Crouching down, I pull Bea’s screwdriver from the bag and start unscrewing the bolts in the grate. They are old and rusty, and I push and pull for a long time with no movement, but eventually I feel the smallest give, and keep pushing until the screw comes out, rolling along the grass. I switch sides, unscrewing the other bolt faster.
Before I can free the grate from the clip at the back, though, I hear a sound.
‘Freeze!’
I spin around, adrenaline shooting into my bloodstream as my eyes fall on an Officer, his hand wrapped over Beatrice’s mouth, her eyes like saucers above his hand as his gun locks onto my head.
‘Don’t move,’ he says, slower this time.
I drop the screwdriver from my hand, my mind scrambling to keep up with the situation in front of me.
I should have left her behind.
I should have left her behind!
I’m not sure who I’m more angry at: her for making me bring her, or me for agreeing to it.
‘Step back inside,’ he says. ‘Slowly.’
I start moving towards the fence, taking tiny steps, trying to buy myself time to think. I could try to run at him and attack him, but he’d shoot me before I’d get anywhere near him. I could just run, but he’d shoot me then, too.
I step up to the fence, not willing to touch it, afraid that the electricity will come back on.
‘Crawl back through,’ the Officer growls. But as he says it, a figure steps out of the trees, and there’s a loud bang and the Officer is on the ground and Bea is running backwards, stumbling into the figure behind her, who catches her by the arm and drags her forward.
Aaron.
I swear I can feel my heart stop. I can’t stop staring at the dead officer, bleeding out at his feet.
‘What are you doing here?’ The words fall from my mouth before I can stop them.
‘What am I doing here? What am I doing here?’
I flinch at the anger in his voice.
‘How many stupid mistakes am I supposed to dig you out of?’ he asks, sounding bewildered. He’s gesturing with the gun he killed the Officer with still in his hand, and I shy away from it every time it lands on me for a second.
‘I got a call from the Warden before midnight, saying you and another girl had disappeared from the Dorms. She asked me did I have anything to do with it. Me! And now you’re asking me what I’m doing here?’ He is shaking Bea for emphasis, who is staring at me, pleading with her eyes for me to do something, terror written across her face.
‘Aaron,’ I whisper.
‘What are you trying to do?’ he asks, his voice dropped in pitch. ‘Is this revenge? Are you trying to punish me for something?’
‘Aaron, stop. You can come with me. Please.’
‘Come with you? Are you insane?’ His eyes are so wide I’m afraid they’re going to pop out of his head, and there’s a vein standing out in his neck. ‘Get back in here, right now.’
‘Aaron, this isn’t everything. This can’t be everything. There’s more outside those walls. I can’t stay in this place anymore.’ My voice sounds desperate and verging on hysteria and broken. I am caught in that perpetual moment just before an elastic band snaps, just before it all falls apart.
‘You hate Oasis because it is the edge of your world,’ he says, his voice like the first cracks in a dam as the water seeps out and you wait for everything to come crashing down. ‘But when you look past it, you will regret it.’ There is something seething and desperate behind his teeth, but he won’t let it out. Nothing is let out, nothing is free in here, and I can feel it draining the blood from my veins a drop at a time.
I can’t take it anymore.
‘You,’ I say, and I step forward, reaching for him through the fence, and I feel myself unravelling, breaking down cell by cell as I am pulled towards him. But I can’t let him decide this for me. ‘You are my everything, Aaron. But that’s …’ I take a deep shuddering breath as I pull my fingers free, ‘… that’s not good enough anymore.’
‘There’s nothing for you out there!’ he shouts. ‘It’s a machine, don’t you understand? It’s a machine that runs on flesh and blood and bone. It will eat you alive and spit you right back out at my feet.’
Tears are pouring down my face as I pull back.
‘If I die out there, it’s better than being their lab rat,’ I breathe. ‘I have to stop belonging to people.’
I shake my head, taking a step back, away from him.
‘Come back,’ he whispers, the sound like breaking glass.
‘No.’
‘What?’ He blinks.
‘No,’ I whisper. Not when I’m this close. Not when freedom is on the other side of that wall, so close I can feel it.
‘Quincy,’ he says, using a voice I’ve never heard him use before. ‘Get inside, right now.’
‘No.’ I start shaking my head, backing up.
Then he does what I never thought he would do. He aims the gun at Bea’s head, and the look in his eyes is as cold as it is deadly.
‘I said. Get. Back. Inside.’
My hands are shaking, and I feel dizzy.
‘No,’ I breathe.
‘LAST CHANCE, QUINCY,’ he roars, suddenly alive and on fire and savage.
Bea looks at me. She looks at me and she knows he’s going to kill her if I don’t stop him, and her eyes are too big for her face and she’s too skinny and too strange, like something caught between this world and the next, and I should save her.
I should sacrifice myself, and she could live.
But I don’t know her. She isn’t my problem.
‘No,’ I say once more, my voice quivering.
The sound of the shot going off will never stop ringing in my ears.
