Oasis

by Eilís Barrett

  ‘He owes me something,’ Jay says, placing his feet on the table in front of him. ‘Believe me, he won’t turn us in.’

  I glare at him, but I’m not in a position to argue any further.

  The room is small, with a low-hanging roof and squeaky wooden floorboards that don’t seem as sturdy as I’d like them to be. Across the room is a small stove, in front of that a short, rectangular wooden table, on which Jay’s boots rest. There are no windows, and only two doors; one leads outside, the other into what I assume to be some kind of bedroom.

  It seems strange. Amid all the dirt and grime of the Outer Sector this place, although small and badly put together, verges on quaint.

  Damien returns just then, and we all sit up straighter, bodies rigid with adrenaline.

  ‘That was a shipment of Officers out to an Official building across town. They’ll be back in half an hour. After that there will be one more shipment, a food truck unloading supplies at the Officer outpost across town. You better get out before it stops, though, or you’ll be found out.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jay says smoothly, and I watch the Officer’s eyes snag on his feet propped on top of the table, but he doesn’t say anything.

  ‘So,’ he says, glancing around the room nervously. ‘What do you guys want in there?’

  ‘None of your business—’ Clarke cuts in, stepping towards him in a threatening way.

  ‘Clarke,’ Kole warns, his voice as sharp as a blade.

  The Officer didn’t turn on the light in the house, afraid to alert anyone to our presence, and so we sit in the dark, the silence tense as we wait.

  Finally, the food truck pulls up outside the gates, and Damien goes out to distract the guards long enough for us to stow away inside. Kole stands at the door, waiting to give us a signal.

  ‘Now,’ he says, and we rush out, keeping to the shadows.

  The back of the truck is empty, and the entrance just a piece of fabric concealing the truck’s contents, so we load up in seconds, huddling in the dark as we wait for the truck to take off.

  ‘Be ready to move on my say so,’ Kole warns us, hunkered down so close to me I can hear his shallow breathing, though I can’t see anything but his outline. The truck rumbles to life as the gates screech open, and I feel us move through it, into the Inner Sector.

  I haven’t been on the inside since I was seven years old. I wonder silently if anything has changed, but keep my senses focused on Kole, waiting for his signal.

  After a few minutes he moves to the edge of the truck bed, and we all follow. He twitches the fabric aside, glancing outside.

  ‘On three,’ he whispers, as my heart speeds up in my chest.

  ‘One.’ I move closer to the exit.

  ‘Two.’ I feel the muscles tense in my legs, ready to jump, and the impact that comes after.

  ‘Three.’ And we leap.

  9

  My first thought is, Where is everyone? My second thought is, I remember this place.

  I thought I had forgotten it. I thought ten years of the Dorms had wiped this place from my memory, but it hasn’t. Rows and rows of perfect white mansions line perfect streets. Each house has a small garden, with roses and violets and other flowers I don’t know the names of, and I try to imagine that just the other side of the Wall exists the heat and grime of the tightly packed Outer Sector, where people skitter like rats across roads cluttered in scrap and garbage.

  But here, there is nothing. It’s like a ghost town.

  ‘Curfew,’ Kole says, suddenly close to me, and I take an involuntary step backwards. ‘We need to get moving.’

  I stumble after Kole, trying to keep up with the group as my eyes linger on the houses, trying to catch every detail. Eventually I have to let it go, have to forget my fascination and focus on the mission.

  Kole walks rapidly down streets like he knows them well, and we follow close behind, all eyes on the surrounding area, waiting for Officers to appear out of nowhere. Kole turns down another street, one where the houses, though still the same white buildings, are larger, grander things, with bigger gardens and sleek black cars out front.

  He comes to the end of the road, facing a huge mansion, more like a castle, and the first one so far that looks completely different from the others.

  ‘Here,’ he says. I don’t know why this is the place, or how he knows it. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going before, but I don’t care. I’m drunk on adrenaline, and my heart is pounding in my ears as memories of my childhood flit behind my eyelids, never fully settling into clarity.

