Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  Once I had wrapped his foot and sterilized the knife again, he repeated the actions on his two ankles. I was quick to cover the wounds. By the time it came to the tracers in his wrists, I was no longer as light-headed, though I was still shaking.

  “Alright, are you ready?” he asked, looking me over nervously. “Because if you’re shaking that badly, I don’t really want you cutting into me.”

  I took a deep breath and slowly let it out, grabbing the knife and rinsing it off with the boiling water before grabbing the alcohol and pouring a little over the blade. As I was putting the bottle back, I glanced at it and, before I had time to think better of it, I lifted it to my lips and took two large gulps. The liquid burned and it was repulsive, but I forced it down as Mykail blinked incredulously at me.

  “What the hell?”

  “Oh…that was a bad idea…” I groaned, setting the bottle down with a clank and shaking my head.

  “Well, then you need to do this quickly before that gets into your bloodstream on an empty stomach,” Mykail blinked. “So, let’s get this done and get some food in you, quickly.”

  Not really registering the meaning of his words or his concern, I took another deep breath, carefully taking one of his wrists. My eyes were locked on the far side of his wrist, where the chip was embedded and the scar was barely visible. Focusing only on that spot, I pressed the tip of the knife to his skin.

  The blood pooled and dripped onto my arm, surprising me, but I forced myself not to jump or flinch. Carefully repositioning the knife, I made another small incision and then pinched the area, seeing the tiny black chip rise to the surface.

  Carefully picking it out, I got the gauze, pressing it to the wound as Mykail smiled at me.

  “See? Easy.”

  “I wouldn’t say easy…” I groaned.

  He pulled his hand away and pressed his wrist against his chest, holding the gauze against his skin as he extended his other hand to me.

  “Let’s just get this done.”

  I took out the other tracer in his wrist and when both wrists were done, I wrapped the wounds with gauze.

  Removing the tracers from the wings proved to be easier for me, but more difficult on him. His wings were very sensitive, particularly where the tracers were, which was close to where the stretched skin met with the thicker skin over the bones of his wings.

  He cringed and tried very hard not to flinch when I first cut into the thick skin where only small feathers grew, but he moved and I decided we needed to switch positions. He turned around and rested his chest and his head on the back of the toilet while his wing rested over the vanity, allowing me more room to move and more stability for him.

  It took me a while to get through the thick skin and feathers, and then I had to search around the torn skin carefully to find the chip, which was difficult to spot since the cut was not as clean.

  The second wing went a little smoother, but it was still very painful for him and I was starting to feel a little dizzy, though it probably was from the alcohol.

  Both wings were wrapped and, when it was over, we hugged tightly, ignoring the mess of blood around us, holding one another close.

  * *** *

  I knew Mykail felt better later on in the night because he was teasing me about drinking on an empty stomach and getting drunk so easily. I was sure I was not drunk, but I definitely felt the alcohol as time wore on. Even though I had eaten, I was still feeling dizzy, a little giggly, and I kept staring at Mykail’s ass whenever possible.

  He did most of the cleaning in the bathroom, limping around and returning everything, carefully cleaning the blood in the bathroom while I cooked, stumbling around the kitchen like an idiot.

  When dinner was finished, I giddily went up to his room with him, leaving the dishes in the sink, and pulled him onto the bed with me, kissing him passionately, canting my hips into his.

  He kissed me for a few minutes before pulling away and shaking his head.

  “No, no,” he chuckled. “You’re drunk. We’re not doing anything more tonight.”

  “I’m not drunk!”

  “Go get some pajamas on and then we’re going to sleep,” he smiled, climbing off me.

  “No.”

  “Lily, if you don’t respect my wishes about not going any further tonight, then you can’t sleep in here with me,” he said, his tone slightly condescending, though he was smiling. “Do you want to sleep in here?”

  “Yes…” I pouted.

  The next morning, waking up in his arms was almost enough to overpower the pain of my headache.

  But not quite.

  I hid under the blankets while Mykail got me aspirin and water, smiling while I glared at him.

  I still had to go to school, despite my pounding head. I slept in my first class, made an idiot of myself in English when I said something in response to a question that I had misinterpreted, and then fell asleep again in art class, only to be rudely awakened by my teacher.

  So, when I got out of school, I was so slow in getting to the car that Clark was also waiting.

  “Hey,” I groaned, shivering at the cold.

  “Hey, you look…tired,” Clark noted. “What happened? Now that the parents are out of the house, you broke into the liquor cabinet?” he teased. I glared at him and his jaw dropped. “Lily!” he laughed in disbelief.

  “Shut up…”

  I was not in a talkative mood, and I was irritable, so when I felt myself getting angry at Clark for absolutely nothing, I told him I was going to go into the records room to look for any older blueprints of the Commission that might have shown secret passages in and out of the cells.

  I only looked for five minutes before taking a risk and falling asleep against one of the cabinets. I managed to sleep for about twenty minutes before my aching back and neck woke me up and I irritably said “fuck it” and left. As I was walking out of the library, though, something else tested my nerves.

