“I guess you’re not far from where I first found you, huh? I’m sure sorry about that. Probably I should’ve got you out sooner. But see, over there.” Piper moved her eyes, the only part of her capable of movement, toward the direction of a vent. “You could use that if you had a mind to. Bet that leads somewhere.”
Sebastian saw the vent but turned his black face back to Piper and didn’t move. He obviously had no intention of going anywhere.
“If you change your mind, I won’t hold it against you.” The pain caught up with Piper again and she fought it with everything she had.
“Piper?”
Startled, Piper’s eyes darted about the room, but she could see nothing.
“Piper McCloud?” The voice spoke again.
It was the same voice Piper had heard in her room back in Lowland County—the one Dr. Hellion had warned her about. Just as Piper had suspected and feared, it had been stalking her.
Suddenly a shadow passed before the door. Moments later, the overhead security camera violently snapped free from its casing and fell to the floor. Terrified, Piper couldn’t move away or defend herself, and was forced to watch in horror as the shadow moved toward her closer and closer. The nearer it came, the more substance it gathered, until the shadow morphed into a man.
He was dressed in black, a backpack about his shoulders. He had a wiry frame that was perpetually in motion and rippled with muscles. He had the harried look of someone who was constantly on the run and under the gun. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of hard decisions and a life lived with deep regrets.
“Piper McCloud?” he asked with a quiet authority that reverberated throughout the room.
“I—I am. How’d you do that?”
“Do what?” He had already slipped the backpack off his shoulders and thrown it to the ground in quick motions. Unzipping it, he pulled out specific instruments with practiced motions.
“You weren’t there and now you are. How’d you appear like that?”
“Oh, you mean how was I invisible? I don’t know. How do you fly?”
No one had ever asked Piper that before. “I dunno.”
“Then I don’t know either.” The man placed gray plasticine against the computer control panel. “Listen to me, we don’t have much time. I’m J. and I’ve been following you and watching you for a long time. I am here to get you out.”
“Dr. Hellion told me you were up to no good.”
He quickly looked up from his work. “And you believed her?”
Piper didn’t answer.
“If I wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead already. I’m here to help you—to get you out.”
After all Piper had been through, she wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. Seeing her hesitation, J. put down his tools. “Look at me. Unless you trust me, they’re going to make you forget you ever flew. Is that what you want?”
“No.” As Betty always said—beggars can’t be choosers—and Piper was hardly in a position to be choosy.
J. nodded and went back to work. He was an expert at what he did. Retrievals were never easy and sometimes things went terribly wrong. He had to be careful and make sure Piper was up to taking direction. “You’ll have to do what I say when I say or they’ll snap you back in here so fast it’ll make your head spin.” He was attaching wires between a small clock and the plasticine.
Relief washed over Piper. In precious moments this man could take away the terrible pain and freedom would be hers. Her prayers had been answered and tears of relief clouded her vision. “Did you get the others already? Or do you need me to show you where they are?”
“I’m only here for you.” J. was definitive on this point.
“And you’ll come back for them later?”
“That won’t be possible. It’s taken me weeks to reach you undetected. With the security in this place, I’ll be lucky to get you out in one piece.”
“But—” In a matter of mere moments Piper’s top-of-the-mountain elation fell to twenty-leagues-beneath-the-sea despair. “But we can’t leave them behind.”
“It can’t be helped. There’s only so much that I can do.” J. was a realist and he didn’t candy-coat anything. Life was hard, and as far as he was concerned, people were better off dealing with cold hard facts.
“You have to try. . . .”
“Try?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t talk to me about trying. It’s all I’ve done my whole life. You don’t know what’s been happening. There used to be thousands of us. But now you down here are the only young ones left. Letitia Hellion has seen to that. You’re it.”
“But—”
“I’m here for you.” J. set the clock on the timer and it started to count down from sixty seconds. “You’re exceptional, Piper McCloud. Do you know how incredibly rare it is to do what you do? To fly? It’s unheard of.”
“But—”
“Close your eyes, there’s going to be a small detonation.” He took cover at the side of the room.
“I won’t go without them.”
J. looked up, shocked.
“ ’Cause of my flying, they’re all in trouble. Dr. Hellion says that if I break the rules again she’s gonna take it out on them. If I leave and they find out I’m missing, there’s no telling what’ll happen to my friends.”
“You can’t make yourself responsible for what she does. It’s not your fault.”
“I still can’t go with you.”
“I won’t take no for an answer.”
“I CAN’T!!!!” Piper screamed. She didn’t have the strength to fight the pain and J. at the same time. “If you try to take me, I’ll scream and I’ll let ’em know what you’re up to. You won’t get more than two feet out that door before they’ll be all over us.”
J.’s clock was counting back from thirty and he began to pace back and forth and pull at his hair. Piper had the distinct feeling he was itching for a cigarette by the way his fingers were twitching and going to his mouth, like he was expecting to find one dangling there.
