by Ramona Finn
“Wait, Ty,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “When the medics come to check on us, they’ll know we’ve escaped. They’ll sound an alarm and send a whole army of EFs out for us.”
He was right. I hadn’t even thought about that. I’d still been groggy from the drugs when I left my room. They were probably still affecting my judgement. For a split second, I wondered if I’d actually heard the writers say what I thought they’d said.
Of course, I had. I couldn’t have made all that up.
Right?
“How much time do you think we have?” Kev asked.
I rubbed my eyes to clear my head. How much time had passed since I’d left my own room? I looked around the room for a clock or some kind of timing device. There weren’t any. “Wait! The pad.”
At the foot of his bed hung a computer pad. It would have had Kev’s medical charts on it, like mine had. Maybe I’d be able to tell how often they checked on him. I wished I’d checked my own schedule, but it was too late for that now. I swiped my hand over the screen, and sure enough, there was the schedule. They made it so easy—it was a countdown timer.
“We have just over two hours before your next visit,” I said before sticking my head out the door to check the hallway. “Okay, coast is clear.”
Kev wouldn’t budge. He stood there swaying a bit, staring down at his feet. “I don’t want to make waves. I never wanted any trouble. What if we get caught? The Farrows will have us killed, just like the others.”
I wanted to tell him we didn’t have a choice, but I wasn’t sure how much of this was the drugs talking. It had taken me a while to get out of the fog. I’d have to be patient with him.
But, if what I’d found out was true, then everyone in the Geos—everyone we cared about—was destined to die underground, all the while believing that these Elites were actually trying to help them. We had been deceived and the Farrows counted on us to be gullible, none of us ever questioning why it took a whole generation or more to find a Cure for the Virus. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. The Farrows must think we in the Geos were idiots, easy prey. I thought about my parents and what they’d suffered, how hard they’d worked…all because they believed in a future for their kids and grandkids. That fire in my stomach grew into a rock, blazing red hot and filling my whole body with purpose. The Farrows would pay for their deception, for their belief that they were better than us.
“Then we’d better not get caught,” I said to Kev as I dragged him out the door.
Chapter Seven
First things first, we desperately needed clothes. I didn’t want to get caught, but if we did, I definitely didn’t want to be caught in three layers of medical gowns. And besides that, the breeze coming up from below was chilling my butt.
“In here!” I whispered, spying another supply closet. Crossing my fingers, I hoped that this one would contain something useful. I hadn’t had time to search the last one I’d been in, but I recalled that it had been full of stuff. Maybe one of those things was clothes?
Kev leaned against the inside of the door panting while I rummaged through every drawer in the closet. I didn’t find any shoes, but I did find socks. I threw Kev a pair and he slid to the floor, putting on each sock slowly and deliberately. It took him a little longer than me, but by the time I stood back up with my toes tucked warmly into the thick socks, Kev was ready to go. Then, I turned to a cupboard labeled “Scrubs.” “What do you think scrubs are?” I asked rhetorically, opening it up. I did a little celebration dance. There were green tops and drawstring pants of various sizes. I picked out a set of small scrubs for me and large set for Kev.
“Close your eyes while I change,” I told him, handing him a set of clothes.
“That goes for you, as well,” he said with a chuckle.
“They feel so soft and silky,” Kev said as we both turned around, now fully dressed.
I ran my hand over the tunic-like top. He was right. Nothing we’d worn in the Geos had been this nice, and these were just uniforms for the medical personnel. I couldn’t help wondering what their regular clothes would feel like.
In a matter of minutes, we were out the door again. The hallway was still empty, but I tried to walk a little more upright so as not to look suspicious. Luckily, the baggy drawstring pants were so long that they covered our feet; no one would know we weren’t wearing shoes. We could possibly pass for assistants, or whatever junior medical personnel were called.
“How do you know where to go?” Kev whispered as we reached the end of the corridor and were met with another choice of going left or right. He was definitely coming out of the drug fog, and I couldn’t answer his question. I didn’t want him to know I was just following my gut, because in truth, I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I’d needed to get out of my room, and now, after eavesdropping on that conversation, I had to find out the truth about the show. I peered down both sides of the corridor, noticing a blinking red sign at the end of the path to our left. That had to be an exit. I waved for Kev to follow me and made a dash for that sign. He lumbered along behind me.
“Wait,” Kev panted, leaning up against the wall about ten meters from the door.
“Sorry. It’ll take a while for you to get your full strength back. But look.” I pointed to the sign above the door.
“It says Exit,” Kev said.
“Yes, it does.” It was a small thing, but this sign felt like the first good thing to happen since I’d run out of my room.
Behind the exit door was a set of stairs that went way up and down. These stairs weren’t those that we’d seen on the way into the Greens, though—the ones that had transparent walls with beautiful people poised on the occasional step. This stairwell had to be an internal one because the walls were a heavy, dull grey, and they smelled musty, as if no one ever came this way.
“So, which way?” Kev asked, peering up into the stairwell.
