issue at this. As much as my mother tried to reassure me, the whole thing about him altering our simulations and Briola possibly having found out didn’t allow my mind to rest.
…
The only person I could ask was Dawid, whom I’d ignored whenever we’d passed him. Hopefully he was still grateful enough for my help that he’d carry on as though nothing happened.
“Hey,” I said as I approached him. As per usual he sat in his armchair with yet another book in hand—1984 by George Orwell, because why not read something like that in a place that reeked of Big Brother is watching you—and looked up at me almost a little surprised.
“Good evening, Oscar,” he said and smiled, open and approachable.