Project Integrate Series Boxed Set

by Campbell, Jamie

  We found what we were looking for – the main electricity supply. Garrick had to use some force but he managed to open the metal covering. A plethora of wires in all different colors and thicknesses were inside.

  “Which ones do we cut?” Garrick asked, pulling a Stanley knife from his pocket.

  I shrugged. “All of them.” That should do it. If we cut some and not the others, it would only be an arbitrary guess. Our freedom was at stake so we may as well go big or not at all – literally.

  I grabbed a handful of wires and held them still while Garrick started slicing through them. One by one, the machines surrounding us started shutting down. Garrick cut faster, understanding we could be caught at any moment. Once the guards realized what was going on, they would come immediately to this room. We had to get out before that happened.

  “Done,” he said proudly when the last wire was separated. We replaced the panel and looked around. According to building regulations, every control room like this one had to have direct access from outside. It was in case there was a fire or other emergency in the room. I silently thanked my teacher from sixth grade who made us design a building for our major project for that piece of information.

  The door was tucked away in the corner, but it was there. The Department wasn’t above the law, or the building codes at least. We made a beeline for it and slowly turned the handle. A sliver of sunshine peeked through, telling us my theory was correct.

  Carefully, we opened the door and slid through. The bright rays from the sun getting ready to set hit my eyes, causing them to squint. I had to blink a few times to get my bearings.

  Across the lawn was a high fence, atop that was barbed wire. I had seen it from the windows in the recreation room so I was prepared for it. I just hoped a blanket would be enough to save us from the razor sharp barbs on the wire.

  The lawn was too exposed in that area, we had to move around the building to the far left hand corner. We crouched low and started moving. My back quickly grew tired with the uncomfortable position but I couldn’t stop. We ducked under all the windows and constantly watched for anyone that might see us. There was nowhere to hide against the stark walls of the building.

  When we arrived at our landing point, we sat on the ground. The lawn was too open for us to cross just yet, we needed to wait for the cover of complete darkness. We settled in for the wait, not even daring to talk to each other.

  It took twenty minutes for the sun to go down enough for us to start the trek. I pulled the blanket from underneath my shirt so I was ready to throw it over the fence when we got that far. We stood, ready to make our way to freedom.

  I looked to Garrick, he nodded. Crouching low, we held hands in the darkness and bolted for the fence. The lawn didn’t look as wide as it felt while we were running. I didn’t think the fence would ever come.

  By the time we got there, I was puffing and gasping for breath. I was sure being in the complex for six weeks had taken away any fitness that I did have. Sitting around doing nothing was definitely not preparing me for the escape. Perhaps that was part of the Department’s plan?

  I flung the blanket over my shoulder and started to climb the chain link fence. Garrick was at my side, scuttling up the fence as quick as he could go. With his height and additional strength, he was moving a lot quicker than I was.

  An alarm started ringing out from the complex. Either they had worked out someone had cut all the electrical wires, or they knew we were missing. Either way, it wouldn’t be long before all the guards were looking for us.

  There was nothing around to act as camouflage. All it would take was a spotlight shone our way and we would be exposed. The thought of returning to my tiny room for the rest of my life spurred me on.

  I was only halfway up the fence when Garrick reached the top. I passed him up the blanket and he settled it over the barbed wire. He doubled it over to offer as much protection as it could but if we stepped outside of it, the wire would cut us deeply.

  I kept my gaze upwards, trying to move swiftly but it was hard going. The wire from the fence was cutting into my fingers as I gripped it and pulled myself further upwards. No amount of exercise could have prepared me for this.

  My confidence was boosted as Garrick made it over the wire and was starting to come down on the other side of the fence. If he did it, so could I.

  “Come on, Amery,” he urged. “They’re going to be looking for us.”

  “Go ahead, I’ll catch up,” I panted in reply. He didn’t move, just continued to wait. I made a bit more progress, almost at the top now.

  A spotlight suddenly lit up the area, with me right in the middle of it. I locked eyes with Garrick, knowing I had been caught.

  “Get down from the fence,” the male voice came over a speaker system, it echoed around the empty lawn. “Immediately.”

  “Garrick, go, seriously. Go and get help,” I urged desperately. Garrick lingered, bouncing from foot to foot as he tried to work out what to do. The last thing I wanted him to do was get caught because of me. “Go!” I screamed again.

  “I can’t leave you,” he replied.

  “Go and get help! Just go, please!”

  “Get down from the fence, now!” The voice repeated, this time more forceful.

  “Go, Garrick!” I wasn’t going to move until I saw he was leaving.

  Finally, he made a decision. With an apologetic look my way, Garrick took off into the woods surrounding the complex. He disappeared out of sight in no time, lost to the trees and whatever else lived in there.

  I started climbing down, jumping the last few feet to give my fingers some respite. I had to squint in the brightness of the spotlight when I turned around.

  “Get onto the floor and lie with your hands behind your back,” the voice barked the orders at me. So they were going to treat me like a criminal for trying to break out of a place that wasn’t a jail. I guess I should have expected it.

