Escaping Eleven (Eleven Trilogy)

by Jerri Chisholm

  “And Maggie, too, right?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Yeah, Eve. Where exactly are you going with this?”

  I look at her and see something startling in her eyes. Some mix of fear and hurt, and it makes me lose my nerve.

  “I’m not going anywhere with this,” I say. “Thanks for the armband, and hey, enjoy the match.” My eyes are locked on Kyle’s as I swing the door shut in his face. Perhaps Maggie will be mad at me for being rude to him. Or perhaps I bit my tongue more than I should have.

  “Everything okay?” Bruno calls to me from the desk. My face must betray my anger.

  I nod. “Just my best friend and her dick boyfriend.”

  He crosses his arms from his chair. “That sounds like a good way to lose a best friend.”

  “Bruno, he treats her like garbage. So lay off, okay?” I swing at a punching bag, and my knuckles smack loudly against the hide.

  “All I’m saying is that it isn’t up to you to make her decisions. You think he’s an asshole; she sees it another way—trust me, I’ve been there before. Hearing it from you will only drive a wedge between you guys.”

  When I speak, it isn’t with my normal voice. This one is twisted with emotion. “Who put you in charge of me?” I sputter. “Because I can’t seem to do anything right in your eyes. I fight Zaar exactly like Anil and Erick suggested, and suddenly you think I don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Well I’ll tell you what’s right and what’s wrong, Bruno. What’s wrong is when Zaar and his asshole friends make my life miserable every goddamn day because I was born two floors below them. Because they can. What’s wrong is the fact that that dick boyfriend out there can knock my best friend around without any consequences. That’s wrong in my books, and I don’t need you or anyone else questioning my sense of decency.” I breathe deeply in order to keep myself steady. I will not cry right now. I won’t.

  Bruno leans back in his chair. He runs a hand over his curly hair, and it lands on a chest that is pure muscle. Probably I have said too much. Made a spectacle. Maybe he will berate me and I will have to apologize. Again.

  But when he speaks, his voice is restrained. “He’s knocking her around?”

  I stare at him. It isn’t what I was expecting him to say. “Yes.”

  “We could use someone like you around Blue Circuit, you know,” he says quickly, then stands. He walks toward me. “In a professional capacity.”

  I frown, confused. “The last time we talked—”

  “We’re a family here, Eve. We don’t always get along. We don’t always agree with one another—words, actions, whatever. But I have a good feeling about you. I’d like you to think seriously about going pro.”

  I shake my head. I don’t know what to say—there are too many feelings humming through my chest, but I know flattery is one of them. I know that desolate vision of my future in Eleven retracts from sight for just a moment. “Uh, yeah. Okay, I’ll think about it,” I say, and maybe for a fraction of a second I even mean it.

  “And while we’re on the subject, I hope one day you find an excuse to beat the shit out of your friend’s dick boyfriend.”

  He smiles, and I smile, too.

  …

  I walk into the cylindrical tunnel where I first saw Wren. How strange it is that he is now my boyfriend, and the thought makes my stomach do cartwheels. But I need to focus, because today I will be paired against a Red Circuit occasional fighter named Star. She is Lower Mean, stocky but fast, and I have heard she is dirty. She beat Emerald once and so I know it will be a difficult match.

  Wren won’t be in the crowd; he and Connor are on a job tour of one of the many Preme computer labs. And as much as I hate to admit it, I am happy he won’t be here. I would be nervous with him here. Nervous and distracted—not a good mix for a difficult fight.

  One thing I have to look forward to is tonight: a date, and at his place. My heart beats harder at the thought. We will meet in front of the library at eight. Late enough for dinner with my friends to be finished with, early enough that the compound’s lights will still be on.

  I think of his lips, soft and warm and pressed against mine. I smile.

  Star’s fists crack against the punching bag, and she grunts loudly with the effort. The crowd at the end of the tunnel is rowdy—I can hear them shouting, but it won’t be a well-attended match. We are both occasional fighters, both Lower Means. I unzip my hoodie and toss it aside. I slap both cheeks and think of my father. I tighten my armband and think of Maggie, Kyle.

