by Greg Dragon
“But so many people will die,” Tawni says.
“People are dying now!” Cole shouts. He lowers his voice, looking around as if the walls might have ears. “Just more slowly. The life is sucked out of us day by day, as the Sun Dwellers take more and more from us. One day they’ll take our souls.”
He has a point, but I’m more interested in something else. “Where the hell did the Star Dwellers get bombs from? They have no money, no resources.”
Cole raises his eyebrows. “Where indeed,” he says.
“Maybe they’ve been planning this for a long time,” Tawni says. “Maybe they’ve been saving for this.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But there were a helluva lot of bombs going off in a helluva lot of subchapters. That would require years of saving to buy or build that many bombs.”
“Not if they had support by a traitor in the Sun Realm,” Cole says.
Before I have a chance to respond, the second breaking news story comes on, so we turn our attention back to the telebox.
The next story is all about us, referred to as “the escaped guests from the Pen,” who are deemed to be “armed and dangerous.” Our photos and names are stuck to the bottom of the screen while they show footage of the destroyed fence, the downed guards, and the dropped guns. Without explicitly saying it, they imply that we’re responsible for the whole mess, rather than admitting it was the Star Dweller bombs that caused the destruction.
Next they give information on who to call if we’re spotted. Security checkpoints are being added to all major subchapter borders, and roadblocks are in place to search vehicles that may be hiding us. The penalty for harboring “the fugitives”—meaning us—is a life sentence in the Max.
The lead investigator, which basically means hunter of humans, is speaking live from the Sun Realm, and will be traveling to subchapter 14 to personally begin the search. His name is Rivet, and his face is what sparks my thoughts about the inherent nature of the human race.
I don’t know where they found this guy, or what hole he’d been hiding in, but he’s the epitome of evil. His face is cold and hard, with black eyes that are so close together they appear beady, like a snake’s. Fierce black eyebrows rim them in a perpetual frown. His mouth is the snarl of an angry dog. A three-inch scar cuts one of his cheeks in half. He has a low-cut Mohawk and multiple piercings in each ear, which fits in perfectly with the dozens of tattoos that litter his muscular frame. Everything about him screams intimidation.
His words are cold, like icicles, and I almost feel like he can see us through the screen, directing his threats right at us. He keeps his comments brief: “I cannot reiterate this enough: We must apprehend the fugitives as quickly as possible. They’re armed and extremely dangerous. Their sentences range from murder to treason, and they deserve to be locked away for the rest of their miserable lives. This office pledges to hunt them down and bring them to justice, to be tried for their new crimes under the law. Thank you for your time.” Cameras flash and reporters yell out questions, but Rivet is gone, having disappeared back inside some government building.
“Murder?” I say. “I was in for treason, but they didn’t even mention your crimes. We didn’t kill anyone, they can’t say that!” I’m angry and flustered. I knew they wouldn’t be fair to us—have never been fair to us—but I don’t want people to think I’m a murderer.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Cole says, finally sitting down on the floor.
I glance at him, but then back to the telly as the next segment begins. It’s a review of each of us—our pasts, our crimes, our sentences, that kind of thing. They start with Tawni and brush past her pretty quickly, saying Cole and I are bad influences on her and that her sentence is much lighter—for the minor charge of illegal interstate traveling.
“My parents are hard at work doing damage control again,” Tawni says sullenly, as if she would prefer to be depicted as a hardened criminal.
They move onto me next, turning my parents’ slight rebelliousness into an act of high treason, framing it like we’re a family of thieves and spies, not satisfied until we destroy everything from the Star Realm to the Sun Realm. They go into a lot of detail about how it makes sense that I’d try to escape, given my life sentence. By the time they’re done with me, I even feel slightly ashamed of myself, although I’ve done nothing wrong.
The broadcast ends with Cole, touting him as the ringleader of our little gang, noting that he is “as cunning as he is dangerous.” I grin at him when they say that, expecting him to take it as a compliment, but he looks away, his lips a straight line, unreadable.
