We Are All Strangers

by Nicole Sobon

  She turned to face me, a small smile springing upon her lips. “They thought that the key was rewiring our minds; that reworking our memories would fix things. And I suppose that it worked for a while, though with side effects – as evident by most of the girls within the compound – until Jolene.”

  Well, that explains the freakish eyes, I thought.

  “Who is Jolene?” I pulled my legs up, resting my chin atop my knees. “And what happened to her?”

  “Jolene Murphy, the daughter of Council member Joseph Murphy,” she paused to allow the shock to sink in. A Council member’s daughter. “They’d found her near the fields with another girl. She was sentenced to ten years within the compounds shortly after. But when they went to perform the memory cleanse, she fought back. Instead of erasing her memories, they had made them stronger.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, truly confused with what this had to do with the Council leaving.

  “As Jolene’s memories grew stronger, so did her anger and her unpredictability. She killed at least five staff members sent here by the Council, which is why they closed down the memory centers temporarily.”

  “Temporarily?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Roslyn pressed her hand to her forehead. “They should be back any day now.”

  Chapter Five

  When I’d received my sentencing from the Council, I knew that my life was essentially over. Not just because of Kieran but also because I’d heard how often people lost themselves in the compound – heck, I’d seen it – how they became so paralyzed with fear that once they were released back to Caiden, they weren’t sure how to act.

  I knew that there was a chance that could be me, and now I knew there was more of a possibility that could be the case.

  With the Council promising a return, I knew that it was only a matter of time, and I wasn’t sure whether I was more terrified or angry.

  Terrified that I’d lose myself.

  Terrified that I’d lose my memories of Kieran.

  Terrified that I’d forget the feeling of love.

  And angry because, to them, they hadn’t taken enough from me yet – they had to take away the only thing I had left to hold onto.

  My mind, my memories, they belonged to me. They were the only way I’d get through the next two years. Without them – without being able to see his face, to remember my family – there was nothing worth fighting for.

  “Are you sure?” I kept my eyes locked on Roslyn, eager to catch a smile, anything to say that she was kidding, but these were the compounds, and there was a reason they were called the Rings of Hell.

  “They sent a messenger to deliver the news to Matron Elizabeth shortly before your arrival.”

  “They are returning for her, aren’t they?” She nodded. “She’s dangerous, and that terrifies them. It’s a battle for power, and right now, they are losing.”

  I ran my fingers over the fabric of my dress, a nervous habit I’d developed over time. I had to keep moving, to distract myself from my thoughts, or else I would fall apart and I couldn’t afford that in a place like this. “Where is she?”

  Roslyn looked up at me, a tight smile on her lips. “A few buildings down. Matron Elizabeth felt it was best to keep her around the rest of us to maintain some sort of normalcy.”

  “Can we go see her?”

  She pressed a finger against her right shoulder blade. “You do know that every movement is being recorded, correct?” I looked at Roslyn, clueless as to what she was trying to tell me. “Despite what Matron Elizabeth thinks, the Council still keeps an extremely close eye on the compounds. I know for a fact that they record our movements and that they keep track of whom we associate ourselves with within the compounds.”

  “How is that?”

  Roslyn handed me her meal card. “You know how your ID card from Caiden stored your personal information?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well, each person’s meal card has a computer chip in place. It not only stores your personal information but also your food intake, work schedule, meal schedule, how frequently you visit a location and how often you spend near another person – it’s kind of like the chip they gave you to wear around your neck.”

  “But how do you know?” I asked, growing more impatient as time ticked by without a response from Roslyn.

  Finally, what felt like an eternity later, she turned to face me, stretching her legs out along the couch. “Do you remember that first time you felt what it was like to be in love? How you felt as though the world could crumble around you and it wouldn’t matter, as long as he was near your side?”

  I closed my eyes, allowing myself to remember that feeling. To remember the way it felt when he looked at me; the love that filled his eyes and enveloped me, making me feel as though I was the only person that mattered.

  I knew that feeling; I knew it all too well.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m afraid to lose that feeling,” she said. “I’m afraid that if I do; if somehow they manage to take that away from me, I’ll have nothing left. It sounds ridiculous, I guess, but it is how I feel. I’m so desperate to hold onto those memories that I’m willing to do whatever is needed to hold onto them.”

  I looked over Roslyn, taking in the pain that covered her face and the telling look in her eyes. “What did you do?”

  “You said that you wanted to see Jolene, correct?” Roslyn asked, effectively changing the subject.

  “Yes,” I answered eagerly.

  She tossed her feet over the edge of the couch and moved to stand. “Come on then, we don’t have much time before Matron Elizabeth returns for us.”

  Chapter Six

  I’d thought that I had seen the worst of Compound One.

  I hadn’t.

