by J. M. Clark
“Please believe me,” she whispered to him. “The three men walked into the building, and I panicked, thinking they would see me, so I took off. One of the men did see me run down the hallway to the elevators. He called after me, but I was too afraid to turn around. I wasn’t supposed to see that. I was able to get into the elevator and get here to our pod, but I’m so scared. I think one of them saw my face. What if they did, Trevor?”
Trevor didn’t know if he should take this story seriously, or if he should just pay lip service to the conversation and get her to sleep, where she would likely forget all about it. “I’m sure they didn’t see you, Amy. If they had, they would have knocked on the door by now. Are you sure you saw the men get off the chopper with no protective suits? You do know what that would mean, don’t you?” He looked into the eyes that he had drowned inside of for so many years.
“I’m positive, and yes, I know what that means. That’s why I’m so scared. We should try to get out of here. I’m scared they are going to find out it was me and do something to me.” She grabbed Trevor and hugged him tightly, beginning to cry again. Her frail and skinny body fit inside of his clutches like that of a child. Trevor rolled over with her in his arms and laid on his side, spooning her. He rubbed her shoulder with his free arm, comforting her.
“Okay, I do believe you. No one is coming tonight, and if someone does, they have to deal with me first. There is a lot I don’t think is right with this place, but it is safe. Don’t worry about anything. Try to get some rest, and let’s go over this again in the morning. We can talk about leaving or trying to leave if you still feel that way. Is that okay, Amy?” Trevor kissed the back of her neck.
“Are you sure?” she asked him.
“I’m positive. If you want to leave, we will leave. Just try to sleep for now.”
She did not return a reply; she was already falling asleep, and by morning, she would not remember a thing about tonight. Trevor kissed the back of her neck once more, grabbed the blanket, and covered them both with it. Eventually sleep found him again. And thankfully, he didn’t dream.
Chapter Thirty
Mary
It had been about a week since she and Jacob got busted by Teacher Luke. Mary hadn’t been able to work up the courage to speak to Jacob since then, but today would be the day. Walking down to his pod was nerve-racking for her, but coming to see him had always been that way. She felt things when they were together that she’d never felt before.
What would she say when she saw him? She had no idea. The hope was that when she saw his face, the right words would pour out of her mouth and all would be great again. They could become closer, get on the same path to reaching the Greater Understanding Program.
Even though Jacob was a lot older than Mary, they had a connection that could not be denied. She no longer wanted to be with anyone else for relations exercises; for some reason, she now felt like sex should only be between Jacob and herself. This went against everything she had ever been taught. Is he rubbing off on me? His ways are different, and I’m becoming different…
Walking along the third floor, she hoped she wouldn’t run into Teacher Luke again. He was usually walking the hallways of this floor, being creepy as usual. Mary was naturally apprehensive and shy—she didn’t like attracting attention—but Teacher Luke always made her feel like he was noticing her…in all the wrong ways. A few of the other girls in the Palace had said as much, even claiming that he had cornered them before. According to these girls, Luke had never actually done anything physical, but he did make them feel afraid and uncomfortable.
As Mary got closer to Jacob’s door, she was relieved that she hadn’t seen Teacher Luke, but the anxiety of the conversation about to take place came rushing back to the top of her mind. Maybe he won’t be in his pod. He likes to go to the gym at this time, she thought while raising a hand to knock on the pod door she had visited so many times, both with and without approval. Mary swallowed, then knocked. Then she waited…knocked again.
She felt a rush of relief when he still didn’t answer. She spun around and took a few shaky steps down the hall before Jacob’s door swung open behind her. She turned to find him looking at her.
They both gave a little smirk, and he looked the opposite way down the hallway, making sure Teacher Luke wasn’t coming. They were in the clear, and Jacob waved her into his pod. She complied.
Mary walked into the pod and sat on the bed, waiting for Jacob to sit next to her like he always did. Normally they would have already begun relations exercises. There would be passionate kissing, hair pulling, heavy breathing, and cuddling if this was any other day. But it was not any other day. It was today, and she could clearly see that Jacob was in no mood for sex.
Mary noticed that Jacob stopped short of the love seat. He stood there looking at her, waiting for her to say something. She did come to his room, after all. His face looked so calm, filled with indifference. Jacob had his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans. Today he was wearing a grey button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. That look always made Mary so hot below the waist, and today was no different. Fight the urge, Mary, and talk to him, she told herself. Mary stood up and walked over to him, glaring at him, knowing that she needed to say something fast or he was liable to throw her out of the pod.
Jacob began to speak. Mary placed one finger over his lips, then touched his arm with her free hand.
“Jacob, please let me speak. I do not wish to get into a verbal confrontation with you. I want to let you know how I feel in the best way that I know how. All of these feelings I’m experiencing are very new to me, and I don’t know how to process it all. If I allow it to continue to stress me out, I’ll end up on the eighth floor, burying myself alive for days at a time.” Mary removed her finger from his lip and pulled his arm to lead him over to the bed. Jacob said nothing, but he followed and sat down beside her.