I wait for them to tell Cole’s story about the bakery, his attempted theft of six loaves of bread, his apprehension and short juvie sentence.
I find out the truth.
There was no bakery, no bread, no mild sentence. Cole duped me. The way his eyes sparkled when he told the story, his attention to detail, his effortless laugh: it all made me believe without a doubt that he was telling the truth. The true story paints a much grimmer tale.
According to the reporter, Cole attacked an Enforcer without provocation. The Enforcer was conducting a routine search of Cole’s neighborhood, looking for anything suspicious—they do that from time to time. They don’t need search warrants; just a badge and a uniform authorizes them to go wherever they want, whenever they want. Cole jumped the guy and killed him, broke his neck cleanly. They say it was instant death and that Cole is a murderer. Cole was sentenced to life in prison, just like me.
The segment ends and Tawni clicks off the telebox.
I stare into space in silence. I’m upset that Cole didn’t tell me the truth, but even more upset with the information in the broadcast. Although I haven’t known Cole for long, I know enough about him to realize that he wouldn’t kill someone without a damn good reason. I want to ask, want to know the real story, but also know that Cole has to want to tell me. I don’t want to force something out of him that he prefers to remain buried. So I just wait. A few minutes go by in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Cole still won’t make eye contact with me—his face turned away—although I look at him a few times.
Tawni’s the first to speak. “Cole, she’s one of us. She should know.”
Cole finally turns his head, and I see what he’s been doing in silence. Crying. His cheeks are slick with moisture and his eyelashes beaded with tears. It scares the hell out of me. In the short time I’ve known Cole, I’ve found there to be a strength in him that’s beyond anything I’ve seen in someone before. It makes me want to be his friend, to depend on him, to count on him. But now he looks broken, destroyed, devastated. The pain on his face is utterly complete, cracking his cheeks with jagged lines.
He starts slowly, building momentum as he unloads his pain. “There were three of them,” he says, “but I thought there was only one.”
“Enforcers?” I ask.
He nods. “When I came home from school he was in the house. My younger sister, Liza, had stayed home sick. My parents were both out, working, like always.” He pauses and takes a deep breath. Before he starts again, a fresh stream of tears dribbles from each eye.
“He was on top of her,” he continues, “trying to take everything from her. God, Adele, she was only eleven.” I feel my own batch of tears well up and I fiercely blink them back. If Cole can’t be strong, I need to be strong for him.
“I was like a raging bull, full of anger, and I felt stronger than ten bulls. I was on him before he even knew I was there. Liza’s tunic was half-ripped and he was trying to pull it off of her. She was incredible, Adele, not giving an inch, kicking and clawing and fighting to the bitter end. Eventually he would’ve subdued her, but not before taking a bit of a beating. My sister was strong, like me.” Although his face remains mournful, I detect a hint of pride in his voice. But as much as I want to, I can’t ignore his use of the word was. It’s there in the back of my mind, tormenting me.
“I pulled him off of her wit
h two hands, threw him against the wall. He wasn’t prepared for a fight. His hands and voice were pleading, begging for me to let him go. I wonder if I should’ve.”
“No, Cole,” Tawni says. “If you’d let him go he would’ve just made up a story about you attacking him and the end result would’ve been the same.”
Cole hangs his head and bobs it up and down, like he wants to believe her but knows he never will. He says, “I was in a rage, not to be reasoned with—you know my temper. I grabbed him and slung him into the wall headfirst. I spun him around, cradled his head, and wrenched it hard to the side. I didn’t even know how to do it properly, but I guess brute strength was enough. I can still hear the bones in his neck cracking. I know I should be sickened by it, but I’m not; I relish the memory.”
I relish that part of his memory, too. The Enforcer was pure evil, inherently bad for sure. If anyone was deserving of death, it was him. I want Cole to stop his story there, but I know he can’t.
