A girl also to my left who had barely said a word took a deep breath, preparing herself to join in. “Do you think we’ll ever get to see it for ourselves? I would love to see where I came from.” She received several nods of the head in agreement. I was one of them.
I had a question for them all. “Do you think our parents will know who we are? They haven’t seen us since we were babies, will they care about us like we’re their children?”
“Doubt it,” Markus snorted. “They sent us across the galaxy, they don’t care about us. They’re just interested in saving themselves.”
I had never heard such negativity from someone in the project before. Admittedly, the Department hadn’t let us socialize very much so I had never spent this much time with other aliens before, but his attitude was still confronting.
I decided I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe my birth parents only brought me into this world to ship me off so they could find a new home. If my adoptive parents had taught me anything, it was that a strong bond was formed between parents and their children. There was no way they could be that cold.
Yet I had still spent a lot of time throughout my life wondering if they were thinking about me. Did they wonder what I looked like? Did they care that I was doing well in school? Were they proud of me for making so many friends and living up to the standards of the project? I had always hoped with all my heart they would spare a few moments to think of me. I know I thought about them a lot.
“I guess we’ll never find out what our parents are like unless the project continues,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t meant to bring up the topic of the project, it kind of just slipped out. The only way I was going to get my curiosity about my parents satiated was to meet them. To do that, the project had to come to fruition so it was safe for them to join us on Earth.
“I wouldn’t count on that happening.” Markus again, Mr. Negativity. Who invited him into the conversation, anyway? “If the Department have their way we’ll be here forever.”
“The Department are only trying to keep us safe,” Cecily shot back.
“They’re doing what they do best: control us.”
“They’re trying to help our people.”
The conversation was going around in circles. If Markus didn’t make Cecily cry, then she would hit him. Either way, it wasn’t going to end well. I decided to interject and change the subject. I felt a little guilty for starting it in the first place. “Do you think they understand English on Trucon? I mean, they have to be communicating with the Department, right?”
Markus leaned back in his plastic chair and crossed his arms, out of the conversation. Katy, the girl who occupied the room across from mine responded first. “They’re probably all learning our language in preparation for the big move down here. Kind of like learning French before going to France for a holiday.”
We all ignored Markus’s snort of disapproval. Cecily spoke next. “They must be very frightened and excited with the thought of leaving Trucon behind. Can you imagine leaving everything to start all over again on another planet?”
I nodded. “It’s probably all they’re focused on. I imagine they are as anxious to meet us as we are them. It’s going to be a big change for aliens and humans alike.”
We were interrupted by the sound of the buzzer telling us recreational time was over. We quickly obeyed the robotic alarm and went our separate ways before the guards forced us to.
CHAPTER 3
I headed for the kitchen so I could do my chores for the afternoon. I helped prepare the dinner, working alongside the paid employees who never said a word to me.
People rarely spoke in the kitchen, even between the paid staff. I don’t think they were entirely comfortable being there but I could have just been paranoid. There was a good chance they weren’t told we were aliens. Perhaps they were told we were plain criminals or something? Either way, preparing the different meals broke up my monotonous routine.
I had never been interested in cooking before. My parents enjoyed it and I always had homework or afterschool activities so they never forced me to help out. As it turned out, I was quite adept at peeling potatoes and shelling peas. It kept my hands busy which made the time pass a little faster.
I usually shared my kitchen duties with a guy named Garrick Smith. Like me, he was a little clumsy. I’d lost count of the amount of band aids he had gone through. The routine of getting them down and opening the packet for him was quite familiar.
Today we were grating a plethora of vegetables for a soup. With utensils like a grater and a knife, we were bound to need the plasters before too long.
“Interesting conversation going on in rec time,” Garrick started out of nowhere. He kept his voice to just above a whisper, making sure we couldn’t be overheard by the humorless workers. I didn’t realize he had been paying attention to the discussion.
“We don’t get to talk about this stuff much, I guess it was bound to happen with us all together,” I replied. It was now the longest conversation that had ever been had in the kitchen.
“Markus is an idiot.”
“He certainly is.” There was no way I was going to argue on that point. I always tried to avoid Markus in the hallways. Most of us accepted the rules and lived by them. Markus, on the other hand, thought they were just something to challenge and bucked against them at every opportunity. He used the confines of the project to blame for every problem he ever had. He wasn’t a good ambassador for our people.
Garrick continued on. “You’re pretty passionate about the project, aren’t you?”
“I guess,” I shrugged, noncommittal. I wasn’t going to give away anything just yet. Even if I did think Garrick was a nice guy. With his shoulder-length chocolate brown hair and matching eyes, he wasn’t too bad to look at either.
“I take it you don’t agree with them putting the project on hold either?” He raised one perfect eyebrow in question. I looked around, triple checking nobody could overhear us.