“I’m just going to come out and say it because I don’t know how this is supposed to go, and I don’t want you to think I’m some immature idiot,” Mary said, looking down at the floor.
“I don’t think you’re—”
Mary cut him off by placing a firm hand on his leg. He abruptly ceased speaking.
“I don’t know what love is, Jacob. From what I know, it was a tool used for control in the Old World. Men and women would say that word, and it would somehow give them dominion over the person they had this ‘love’ for.” Mary looked up, into Jacob’s eyes.
“While I know on a scientific level that love is just lust, selfishness, oxytocin, and other chemical changes happening in the body…I feel in my heart that there is more to it than that. I’ve been spiraling out of control since I began having talks with you a few years back, and as of late, the feelings have gotten so strong that I can’t think of anything else. I’m beginning to make myself look like a fool to everyone around.” Mary wiped her eye, stopping a tear from dropping.
“It doesn’t matter to me at all,” she went on when Jacob didn’t respond. “I’ll continue to be a fool if it means I get to be around you more and we get to spend more time together. I have no desire to be with another man here, or anywhere out in the world. That became clear to me when Teacher Luke caught us in here. It was obvious what we were doing, and we could have gotten into so much trouble. I cared more about how you were feeling than anything. I just wanted him to leave your pod.”
Jacob moved in and kissed her cheekbone, stopping another tear in its tracks. Their foreheads met, noses touching; the electricity between them almost made Mary want to collapse.
“I know what you are feeling, Mary, and honestly, I feel the same way. I’m not good at showing it; most of the things that happen between us on my end are a habit of how we—we as in the people from the Old World—behave naturally to ‘loving’ someone.
“There was a woman from the Old World that I was coupled with. She passed away when the sickness came for everyone. I took that hard, right along with the deaths
of my parents and close friends, but her…Leanne dying hurt me in a unique way. I closed myself off to everyone, everyone except you. I can’t close myself off from you. I’ve had relations exercises with different women here, but I’ve never felt anything at all for them. With you it feels…different.”
He kissed Mary’s lips and ran both hands through her hair, caressing her scalp.
“I can’t stop crying, Jacob.” Mary’s face contorted into the biggest smile, exposing every tooth in her mouth. She couldn’t stop smiling either. She didn’t even know what this meant, but it made her happier than she had ever been. Never knowing a feeling like this was criminal, and she thought everyone should be able to experience it.
“Listen, Mary, I have something I want to talk to you about. I’m happy that you came over; honestly, I was gonna come find you anyway.” Jacob grabbed both of her hands in his own and placed them in her lap, speaking closely to her face. She could tell he was being careful so as not to be overheard. They could never be sure if Teacher Luke or someone else was listening at the door again. For most, whispering was like a second language in the Palace.
“I’ve come up with a plan, Mary, and I want you to come with me,” Jacob said.
“Go where, Jacob? Where are you going?” Bewilderment transformed her face. “There’s only one way to leave the Palace, and that’s through the Greater Understanding Program. We couldn’t get farther than a hundred yards without dying from the sickness that ended the Old World; how else could we leave but through that program?” Was he going crazy?
“Now it’s time for you to listen to me, Mary, just hear me out. Try to hear me through all the things you have been taught. Please. I know that it won’t make a lot of sense to you, but listen to what I have to say—because I do not want to do this without you.” Mary just nodded her head. Jacob stood from the bed and began pacing the floor while speaking.
“Stuff around here is not what you think it is—it’s not what any of us believe it to be. Since we got here, things have been off, but because there was no other choice, no one cared to mention it. We got here over two decades ago, and it was only supposed to be a year or so until the quarantine area was expanded to the cities, then we could all leave and begin helping to fix the carnage and death that took over the planet.”
Mary fixed her eyes on him and really tried to understand what he was saying to her. Keeping up with topics on things from before her time was always a struggle, and Jacob spoke so quickly when he was excited about something. She thought he sometimes forgot she was not from the Old World. Like he mistook her for someone from his past. Leanne, perhaps.
“After a while, only certain people were being released back into the world, and it didn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason as to why. This was through the Greater Understanding Program. There wasn’t always a level of ‘knowledge’ you had to reach before getting the chance to enter the program. At one point, there was nothing in particular you had to do; it seemed to be a random choosing.
“The years went by, and we all became complacent about weird things we all noticed with the newborn children—they were not allowed to be raised by their birth parents. I don’t need to tell you about the child center, you grew up there. To you, this all seems normal, but to us folks from the Old World, it’s foreign and not the way things used to be. I know you could argue that we needed to do things differently, that undeniably, the old ways brought us here. I agree to an extent, but that brings me to my point.”