  The old wounds open quickly, and every punch is harder than the last. I don’t like to lose, so I won’t. Star isn’t the only one who can fight dirty, and I see Zaar crumbling under me in my mind’s eye. I hear his screams of pain, and I relish in them.

  But when the ref gathers us, something inside of me gives way. Maybe it’s the love of the fight, if it was even there in the first place. Maybe I am being overly and unnecessarily dramatic. But as I walk into the Bowl and toward the bright lights of the ring, my feet feel as though they are filled with lead, and the desire to be nestled into Wren’s arms fills my chest like a syringe has been squeezed into my heart.

  No.

  No, I cannot go there. Not right now, not ever. I am me. I am cruel. I am a fighter.

  I look around at the beating hands that cheer us on, and I let their energy seep under my skin. It propels me forward, faster with every step. Hunter once told me he would die if so many people yelled his name. I know why, right now.

  Maggie screams loudly—she must not be mad—and I nod in her direction before my eyes slide over to Kyle. He doesn’t clap; he just stares down at me with those pale eyes.

  Star stands before me, and I see her stocky legs have tights pulled over them that are acid green; I see she has shaved both eyebrows. Her taped knuckles are stained pink, and she grins like a lunatic. I shift my weight slowly, then faster. I bounce up and down and shake my hands at the wrists. Now isn’t the time to be soft, and it isn’t the time to be complacent.

  I am focused and determined and ready.

  Except that I don’t see her first punch until it is too late. It hits me hard in the ear, and it feels like a rod has been jammed clean through the other side. She brings an elbow up, and I only just manage to lurch back in time to save my teeth. A kick lands in my stomach, but it hits engaged muscle and so I barely feel it, and I use her wasted effort as an opportunity to attack her with a punch of my own. I have good aim, and it hits her in the center of the face. I feel her nose give.

  It bleeds, and droplets land on the floor that my feet pad over. A guttural noise emerges from her bloodstained lips, and she launches forward, her thick frame barreling into me and knocking me to the ground. It is a dangerous place, the ground. But no sooner do I draw my shoulders up does she grab my ponytail, and I yelp as she pulls me with it: a dirty fighter indeed.

  In my state of powerlessness, I think of Maggie and my desire to teach Kyle a lesson. Now, I am calm through the pain. I wait. And then Star moves beside me, and her fist is cocked. I jerk upward and clip her under the chin and hope that she’s lost her tongue in the process. Next I grab her shirt and pull her down to me, and we’re both on our knees and my ponytail is free. I take a page from Wren’s book and smash my forehead into her already busted nose, then jump to my feet before she can see straight again. I kick her—just like Erick taught me, straight in the face—and her head snaps back like her neck has come undone.

  She is out. Cold. Another one bites the dust.

  My chest heaves as the crowd roars, and I look over my shoulder, my eyes scanning the crowd until they land on Kyle’s. I spit and smile, then head back to Blue Circuit’s training room to wash myself of sweat and Star’s blood.

  But once I’m there, I notice something. I am shaking, and it isn’t victory or even adrenaline that is doing i
t. It is fright. Not because I almost lost, but because I almost lost unnecessarily. I almost let myself get soft.

  …

  That evening, I check my reflection one last time in the small mirror hanging in my cell. My blond hair is loose and still damp from my ice-cold shower, all four minutes of it allotted to Lower Means. It doesn’t look great, but I am not good at styling it the way Maggie is. I give it a half-hearted tousle and shrug. It will have to do. Next my eyes travel to my nose, straight and wide, and then to my eyes. They are dark blue and set apart. Unremarkable, other than their crescent shape.

  My face is unscathed after today’s fight. I know I shouldn’t care, but part of me is happy about that. One ear still rings with pain, and my scalp burns, but otherwise I am uninjured. Only tired from the exertion it took to beat my opponent.

  I check the clock and see that it’s time to go. My heart thuds at the thought of meeting Wren, at the thought of seeing his apartment. That’s what he called it. An apartment, not a cell. But that isn’t the appeal, not really. It is seeing another sliver of him that excites me.