“She’s already brainwashed you. If you let me take you out of here, I can fix that.”
“No.” No matter what, Piper wasn’t going to hurt anyone else ever again.
J. visibly deflated and sighed with defeat. Rushing to the clock, he quickly unwired it. A simmering rage seemed to bubble up inside of him. “We don’t have the resources she has. Every day she stamps out another species, snatches another kid, and we have to sit and watch her do it.” Suddenly he violently punched the wall. “What will become of us?”
“I’m sorry.” Piper wept miserably.
J. ran a hand through his hair, sorting through the rubble of the debacle. “It’s not your fault. I was too late. I should have found a way to get to you sooner.” He gathered up his bits and pieces, shoving them aimlessly into his backpack.
Piper didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t be sorrier or feel worse. After J. put the last of his instruments away, he picked up Betty’s white linen handkerchief off of the floor and held it in his hand. He ran his fingers slowly over a tiny embroidered bluebird.
“I’ll be back for you, Piper.” J. had steely resolve in his eyes and he gently placed the handkerchief in his pocket closest to his heart. Slowly he began to fade, and then he disappeared altogether. The room appeared empty, but J.’s voice was close by. “I’ll find a way.”
After J. departed for good, Piper was left with only Sebastian and the terrible pain to keep her company. Through the darkest hours of the night, she bravely waged her silent battle. It wasn’t until dawn approached that her last reserves of energy dwindled. Her breaths came in short rasps, and Sebastian drew close.
“The—pain—” Piper whispered to Sebastian, “it—I . . . can’t.” She wanted to apologize to Sebastian for not being able to save him, but was too weak to talk. Sebastian watched as her body went limp. Beside himself, he jumped up and down, but Piper remained silent and still. In desperation, Sebastian stood upright on his hind legs and inhaled d
eeply. Opening his mouth wide, he began to sing—not with the voice of a cricket, but with the deep, rich sounds of an operatic tenor.
“I have seen the coming of the dawn.”
Sebastian’s voice was so extraordinary that Piper’s eyes flickered and then opened, and she managed to focus on the little black cricket singing his heart out.
“Unconcernedly watching the passing of the day,
Whiled away my hours in joyful play—
I live to simply sing the song of love
And play the music of my heart—”
The music filled up every space in the room and then spilled outward through the vent, and quickly traveled through the entire facility of I.N.S.A.N.E.
In the laboratory the silver giraffe raised his head, listening to the music. Stretching his long neck so that he could press his ear right up to the vent on the ceiling, he drank in every note. The red rose, no longer feisty, paused in its coughing to listen to the music.
In the facility’s main security room, sensors promptly notified Agent A. Agent of the sound disturbance. He instantly activated the silent alarm and reached for the phone. “Dr. Hellion? Yes. We have another situation.”
After the events of the evening, no one had been able to sleep on level thirteen. As the music wafted down the dormitory hallway, kids sat up in their beds and listened in wonder.
“Dancing and playing in the light,
I am filled with passion and delight.”
In her nightdress, Lily came out into the hallway as though in a trance. She was soon joined by the others.
“Where is that coming from?”
“It’s so beautiful.”
“It’s the cricket,” Conrad stated plainly.
“That tiny cricket’s making all that sound?”
“They find them in the floorboards of opera houses.” Conrad shrugged and returned to his bed. He didn’t want to be with the others. He couldn’t look them in the face.
“My voice is free.
It rises and floats away from me—
I am unable to escape these walls.
My body will not float like my song’s plaintive calls.”
Piper’s chest swelled and the power of the music banished any pain. Her body tingled and, emboldened with Herculean strength, she effortlessly pushed against the M.O.L.D., causing it to groan under the pressure.
“It’s coming from the testing laboratory.”
“How is that possible?” Dr. Hellion was applying her lipstick faster than she would have liked. Agent A. Agent had met her in the elevator and they were on their way to the fourth level.
“We have agents standing by.”
“This is the second disturbance in one night.” Dr. Hellion’s voice was almost irritated. “Before Piper McCloud showed up we went seven years without an incident. Seven long years and now we have two in one night.” She snapped her lipstick shut. “This stops now!”
“Only in my mind I float free as my song
And I fly to a home where I belong.
There, those who know my heart well
Sing, sing, sing with my song’s spell—”
The sun was just about to rise in Lowland County, but Joe McCloud had not been able to sleep. Sitting on the windowsill of his bedroom, he gazed at the fast-fading stars in the morning sky. It was going to be a good, clear day.
“Mr. McCloud, you’ll catch your death from that morning air.” Betty turned over, discovering Joe in his underwear on the open windowsill. The weather had turned cold, but Joe didn’t seem to notice.
“Hmmm.” As usual, Joe didn’t have much to say, but Betty knew what he was thinking all the same.
“She’ll be home soon enough.”
“She’d sure have liked this sky,” Joe sighed.
“They snatched my voice,
Held me against my choice.
I forget all that was mine
Yet I reach to dream it one last time.”
