by Alice Reeds
“That’s the attitude I like to see,” she said, and raised one brow like a challenge, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Freighter
“This is crazy,” Fiona said with a sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Turning to look at me, she frowned. “What possible reason could you have to apologize?”
I shrugged. “We have no other choice than doing this, and somehow it feels like it’s my fault because I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“Hard to think of something else when this is literally the only option left, so quit that self-deprecating train of thought.” She touched my hand and faintly smiled. “If this works, we’ll be free, or so I hope. So let’s focus on that.”
I hated having to put her through this, but unfortunately, she was right. Jumping overboard was our only option. There was only so much a human body could withstand, and even if it made me feel sick and my skin crawl, I hoped that the drop was high enough to kill us fast.
And here I thought the things we’d gone through on the island were macabre—they were nothing compared to this. Even the idea that this was all just a simulation didn’t bring me the solace I hoped it would.
We’d be okay. I had to focus on that. Everything that happened here was just in our heads.
“Isn’t it ironic, though?” I said a little absentmindedly.
“What is?”
“On the island I pulled you away from the cliff, worried something could happen, even if only by accident, and now we’re about to climb over that railing and greet the water.”
“L’appel du vide.”
“Despite the fact that you don’t speak French, your pronunciation is surprisingly good.”
Fiona’s smile reached her eyes this time, made them sparkle just a little bit. “If we survive this, could you teach me?”
“Deal.”
I wanted to remain here, in this moment, bask in this temporary feeling of silliness, watch her smile for hours and just forget everything around us. I was certain that jumping was the key, would put an end to this, but still a part of me was afraid of what would happen if I was wrong.
How long would it take until we drowned?
How painful would it be?
“So, we’re really doing this?” Fiona asked, her hands on the railing, her eyes focused on the horizon.
“Looks like it, yes.”
“Should we for some reason actually die, can I say something first?” Moving her head just enough to look at me from the corner of her eye, she waited for me to speak, but all I did was nod. “I’m glad we went through this together, which I know sounds fucked up, but even with how awful everything was, I liked spending time with you, getting to know you, and…falling in love with you. You’re nothing like who I thought you were, and I’m grateful for that. In all this awfulness, you were this one thing that made me want to continue instead of giving up. Sure, I would’ve tried to make it for myself if I had to do this alone, but doing it together made it bearable. What I’m trying to say is…thank you for keeping me sane all this time, and for seeing me for me, and for liking me for me.”
She left me utterly speechless. What could I possibly say to that? My heart ached with the fact of just how lucky I was in this unlucky situation. Giving myself time to form a good response, I stepped behind her, laid my head on her shoulder, and wrapped my arms around her waist, her hands settling over mine. Softly I kissed her cheek, her shoulder, watched as she closed her eyes and smiled.
I was such a lucky bastard.
“Merci,” I said quietly, “for allowing me to get to know you, to discover a side of you no one else gets to see, and for falling in love with you and actually having my feelings reciprocated. As much as my presence helped you, yours saved my life. I wouldn’t have made it without you. You’re a wonderful person, with a hard shell but a soft inside, and I am the luckiest guy alive because I get to call you mine. I really…I hope this isn’t the end.”
Allowing ourselves a little more time, we just stood there and watched the never-changing horizon. The two of us alone, surrounded by nothing, our presence the only thing we needed, our past as uncertain as our future, and amid this storm of unknown factors and fears, I allowed myself to feel just a little hopeful.
Eventually though, we moved, climbed over the railing, and started to count.
“One,” I said.
“Two,” she said.
I love you, I mouthed, and then, together:
“Three!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Villa
“So?” Ivy asked expectantly, barely waiting to speak until Fiona closed the door to our room the next day.
“We’re doing it,” I said, feeling much more confident about my decision. This was the perfect way to prove myself the way I wanted, needed. Besides, we had no time to figure out anything else. The sand in our hourglass was running out scarily fast, made only worse by our inability to see how much was left. We couldn’t risk going to see our files again.
“An hour or two before the night bell,” Fiona added, “since the IT people should be gone by then and the likelihood of us getting caught is low.”
“So, you’re just gonna wing it?”
“Actually,” I began, still unsure of how to deliver the news of how much I wanted to change our plan. Fiona would hate it. “I want Ivy to come down to the IT floor with me.”
“What?” Fiona said, sharp and surprised. Ivy’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to argue. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Fiona, though I was sure she thought that immediately, but it simply made the most sense.
I raised my hands, palms forward. “Hear me out. It’s the option that raises the least suspicion.”
“How?” Fiona crossed her arms, her tone annoyed, defensive, and much too close to angry.
“If you come with me and someone from the staff sees you, it’ll be easy to conclude that I must be nearby, right? Since we stick together.” I began speaking way faster than intended in an attempt to lay it all out before Fiona could try to argue against me. “But if Ivy comes with me, who’d think of me being there as well? They’d just think she’s loitering or maybe looking for Wakaba, which would buy us time and threaten our plan the least.”