  Roslyn led me to a back doorway that led us into the silent night. Candles burned on the windowsills of the buildings we passed as we crept along, careful to keep an eye out for Matron Elizabeth and the rest of the Order.

  “What will happen if they see us?” The crisp night air danced along my bare skin, igniting an army of goose bumps all over my body. I’d never missed the comfort of home more than now.

  “They’d send us to one of the nearby detention centers,” she said, shrugging.

  Part of me almost wanted to be captured and brought to one of the detention centers, only because at least then I’d understand the pain Kieran must have been experiencing.

  But then there was a part of me desperate to uncover what was taking place within Compound One. I wasn’t entirely sure why either because I knew that I was far too weak to do anything about it.

  “Relax,” Roslyn urged. “They won’t see us. I’ve learned how to sneak around.”

  “But her chip, wouldn’t they know you’ve been to visit her?”

  A sly smile crept onto her lips. “There are ways to jam the trackers.”

  Even though she wore a smile, I could still see the pain in Roslyn’s eyes.

  Love had the power to drive a person mad.

  I was beginning to think that she wasn’t too far off.

  She crept alongside the wall of the building, her hands pressed against the rough cement. I moved along behind her, my eyes roaming around the vacant compound, worried we’d be located at any given second.

  As we moved to the front of the building, I was surprised to find a line of armored men lining the doorway. “How are we supposed to get by them?”

  Roslyn reached behind and clasped her hand over my mouth. Be quiet, she mouthed.

  It was a lot easier said than done when fear was coursing through your veins, forcing your heart into palpitations. Relax, Ridley, I reminded myself.

  I closed my eyes and focused on what had led to me being here.

  I originally thought that I’d need to forget Kieran, to forget my family, to forget my home in order to survive the compounds. I was wrong.

  I needed those memories now more than ever.

  I recalled the feel of th
e grass beneath my palms and how the sun burned against my skin; how Kieran’s eyes sparkled under the sunlight, and how his skin glistened as beads of sweat traveled down his arms; how I told him that I wasn’t into sweaty guys, and he smiled, bigger than I’d ever seen him smile before.

  And I thought of the three last words he spoke to me as the guards pulled us from the field.

  “I love you,” he shouted as they dragged him in the opposite direction.

  I ignored the red light of the camera recording the entire ordeal. I ignored the smirk on the main guard’s face as I called out for Kieran. I ignored all of that because all that mattered in that moment was that he’d said he’d loved me, and it was that knowledge – those three little words – that would get me through this.

  Roslyn stared at me for a moment once I’d finally opened my eyes. “You’ll get used to it in time,” she whispered, careful to check over her shoulder, just in case someone else was nearby. “It is always difficult in the beginning.”

  I wanted to believe her, but her eyes betrayed her own words.

  There was still a part of her that was scared underneath her put together exterior. There was still a part of her left to be broken; a part of her that hadn’t been taken by the Council just yet.

  I went to speak, but she stopped me.

  “Come on,” she said, grabbing hold of my wrist.

  She pulled me along behind her, stopping suddenly in front of a door marked “No Entry”.

  Roslyn reached inside of her dress and tugged on a clear cord that hung around her neck. A brass key dangled from the cord. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  She grinned. “I told you, I’m not ready to lose that feeling just yet. I’m going to find a way out of here, and a way back to him. This key? It’s the first step in doing so.”

  She slipped the key inside of the lock and jiggled the handle. I watched the front of the building nervously, fearing that the men would hear us. But they hadn’t.

  Roslyn pulled the door open quietly and slipped inside. “Ridley,” she whispered. “Let’s go!”

  I followed her inside of the building, carefully shutting the door shut behind me. “Where are we?”

  “This,” she said, spinning around with her arms outstretched beside her, “Is the testing center.”

  Chapter Seven

  The walls were covered in black paint, and the floor was covered in, what appeared to be dried blood stains. “I thought you said they only performed memory cleanses here?”

  Roslyn ran her fingers through her hair. “That’s what the building used to be used for, at least according to the reports in Matron Elizabeth’s headquarters.”

  A few feet away, I heard a door slam shut. “What was that?”

  She shot me a worried look. “I don’t know. Jolene’s holding room is downstairs. No one else should be on this level.”

  Maybe no one was supposed to be on this level, but someone else was.

  My first instinct was to run for the door, hoping to escape before whoever it was reached the front room. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. Something had jammed the door, preventing it from opening.

  The sound of the footsteps grew louder, and I knew that it was useless.

  “The trackers should have been disabled once we crossed the threshold,” Roslyn said, more so to herself than me. “I installed the jammer myself. It should have worked.”

  “Do you mean this?” a male voice called from the opposite end of the room. I could faintly make out the outline of a long, silver strip covered in black electrical tape.