“No, I’m not. I think it’s a cop out. You?” I raised an eyebrow back in challenge. I had told him the truth, I wanted to see if he had enough guts to do the same.
“I think they have no intention of continuing on with it,” Garrick replied boldly, but quietly. “I think they will keep us here until they can quietly dispose of us. And Trucon will never be heard of again.”
I stared at him carefully, trying to work out whether he was trying to bait me, or whether he really meant it. Because if he really meant it, I might just have found the person who could help me escape. But I needed to be smart about it, in a place like the complex, you could never let your guard down.
“You really think they’ll kill us?” I asked skeptically.
“I think they’ll do whatever it takes to bury the whole project.”
“Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?” I challenged, trying to focus on the vegetables so we wouldn’t get in trouble for talking so much.
“What do you have in mind?”
“Can I trust you?”
Garrick laughed to himself. “If I say yes will you believe me?”
He had a good point, but I didn’t know how else I would be able to work it out. I was trained to detect opportunities to find the good in people, not instantly distrust everyone. I looked at him cheekily. “Probably not. So tell me a secret about yourself, something you’d be too embarrassed for anyone else to know. Build up some goodwill with me.”
He pursed his lips together as he thought it through. Finally, he had a light bulb moment. “When I was seven, I sneezed and farted at the same time. We were in a quiet classroom full of kids. Everyone looked and stared at me while I just turned red and ran out of the room. Is that embarrassing enough for you?”
I giggled, having to cover my mouth with my hand to stay quiet. “Okay, that’s pretty bad. I can trust you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“How badly do you want to get out of this place?” I asked the burning quest
ion. He didn’t hesitate in replying.
“I would do anything to leave. Anything.” He took several seconds to say the last word, dragging it out like our stay there was dragging out.
“I’m planning on escaping,” I whispered, trying to make it sound casual, like I was just going to have a bite to eat or something. “I’ve been studying the guards and exits, and I think I can do it.”
“You’re serious?”
“Absolutely. Are you in or out?” I stared at him, silently challenging and wishing him to say yes. If he said no, I didn’t like my chances of him not telling anyone else about my plan. I had revealed too much to turn back.
It seemed like forever before Garrick spoke again. “I’m in. Tell me what I have to do. I have a little sister at home and I have no intention of never seeing her again.”
I grinned, perhaps I wasn’t completely alone in the complex. For the rest of the time it took to make the soup for dinner, we discussed ways we could escape. I explained about the guards’ routines but I didn’t tell him everything. My gut was telling me to trust Garrick, but my mind was still saying to protect myself. I didn’t want him to disappear in the middle of the night and have my escape plan exposed.
The longer we spoke, the more comfortable I felt with Garrick. He was probably the only one there who had a sense of humor and I got the feeling he really loved his adoptive family. He had two parents – both retired FBI Agents – and an eight year old sister. She was adopted too, but from Romania, she wasn’t an alien. Not that many members of the project had siblings, it was nice to hear of someone in a larger family.
We didn’t work out the entire escape plan during our kitchen duties. Far from it, really. The complex wasn’t a place designed to sneak out of. It was built to keep people in and it did that very well. We had to outsmart the Department and that was no easy feat.
By the time the buzzer sounded and we were ordered to bed, I was feeling a lot more positive about the future. My mother always told me I could do anything if I put my mind to it. It was one of those adages that mothers always said, but I always believed her for some reason. My entire mind was put to escaping so no doubt that was what I was going to do.
I couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard I tried. Nine o’clock hadn’t been my bedtime since I was ten. And even then, my parents never really enforced it. They said to go to bed when I was tired, I soon learned to do just that. Especially after staying up all night and then having to go to school the next day completely shattered. I learned the hard way, but at least I learned.
Now, in my designated bedroom that completely lacked any personality or warmth, I felt like that ten year old again. I would have killed for a television or a computer with the internet. Anything that could take my mind off all the people I was missing. I wondered if they were missing me too. Lochie and I hadn’t been together very long and he always had a fresh supply of girls falling all over themselves to go out with him. Perhaps he had moved on? It had been three weeks and one day since we were in the park together.
Lola was probably spending all her waking hours with Asher. He had better be taking care of her. Lola didn’t deserve another heartbreak and I wouldn’t be there to comfort her if everything went wrong.
And then there were my parents. They were probably told what was going on so they would know I was safe. I hoped they had passed that on to Lochie and Lola too. I didn’t want them worrying about me unnecessarily. Not after everything I had already put them through.
A soft knocking on my door pulled me out of my pity party. Nobody ever knocked on my door here. Other aliens weren’t allowed out of their room unless it was to go to the bathroom and even then you were likely to be interrogated if you got caught. And somehow, I didn’t think a guard would knock.
I hurried over and opened the door, curious beyond words to see who it was. My first thought was Katy, maybe her sorrow got the best of her and she needed a shoulder to cry on.
