I walk up to the entrance, pulling out my ID card to scan it at the gate. Before I can do that, an Officer stops me. He holds out his hand, and thinking it’s just a routine check, I hand it over.
‘Please step to the side,’ he says, gesturing for me to move away from the gate to stop blocking the other workers from getting in.
Something feels off suddenly, and I can hear my heart thudding in my ears as I move out of the way.
He lays his hand on top of my right shoulder, catching the fabric badge with my serial number printed on it, and tears it off.
‘What are you doing?’ My voice comes out a shocked half shout.
‘Your services are no longer required,’ he says in a monotone voice. ‘Your ID card is being confiscated.’ He throws both the ID card and the serial number badge in the bin, the only two forms of identification we are given.
‘What?’ My voice sounds high-pitched and scratchy, and I can’t tell if it’s from all the screaming when I was taken to containment, or if it’s the fear I feel pooling in my chest.
‘Branded citizens are not authorised past this point.’
I fall back a step.
Somehow, in the middle of all the confusion, I forgot about the second part of being Branded – the part where you’re stripped of your rights, your job, your ID.
‘Please vacate the premises, or I’ll be forced to call security,’ the Officer says, and suddenly the cold edge to his voice makes me want to scream.
I turn on my heel, trying not to touch anyone as I walk by the other workers, but as always, every step I take is another invitation to bump into someone, make contact with someone, the fear of Infection rising with each touch.
My heart is pounding in my ears as I walk away, and the emotions I felt in the containment centre return with a vengeance.
I want out.
But this time, maybe I have a way.
Aaron is gone, I’ve been stripped of my job, and I have less than a week to live before I’m shipped out to the Labs.
I have nothing left to lose.
If what that girl was saying is true, it’s my last shot at having some kind of life. At staying alive.
And if not? Then I guess I’m not leaving anything behind, anyway.
Without an ID card to procure food, I end up sitting on the scrap heap, listening to my stomach growl at me. Hours pass, but all I can do is wait.
The girl said the tenth day of the tenth month, which means, if she’s telling the truth, the power will be cut tomorrow at midnight. She’ll walk by the scrap heap on her way back to the Dorms, so I sit with my back to the Celian City for the first time, not waiting for the future, or for the Cure, but for a way to escape.
When she finally turns up, I’m almost asleep. I haven’t been able to sleep the last few nights, and last night, with the Brand burning into me, I didn’t even close my eyes.
She climbs the pile and sits down beside me without a word. She pulls a roll of bread from the satchel slung around her shoulders, and hands it to me.
For a moment I just stare at it, but she nudges me forward.
‘Eat. They took your ID, didn’t they?’
I look at her infuriatingly blank face, trying to understand what she’s thinking. I nod slowly, ripping a chunk from the bread and biting into it.
My stomach growls again as I swallow, and I realise how hungry I am.
‘That’s what they did to my father. They Branded him, they starved him, and then they killed him once it was easy to cover up.’
Part of me still doesn’t want to believe it. How could Oasis be so cruel? And yet the burn on my left shoulder speaks of just how cruel they can be.
I don’t know how to pose my next question, so I sit for a long time, chewing the hard bread and staring at the lights of the Celian City.
‘Are you … are you coming?’
‘Yes,’ she says, not asking where I mean.
‘How do you know it’s going to be worth it? You don’t know what’s going to be out there. What if it’s just like they said? What if it’s a wasteland?’
She turns, looking at me for a long moment.
‘And this isn’t?’
My chin drops to my chest automatically, and I see my life in a kaleidoscope of memories, wheeling into each other. After I was dropped into the Outer Sector, I had to learn how to survive in a world I didn’t know or understand. The rules were different here, and yet no one would explain them to me. At home, there was always enough food. Here, if you didn’t fight for it, you’d go hungry. At home, I had my own bed in my own room, with soft, warm blankets. Here, we slept on the floor, the dry spots regularly fought over, sometimes to the point of blood, and the thin blankets gave little defence against the dropping temperatures.
The people acted differently, too. Suddenly people were something dangerous, something to be feared. I had to learn which ones to avoid, which ones were safe, and which ones would hurt me. The Officers, a symbol of peace and safety back in the Inner Sector, were different out here. They had short tempers and were more likely to punish you than smile at you. The whole place was a cesspit of violence and fear.
But then there was Aaron. He was worth all of this, wasn’t he? He was worth the pain and the fear and the hunger. He was worth everything … until … until he looked at me like I wasn’t worth anything at all.
Something in my gut whispers that he’s not coming back. That he’s done with me, of course he is. Nine months I knew him. Nine months I had the privilege of seeing him, hearing him, holding him. But perfection doesn’t last forever, and Aaron was perfect. He was too perfect, and now he’s leaving. And if Aaron’s leaving, so am I.
I finish the bread with Bea at my side, and I can feel the reluctance in both of us to return to the Dorms.
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirteen,’ she says, her chin rising slightly.
‘Thirteen?’ I ask, confused, looking at her. She doesn’t look thirteen. She looks ten.
I can see it in her face that she realises what I’m thinking, and her expression sours for a moment and I almost laugh.