I tried to picture what I’d seen when we’d flown into the Greens. And I retraced my steps with those clones in my head. We’d passed the studio on the way to the medical sector. Which way had we come?
“We’re on the second level from the top of the Greens,” I said, recalling the elevator buttons.
“So, why do these stairs go so high up?”
“I don’t know,” I said, running down the stairs to see what was on the next landing. It was a door marked Maintenance Level 17. And it was unlocked. “Let’s try this one.”
It took Kev a while to climb down the stairs. He held on to the railings quite tightly. He was probably still feeling a bit winded. I pulled open the heavy door and it groaned in protest.
The door opened into a large room. It was some kind of maintenance area. There were large pipes running along the ceiling from one end to somewhere I couldn’t see. The ceiling was so low that I could touch the pipes with my arms stretched upward. Some pipes were warmer than others, and some were narrow while others were thicker than my whole body. But all of them had bright red numbers printed along their sides. Kev had to duck between pipes as we explored the area. It was hot and humid in the space, and the occasional sound of steam hissing made us jump.
“I don’t think this is where we want to be,” Kev said. It took all of my strength not to roll my eyes at him or turn around and smack him. He had a knack for stating the obvious.
“Let’s just see if there’s another door at the other end,” I said, ducking under a much lower pipe. “Maybe this connects us to a different section.”
We walked in silence. The dim lighting, the heat, and the dampness of this place reminded me so much of home in the Geos. It was almost comforting to be walking under the pipes. I thought about my parents, wondering what they were doing at this moment. Were they thinking of me? Wondering what I was doing up in the Labs? A lump formed in my throat. My mother should’ve been there in the Labs already. She should’ve been getting treatment, living it up like she deserved. Dad, too. But I had no idea where they were, how they were bei
ng treated, or whether Mom was getting any medicine at all. Nari would do what she could, but there were so many restrictions in the Geos. And now that I knew the Farrows were all fakes, that they had no plans at all to save the people living in the Geos, I couldn’t be sure they’d keep their word about saving my parents.
My feet slowed as I pictured my mother suffering in the filthy, damp air of the Geos, getting sicker with every passing moment. If the Cough took her from me, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Everything I’d done, from hacking the system to fighting the Virus, and even joining the Rejs, had been for one purpose only—to save her life. If I failed at that, then I was worth nothing. I had to do something to help her, and fast.
“What’s this?” Kev’s voice broke me out of my thoughts. He was staring at a chart posted on the wall.
“It looks like a map of the section above us,” I said. I couldn’t believe I would’ve walked right past this, all because I was wallowing in self-pity. Nice job, Ty.
We squinted at the large map, studying the layout of this section of the Greens. It showed where each pipe led and what areas they served. We were apparently underneath the wing that housed medical, the library, several food service facilities, and the film studios.
“That’s where we need to go.” Kev pointed at the top right corner of the map. There were several sections labeled “Film Studios.” “Why would they need so many rooms?”
I shrugged, stepping closer to where he was pointing. I counted five rectangular sections; one had the words “Costumes and Make-Up” printed in shadowy letters on it, where the others had no words labeling them. Another sixth and much smaller square was shaded in diagonal lines. The word “Private” was stamped across that square. Red numbers were printed on each shape, and they seemed to match the numbers printed on the pipes in this area. “From what I know, they usually film most episodes in the lab itself. But then there’s the garden outside—”
“Right! Like in that episode where Ben confronted those two lab assistants about sneaking off every day, because the girl was matched to someone else? That was a tense episode.” Kev chuckled at the memory.
“Yeah, people were talking about it for days.” And it wasn’t even real. “So, each of these rectangles must act as a different location for filming. And these numbers must be the pipes that serve each room. I wonder which one is the lab itself?”
The fake lab. My heart sank into my stomach with thinking about how the Elites had to be laughing at us in the Geos believing their stupid, made-up show. How could they be doing that to us? What had we ever done to make them hate us so? We were all humans just trying to survive a damaged planet. It wasn’t like there was anywhere else for us to go. If the Earth was destroyed, even the Labs would fall. Those Elites depended on our planet as much as we did. We were all vulnerable. So, why create these artificial distinctions? It made no sense.
“Aren’t you coming?” Kev tugged at my sleeve. He was pointing in the direction we needed to go, to be right underneath the studio floors. “We just need to follow this pipe to find a door that’ll get us up to the studios. Easy peasy.”
I blinked away my growing rage and followed him. He was walking much more quickly and steadily now. He almost seemed excited.
A door creaked somewhere in the distance. Loud voices echoed in the room, followed by a bang as the door slammed shut. I couldn’t see anyone, but we both definitely heard them. There were so many twists and turns in the pipes above us, I could only assume that there were just as many corners and corridors in this giant room. At any moment, the people whose voices we’d just heard would turn a corner and find us.
Kev and I headed away from the sound of those voices. We came to a section of the room where the pipes were so thick that it felt as if the entire ceiling had been lowered to my eye level. Enormous pipes that oozed heat ran parallel to each other from one end of this room to the other—to where, I couldn’t tell. The room seemed to go on forever.