She drops to the ground and he lunges, coming after me, and I only spare her the smallest second, the tiniest sliver of a moment to watch her body crumple, and then I yank off the grate and I dive through, grabbing the screwdriver as I go. I wriggle through that narrow space, eyes fixed on the exit at the other end, body fighting towards the gap. It’s all I can see, the black on the other side, punctuated by the stars. Finally I reach it, push my head out, my shoulders. I’m on a narrow ledge, two metres off the ground. Without thinking, without breathing, bag slung across my body, I jump. And all that there is left is to run
run
run
run.
PART TWO
BEYOND
1
If this is freedom, I don’t want it anymore.
Branches tear into my arms as I sprint through the trees, my breath coming in short gasps as I try to put as much space between me and the Wall as possible. The forest is eating me alive, tormenting me with his shape, turning the shadows caught between the gaps in the trees into his form. It’s his limbs that I keep tripping over, his hands clawing at me from every side, his voice I keep hearing. I can feel him watching me from behind every corner, and fear won’t let me slow down, even for a moment, but I know he’s not here.
He’s back there, with her body.
When I can’t run any longer I collapse, face-down in the dirt, bleeding into the cold earth beneath me. It’s still dark, though it feels like I’ve been out here running forever. Every noise I hear sounds like patrols and shouts and whistles and gunshots, but it’s always just the wind playing tricks with my mind as I stand on the edge of sanity.
What is happening to me?
I can’t get up, I can’t move, I can’t do anything but lie here, my brain unable to process what’s going on.
I see her falling, see his finger pulling the trigger, see her hitting the ground too hard, see his face, the way it twisted as he looked at me, as if to say, This is your fault, I never wanted to do this.
I didn’t think he’d do it. Not really. I didn’t think he was capable of that kind of heartlessness, no matter how furious he was. I was wrong.
I keep asking myself who it was that shot her, because it wasn’t Aaron. It couldn’t have been Aa
ron, not really. The boy I fell in love with wouldn’t do something like that. The boy who cared about me when no one else would wouldn’t do that.
My fingers dig into the dirt beneath me, and I try to push up, push away from the ground, but I can’t. My muscles shake and I fall straight back down, and my breath is knocked from my lungs.
I don’t want to fight back. I’m too weak, and I’m sick of fighting. I’m sick of getting thrown to the ground and telling myself that if I try one more time, everything will be fine.
It’s not fine.
It’s never going to be fine again.
Aaron is gone. I refuse to believe that monstrous thing that shot a girl in cold blood could be Aaron. Not my Aaron. My Aaron was good. My Aaron was beautiful.
I loved my Aaron.
And now he’s gone, as dead as Beatrice, and I lie in the dirt and wait for the sunlight to find its way to me, and I cry for the loss of the only thing I ever loved that loved me back.
My life has been one punch after another, and I’m tired.
I am so, so tired.
Hours pass like that, lying in the dirt, crying, because there’s nothing else to do. But eventually it comes, that voice in my head that won’t let me give up, won’t let me give in, won’t let me lie here. And I feel it again like I felt it those first weeks at the Dorms – the pull, deep within me, the fabric of my flesh and blood, always wanting more.
Always wanting life.
I pull my feet up under me and I push off the ground, taking a single step forward. I watch my feet beneath me, step after step after step, and I find myself moving.
I slip more than once on the icy ground as the sun begins to warm the surface of the frozen earth, but I lift myself up again and I push on, because I have to, because I can’t afford not to.
Hope is not something that is smothered easily, and it’s what has kept me alive all these years. In Oasis I always had hope for the Cure, that someday I would be Pure, and that Aaron and I could be together, really be together. And now that that is gone, and Aaron and Oasis and the Wall are miles behind me, I have to find something new to hope for, something to keep me alive.
So I have hope that there is something beyond danger and stagnation revolving, something other than fear and betrayal, something more. I hope that I can find it, and that I can be happy.
I think of Aaron. I wonder if he’s looking for me, if he’s worried about me, if he misses me, but it doesn’t matter anymore. None of that matters. I left Oasis to save myself. I left to find something better. I left to be free, no matter what the cost, and from now on, that is all that matters.
2
Time doesn’t make any sense. There are times when the light fades around me, but I am so buried in this forest I’m not sure what is day and what is night.
I walk until I can’t walk any further, and then I sleep, just to wake up and start walking again.
There is pain in my bones, my muscles and the wounds on my arms and legs, but that doesn’t matter. My lips are cracked and bleeding, I can feel the blisters forming and bursting inside my boots, but that is not what I think about.
I think of the fresh air passing in and out of my lungs, of the silence surrounding me for the first time in my life. I think of freedom, and how I have it, for this moment, even if it’s short. At least I get to feel that freedom for however long I have left.
It is not what I thought freedom would feel like, but it is freedom, and I surround myself with it, breathing it in with every inhalation.
It’s getting cold. The light snow showers from before I left have stopped, leaving behind bitter, steady winds that keep me awake at night. I press forward blindly, hunger and thirst my only driving force. It doesn’t rain, but my thin grey uniform is little defence against the harsh wind, and sometimes I think I’m going to die from the cold alone.