She reminds me of myself. Young and small and always a little bitter, always ready to bite, green eyes flashing the moment someone spoke to me.
But then the expression melts, replaced with that same vaguely bland look she’s had since I met her.
‘My name is Beatrice,’ she says, as if trying to change the subject. I freeze a little, but she continues on, ignoring me completely. ‘But you can call me Bea. My sister couldn’t pronounce Beatrice when she was little, so she started calling me Bea.’
‘You have a sister?’
‘Yes. Her name’s Sophia.’
‘Does she … is she Pure?’
Bea looks down at her hands. ‘No. She was tested a few years after me, and we were placed in the same Dorms for a while. They moved me a few weeks ago.’
I go silent for a moment.
‘I’m going to find her,’ she says. ‘7425. That’s her serial number. If Oasis can use the serial numbers to track us, I’ll find a way to use them to find her.’
‘But why are you leaving then?’
‘I need help,’ she says. ‘Those people who hacked the mainframe? They know how to do things like that. They can help me find her.’
I don’t point out the flaws in her plan. Like how she’s supposed to get back in, or how she even knows there really is anyone outside. But I’m escaping too, I remind myself. She’s not the only one risking everything for a tiny sliver of hope that things might get better.
Eventually we pack up and go back to the Dorms, waiting for tomorrow. My heart is in my throat, my blood like fire in my veins. This feels like fear, but not. Like the moment between one breath and the next. Like the thing in my chest, pushing and expanding within me when I saw Aaron in the distance, like a beacon of light.
And maybe Aaron was hope all along. Maybe Aaron was the hope of something better that would never come. And maybe I’ve fo
und a new hope, and if it will not come to me, I will go to it.
13
Oasis has three lines of defence: the Peace Wall, the fence, and the patrols. Just beyond the Outer Sector there’s a thick line of trees with a stretch of open ground beyond it that’s heavily patrolled by Officers. The fence is a fifteen-metre high electrical contraption, the top lined with barbed wire and sensors to detect any attempt at breaking in.
If you manage to get past the fence, you’re faced with the Peace Wall. It’s thirty metres of steel and stone, several metres in width, and completely indestructible. But there are drains every couple of hundred yards, covered with iron grates. If we could figure out a way to get past the grates, we’d be able to slip out through the drains and out into whatever exists beyond.
We have to build our plan quickly. With less than twenty-four hours until the power is cut, we have to figure out a way to get past the guards, out of the Dorms, past the patrols, past the fence, through the Wall – all of it sounds impossible, all of it has to be figured out fast.
The only tools we need are wire-cutters and a screwdriver, and Bea says she knows a way to get them. She works in the crematorium, and she says she’s seen a toolbox inside the building. I try not to think about working there, or about why she works there, because citizens are only elected as crematorium workers as a punishment. I wonder what she could have done to have been given that job, but I can’t be slowed down by useless details.
Bea leaves for work after the sirens go off in the morning, but with nowhere to go, my job is to scope out the perfect place to leave from. I spend the day wandering the border of the Outer Sector, my nerves on edge. Since I was seven years old, the Outer Sector has been all I’ve known. And no matter what it’s done to me, there are memories here, clinging to the walls. And in every good memory, there’s Aaron’s blue eyes, his perfect smile, his golden hair falling in waves across his forehead.
I haven’t heard anything from him since the containment centre. But with only a few days between now and me being carted off to the Labs, I can’t afford to wait for him any longer.
That’s when I see it. I’ve come full circle, going deep into the Outer Sector and walking back out. On the way out, with the Dorms in view and far from any Officer patrol stations, there is a drain. I feel fireworks going off in my chest, dizzying excitement mixing with crippling fear.
This is it.
When Bea returns hours later, we meet in the hallway and she slips the tools into my hand. Now that we have everything we need, there’s nothing left to do but wait until dark.
My heart’s been racing in my chest since I woke up, and I can’t stop myself from fidgeting. Beatrice puts her back against the wall opposite to me, and I do the same, and we stare at each other as people file back into the Dorms, loud and boisterous and then slowly, slowly getting quieter and quieter as they slip off to sleep one by one, but Bea and I never break eye contact. Not once. Not for a second.
In Oasis, clocks are everywhere. In the streets and at the power station and in every room of every building, ticking the seconds away to the next place you need to be, the next thing you need to do. I glance at the clock above the door and watch the seconds tick by, waiting.
Eventually I nod to Bea, and we stand up slowly, moving towards the stairs.
Nobody at the Dorms is a light sleeper. If they were, they wouldn’t get any sleep at all, so there’s little chance of waking anyone, but I still carry my boots in my hand, afraid they’ll make too much sound on the wooden floors.
Bea is standing at the top of the stairs, a terrified look on her face, as if she’s suddenly realised we’re actually doing this. For a split-second I think I should leave her behind. She’s going to slow me down, trip me up, get us caught. But when I look into her eyes I see the desperation in them, not fear of escape, but fear of living here for the rest of her life, and I can’t convince myself that she deserves to be free of this place any less than I do.