  These are the richest houses in Oasis, enormous, gargantuan things, each housing two to three people, but with enough room to hold hundreds. I know these houses are guarded and fitted with security systems, but Kole doesn’t seem bothered. He walks up the perfectly paved path to the looming oak door, taking out two long metal rods from his pockets and inserting them into the lock. I stand behind him, watching as he fiddles with the rods, and the door finally swings open.

  Before I can ask Kole about the security system, he walks straight to a panel on the wall and types something into it. I step in after him, my breath knocked from my lungs at the size of the place, at the grand staircase and marble floors. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever imagined. The others come in behind me and Clarke shuts the door behind us.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whisper to Kole, looking over my shoulder every few seconds, making eye contact with Jay and Clarke, as if maybe they have some kind of explanation.

  Why is there no one here?

  ‘One second.’ He types in something else, and the light beside the panel turns green, showing that it’s been disabled.

  ‘How did you—’

  Kole holds his fingers to his lips to shush me.

  Someone’s coming.

  Kole pulls his gun from his waistband, and puts his back up against the corner wall. I pull my knife from my boot as all four of us huddle around the corner, our hearts in our mouths. An Officer finally comes around the corner, and Kole cracks the butt of his gun against the Officer’s temple before he has time to shout.

  Kole crouches by the man’s crumpled body, stripping him of weapons and tucking them away on himself.

  ‘Is this how you get guns?’ I say as quietly as I can. Sound bounces off these walls disconcertingly.

  ‘There’s no one in the house,’ Kole tells me, stepping over the guard’s body and speaking normally.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘They only leave one guard in the house while they’re away.’

  ‘Who? Who’s away? How do you know that they’re away?’ I can feel that Kole doesn’t want me asking, but I feel like I’m drowning in omissions.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He brushes me off. ‘Okay. I want you all searching for documents, files, papers – anything that pertains to us or other rebellions they’re tracking. We don’t have long, so let’s get moving. There are drawers and cabinets in the living room and in the bedrooms upstairs. I’ll take the office.’

  Kole disappears into the back of the house, leaving me, Jay and Clarke standing in the hallway, staring at each other. Without a word, Clarke disappears upstairs. Jay and I move into the opposite room to Kole, and I’m desperately thankful for the thick curtains pulled across the huge windows, concealing us from outside view.

  There are several desks and side-tables in that first room, so I start pulling out drawers, riffling through pages as quickly as I can, the sound of Jay moving through the rooms fading into the background.

  Shipping documents, law notices, payment schedules, cut-backs, Subject transfer notices—

  I glance back at the slip of paper that I just set down, and go back to it.

  Quincy Emerson, South Outer Sector, Subject 1712.

  My blood runs cold. My eyes drop to the bottom of the page, to the authorising signature, and I see a familiar name.

  OP Johnson. The Oasis President. But it’s not just that. I stare at the last name, my heart
throbbing in my ears.

  Johnson.

  Aaron Johnson.

  It strikes me for the first time that Aaron’s full name is Aaron Johnson. For some reason, now this hits me hard. Johnson. Why have I never thought about that before? Why did I never question that?

  But it couldn’t be him. I grab at the other pages, searching for a full name, until I find it printed on a Law Pass.

  Leroy Johnson. Leroy Johnson. Leroy Johnson.

  I see it everywhere now, printed on everything. We only ever knew him as OP Johnson. I remember Aaron telling me I couldn’t meet his father. It wouldn’t work out, it wouldn’t be possible.

  ‘Leroy, he wouldn’t—’ he’d stuttered. ‘My father wouldn’t understand.’

  The memory of it cuts into me like a shard of glass. I barely registered it when he said it, but now I’m looking at that name on document after document and my insides are cold, cold, cold.

  Stupid.

  I should have known. I should have known it was Aaron’s father. The way the Officers treated him, the authority he always radiated, not just that of an Officer but more like … more like a prince. I thought it was because of Aaron, thought that was just how Pures were treated, that I didn’t know anything about that life anymore. But it wasn’t. It was because of who his father was.