But I don’t. My body keeps fighting, even when my mind cannot, and I live. On and on, each breath a small miracle.
3
The last moments of the escape come back to me in flashes. Getting through the drainage grate, leaping across the ditch between the wall and the no-man’s-land beyond it. I almost made it across, but had to scramble up the bank before my feet landed on solid ground. Once I got my footing I took off, terrified of hearing the stomp of their boots behind me, terrified of being hunted down and caught and brought back there.
A short distance from the ditch I was faced with a wall of trees, so dense at first that I couldn’t even run, only push my way through slowly. But all the panic was still there, all of the adrenaline, urging me to run, to flee, to put as much distance between me and Oasis as possible.
And now the sun is rising, and it looks different out here. I’ve lost my direction and ended up outside the tree line, overlooking a river as light bleeds across the never-ending expanse of the Outside.
The sun out here, with no Celian City to contend with, looks brighter. My knees buckle underneath me, and I stare at the dawn until my eyes grow sore, and then I stare at my hands.
It’s beautiful, but I don’t deserve it. I shouldn’t be here, not alone. There are so many mistakes that I made. If I had told Aaron sooner, if I hadn’t got into a fight at the power station, if I had made Bea stay, or made Aaron release her, or went back when he told me to.
My stomach growls at me, and it’s such a stupid, insignificant human need, and the laugh that escapes me is dry and humourless and I can’t tell if I’m angry anymore, or just broken.
I move down to the river, climbing down a steep bank, and I drink without thinking if the water is clean. I have to find something to eat. I can already feel my hands starting to shake, my blood-sugar levels dropping dangerously low. But all I see is grass and trees and rocks. I don’t know how to find anything out here, and even if I did, how would I know if it was food?
I pull myself back onto my feet, and face the forest. This is what I wanted. I was the one who decided to leave, and I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with that decision.
Hours pass, and the sun is high in the sky before I find something. Above my head is a small cluster of branches, like a bush growing on the limb of a tree. I pull the strap of the bag over my head, leaving it against the base of the tree as I pull myself up, higher and higher, until the plant is at eye level. Among the branches are small, white, almost translucent berries and when I pick one, it’s soft between my fingers. I carefully place it in my mouth, biting down tentatively. It tastes sweet and sour at the same time, and it’s not the nicest thing I’ve ever eaten, but nothing else happens.
After several more moments of feeling nothing at all, I climb down the tree to collect my bag to fill it with the berries. I didn’t think I’d find anything. I thought I’d starve. Thoughts start running through my head as I climb back down, fistfuls of the berries rolling around inside my satchel.
I sit down at the base of the tree and start eating. I’m dizzy from hunger, and within minutes I’ve eaten all of the berries. I lean my head backwards, staring up at the sky. For the first time since I escaped I feel something like calm. I’ve found food and water and I’m still alive.
Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can survive. Maybe that moment at the Wall wasn’t the end.
Maybe this is only the beginning.
4
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I wake up forcefully, rolling onto my side as I throw up, my entire body heaving. I puke until there’s nothing left inside me, and then I open my eyes.
The world is a blur, colours and light blending together, and I can’t focus and I can’t see. I pull my knees up under me, trying to stand up, but I lose my balance before I’m even on my feet and fall over, cracking my head against the base of the tree.
I try to breathe, but my breaths are gasps I have to fight for. I pull my blurry hand up towards my face, but I can’t make a fist. I’m shaking, my entire body is shaking, and the pain shooting up through my abdomen has me curling up on the forest floor, strangled sounds comi
ng from between gritted teeth.
My body convulses as I retch again, rolling over onto my side as I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to block out the world.
The Virus. It hits me like a fist to the gut. It’s been so long since anyone’s seen an outbreak that I don’t even know what to look for. I don’t know what the symptoms are other than what everyone knows: that it’s fast, that it’s brutal, and that no matter what you do, you’re going to end up dead.
5
I don’t know how long I spend lying there, dry heaving against the earth as I try to grasp on to anything, anything at all that will make it stop, make the pain stop. Slowly my vision comes back, the blur of the forest gradually taking shape as the nausea slows. My throat is dry and burning, and all I can think about is water.
I need to drink something or I’m going to die.
I don’t know where I am, or where the river is, but I start crawling towards the light on my left, out of the forest. Eventually I gain enough strength to pull myself to my feet and using the trees around me to steady myself, I make my slow journey towards the tree line.
When I see the river, I almost cry.
I try to speed up, but my stomach cramps and I have to stop and breathe for several seconds, tensing against the pain. When I can move again I go slowly, one shaky step at a time, and then shuffle down the bank towards the clear water, the sunlight making the surface shimmer.
I kneel down, as close to the edge as I can get, and reach my shaking hands into the water. It’s so cold that once my fingers touch the surface I yelp and pull my hands back out, just as the unsteady pebbles at my feet slip and my feet go out from under me.
I am in the water, and it is like ice trying to pull me under as I frantically try to get a foothold at the bottom of the stream, but I am too weak, and the current is too strong. I am pushed downstream in a stupefied frenzy, and the water is in my eyes and in my mouth and in my lungs, and
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