Talen

by Shay Savage

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I nod, and she narrows her eyes at me, obviously not convinced.

  “Come on, Talen,” Aerin says quietly as she reaches for my hand. “Let’s go.”

  She pulls me to my feet, and we scan the area carefully before traveling back over the catwalk and through the door into the access corridor. When we reach the ladder, we stop.

  “Quite a shock, isn’t it?” Aerin says. “Your father, I mean.”

  “Yeah.” I take a deep breath and stare at the dirty floor.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking, Talen.” Aerin steps closer to me and reaches up to run her fingers over my cheek.

  “I don’t know what to think, I guess.” I put an arm around her back and lean against her. “I haven’t seen him in years, and it’s not like we parted on good terms.” I let out a short, humorless laugh. “Far from it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Too long of a story to tell right now.” I glance up at the ladder. “We need to move.”

  “All right.” Aerin touches her lips to mine briefly. “I do want to know though. I want to know what really happened to you.”

  I nod, but the thought of explaining it all leaves me feeling ambivalent. I want Aerin to know, but I don’t want to relive it.

  “Ready?” she asks as she places a hand on the ladder.

  I look around the dusty corridor as if I were in one of the homes in Hilltop, making sure I didn’t leave a trace. Keeping myself in the here and now helps quell the churning in my gut.

  “We should turn the light back off,” I say. “We don’t want anyone to know we were here.”

  “I don’t think they use this access point,” Aerin says. “It looks like no one has been in here for years.”

  “They might still notice the light.”

  “Good point. Either way, we’re going to have to find our way back to the rooms without any light.”

  “No, we won’t.” I grin and pull out the stolen flashlight.

  “Always the thief, aren’t you?” Her eyes sparkle as she smiles at me.

  “Lost and found,” I say with a wink.

  I hand Aerin the flashlight, and she heads up the ladder first with me right behind her. I climb back onto the floor of the corridor and dust off my jeans as I stand.

  “I’m pretty sure the room they were talking about is the one we’re staying in,” Aerin says. “We’re going to have to get out of there, and fast.”

  “Agreed. The last thing we need is for someone to find our stuff.”

  “For all we know, someone’s already there,” Aerin says. “The last thing we need is for someone to find us.”

  “Good point. Let’s keep it quiet then.”

  “I always do.” Aerin grins.

  “Not always,” I reply quickly, grinning right back at her.

  “Talen,” Aerin says as she bats her eyelashes, “are you flirting with me?”

  Before I can respond, the corridor suddenly fills with bright lights.

  “Oh, shit.” Aerin’s words are barely a whisper, and I follow her eyes down the hallway.

  “Who the fuck are you?” a loud, deep voice shouts from the distance.

  A hundred feet down the corridor, right near the junction that leads to our room, stand three men in uniform. I recognize the insignia on their chests even from this distance—a diamond with a scripted P in the center—as the one used for the government security force. Though they’re supposed to be used by all branches of government, I know them mostly by their loyalty to my father. Similar men dragged me from my father’s home and shoved me into Havens, the government-sponsored prison for the criminally insane.

  The man in the center raises a gun and points it at us. The plastic bullets inside aren’t usually lethal, but they pack a hell of a punch.

  “Get on the ground!” he yells as the other two men step forward with batons clutched in their fists.

  “Stay behind me,” I say softly as step in front of Aerin.

  She replies, but I don’t listen to her words. All my focus is on the men in front of me as I reach for my belt. I spread my arms out to my sides, brandishing the sleek silver knives.

  “Holy shit,” one guard says. “That’s Theodore LaGrange.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Without a doubt,” he replies. “I was one of his arresting officers. Don’t shoot, Becker. We may need him.”

  I stare at the man who spoke my name, trying to focus on distinguishing features, but I don’t recognize him. The night of my arrest is unclear, and I don’t recall the faces of the men who dragged me out, but I also have no reason to doubt him.

  “Theo,” he says as he steps forward, “I’m Officer Ford. Do you remember me? Why don’t you put those down so we can talk?”

  Though the name strikes a chord in my head, I glare wordlessly, adjusting my grip on the knives as I continue to stare him down.