  But that means … this is his house. I’m in Aaron’s house.

  I stumble out into the hall, following the path Kole took.

  Aaron lives here. This is Aaron’s father’s house. Aaron’s father is the president of Oasis.

  And then I stop.

  Leroy Johnson chose me as a Subject. He was the one who wanted me taken to the Labs. He was the one who started all of this. We were told it was a lottery, a blessing bestowed out of pure chance – so why was I handpicked by the OP?

  By the time I find Kole in the back room, in a musty office behind a huge desk, where he is sifting through a pile of notebooks, I can’t breathe. My head feels full up with loud noises that don’t belong to me, chattering and screaming until I’m overwhelmed. I can’t breathe.

  He leaps up from his chair, his face paling.

  ‘What happened?’ he asks, but he doesn’t come towards me. He doesn’t move, and I can’t speak, so I just hold up the Subject notice.

  His brow furrows in confusion, and he moves forward to take it from me, scanning the notice quickly.

  ‘This is why you left?’ his voice sounds uneven, a note of pain somewhere buried there, and I feel my knees go weak beneath me.

  ‘They were trying to kill me. He was trying to kill me because of Aaron.’

  Something passes across Kole’s face that I can’t name.

  I realise in a burst who that means Aaron is, or rather what that means Aaron is. Aaron is the son of the leader of Oasis, the person who has made everyone’s life hell. He is part of the twisted regime that stole our freedom and called it a blessing. Suddenly I can’t say anything because I can see Kole’s face, his expression twisting from disbelief to realisation to disgust.

  Jay rushes into the room, pale faced, his gun in his hand.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ he says hoarsely.

  Kole’s eyes meet mine for only the smallest second before he opens his backpack and starts piling notebooks into it, along with several other piles of paper.

  ‘What did you find?’ I ask. I’m trying to push past what’s going on in my head, but I’m struggling to do something as simple as keep air moving in and out of my lungs.

  ‘There’s a mole,’ he says, zipping up his backpack roughly, and suddenly he’s angry.

  ‘In the base? Someone we know?’

  ‘Has to be. I should have known.’ He brushes past me on the way to the door, panic in the way he moves, dodging corners like bullets on his way to the hall.

  I run after him, my heart in my throat, and I can hear someone at the front door, and we all freeze in the hall, staring at each other.

  We shouldn’t have wasted so much time, I think.

  I shouldn’t have spent so much time on the Subject notice, I think.

  We should have been faster, I think, just as the door slides open.

  10

  Aaron stands in the doorway, frozen. He’s backlit by the streetlights outside, just a silhouette, but I would know him anywhere. It’s the same tall frame and broad shoulders that have been haunting my dreams since I escaped. But we’ve caught him off-guard. Kole has his gun aimed at Aaron’s head, and there is a stalemate.

  ‘Get out of our way, Aaron,’ Kole says quietly, too calm.

  I glance sidelong at Kole, trying to swallow around the lump in my throat. Kole knows Aaron. I can tell by the way Aaron’s face twists at the sight of him. You don’t give that look to a stranger.

  ‘Kole,’ Jay says slowly, looking for some kind of signal, some kind of clue as to how to handle this. I can feel the others behind me, advancing on Aaron slowly.

  Aaron looks past Kole, directly at me. I feel the weight of his gaze like a physical thing.

  ‘Hello, Quincy,’ he says, softly, his voice like warm honey, making everything he says sound golden and powerful.

  I see Kole’s shoulders tense.

  My heart is firing so rapidly in my chest I’m afraid he’ll hear it. I’m afraid he’ll smell my fear, that he will sense that I am still afraid of him.

  ‘Put your hands above your head.’ Kole’s voice is deathly cold, and Aaron turns a mocking smile on him, raising his arms at the same time.

  ‘Yes sir, Officer,’ he smiles, and he’s too comfortable. It’s as if he doesn’t care, as if it doesn’t touch him.

  But then, nothing ever really touched Aaron. He was like the Celian City, so buried in walls and barbed-wire that he couldn’t find his way out even if he wanted to.