We ducked under the lowest, thickest pipe and followed it until we came to a wall. The pipe went through the wall, creating a nice little hiding place between the wall and the pipe. We pressed ourselves as close as we could into that corner. It was just thick enough to hide our bodies. But if anyone found us, there would be nowhere for us to go. We’d be trapped.
Kev’s face went from pink to white in less than a second as he stared at me with wide eyes. I pressed a finger to my lips and tried to push my heart back from my throat into my chest. I must’ve been wrong about Kev’s chart and when they would check in on us. Or maybe they’d discovered I was missing and were just looking for me. I hadn’t checked my own chart, after all.
I curled up into a ball, pulling my knees into my chest. I shouldn’t have brought Kev with me. What had I been thinking? I was just getting him into more trouble. It was stupid of me to think I was saving him.
Stop, Ty. Focus.
I had to hear what the people were saying, because their tone didn’t sound urgent or angry, as I imagined the EFs who were looking for us would be. No, someone had just laughed. Others followed suit.
“I’m going to go check Section 2,” someone said. Others grunted in agreement.
“They’re not looking for us,” I whispered to Kev. My voice echoed a little against the pipes and I stopped breathing for a second, waiting to see if I’d just given our position away. Nothing happened. I looked around. No one was in sight. The voices were fading. I looked up and read the letters printed on this pipe we were hidden behind. Recalling the map on the wall, I felt sure this pipe was headed to the studios. It should lead to the door we needed. I motioned for Kev to follow me as I began to move along the pipe in a low crouch. This way, we stayed partially hidden from view.
My thighs were burning from staying low, and we didn’t hear any more voices near us. We must be headed in the right direction.
“I see it!” Kev tapped me on the back, sounding excited. He pointed frantically in front of us and I nodded when I saw it, too. The door. I snuck a look back. The coast was clear. No footsteps, no voices. Just Kev and me, breathing too loudly. I made a final dash for the door and Kev followed. By my calculations, we should be right beneath the film studios. I pulled at the door handle. It was heavy, but unlocked. With both hands, I yanked it open. The door made the worst groaning sound. It echoed all the way through my body. And through the room.
“Hey!” someone yelled. “Who’s in Section Five? Casey, is that you? Are you lost again?”
Thudding footsteps grew louder.
“Casey!” the voice yelled again.
“I’m over here,” someone else—it had to be Casey—replied. “Are you hearing things again?” He laughed.
I pulled Kev through the door. We yanked it shut as it groaned even louder. Then it slammed with a reverberation that must’ve gone right up the floors to the studios themselves.
“Run!” I whisper-yelled to Kev.
I took the stairs two or three at a time, hoping Kev’s adrenaline would kick in and give him the strength to do the same. We climbed up three flights of stairs before we came to a door. This one was marked “Film Studios.” We’d found it. Before we could open it, the door below us opened and someone called out from below.
“Who’s there?”
I pressed myself against a corner of the wall and with one hand pushed Kev back next to me. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit my lip, knowing that this wasn’t going to make me invisible, but hoping that the man below wouldn’t see us when he looked up.
“No one is supposed to be in here except maintenance,” he called out. “You better not let me catch you.”
The clunking sound told me that he was coming up the stairs. Kev stared at me, mouth wide open. My breaths screeched to a stop. The man would see us in just a few seconds, and if I opened this door and it was as creaky as the last one, he’d know where we’d gone.
Just as my lungs gave out, screaming for air, the lower door groaned once more.
“H
ey, Casey,” someone said. His deep voice boomed up the stairwell. “Looks like we have a problem with Section 7. Could you come help?”
“What?” Casey sounded distracted.
Please, Casey, go help him.
Casey hesitated, as if he was listening for sounds in the stairwell. I didn’t even dare take another breath. Next to me, I could feel Kev doing the same thing. This moment went on forever. Then, I heard Casey grunt.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he said.
Multiple footsteps and a door slam told me that we were safe.
I exhaled. Kev and I were alone. I moved to the banister and looked down. Empty.
“We’re clear,” I said with a huge sigh.
“What if he alerts the EFs and they discover we’re gone? They’ll put it all together and know where we are.” Kev was still white as a sheet.
“You’re giving them too much credit for being able to make those conclusions,” I said, trying to lighten things up a bit. My heart still hadn’t slowed back down to normal. “One thing at a time, Kev. The studios are right behind this door.”
Chapter Eight
Matching the perfection we’d seen flying into the Greens, this door was pristine and creak-free. The hallway beyond it was also perfect—perfectly white, clean, and bright. The floor was covered in plush white carpet. The walls were textured in diamond patterns with shades of white blending from one panel to the next. The lights were hidden, but bright. Kev and I, in our green outfits, stood in gawk-worthy contrast to this place.
“This must be a different side,” I said quietly. When Kev looked at me with bewilderment, I told him how I’d passed by the studios on my way to the medical center when the clones had taken me to my room.
“So, where to?” he asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I let him pick a direction and we headed down the hallway trying to look like we fit right in. We turned a corner, and I stopped.
Kev bumped into my back.