“The other two Enforcers were upstairs when it happened,” he says. “They were looting our few measly possessions of value. My mother’s gold wedding band. My father’s steel-toed boots. Taking our stuff while their buddy took my sister.” Cole’s face remains tearstained, but there are no new flows. His eyes are strong again, flashing anger. I would’ve pitied any Enforcer who walked into the room at that moment.
“I guess they heard the commotion, because they came down quietly, their guns out and ready to shoot. But I wasn’t ready to fight anymore. I was holding Liza, helping her cover herself with a blanket. She was bawling, kissing my face, begging me to take her far away from that place. Our home, the place where we’d had so many happy memories, grown up together, had become dirty to her, a prison of filthy nightmares. She would’ve cast it off forever, Adele.”
I’m crying. I don’t know when I started, but once the taps are turned on I can’t seem to stop them. I feel ashamed, like I’ve let my friend down in his moment of need. But he doesn’t seem to notice, like crying is the natural thing for me to do.
“They pointed their damn guns at us, screamed for us to ‘Stand up! Stand up!’” He wipes his face with his sleeve. “One of them checked the other Enforcer, realized he was dead. They separated us, moved us apart, kept screaming at us. I didn’t understand what was happening until they shot her, my Liza, oh, my poor sweet Liza!” Cole’s head is tucked in his hands, his entire body shaking with sobs. I’m bawling. Tawni’s crying, too, but more constrained. She moves to Cole’s side and rubs a hand on his back.
I think the story is over, but a few minutes later Cole looks up, dripping tears from his chin. “They waited for my parents to get home. I was in shock, sitting there numbly, waiting to wake up from the horrible nightmare. I almost charged them, daring them to shoot me—preferring if they would—but I didn’t because I knew I had to explain to my parents why their little girl was dead on the floor. They hadn’t even bothered to cover her body with the blanket.”
The only thing I can do for Cole now is to listen, although God knows I don’t want to—don’t want to know the truth—not anymore. Desperately want to believe the comedic story about him juggling the loaves of bread.
“My parents walked through the door like they always did, holding hands, laughing, as happy as anyone in the Moon Realm ever was in those days. I screamed out, tried to tell them everything in a single breath, but I was denied even that. They shot them before they’d even registered what was happening.” No, no, no, no, no! I can’t take any more of the story. I bury my head in my shoulder, sob uncontrollably, like he’s telling me the tale of my own parents’ deaths.
In a strange reversal of roles, he waits patiently for me to get control of my emotions. When I force my head back up, he continues. “I fought like a wild animal, trying to force them to kill me, too. I really thought they would, especially when I started throwing anything I could get my hands on at them. But no. They ran around, dodging the things and laughing, mocking me, enjoying themselves.”
“Cole, I’m…I’m…” I can’t get the right words out—there are no right words.
“I know,” Cole says. “So now maybe you can see why I just can’t trust that Tristan is good, not when he comes from up there.” He motions to the ceiling, like he’s pointing to the heavens.
“I thought…I thought you were jealous or something,” I say, right away wishing I hadn’t.
Thankfully, Cole laughs it off. “Jealous? I mean, you’re not a bad-looking girl, Adele, very pretty actually, but I’m not really into…how do I put this delicately…you.”
Now I laugh, too; it sounds hollow and foreign to me, like it’s something I haven’t experienced in a long time. “Sorry, I realize it was stupid now,” I say.
He waves me off. “So that’s my story. I’m the murderer in the group, I suppose.” His eyes are steely again, but I can still feel a weakness behind them, a vulnerability. I’ve only just met him, but he already feels like a lifelong friend, like I’ve known him forever. Instinctively, I move over and hug him, squeezing so tightly that if he wasn’t as thick as a bear he might pop. It feels so good to be hugged by someone again, even under such awful circumstances. Earlier, I’d gotten a taste of it when Tawni held me close after my fight with the gang leader, and now I’m suddenly addicted to human contact, like I need it to survive. I don’t want to let go, but after a few seconds I do, not wanting to make things awkward between us, or to give him the wrong impression.