  I lay on the ground and did as I was told. Only when I hadn’t moved for a few moments did a pair of guards come rushing over to me, guns pointed my way.

  While one trained his gun at my head, the other handcuffed me. Once I was secured and posed no threat, the guard pulled me to my feet. My legs were shaking from the climbing but he was still relentless in pushing me forward.

  The pair took me inside, not saying a word. I didn’t have anything to say to them either so I guessed we were even. I was the enemy, the alien not obeying the rules. I didn’t expect they would take me back to my room.

  I was right, they took me underground to a cell – a real one. It resembled my room upstairs except it was smaller and unpainted. The grey cement walls were even drearier than my beige ones. They shoved me inside, ripped off my handcuffs, and closed the door with more force than was necessary.

  My cell didn’t even have a window so, with the closed door, I was plunged into darkness. I hated the dark so much, I desperately wished for some light. Bad things happened in the dark. My mind instantly recalled being inside the back of the truck when they took me from the park. All those hours spent sitting in complete darkness, my fate in someone else’s hands. Nothing had changed. I feared the Department as much as I feared the Originals. Neither played by rules generally accepted by the public. And I hated the dark even more than them.

  My only hope was Garrick, but the sensible part of me knew there was nothing he could do. Even if he did manage to get away and they didn’t catch up with him, what could he do? He couldn’t go to the police and tell them we were being held here against our will. The moment the report was logged in the system, the Department would erase it and have him locked up.

  If Garrick was right and the Department was planning on eventually disposing of us, then I guessed I would be the first to go. It would be far easier for them to destroy me than have to contain me there. Bringing me food and seeing to it that I was okay took resources and manpower. Guards were expensive and I doubted they would want me to stick around for too long.
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br />   It was a depressing thought. My parents would be thinking I was safe with the Department and they would have no idea the guards were the ones that killed me. Poor Mom and Dad would probably be told I was just fine.

  I felt around for the bed I had caught a glimpse of when I first arrived. It was on the right hand side, just where it was in my room upstairs. I lay down, stretching out my fingers and feeling the pain still in them.

  I closed my eyes and tried to keep the tears at bay. I had been so sure I would be free tonight. I had convinced myself I would be seeing my parents, Lochie, and Lola soon. Now, I would probably never see them again. I was more alone than I ever had been before.

  A tear escaped my eye and slid down my cheek. I let it go and drop onto the hard bed, even though it tickled a little as it moved. At least nobody would see or hear me cry like poor Katy upstairs. Everybody knew she cried herself to sleep every night. I had once considered making her my escape buddy, I was so glad I hadn’t now. Ten minutes down here and she would be strangling herself with the isolation.

  I sobbed myself to sleep and was awoken by the door opening. It took me a moment to remember where I was and why I was there. My eyes and fingers were sore which brought the memories flooding back.

  A guard was standing at my door, he was joined by another and they each took one of my arms. It wasn’t like I protested but they were acting like I was a dangerous criminal. I was a seventeen year old girl, scared and tired. It wasn’t like I was an axe murderer. I instantly hated them all.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t to an execution chamber. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they had one of those in the complex. I might have been the first one to try it out. That was probably an honor, right?

  The guards didn’t answer me, their faces may as well have been made out of stone. Their hands could have been too, their grip was so tight. They marched me up two flights of stairs and down a corridor I had seen only once before.

  They took me into the office of Agent Harrison and thrust me down on a hard plastic chair. As I sat there, my first thought was how much I wanted to brush my teeth and hair. I felt grimy and sore, not a good way to start a conversation with the person in charge of the entire complex.

  “Miss Jones, we meet again,” Agent Harrison started. He still held his hands together on top of his desk. He didn’t look any happier than when I had first seen him. “Tell me, why did you try to escape yesterday?”

  “I want to go home,” I replied, trying to keep the quiver I felt out of my voice.

  “This is your home now. I thought I made that quite clear.”

  “It’s not.” How could I convince someone when they had no intention of even listening to me? I wasn’t sure what the point of the meeting was but I didn’t want to say anything that would only add fuel to the flame.

  “We’re only keeping you here for your own good. We’re actually doing you a favor by keeping you safe. And this is how you repay our generosity?” He leaned back in his chair, like we were having a casual conversation.

  “I would rather chance it at home, thanks.”

  “You’re a tough little nut to crack, aren’t you?”

  I just stared at him in response. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry, I was determined to shut off all my emotions. I got the feeling he enjoyed seeing little girls cry.

  “You need to start playing by the rules, Miss Jones. What am I going to do with you?” Agent Harrison watched me like he was expecting an answer. I was pretty sure he knew what I would say.

  “You’re going to let me go home. Make me my parent’s problem and then you don’t have one.”

  He laughed. “If only it was that easy. We all have bosses, Miss Jones. We all have people we have to be accountable to. Tell me where Garrick Smith is headed.”

  “I don’t know.” So they hadn’t found him, that was good news. There was no way I was going to give up Garrick. We had an agreement and nothing would prevent me from keeping it.

  “It’s in your best interests to tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated. I was going to keep telling him the same thing until he stopped asking me.