But it wasn’t Katy, it was Garrick. He held up a bag of chips next to his cheeky smile. “Late night snack?”
I let him in quickly, checking the hallway to make sure there were no guards in sight. “How did you get here?” The boys’ wing was on the opposite side of the girls’. Apparently we weren’t allowed to fraternize either. Couldn’t have anyone having fun now, could they?
“Something you should know about me,” Garrick whispered as he sat on the bed. “I’m very good at being sneaky. Which is why I am perfect for your plan.”
I grabbed some chips from his bag. I thought it would be pointless asking where he got the snacks from too, he would probably just reiterate his point about being sneaky. “What are you doing here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I’m too wired. And it’s nine-fifteen.”
I couldn’t suppress the giggle. The whole situation seemed so bizarre. One minute we were living our lives, the next thrown into a prison and told it was for our own safety. If you didn’t laugh, you cried. And then you would be Katy, I didn’t want that.
“I used to stay up with my best friend, Lola, when we had sleepovers at her house. Every time her parents checked on us, we’d pretend to be asleep.”
“My sister and I would do that too,” Garrick confessed. “When she was first adopted, she used to have these killer nightmares about going back to the orphanage. I used to stay with her until she fell asleep because she didn’t want our parents to know about it. She thought they’d send her back for being difficult.”
“Oh, that’s so sad. Did they last long?”
“It took about four months for her to really settle in.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Maya. I’m sure she’s raiding my room right now for all the stuff I wouldn’t let her have.” Garrick smiled but it didn’t translate to his eyes. He was covering how much he missed them. I knew that feeling well.
I changed the subject, I couldn’t handle reminiscing about our families any longer. “I think I’ve figured out a way to implement our plan.”
“Really? I’m all ears.”
I went through what I had worked out so far for our escape. He listened intently, only asking questions where there was something he could add to the plot. We spoke for most of the night about how we were going to do it. We tried to plan for everything that could go wrong so we didn’t just have a plan A, but a plan B, C, D, and E too. We only had one shot at getting out and it had to be perfect.
We tested our theories over the next week. We decided Friday was the best day to do it, they had a staff meeting back at the Department and only skeleton staff were left at the complex. There were still enough guards to be challenging, but not enough to be overpowering. At least we hoped so, anyway.
We had a dry run the following Friday. We paid particular attention to everything and tried to see if we could make it. So far, it looked like we had our calculations right. However, until we actually did it, we couldn’t say for sure. Beyond the walls we were allowed to see, it was difficult to know what went on.
We worked on refining a few aspects of the plan and kept going over it so we knew every piece by heart. By the next Friday, we were all ready to go.
CHAPTER 4
I sat in the recreation area feeling nauseous. My eyes kept flicking to the clock on the wall, waiting for the buzzer to sound. That was our go time. That was when Garrick and I were going to escape from the complex. I was a bundle of nerves. If I didn’t have a partner in crime, I would probably have chickened out and delayed for another week.
Two minutes to go. The guards were where they were supposed to be. It was a good sign, perhaps we could pull off the entire escape. I couldn’t get cocky though, that’s when things would start to go wrong. The universe would teach me a lesson.
My palms were sweaty as my heart pulsated way too hard in my chest. My face started to burn, I was certain everyone was staring at me. They all knew what I was going to do, one of them would yell it out at any moment. I was so sure of it.
The b
uzzer went off, telling us all to move. I couldn’t wait around any longer. It was now or never. If I backed out, Garrick would have to go ahead alone and I couldn’t do that to him.
I headed toward the dining hall except I made a detour at the last moment. Pretending I had left something in my room, I changed course and headed down the hallway, mumbled to myself about my lost item as I went.
I hadn’t seen any security cameras in the complex, as hard as I had tried to find them. As far as both Garrick and I could tell, they were only located on the outside of the building. We had pinpointed them all to the best of our spying ability so we were pretty sure we were safe on the inside. Still, as I moved about, it felt like I had a million eyes watching and judging me.
Garrick was waiting in my room. We stood in the centre of the cell, waiting for the buzzer to go quiet. It sounded way too loud in the tiny room. When it turned off, the silence was even more deafening. I could hear Garrick breathing heavily, obviously he was just as nervous as I was.
We checked the corridor – clear – and headed in the opposite direction of the dining hall. I never really ventured that way before but Garrick had to do the trek daily to get to the boys’ dormitories. I had to rely on him to lead the way through that particular part of the complex.
The side door was exactly where he said it would be. We ducked through, hoping our estimations about what was on the other side was correct.
We were confronted with a bunch of machines and pipes that seemed to be going in all different directions. This was the room that operated all the air conditioning and electrical works for the complex. Its constant noise was a stark contrast to the silent corridor.
“Through here,” Garrick whispered, grabbing my hand so he could lead me without speaking. It was a good way to ensure we remained together, even when we couldn’t communicate or it got dark.
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