  I lock the door with unsteady fingers. Perhaps from fatigue, perhaps from nerves, probably a bit of both.

  “Are you wearing makeup?” I whirl around to see Emerald standing there with her arms crossed. Shit.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Yeah, you are. Your eyes look different. And your cheeks are all streaky.”

  Red creeps up my neck. My hands rub at my face. “They are not.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Jules. Remember? I told you at dinner. I’ve got plans with Jules.”

  “No,” she says slowly. “I don’t remember that, but okay. So. Jules. What are you two doing?”

  I can’t tell her we’re going to hit up the punching bags. Not after she has caught me with makeup on. “You know,” I say instead. “Just hang.”

  She squints her eyes. “You don’t have plans with a guy, by any chance, do you? Say, a good-looking one from the fifth floor?” She leans her head forward knowingly and gives me a look.

  “No!” I shout, but I am smiling and I can’t get rid of it. “No. Of course not. Besides, we’re just friends.”

  “Yeah right you are. Listen, I won’t tell the others, okay?” She winks.

  I rock back and forth and then punch her on the arm. “Thanks,” I say awkwardly, and then I am gone, past her and down the hall. I wipe the last of the blush off as I go. It isn’t so bad if Emerald knows. But Maggie would make a big deal of it, and Hunter…well. I don’t want Hunter to know.

  I hate sneaking around. I hate lying. But it is hard to feel too bad about any of that right now. It is hard to keep the skip out of my step. I take the stairs two at a time, and I feel like taking them three at a time even though my muscles are heavy.

  Still, I am smiling like a fool.

  And then the lights go out and all around me is blackness, thick and impenetrable, and I realize I have left my knife and my flashlight in my cell, and that this is bad. So very bad.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I don’t know which floor I’m closest to. How long was I climbing before the power went out? Probably I’m somewhere between the third and the fourth. Between Mean land and Upper Mean. Possibilities flash in front of me, displacing the darkness, but my brain isn’t processing correctly and I can’t make sense of any one of them. Instead I stay still, my feet rooted to the concrete steps like one of those trees aboveground, tethered to the earth.

  I swallow, and I can feel the pressure in my ears. They are my only useful sense right now. Okay, Eve. You need to do something. I swipe a hand in front of me through the black air. It lands limply at my side.

  I can’t. I can’t do anything.

  I push a toe forward, and it edges an inch to the side.

  It is like I am paralyzed.

  Perhaps I am overanalyzing; perhaps I don’t need to do anything. Perhaps I can wait here until the lights come back on. And then I will continue on my way to see Wren. Yes, that is what I will do.

  The thumping in my chest makes me lose my balance, and my hands fumble for the handrail that digs into my back. Both hands grip it tightly. My feeling of powerlessness in the ring today was nothing compared to now; this is real life. This is true vulnerability. This is terror.

  A door pushes open below me, and I hear “fucking compound” hissed under someone’s breath. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I need to hear it again to recognize it because my brain is moving impossibly slow. Like molasses that the cafeteria sometimes serves with toast. But whoever it is has a flashlight, and its glow lights up the stairwell. My pupils dilate with excitement as they latch on to it.

  When my eyes find the speaker, the giver of light, my pounding heart does not slow. Laughter does not bubble to the surface with relief. Because it is Daniel and Landry, and both slow when they see me, both their spines straighten. As the old saying goes, I feel like the cat just spotted the mouse.

  “No bodyguard tonight?” Daniel asks me, and his voice is cold. “That’s a shame.”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “You know what your problem is, Eve?” he asks, and he shines the flashlight up and down along my body. “You’re cocky. Do you ever see the other girls acting so tough?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Nah. Not the butch fighters you run around with. I’m talking proper girls. Like you, Eve. You’re a proper girl. Aren’t you?”

  My brain is moving quicker now, and my eyes dart up the stairs and away.