  “What were you doing in the library, Little Lily?”

  I ground my teeth together, rolling my eyes. Of all the people I could have run in to outside the library, it had to be Dana fucking Christenson on a day where I was angry at the sun for shining.

  “Research,” I told him, watching him approach. “For the paper I wanted Leader Simon’s help on.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit again,” Dana chuckled, rolling his eyes as he stopped in front of me. “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks,” I growled.

  “What happened last night?” he pressed, looking me over with a predatory look, searching for a clue.

  “I was drinking to celebrate my parents getting away from you,” I snapped.

  “So, this is you with a hangover…” he noted, nodding slowly. “Good to know…”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said sharply, “I have a paper to write.”

  “No, you’re not excused,” he shook his head. “We need to talk about what happened on Wednesday.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to scold you for going to Leader Simon behind my back and planting ideas in his head.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You’ve already told me that you’re trying to take me out of my position, and I was curious to see how you were going to try such a feat. I did not expect you to go to Leader Simon, but the truth is, he’s off limits.” Dana sighed and placed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t mind playing with you, but you cannot use Leader Simon. He’s mine.”

  “You’re talking about this like a fucking board game,” I snarled.

  “With a much bigger board,” he agreed. “Leader Simon is a very easily influenced man. If he begins to think that there is a way to rebel against me, I have to prove to him that he can never get away from me and, frankly, I don’t have time for that right now. I have too much on my plate.”

  “I just wanted his opinion on a few things about the Commission and I wanted to know where he stood when it came to the decisions
you make,” I told him, grinding my teeth together irritably. “I need to know if he’s going to be in the way of our little game.”

  Dana’s smile widened despite the angry and sarcastic tone that lined my voice.

  “In the way?” he asked, stepping closer. “Or someone you can use against me?”

  “Whichever you’re more inclined to believe,” I shrugged. “Not like I can convince you otherwise, anyway.”

  “Generally, no,” he agreed. He grabbed my arm, pulling me close and wrapping his other hand around my waist. “But I must say, I was very impressed by what you did a couple weeks ago when you were teasing me.” He pressed his hand flat against the small of my back and leaned over me. “You’re starting to get the idea…”

  “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  “Dana, I’m in no mood to play with you right now,” I snapped. “I said, let me go.”

  “Make me.”

  I reached down and grabbed at the front of his pants, pressing my fingers into him roughly. He stilled, but he did not seem worried about my hand around his genitals. I tried to ignore any strange feelings I experienced at the touch and glared at him the best I could, trying to growl.

  “I will only say this once more…” I snapped. “Let. Me. Go.”

  Dana smiled and the hand that had been holding my lower back slipped further down and groped me through my jeans. I tried to worm away from him but his eyes lit up and he smiled.

  “Well, you seem to be a little fuller than usual,” he grinned. “A little swollen in the breasts and hips…” He tilted his head slightly and chuckled. “On your period?”

  “None of your fucking business!” I gasped, pushing at him roughly and managing to wiggle out of his arms, rounding angrily to glare at him.

  “Which means yes,” he nodded. “No need to be ashamed. I’m certainly not disturbed.”

  “Why am I not surprised with your fucked-up tastes?” I growled. “Dana, go play with someone else. I have homework I need to do.”

  I don’t know why Dana did not follow me, but I was too irritable and my head hurt too much for me to care.

  * *** *

  Thursday and Friday passed without consequence, but Clark and I were starting to get desperate about figuring out a way to break the experiments and humans out before our override codes expired.

  We spent what seemed like endless hours poring over every available blueprint we had managed to get our hands on to find a way out of the Commission without being spotted. But because we had to do all of this in secret, we could not brainstorm openly and that made the process even more frustrating.

  Due to our frustration, we decided to meet at Clark’s house on Saturday to talk about the plan of escape before the Commission meeting. That way we wouldn’t have to be as careful.

  Early Saturday morning, I rode the bus to Clark’s house, leaving the sleeping Mykail a note telling him where I would be all day so that he wouldn’t worry when he woke up to find me gone.

  I was still tired from Archangel, so I stopped and picked up coffee on the way, hoping it would wake me up. Mark let me into the house and motioned for me to go upstairs, so I went to Clark’s room.

  “You didn’t bring me one?” he play-pouted when he saw the cup of coffee in my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I figured you would have some here.”

  “We do. I’m just teasing.”

  “What is all this?” I asked, looking over the papers laid out across the floor.

  “These are the blueprints,” he sighed, looking back over the collage. “From the photos we took. I printed them out to look at them in a larger form and we can take them to the fort tomorrow when we meet with everyone to see if anyone knows anything more about the back…”

  “I doubt anyone will,” I sighed, setting my purse down and dropping to my knees beside Clark, looking over the photos that had been loosely taped together to make the large and confusing map of the Commission of the People. “You and Melissa and I seem to be the only ones close enough to Dana to be allowed back there at any point in time, and Melissa isn’t even a part of this.”