  Ford continues to tell me to drop the knives as he takes a few steps toward me, baton still gripped in his hand. Becker holsters his gun before he and the other guard move up behind Ford in close formation, all of them wielding batons.

  A cold, clear calm comes over me, and I flex my fingers around the handles of the knives, breathing slowly.

  “Get back,” I say as I feel Aerin move up behind me.

  “Talen…” She says nothing else, and I hear the shuffling of her feet as she backs away.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way, Theo.” Ford stares at me intently.

  It does. He knows it does. I can see it in his eyes.

  Ford takes another step forward. I watch his knuckles whiten as he grips the baton more securely, preparing to use it. I clear my mind of everything except the movements of those in front of me.

  They move with slight irregularity, telling me that they don’t normally work together. The two guards behind Ford switch sides, unsure of the best position for an attack. As they switch, Ford strikes.

  He moves quickly, holding his baton high above his head, but I easily dodge to one side as he attempts to bring it down on my head. I twist away from him again, encouraging him to move close to me. When he does, I bury a knife in his side.

  Ford groans and drops the baton as he grabs for his side.

  Without missing a beat, I spin around and go after Becker. He also swings his baton at me over and over again as I parry, ducking one way and then sidestepping the next. I cut his arm, but he continues his attack, striking my shoulder hard enough that I nearly lose my grip on the knife’s handle. I spin and bring my foot up to connect with his chest, and he stumbles, dropping his weapon.

  The third guard lunges forward, reaching out to grapple with me, but I step back and bring a knife down into his neck. Warm blood covers my arm as he falls to his knees and then on his face.

  I focus on Becker as he starts to move in a slow circle around me. He pauses and glances to my right. I see Ford regaining his feet and rushing at me.

  Turning quickly, I strike Ford in the face with the butt end of the knife. I stumble slightly, and Ford reels backward, arms flailing. As I regain my footing, Ford turns and races down the corridor and out of sight. I start to pursue, but I hear a scream behind me.

  I turn quickly and see Aerin in Becker’s clutches. The burly guard places the gun at the side of her head and stares me down.

  “Drop those fucking knives right now,” Becker says, “or I shoot. The bullet may be plastic, but at this range, I’m pretty sure it’s going to go right into her brain.”

  I don’t think about my next action. No plan forms in my head. I simply raise my right hand to my shoulder and fling the knife forward. It spins end over end through the air silently before embedding itself in Becker’s skull, right between his eyes.

  He drops to the ground, and Aerin lets out a squeal as she jumps away. She stares at me, open-mouthed, as I race up to her side, pull the blade from the guard’s head, and grab her by the hand.

  “Move.” I grab Ae
rin’s hand and tug at her.

  “Talen, how in the hell—”

  “Move!” I drag her along behind me, racing as fast as I can to the room we’ve shared since we arrived inside the complex.

  “You are going to have to tell me how you learned to use those knives so well,” Aerin says as she grabs both of our packs from the side of the bed. She hands mine to me, and I start to fill it with food and water, refusing to acknowledge her words.

  Aerin loads her pack with candles and matches, and I shove two of the towels from the bathroom into mine before I grab her and start toward the doorway.

  “What about the other stuff?” Aerin pulls back and shakes my hand free of her arm.

  “There isn’t time. They know about us now, and we have to get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “For now, just out.”

  “Out where?” It’s Aerin’s turn to grab my arm. “Think for a minute, Talen. It’s a twenty-mile trek underground to the western exit, and nearly a hundred miles to walk over the mountain from that exit to Plastictown. The only other way we’ve been is the shaft, and it’s blocked from the outside.”

  “We can hide there,” I say. “That would at least give us time to think. Right now, we have to move. They know who I am, and I can’t risk them finding us!”

  “Moving without thought is idiotic!” Aerin glances toward the door and then lowers her voice. “We could end up stuck in that shaft with no way to get out. We can’t risk it. I studied the map. I knew there was another shaft somewhere in the north, and I think I can locate it now. It will at least get us closer to town.”

  She’s completely correct, and I still myself long enough to start thinking outside of pure flight mode.