  Daniel is still talking. “And that attitude of yours. Another one of your many faults.” He stares at me, but I can’t see his eyes. The sockets are a cloud of black. “What do you think, Landry? Cause I’m thinking we ought to teach Eve here that lesson we’ve been so meaning to teach her.”

  “Back off, Daniel,” I manage. I hope they can’t hear the agitation bubbling in my stomach. It must be pure acid, because it lashes and burns. All I can think about is the fact that I fought today and how unfair that is. I fought today. Physically I am drained and tired and vulnerable. And it is a horrible thing, to be vulnerable. “Back off or you’ll end up like your friend.”

  “Another thing you ought to pay for,” says Daniel, and a sneer curls his lip. As he shifts the glow of the flashlight, I see that evil glints in his eyes.

  No more time to waste. I lurch away from them and up the stairs with the help of every fiber of muscle and every last cell pushing maximum energy into motion, but I am not fast enough. Grabbed around the ankle, I fall. My face lands on the lip of a stair, and my cheekbone screams with pain.

  Please let that be the lemon juice. Please let the rest of the blows that are sure to come fall over me unnoticed.

  “Will you look at that, Landry. Eve is panicking,” he taunts. “Thought I’d never see the day. God, it feels good to watch her sweat, although I have to admit it’s a bit sad. Pathetic, even.” He grabs my other foot and rips me down the flight of stairs until my bare stomach is flush against cold concrete. I am on a landing—probably the Mean landing—and my only hope now is to scream. So I do, at the top of my lungs, but even then, I know it’s futile. Nobody will come. Nobody ever comes in this godforsaken compound. It is every man, woman, and child for themselves, and the reality is I don’t have enough in the tank to see me to another day.

  The back of my head is grabbed; it is smashed into the floor, and my scream is stopped. Cut off much too quickly by pain and shock. Blood seeps into my eyes and between my teeth, and my fingers crawl to my face, my palms offering a bath of much needed warmth. Daniel is on top of me, and his hands grip my arms, and his legs lock over mine.

  “Turn her over,” comes Landry’s voice, and I know that I have no chance. He was my only hope, but his voice gives away his delight. He is on Daniel’s side. “I’ve always thought she had a pretty face.”
>
  “Too bad I just smashed the shit out of it, then,” says Daniel roughly. “And for the record, Eve, I loved every second of it.” And with that, he pulls at one side of my body, and I flip over, my hands still covering my face, holding it together. Still he is on top of me, still I can’t move. The smell of his acrid soap chokes the back of my throat.

  “Ah, will you look at that,” says Landry. “She’s playing shy.” Fingers touch my bare stomach, lightly stroking back and forth, and a knot twists my insides, one apart from pain and terror. This is a dull and knowing sense of dread.

  I thrash around with as much effort as I can muster, the desire to be free drowning everything else that fires through my brain. But it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough because it isn’t a fair fight, not tonight. Not with two of them.

  “What do you think of her body?” Daniel asks. I can hear the effort in his voice as he holds me in place, but he is trying to keep it level. Trying to keep it cool. “No complaints there.”

  “Meh, too hard for my taste. And she’s tall, too, right? And flat as fuck, like a dude.”

  Daniel laughs, cold and sharp, and my hands ball into fists over my eyes as though this will protect me from their evil intentions. Still I thrash, still I try to knock Daniel off me.

  “Hey, Eve,” he says now. “Hey, Eve—calm down a bit, ’kay? This’ll hurt a lot less if you stay still. Trust me, okay?”

  “You can’t do this!” I scream, and the words erupt from my mouth. They taste like vomit. “You can’t do this to me!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Eve,” he hisses through clenched teeth. But I see strain in his eyes as he holds me down. He is tiring quickly. “We can do whatever we want because we’re Upper Means, and you’re a dirty little girl nobody gives a shit about. And let me tell you this,” he adds as a small smile curls his lip, “when we’re guards, don’t think for a second you’ll have a moment of peace again. Not when you sleep, not when you eat. Not. One. Second.”

  But I can’t respond because I am screaming again. Landry’s fingers curl around the waist of my jeans, and in that moment my legs roar to life, and there is a dull thud that is my heel on his chest.