Neither said a thing at first; they just looked at me, Fiona in a defensive stance while Ivy was torn, her eyes wandering between Fiona and me, wondering, considering. I probably hadn’t presented my case as well as I could’ve or should’ve, but it had to do.
“What exactly am I supposed to do? Just sit around and wait until you return, take a nap or some shit?”
“You have to take Dawid’s attention off the stairs long enough that he won’t know I’m gone. If anyone comes to check on us, because of what happened yesterday, you’ll be able to sell them some kind of lie or excuse, doesn’t matter. If we go together, our room would be empty and that’d be way harder to explain, especially if they don’t find us anywhere in the Villa on the cameras.”
“They have CCTV cameras down there, too,” Fiona said.
It was a valid point.
“Just have to hope no one is watching those hallways when they don’t expect anyone to be there,” I said. “Besides, they should be busy watching everyone else on the main floors.”
“If he thinks this is the right thing to do,” Ivy finally said, hesitantly, “then maybe we should just trust him? He’s the only one who can do this, so if he wants me to go, maybe we shouldn’t argue?”
“I trust him, too, that’s not the problem,” Fiona said with a pointed look at Ivy. “It’s the Villa I don’t trust. And I’m worried. What if you get caught? Who’ll kick their asses when I’m not there to do it?”
I stepped toward Fiona and lightly touched her arm. “I’ll just have to not get caught, then.”
She met my eyes, her expression unreadable, though the anger and annoyance vanished. “Like that’s so damn easy.”
“Just because it isn’t easy doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
Fiona uncrossed her arms, her shoulders relaxing, her hand moving on top of mine, and finally, with a small nod, she said, “Fine.”
A smile grew on my face.
“You okay with it?” she asked Ivy.
“FBI father—I can listen, warn, and hide if I spot anyone. I can’t kick ass, but I can be useful in other ways.”
“All right, then,” I said. “Let’s go.”
…
The day passed quickly while nervousness coiled in my stomach as the time to go approached. Acting all smiley in front of Pamela was annoying, but the fact that she accompanied us back to our room after a short meeting with Doc Bowie was unsettling. Doc Bowie hadn’t asked us much, or said much of anything in general, just watched us for most of the meeting. If either of them suspected something, they hadn’t let it show.
If only I could read minds.
Pamela reminded us to behave and reassured us that she knew we usually weren’t the sort of people to break rules. As if she knew the first thing about us. The notes they had on us told them our blood types and psychological profiles—however they got those in the first place—but they didn’t know anything about who we really were, nothing about our thoughts and morals, what we were willing to do and how far we’d go.
Dressed all in black like burglars, Ivy and I were ready to go about two and a half hours before the night bell. In theory it should give me enough time to create the loophole our mothers needed, and I hoped in practice it’d work out that way, too. We’d be off the CCTV grid way too long, but it had to be worth the risk.
There was also something else I wanted to set up that I thought of the previous night.
“Ready?” Fiona asked, her hands on my shoulders, her eyes staring straight into mine as though to make sure she’d be able to see if I were being honest. There was no use in lying.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I admitted and rested my forehead against hers. “We’ll be careful, and with a little luck we’ll make it out of this place in no time.”
“Be careful. And if you fuck up, I will kick your ass.”
“How very reassuring and loving of you.”
“You’d love it,” she said and stuck her tongue out, making me laugh. After a quick kiss that felt way too much like a final goodbye, we left the room, Fiona first, then Ivy and me a few seconds later.
Fiona approached Dawid and positioned herself to block his view. Quickly we crossed the room and rushed down the stairs, past a group of girls making their way upstairs and laughing at something, none paying any attention to us.
Soon we made it to the unmarked door and onto the staircase. It was empty, no staff standing around waiting to pounce. I didn’t like it. It was too quiet, especially after we were explicitly told not to come here again. I expected them to watch things more closely, but perhaps I’d seen one too many movies. Or maybe they thought we’d be too scared to try again—and I was scared, but we didn’t have any other choice. We made our way down the stairs, our footsteps echoing off the walls, an empty metallic sound, and then stopped before the door onto the minus three floor.
“You sure you can do it?” Ivy asked.
Maybe? “Yes.”
“Our lives depend on it so, like, no pressure.” None at all. “One forty-five?”
I nodded, and then we went through the door.
No voices or footsteps, no noises or staff. There were no signs pointing toward which room numbers were in which directions, and the first few doors we passed didn’t have numbers on them at all. Leon said that there would be. He wouldn’t lie, had no reason to…unless they changed it after they realized what Leon had done, that he was a liability, a threat to their security.
Don’t think about that!
It took three hallways, and more time than I had planned for, until we found door one forty-five. Ivy and I exchanged a look, searching and nervous, before I stepped closer and tried to hear if any sounds came from inside. If it were a staff room there would be voices, maybe a TV or music, but there was only silence.