  “We’re going to find him,” Agent Harrison warned, threatening me.

  “Well you don’t need me then.”

  He breathed in deeply through his nose, his whistle was back. “Is there anything you want to say before you go back to your cell?”

  “Please let me go back to my room if I can’t go home. I’ve learnt my lesson and I won’t try to escape again.”

  He held his belly to laugh this time. “Oh well, if you say so,” he said sarcastically. “That’s not going to happen. To be honest, I don’t know why the President ever agreed to your people’s little arrangement. We don’t need people like you on our planet. We have enough scumbags of our own.”

  That was insulting on so many levels. I held my tongue, trying desperately not to make the situation even worse for myself. He might order me chained up in my cell too. Or order my instant execution. Either way, it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Agent Harrison spoke directly to the guards. “Take her back downstairs. I don’t want to see her face again.”

  They each gripped an arm and took me down to my cell in the same haste they used to take me upstairs. I didn’t have a chance of escaping their grip.

  They threw me into the cell with no concern for my health or wellbeing. When the door was slammed shut, it plunged me back into darkness.

  I tried to ignore my stomach growling and the nausea swirling around. Not to mention the fear gripping every nerve in my body. I needed to get out of the cell or I was going to go crazy. I didn’t want it to be my tomb but I got the feeling that was the plan. Agent Harrison didn’t care if I ate or whether I was afraid of the dark. I was just a nuisance.

  I needed to stay busy, do something productive even in the pitch blackness surrounding me. I found the door with my hands and started to feel around the walls. I intended to feel every inch of my cell to look for some weakness I could expose so I could break out. I knew the chances were unlikely, but I had to do something.

  The walls were damp, especially near the bottom. The bed was bolted to the floor and so was the cold steel toilet. A sink was in the cistern, it only ran cold water. Other than those two items, there was absolutely nothing else in the cell.

  I lay on the bed, exhausted and hungry. Sometime in the day or night I fell asleep. I don’t know how long I was out or what time it was, but I was awoken by an alarm sounding. It wasn’t like the one that normally ordered us about. It wasn’t even like the alarm that had gone off before we were found on the fence. This one was different and I thought I knew exactly what it meant.

  But I didn’t want to believe it. Because if I was right, then my time was definitely up. Somewhere in the complex a fire burned, hot enough to set off the fire alarms. I was going to be left there to succumb to the fire.

  CHAPTER 5

  I had suspected I would die in the complex, either from old age or at the hands of the Department. A part of me never thought I would make it out of there alive.

  As the smoke from the fire started to whisper underneath the steel door to my cage, I felt like a trapped rabbit. I couldn’t get out and it wouldn’t take long for the smoke to fill the entire cell. The only good thing was that I would probably die of smoke inhalation rather than burns from the flames.

  But I really didn’t want to die that way. I desperately wanted to get out of the cell so I could have some more time on Earth. I couldn’t bear never setting eyes on my friends and family again. I didn’t want it all to be over like that.

  I soaked the bottom of my shirt in water from the tiny sink and used it to cover my mouth. It would help for a while but it wouldn’t stave off the heavy smoke forever. Once the smoke came into the room, it had nowhere to escape. As a result, it just worked its way into the entire space and grew thicker.

  I used my free hand to start banging on the door, mak
ing sure they didn’t forget I was down there. Even if I was a prisoner and the outcast, I still didn’t deserve to die in the cell. Even terrorists got a fair trial.

  I kept banging, refusing to give up. When my arm grew tired, I switched and used the other one for a while. It was the only thing I could do besides sit down and wait to die.

  It became clear nobody was coming down to rescue me. I had to admit it to myself. The smoke was so thick by that time I could barely see. My eyes watered and stung, squinting just to have a chance at remaining open. My breathing was starting to get difficult and every breath I took was filled with the acrid taste of the smoke.

  I slumped against the wall, taking a break from the banging. My mind whirled, desperately trying to think of something else I could do to save myself. I kept drawing a blank. The only way out of the room was by the door and it was made from heavy steel.

  I let myself slide down to the floor where the smoke was a little thinner. It would only prolong my wait for death but I couldn’t stop the survival instinct. Perhaps if I could just wait it out? Perhaps they would put the fire out and remember me? I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

  A loud thud on the door scared me, snapping my head up. Someone was on the other side of the wall. I didn’t have the energy to get up, so I banged on the bottom, hoping they would be able to hear it just as well.

  The door swung open, nearly taking me out with it. I couldn’t see who it was in the doorway. “I’m here. Please get me out,” I croaked.

  “Amery, come on,” Garrick replied. I was confused at hearing his voice, was I just dreaming it? I could have been imagining the whole rescue, I wasn’t sure.

  “Garrick?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Down here.” A strong hand found my arm and gripped it tight, pulling me to my feet. I still couldn’t see the owner, I couldn’t even see the hand on my arm.

  “Come on, we’ve got to hurry.”

  I put one foot in front of the other and started walking, Garrick refusing to let me do otherwise. He dragged me along through the thick haze. My coughing fits didn’t slow us down, his pace was relentless.