  “Not yet…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is not happy about the Sweeps,” he sighed. “She’s been saying that she’s getting sick of the way Dana is abusing his power. I’m waiting until I figure out if she’s really serious or just temporarily upset before I tell her about what we’re doing.”

  “Okay,” I nodded, hopeful that the other child of Dana’s advisors would be willing to help us, and bring her younger sister to join as well.

  “Alright, let’s go over this once more,” Clark said, pointing at the security station that led into the back of the Commission. “When Dana took you into the back, where did you go?”

  “We followed this main hallway,” I told him again, running my finger over the hallway that ran between the termination cells until I reached the door that led to the corridor for Wards One and Two. “And then we went straight to Ward Three. I didn’t see Wards One or Two.”

  “That’s okay,” Clark assured. “None of the experiments we were told about are in those wards. Where did you go in Ward Three?”

  “Just down the main hall,” I said, once again motioning to the larger hallway in the slightly more complicated ward.

  “So, this cell,” he pointed to one he had marked with a red X on the paper, “is the experiment from Ward Three we were told about.” He turned to me. “You didn’t see her?”

  “No.”

  “I also need to hack into the security system and find out the cell override codes,” Clark sighed. “There should be an emergency release code. If I can find that, it should work throughout the entire Commission.”

  “So, we need about how many people to break these experiments out?” I asked. “We don’t have a lot of time, so we’re going to need more than two people…”

  “I think, since we have twelve experiments to break out in Ward Eight, we need at least two people in there. Then I think we need another two people in Ward Nine, one in Ward Seven, one in Wards Six and Three, and probably one in Ward Four.”

  “What about Ward Ten?” I asked.

  “That’s the highest level ward, the security around there is going to be ridiculous,” Clark sighed dejectedly. “I don’t even know how we’re supposed to sneak all these people in to begin with. And then we have to get to everyone in the holding cells, and get everyone out.”

  “The only two ways I see out are the elevators that lead up to the lobby, and these,” I pointed at the car elevators on the far side of the holding cells and sat behind the offices of the Commission, though the only way into that area was through the expansive holding cell area. “What if we were to get everyone around security somehow, go to the car elevators and, rather than take any of them, we climb up the shaft?”

  “I don’t think that would really work…” Clark sighed. “Leaving aside climbing up the elevator shaft, which has to be pretty long because of how far underground the Commission is, we have to get them past all the security in the Commission. The Commission is guarded by approximately one hundred and twenty people every day.”

  “But the Sweeps have started,” I said. “We find out the Sweep schedule and plan this on a night where a lot of the security is out on Sweeps.”

  Clark seemed hesitant.

  “Okay, then what about the cameras?”

  “I thought you said you could shut them down.”

  “I can,” he assured. “For the Commission that’s underground. The upper building is on a different security grid and if both of them go down, then we have panic and people will start to notice things. There are cameras in the garage where those car elevators go.”

  I sighed heavily and rubbed my forehead.

  “How long can you shut down the security in the lower part of the Commission?”

  “I can shut it down for about seven minutes, but then the backup kicks in,” Clark shook his head. �
�I mean…in theory. I haven’t tried it, yet.”

  “Can you shut down the backup?”

  “No,” Clark shook his head. “That’s above my pay-grade.”

  I groaned in frustration and leaned back on my hands.

  “So, we have seven minutes to break out nearly one hundred people in the holding cells and the twenty-five or so experiments…”

  Clark looked at me apologetically.

  For the entire afternoon, we found the holding cells we wanted to break into and then tried to think of another way to get the experiments around the security personnel and then get everyone out of the Commission entirely.

  It was beginning to look hopeless to accomplish everything without being caught, let alone in the short timeframe of seven minutes. Not only that, but we only had about two and a half weeks before the codes expired and we were not sure if we would get another set of codes from our mysterious note writer.

  I called Mykail later in the afternoon and told him I would be going to the Commission meeting with Clark and that I would be back to the house later in the night. I had to be sneaky about the phone call, though, since Clark still did not know that Mykail and I were seriously involved.

  After a short dinner where we ate hurriedly to rush upstairs and look at the map from another angle to see if we could find anything we missed, the time to go to the Commission meeting drew close, and Mark came to get us.

  We drove to the Commission, trying very hard not to talk about the escape plan. We figured we would have to get into the area of the car elevators and see if there was any other passage that could be used to get out of the Commission, but we would not be able to do that until the following week, so we would discuss the plan with the other Commish Kids the following day and brainstorm other ideas.

  I tried to pay attention at the Commission meeting, though when there was no talk of anything I was interested in, I zoned out and thought about the escape plan, working my brain around the problem to see if there was anything we could have possibly missed, running through the images of the Commission in my mind. The talk of the Sweeps did come up, but Mrs. Prescott, who was running the meetings while Mrs. Markus was in Europe, did not say anything other than that the Sweeps had already yielded some results and seventeen new people around the country were coming into the Commission as prisoners.