  Kole takes a tentative step forward, gesturing with his hand to Clarke.

  ‘Get the rope out of your bag,’ he says calmly.

  Kole takes another step towards Aaron, the gun still aimed at him as he approaches cautiously.

  Aaron begins to turn around, but at the last second his hand comes down, catching Kole’s, twisting the gun from his grip and sending it flying across the room. Before anyone can take a breath he catches Kole by the back of his head as he brings his leg up, cracking his kneecap into Kole’s face. But before anyone else can move, Kole threads his arm under Aaron’s knee, hooking his foot behind Aaron’s ankle and kicking his feet from beneath him. Aaron hits the floor with a sickening crack, spine and skull hitting the marble floor one after another.

  Jay and Clarke descend on Aaron in quick succession, rolling him onto his front and tying his hands behind him as Kole stumbles away, blood streaming down his face.

  ‘Kole,’ I say, reaching for him, but he shrugs me off, running his hand under his bleeding nose.

  ‘I’m fine. Get him up.’

  Clarke and Jay heave Aaron to his feet, but he just smiles, as if nothing has happened.

  ‘Still the same, I see,’ he says, as if passing judgement on Kole.

  My eyes flit between Kole and Aaron as they glare at each other, but I can’t read anything off them.

  Kole glares, and Aaron grins back at him, but I know Aaron too well to think he doesn’t hate Kole just as much as Kole hates him, it’s just that Aaron doesn’t show it on his face. He shows it in his posture, in his hands flexing behind his back, in the way his feet shift beneath him.

  Kole picks his gun up off the floor, darting a glance around the room to make sure everyone is still here, and nods towards the door.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he says.

  ‘With him?’ I ask, my throat tight as Aaron’s knowing smile turns on me.

  ‘We don’t have any other option,’ Kole snaps, jerking his gun towards the door. ‘Let’s go,’ he repeats, and we file out into the half-light, dragging Aaron along with us.

  11

  ‘You know, I could just scream,’ Aaron points out as we jog through the streets, paranoid glances flying around in
every direction as we wait for a troop of Officers to descend upon us. But this is the Inside. They don’t patrol the streets waiting for someone to step out of line. There is a curfew, and it’s expected to be kept, no questions asked.

  ‘And we could just shoot you,’ Clarke snaps, pushing him forward.

  As the gate comes into view we all go quiet. Kole hunkers down at the corner of one of the houses, concealed by a wall on one side and a hedge on the other, with a good view of the road in front of us. We follow him in, and we are pressed close together, and Clarke’s gun is pressed to the base of Aaron’s skull and I watch him as he coolly surveys the situation.

  Several minutes pass, and when nothing happens I begin to get antsy. I bite my lip, buckling and unbuckling the strap on my boot with shaking hands as my eyes bounce between Kole and Aaron, Aaron and Kole, back and forth until I feel dizzy. Kole hasn’t looked at Aaron since we left the OP’s house, but Aaron won’t stop staring holes in the side of Kole’s head.

  When we hear the rumble of an engine moving up the road, my hand reflexively clamps down on my knife as I shift my weight, waiting for Kole’s signal. The truck, a similar one to the one we came in on, only bigger, pulls to a stop as it waits for the gates to open. Damien promised he would stall the truck long enough for us to get inside, but my heart still thumps loudly in my ears as I watch the truck roll to a full stop.

  Then I see Damien stepping out of the truck, walking around the front of it and towards the guard-post. I can hear them talking from here, not well enough to know what they’re saying, but Damien is gesturing wildly, pointing at himself and then at the Officer.

  And this is it. Our opening.

  Kole moves first, quiet as a cat across the street, and then Clarke and Jay, pulling Aaron with them. I am the last to cross over, and by the time we do Kole has helped Clarke and Jay heave Aaron into the truck.

  We are very still, hardly breathing, our backs pushed up against the side of the truck as we wait for the next move. I can’t stop looking at Aaron, waiting for him to do something, waiting for him to get us all killed, but he doesn’t move.