  He was tall with gray hair and dressed in an all-black, crisp suit. He had a young girl restrained under his grasp; a young girl that looked a lot like him, except that her eyes – the same piercing blue as the old man’s – were empty while his were full of hatred and disgust.

  “May I ask what the two of you are doing here?” He asked, a sneaky smile wide upon his face. “Have you come to seek our services? Because if so, we’d be more than happy to test our new program out on the two of you.”

  “Not going to happen, geezer,” Roslyn snapped.

  But the thing was that we both knew that it would.

  We weren’t strong enough to take on the Council, and who knew how many were waiting on the sidelines, ready to capture us the moment we made a move to fight back.

  “The determination you have is quite admirable, dear.” He grinned. “You see, as you know, we keep a close eye on your tracking devices, mainly to make sure that people aren’t trying to find a way out of serving their ordered punishment. Your reports, Roslyn, were quite fascinating. You spent a lot of time in places you were never meant to enter, didn’t you?”

  Roslyn stiffened beside me. “I’m not going to let you take away the only good thing I have left in my life.”

  The old man ignored her, instead moving his focus over to me. “You. You’re a new offender, correct?”

  I tried to ignore him as he moved closer to me, dragging the young girl along with him. I tried to focus on Kieran, on the fields – on home. I pictured his face in my mind. I thought back to the first day we met near the fields, and how he approached me and asked me what my name was in his deep, southern accent.

  In that moment, he became all that I could think about – all that I cared to think about. He became a part of me that day, and I wasn’t going to allow them to take him away from me again.

  I couldn’t.

  “What’s your name again?” He asked, growing frustrated with my lack of answers.

  “Ridley Mulligan,” I replied nervously.

  “Well, Ridley. You wanted to meet Jolene, did you not?” He beamed. “Here she is, live in the flesh.”

  He shoved her forward, knocking her to the ground.

  For someone who was classified as dangerous, she seemed to be withdrawn, empty. Just like the others before her. “What did you do to her?” Roslyn shouted.

  Jolene looked up, her piercing eyes locked on me. She titled her head and glanced back at the old man behind her. She threw out her leg, sending him flat on his back, before turning to face me. “Run,” she said, her voice raspy, dry. “They’re coming.”

  “Where are we supposed to go?” I asked, looking back at Roslyn.

  Jolene pointed to a small door near the stairway that led to the basement. “Take that tunnel,” she said. “It’ll lead you to the end of the compound. Whatever you do, get the hell out of here.”

  Before I could ask what we were running from, loud cries from outside gave me my answer.

  The compound was under attack.

  “No matter how tired you get, do not stop running until you hit the detention centers. Do you hear me?” Jolene’s voice grew desperate. “And no matter how difficult it gets, or how close you come to waiting to give up, you can’t. They want to destroy you, do you hear me? They’ll try to break you, to erase that feeling of pure bliss. They’ll try to make you forget. You can’t let them.”

  She lifted her foot and pressed it down on the old man’s chest. “Because love is the only thing that is going to save us in the end.”

  Did you love We Are All Strangers: a Collection of Short Stories? Then you should read Submerged (Outbreak, 1) by Nicole Sobon!

  After a mysterious virus makes its way into the United States, the government demands that states seal themselves off from one another and do their best to protect their surviving residents. When the state of Florida is bordered off from the surrounding states, Taylen Fincher, a seventeen-year-old girl with a yearning for her former life finds herself wondering how much of what they've been told is true.

  When Troum took control of the state, he told the residents that the other states had fallen to the virus and that he wouldn't allow the same thing to happen to them. But Taylen doesn't believe it. She insists that there is still life outside of the state, and she is going to do whatever it takes to prove it... but her actions will cost her more than she ever expected.

  Troum kidnaps Taylen's
sister, Penelope, in hopes of coaxing her into behaving - into being a submissive resident, much like the others. But Taylen isn't one to give in that easily.

  Eager to rescue her sister, Taylen will set out on an adventure that'll force her to open her heart to the unexpected and to uncover secrets that will change everything.

  SUBMERGED is the first book in a Young Adult Dystopian duology.

  Read more at Nicole Sobon’s site.

  Also by Nicole Sobon

  Outbreak

  Spark (Outbreak, 0.5)

  Strength (Outbreak, 0.8)

  Submerged (Outbreak, 1)

  The Emile Reed Chronicles

  Allegiance (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 1.5)

  Program 12 (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 0.5)

  The Emile Reed Chronicles: Volume 1

  Program 13 (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 1)

  Deprogrammed (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 2)

  Standalone

  No Place Like Home

  We Are All Strangers: a Collection of Short Stories

  Rare Talents: a YA Short Story

  Watch for more at Nicole Sobon’s site.