So I move past her, and I don’t nod or encourage because I can’t and I shouldn’t and I won’t because it’s dangerous, and I am pulling and tugging and struggling on the inside to get away from this place where everything is summed up in terms of how dangerous it is.
There is a window in the hallway, and I push it open slowly. It creaks under the pressure I put on it, but eventually slides open, the cold night air slapping me in the face.
Leaning out of the window I place my boots gently onto the fire escape outside, then slide myself through as quietly as I can. Suddenly I am outside, and the sky is black-blue and speckled with droplets of light, and the moon is huge but hiding behind clouds in fits and starts, and I am at once nervous and intoxicated by this semblance of freedom.
The air is damp and cold, and I wait in the half-light for Bea to slip through the window behind me, silently nodding her around the side of the building’s fire escape. They loop around each floor of the building, rickety mesh things that are barely held to the wall of the Dorms, but all of the downstairs exits are so tightly locked up it would take hours for us to even get out into the yard.
I pull the window back towards me, cringing at every squeak it emits. I quickly scan below for Officers who might catch us moving around up here, but there are none in sight, so I follow Bea around the corner. I find her staring down two storeys to the laundry bin beneath her, and something about the way she stands there, white-knuckled hands gripping the railing, makes me think she’s guessed what I intend to do.
I swing a leg over the rail and catch her arm, pulling her over to me until her ear is by my mouth.
‘If you want to turn back, do it now,’ I whisper.
Her wide eyes stare at me, and she shakes her head firmly.
Bringing my other leg over the railing, I grip the side with my toes.
‘Wait thirty seconds before you follow me down,’ I tell her, before releasing my hold on the side and falling.
My breath is knocked from my lungs as I land, and it takes me a minute to get my bearings before I swing myself over the side of the bin and onto the safety of the gravel. Seconds later I hear Bea land after me, scrambling to find her footing.
I reach into the clothes and search for her hand, feeling around until I am met by thin, cold fingers. I pull her out after me, and we crouch beside each other at the north-west corner of the Dorms.
I pull on one of my boots, tying it as fast as I can so we can keep moving.
‘What now?’ Bea whispers, looking nervously around her. She didn’t bring enough clothes, and her shoulders are huddled over from the cold.
I pull on the other boot and begin tying up the laces with enough force to cut off the blood circulation to my feet. I rest my trembling fingers on my over-tight boots. I don’t answer her, instead whispering for her to stay low and be quiet, grabbing her arm as I pull her around the back of the building and around to the other side of the Dorms. We push our backs up against the wall, and we wait and we wait and we wait until it’s the right moment, and then we run.
I catch Bea’s hand, and we’re not stupid enough to run for the open gate, but instead I start pulling myself up over the fence, which isn’t much taller than me, and I can hear Bea following, her laboured breaths mixing with the night air.
We land on the other side of the fence, and something comes loose inside me. The real freedom was never in the lack of walls, but the lack of regard for them. It wasn’t the Wall that was holding me back, it was the fear I had for the people inside it, and now that that’s gone?
We are indestructible.
14
We loop around the Dorms, staying as far away as possible from the guards’ line of sight. But quickly we find the stretch of forestry that runs along between the Wall and the Outer Sector streets, running as quietly as we can as we speed across the damp earth.
Bea is lagging behind, and I grab her hand, tugging at her to go faster. After several minutes of running, I start to slow down, moving closer to the Wall as I watch for
the escape route I chose.
Finally I pull up, stopping Bea along with me, and I crouch at the edge of the tree line. There are light posts along the fence for the patrolling Officers, and I stare at them, waiting for the power to cut out.
A minute passes, and nothing happens. Another comes after that, and another, and still, nothing.
My stomach drops. I’m an idiot. Stupid, stupid, stupid, naive hope.
Panic starts welling up inside me, and I glance over my shoulder, my heart in my throat as I consider running back to the Dorms, but before I can move, the lights die. I freeze, my heart hammering in my chest.
It worked! It worked!
I move forward cautiously, my eyes scanning the area around me for movement, but I don’t see anything. If Bea could figure out the code, then others must have too. I know – like you know when someone’s watching you even when you can’t see them – that there are others like me. Moving like shadows through the dark, invisible, out there somewhere in Oasis, risking their lives for this nebulous hope of something better.
I jump when I hear a shout go up in the distance, probably an Officer wondering why the lights are dead, but the voice is too far away for me to have to worry about it.
I sling Bea’s bag across my body and hold up a finger to Bea, telling her to stay put, and then I kneel in front of the fence. Ripping a piece of grass from the ground beneath me, I throw it at the wire, making sure it’s dead. Nothing happens.
I pull the wire-cutters that Bea stole from her bag, and with a steadying breath I start cutting through the fence, one link at a time. I work methodically and steadily until I’ve cut a hole in it big enough for a person to squeeze through.
I push myself through the gap. The sharp ends of the wire cut into my skin, but I can barely feel it. There are a few metres between the fence and the Wall, but my sight isn’t set on the Wall, it’s on what’s built into it. The drainage system passes pipes from the Celian City, the Inner Sector and even the Outer Sector out to here, releasing the waste outside through small grates built into the Wall.
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