  “Can you find it in the dark?” I ask. “We have to move without light. If they see the flashlight, they’ll know where we are.”

  “I think so,” Aerin replies. “The corridor is straight, and the shaft is in the room at the end of it. Once we get there, we just turn left and head to the end of that one.”

  “How far?”

  “That, I don’t know. It looked like at least five miles, but I couldn’t tell scale from the map. That’s just based on how far it looked compared to the exits we know.”

  We gather up as many supplies as will fit into our packs. I can tell how much it pains Aerin to leave her books behind, but we need to stick to the essentials. Before we leave, I notice her slipping her journal into the back pocket of her pack.

  Out in the corridor, I look left and right quickly. I don’t see or hear any signs of other people, so I look back to Aerin.

  “Do you hear anything?” I ask.

  “No. I think we’re good.”

  “All right,” I say, “Let’s keep a low profile then, shall we?”

  Aerin nods, and I turn off the light. The darkness is overwhelming, but it’s something I’m used to. I give my eyes a moment to adjust, but it doesn’t really help. With one hand grasping Aerin’s and the other touching the wall of the corridor, we make our silent trek down the hall.

  It doesn’t take long to reach the bend in the corridor, and I don’t hear anything to make me think we’re being followed. We turn left and continue down the corridor to the north, remaining in darkness for another hour before finally feeling comfortable enough to switch on the light.

  Once my eyes adjust, I see this area isn’t drastically different from the others we’ve explored. The dusty, unused rooms on either side of the hall are devoid of anything useful, so we continue on for another hour or more before we see the abrupt end of the hallway with doors on the right and left.

  “Which side?” I ask.

  “Right, I think.”

  Aerin pushes open the door, and I immediately recognize a grated entry near the ceiling, just like the one we used to enter the complex. We use a stable-looking metal table shoved up against the wall to reach the shaft.

  “Do you think it will have a lock on it,” I ask, “or do you know all the combinations?”

  “I don’t,” Aerin says. “I hope it doesn’t since I can’t imagine the combination is the same.”

  We crawl up and into the shaft, which is much larger than the one before. Though there is a door and a chain at the end of the shaft, the lock has rusted and breaks easily.

  “Rain gets in here,” Aerin says. “Can you smell it?”

  “Yeah, it’s making my nose itch.”

  “Keep going?”

  “Of course.”

  A few minutes later, we push open a hatch on the other side and see dim daylight in front of us.

  “I don’t think we’re far from Plastictown,” I say as I stand on the ashy ground and stretch.

  “It’s getting late though.” Aerin looks up at the sky and the sun low on the western horizon. “We should be able to get there pretty quickly in the morning.”

  Inside the complex, I’d become used to the clean, relatively fresh air. Outside, the ash fills my lungs and makes me cough. I reach into my pack, grabbing a cloth to cover my mouth and nose. Aerin does the same.

  “Shall we just camp out here?” I ask. “The shaft is big enough to sleep in and slightly better than the ground.”

  We make ourselves comfortable and eat some of the food we brought with us.

  “Talen, what you did back there—with the knives, I mean—well, that was incredible. How do you know how to do that?”

  “Long story.” I shrug and try to brush it off.

  “Does it have something to do with escaping from the capital?”

  “Yeah.”

  Not surprisingly, Aerin uses the opportunity to press me about my father.

  “You promised to tell me about your father,” she said. “I think there’s plenty of time for that now.”

  “How much do you want to know?”

  “What happened between the two of you, how you ended up escaping, the knives—everything.”

  I steel myself, knowing that at some point I’ll have to tell her. She isn’t going to stop asking, and maybe it will be best to just get it over with.

  “I’ve done shit I’m not proud of,” I tell her. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  I close my eyes for a moment and then begin my story.

  Chapter 16

  “I’m not sure where I should start,” I say. “You know a little about it.”

  “I know you protested against your father’s policies regarding Naught relocation programs,” Aerin says. “You reportedly died in the hospital from complications after developing pneumonia. Your father said it only stressed the need to distance civilized society from the Naughts since your work with them exposed you to the virus.”

  “Well, that didn’t happen. I was never sick.”