The cricket’s voice sang not for the ears but for the heart. His words resonated with a strength and truth that transfixed all nine children in the dormitory hallway, as the music permeated their very cells. In no time at all, the song hit at their core and a sharp pain stabbed them squarely in the chest. The drugs Letitia Hellion had pumped into them were neutralized—and all fears, both big and small, were forced out, leaving their mouths buzzing with the taste of freedom.
“Piper was right,” Kimber chirped. “We’ve gotta get outta here.”
“You got that right!” For once Smitty agreed with Kimber.
“We’ll escape,” Nalen said forcefully, and Ahmed was silent.
The singing affected Conrad too, but his heart was so crowded by meanness and madness that the beauty of the song was too painful to bear. He writhed in pain, his bed-sheets tangling around his legs. As much as he resisted, the song gnawed at the meanness and madness inside of him.
“I struggle to the last
But my light is fading fast,
A lone warrior waging a brutal fight
Against an endless night.”
Dr. Hellion, Agent A. Agent, and a security team burst into the room where Piper was being held. As the door opened, the music crashed against them, battering their defenses.
“Over there, Dr. Hellion.” Agent A. Agent pointed to where Sebastian sang.
“I fight for escape even if the notes of this song
Are the only part of me to leave.”
Examining the cricket, Letitia Hellion came as close as she had come in a long time to feeling an emotion. As it started to bubble up inside of her, she firmly clamped down on it, and instead turned to Agent A. Agent. “Give me your shoe!”
Agent A. Agent immediately complied.
“I rise up out of here,
Reaching for the things I hold dear.”
The voculus romalea microptera, which was the name scientists had given to Sebastian, wait their whole lives to sing one song. When they start to sing that song, it often lasts days, and sometimes weeks, and they sing about everything they have heard and seen and learned in their lives. As Sebastian had only spent a few short months in the Vienna State Opera House before being captured and imprisoned inside I.N.S.A.N.E., the only thing he had experienced that was worth singing about was inspired by the time he had spent with Piper McCloud. But that was enough.
“I will not stay silent,
I shall not remain still.”
In the laboratory, the glow created by the silver giraffe blinded the spiders that made cobwebs in the ceiling of his cell. In one great shake, the red rose shook off all of the black soot on its leaves and bloomed with rebel daring.
In the dormitory hallway, the children cheered and cried, while Conrad screamed in pain as the meanness and madness was driven from him.
Dr. Hellion snatched the offered shoe from Agent A. Agent and raised it high in the air.
“Nooooo!” Piper shrieked.
“I sing. I sing to the end.”
In one swift motion, Dr. Hellion hit hard and did not miss her mark. Sebastian’s voice was forever silenced.
From that moment on, Piper would remember nothing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CONRAD HAD betrayed Piper, had betrayed them all. He’d cut a deal with Dr. Hellion and told her everything. It was the only logical choice available to him at that time.
On the afternoon of the escape, when Dr. Hellion summoned Conrad to her office, he knew that she knew something. She knew he knew she knew.
“Conrad, please sit down.”
Conrad remained standing. Letitia Hellion’s fresh coat of lipstick glistened and she leaned back in her chair with an expression that was welcoming and conveyed warmth.
“I know you are up to something. I know the others are involved too.” In the end, it had been Piper herself who had tipped Dr. Hellion off. The week before when Letitia had arrived at the dormitory to invite Piper for an evening stroll, she had found the girl mumbling about being tired, and she was una
ble to meet her eye. Piper’s sudden hatred for her was as transparent as a picture window, and so intense that the child wasn’t even able to pretend otherwise. This unexpected turn of events prompted Letitia to quickly return to her office and order a special security team to investigate the matter.
It went without saying that Letitia Hellion’s greatest fear was that J. had, despite all her precautions, gotten to Piper. For weeks she’d sensed his presence and, knowing J. as she did, Letitia could expect him to be reckless, unpredictable, and willing to go to any extreme. There was a lot of history between the two, and that history had taught Letitia, in no uncertain terms, never to underestimate J. Indeed, he was the one person who posed a real threat to her plan, while at the same time being the very same person that the facility’s security could neither repel nor contain.
To her very great relief, the security report had come back detailing secret midnight meetings on level thirteen, among many other things. Naturally, Letitia Hellion not only knew exactly what was going on, but how to deal with it.
“It’s an escape, I presume.” Dr. Hellion watched Conrad closely, but he gave nothing away, and his features leveled into an inscrutable neutral expression.
“You alone are smart enough to understand that it won’t work, which is why I’m talking to you. I assume the others don’t know the consequences they’ll face when caught? No, I wouldn’t have told them either. How can a child face torture, or having the very life squeezed out of their body and enduring a living death? With stakes so high, they probably wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I worry for the little ones the most, don’t you? Can Jasper survive it? Or Lily? They’re so young, and fragile, and under the circumstances it’ll be necessary to use extraordinary means.”
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