Jacob stopped his pacing and laid his hands on her shoulders. He bent down and kissed her lips again. “Stay with me, Mary. I know it’s hard to deal with.”
“Jacob, I’m listening. Just get it all out so I can process. Please.” Jacob stepped back and sat on the back of the sofa. He continued to tell his truth to Mary.
“Myself and others believe that things are not exactly what we think they are. Honestly, I don’t know what’s happening here, but I think we can find out. I wanted to see what would happen if I got close to the main doors or pretended to walk outside. The guard was ready to pull his gun on me to get me back behind the red line.” Jacob whispered to Mary from the sofa, “He didn’t actually do it, as some are saying, but I know he would have if I had walked through the door.”
“Red line?’ Mary was confused.
“Yes, the red line near the main entrance. You might not have noticed it because no one ever gets that close to those doors, but there is a red line there that we are not allowed to pass. It’s there. I walked past it and near the main door, where the security is stationed. The guy would have killed me before allowing me to go outside. I had no intentions of doing so, but I just wanted to see how he would react,” Jacob said, eyes flickering the whole time.
“Wait, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Why would they react that way when we can go out into the courtyard from the east exit, and there is no security there at all? Clearly, they aren’t trying to keep us inside the Palace. We can leave whenever we want to.” Mary wanted to be right about this.
Jacob walked back to the bed and sat beside her again.
“But think about it. You can’t get to the grassy area beyond those red flags from the courtyard, so why would there be security there? The only exit in the Palace that we know of where you can go beyond the flags would be the main entrance.” Jacob’s eyebrows went up a level. The look he gave her said, This didn’t occur to you?
“Jacob, why would you want to leave? You witnessed firsthand what the sickness did to the planet, and it’s still out there. Why would you want to throw your life away?” Mary was getting visibly upset, her voice rising an octave. Tears filled her eyes. She knew one hard blink would break the levee and the waterworks would begin.
Jacob cupped the side of her young soft face with his wide aging hand. The contrast showed the difference in age and size between them more than ever. He rubbed her face and squashed the tear that began to fall with his large thumb.
“Mary…what if the sickness went away long ago?” Jacob said, staring into Mary’s eyes. She watched the fear, anguish, and reluctance animate his pupils. “What if it’s actually safe to be on the outside, and they are keeping us here for other reasons? I don’t know what those reasons would be, but at this point, I don’t know if we can believe anything they say or have said. What if the rest of the world was not wiped out? What if there are others still out there? I need to know, Mary, and I want you to go with me. I know it’s a lot to ask, and I’m turning your entire understanding of the world on its head, but I want you by side. If you can’t come with me, I’d appr—”
“I’ll go,” Mary said swiftly and with confidence, cutting him off before he could finish the sentence. “If you are going, I’m going. I don’t know what’s going on in the Palace, and at this point, I don’t care. But what I do care about is being with you regardless of how things turn out.”
“I love you, Mary…”
Chapter Thirty-One
Michelle
Michelle sat on her brand-new perfectly made bed, picking through items from the box she brought with her from the child center. Alone for the first time in her entire life, she didn’t know how to feel about it. She didn’t feel as scared now, but she was also not excited about the new life she had before her. It was all so new and different from what she was accustomed to, it would take some adjusting. To her, this pod was worlds away from her life in the child center.
While there were rainbows and colorful teddy bears in her old home, now there was only white paint in abundance. Her eyes would have to adjust to the lack of color, but she assumed there was a reason for all the white. She would enter this new level ascension with an open heart and with great confidence in the Order and teachers alike. She had never had a reason to doubt them before, and she wouldn’t do it now. The time had arrived to grow up. It didn’t make things any easier, but she knew, in theory, she was at the right age and education level to be on her own.
Michelle was intimidated coming fro
m a situation in which she was the oldest and wisest to now being the youngest and most in need of guidance. This was the case for all Palace-born children, and some were now as old as twenty and could help her adjust. Teacher Paul even said he would check in with her this week for introductions to other Palace-born individuals. For that she was grateful.
Rifling through the box of items, she pulled out a deck of cards and dropped it into the open drawer of her nightstand along with the hairbrush and book from her old life. She didn’t have much; no one here had much though, so that was normal.
What they all lacked in personal items, they made up for in logic and caring for themselves and everything around them. That was the whole point of the Palace; that, and of course to house human life until they could get back out into the world. She would be a part of that transition. The thought brought a sideways smile to her face.
Michelle crossed her arms over her small chest and began giving herself the tour. Teacher Paul had a meeting to attend, so he had let her in the pod and said, “Make yourself at home,” before delivering an excited smile and moving on with his day. She thought he had a kind face.
There was not much to discover here, however. There was one room—one big room, but still, one room. The bathroom did have a door. This was a plus, she supposed. Couldn’t do your business in front of company, after all. The child center was much bigger, but the many new places she could now visit were more than what she had access to down there.