Closing my eyes momentarily, I placed my hand on the door handle and pushed it down. It opened soundlessly and revealed nothing but darkness at first, and then, when I opened it farther, a broom closet. Cleaning utensils, a few tools, absolutely nothing of significance or that’d be useful.
“Well, shit,” Ivy said behind me.
“Let’s try the doors before and after this one.”
We checked door after door, some locked, some filled with replacement computer parts and spare cables. Their tech was certainly state of the art, and if they weren’t using it for evil and our time wasn’t limited, I would’ve loved to have a look around. Instead we moved on.
One sixty-nine was the magic number.
The room was quite big and separated into a few relatively narrow corridors between almost ceiling-high server towers, their farm much bigger than I anticipated. Then again, running several dozen different simulations and the calculations for those, storing their data and whatnot, did require quite the setup.
“If you hear anything, even if it’s just a mouse or the air vents, let me know,” I told Ivy.
“Got it.”
While she stood in front of the door, I set out to find the laptop I knew had to be somewhere hooked into the system of servers, the main station, so to speak. The servers blinked different colors and at different speeds as I passed them, the cables connecting them all neatly gathered and labeled, hidden away behind perfectly clean glass doors.
“Aha!” I whispered to myself once I found it farther in the back in the middle column of servers. It looked like any other ordinary small laptop, black with an illuminated keyboard, no Windows but instead running on Linux, old-school style. Thankfully so did my computer at home, at least the one I used to do all the things I shouldn’t.
Cracking my knuckles, I reminded myself to trust my skills, as well as all the lessons Leon taught me, every little bit I absorbed over the years. I could do it. I had to. I would. Doubt tried to force its way back into my thoughts, but I pushed it aside.
Then I went to work, my mind a perfectly calm plain, my focus zeroing in on the task at hand and not allowing any other thoughts to distract me.
My fingers flew over the keyboard with lines and lines of commands and coding as I dug my way through the system, searching for a weak spot, just the right one I could use and then cover it up.
Once I found what I was looking for, the real work began.
“Hide,” Ivy said, her voice catching me off guard and the meaning of what she said taking a moment to register. Ripping my eyes away from the screen in front of me, I looked to my right and spotted her rushing toward me, her eyes wide.
“What?” I asked, hoping I’d understood her wrong.
“Staff, I heard them, and their voices were getting louder, so we need to hide, now!”
This couldn’t be happening. I was so close, just a little bit more and I would’ve had it!
Looking around, there wasn’t really much that offered us any cover, nothing but a small cupboard and a low table, neither ideal, but we didn’t have much of a choice. I was too tall to fit into the cupboard, so I folded myself into as small of a cube as I could and hid beneath the table. It was dark in the back of the room; hopefully they wouldn’t notice us, me. Ivy disappeared into the cupboard and closed the door behind her just as the door into the server room opened.
Two people walked inside, their voices dark and raspy, and they spoke in what I assumed was Polish. One of them laughed at something the other said while they moved around. I stopped breathing as they came way too close for my liking. I could see only their legs now.
&
nbsp; Were they looking for something? If they decide to use the laptop, we are so screwed!
I pushed myself against the wall as one of the dudes came even closer, the tips of his shoes dangerously close to my leg. A fraction of a step more and we’d get caught. My heart practically rose up my throat.
The one farther away said something and the one in front of me turned toward him, said something in return that sounded harsh, followed by laughter. I gasped for air like some kind of fish the second the door fell shut behind them. After a minute or two, I crawled out of my hiding spot.
“I thought everyone would be gone by now,” Ivy said after she came out of her spot as well.
I shrugged. “Guess they had other plans.”
“Assholes.”
I went back to the laptop to finish my work while Ivy went over to the door and opened it quietly, stuck her head out to make sure the dudes were gone before going out into the hallway again. My focus zeroed back in on my task as I tried to finish it even quicker than before, and then tried to get the second one set up as well, a safety net I hoped we wouldn’t have to use. We couldn’t risk a another incident like this.
I was done a couple of minutes later, a perfect loophole in place with a blanket to hide it under, the coding flawless. Or at least I had to trust it was. Pulling out the tablet, I sent our mothers the data they needed to get in, victory making my heart race and an involuntary smile appear on my face. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time left for me to wait around for their reply, not even to see if it had worked. But I’d done it. I’d actually done it.
For over a decade my father told me I was a living, breathing, walking failure, a disgrace to our family name, wasn’t good enough, an idiot, and would never amount to much of anything. But he was wrong, always had been. I was all those things to him because I wasn’t Leon, and finally I didn’t want to be my brother anymore, because I was good enough being myself, better than our father would ever realize.
I didn’t fail when my skills were put to the test, damn it! Even though I’d doubted myself, I still managed to do it, use everything I was taught and also learned on my own. Take that, Briola!