He’s smiling. I feel we’ve made a major breakthrough in our relationship, which has seemed somewhat strained at times. Tawni’s smiling, too. She already feels like my sister, after all we’ve been through together in such a short time.
My real sister’s face pops into my mind once more. “It’s time to rescue Elsey,” I say.
“Where did you say she is?” Tawni asks.
“She’s in an orphanage not far from here. It’s just across the border into the slums.”
“We should be leaving soon anyway,” she says. “It’s not safe to linger here.”
“I thought you said they wouldn’t look for us here,” I say, frowning.
“Of course they will,” Tawni says, a twinkle in her eyes. “Just not right away.”
Before leaving, we make sure that everything is put back to how we found it. We “borrow” a couple of old packs that Tawni says her parents will never miss, and fill them with nonperishable food from the storeroom. Unlike most residents of subchapter 14, Tawni’s family has enough supplies to last them for months, if not years. We only take items that are available in plenty, to ensure no one will notice they’re missing. Although we expect to be able to find plenty of water along the way, we fill a couple of jugs from the servants’ quarters with fresh water from the well. Then we nab a few waterproof flashlights before tying our packs shut.
Lastly, Cole and I raid Tawni’s parents’ closets for things to wear. Tawni points out the items that her mom and dad never wear, so they’ll be less likely to realize they’re gone. We stuff our gray prisoner uniforms under a mattress in the shed. Tawni grabs a few old tunics from her own closet and we head out the back door.
Daylight is more dangerous for us. We don’t necessarily expect that if someone spots us that they’ll call the hotline and report us to Rivet, but we also can’t count on silence amongst our people—Tawni’s parents proved that.
The one thing we have going for us is that even during the daytime, so little electricity is provided to our subchapter that the overhead lights don’t provide enough light for someone to recognize us unless they’re practically right next to us.
Still, we stick to the shadows, pausing to look all around before moving across open spaces. Block by block we make our way out of Tawni’s neighborhood. When the houses change from solid stone to crumbling bricks, we know we’ve reached the slums. I think we all feel safer now.
The slums are exactly as you’d expect. All the houses, if you can call them that (they’re more like tiny sheds), ar
e in major disrepair. Kids run barefoot in the streets, playing knights and barbarians with rocks and cardboard swords. Dead, staring faces sit at windows, as if waiting for someone to come save them. No one is coming. Except us, and we aren’t there to save them.
Unfortunately, the orphanage is in the dead center of the slums. Because there’s so much more activity in the slums than in most neighborhoods—none of the people seem to work and none of the kids seem to go to school—we’re especially careful. Despite only covering about ten blocks, it takes us nearly two hours to reach the orphanage. I’m ready to scream when we finally arrive.
The orphanage is probably the best-maintained structure in the slums, but it still isn’t fit to live in. Certainly not for children. I feel my hands squeeze into fists so tight that my knuckles start to ache. Things were bad for me, but they might be worse for Elsey.
The dilapidated door hangs precariously by a single hinge, unable to fully close. At least half the windows are broken, either by old age or a few well-aimed rocks from the neighborhood monsters. There are holes in the roof and cracks in the steps.
We can’t see any activity through the windows in the front. The orphanage is ringed by a crumbling stone wall, high enough to block our view of the rear yard.
When it appears the coast is clear, we take turns climbing the wall while the others cover us—not with guns but with eyes, ready to whisper a warning if someone is coming. We all make it into the side yard safely. We creep toward the back.
As we approach the corner of the building, we can hear voices. Children laughing, children shouting, nursery rhymes: that sort of thing.
I’m leading and am about to peek around the corner when I feel something whiz past my head. I duck and throw myself flat on the ground, suddenly believing that we’ve been discovered and that someone is shooting at us.