Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  Mark began climbing down the iron ladder rungs into the dark tunnel.

  “Be careful,” Josh told us, reaching a hand out to Clark, who grabbed his hand and carefully stepped down, grabbing the first rung and beginning his descent. I followed shortly afterward, feeling the rust on the rungs rub off on my hands as I started climbing into the encroaching black.

  The ladder was a lot longer than I expected and I was started to get worried when I finally caught sight of Clark’s phone light at the bottom.

  Mark helped me down the final few steps and then helped Rin as I looked around the large tunnel with Clark. I could hear the sound of water running distantly.

  Josh finally joined us and Rin leaned over, whispering quietly to keep her voice from echoing.

  “Someone will have to be standing here to guide people up the ladder, and another two people at the top to help people out,” she hissed. “We go down that small tunnel,” she pointed to the left of the ladder, where Mark and Josh were walking.

  I followed them, Clark behind me. As we crouched and made our way through the tunnel, the sound of water became louder. Moving down a slope, we drew closer to the next tunnel.

  Once we had reached the larger tunnel, I looked around, barely making out the water flowing a few feet in front of me. We were standing on a thin walkway next to the bubbling water and across the stream was another walkway. The high ceiling amplified the sound into a near roar, and it covered our voices.

  “The water comes from there,” Josh said, pointing to the nearby wall where the water was flowing from under a grated archway. He pointed down the other direction and Clark flashed the light to illuminate the other end of the tunnel. There was a short distance before a steep half-wall rose to a sharp point.

  “We have to climb that,” Rin said.

  Mark walked to the wall first and jumped, his fingers grabbing the top of the slope and he pulled himself up, sliding down the other side. When his shoes hit the puddle of water on the other side, it was the signal for the next person to climb over.

  Everyone decided that that next person was me.

  Josh helped boost me to grab the top of the sharp slope and I pulled myself to the top, trying not to cringe in pain as I hooked my leg over and sat to slide down the other side. Mark caught me and stood me up. I brushed off, looking around.

  I waited for everyone to be on the other side wall before I asked my question.

  “Why is that wall even there?” I whispered. Rin laughed and looked at the obstacle.

  “There used to be a grate over that whole area,” she explained. “These two spent three weeks disassembling it.”

  “Wow, you really have spent time on this…” Clark mused, turning to Mark and Josh as he turned on his phone flashlight again.

  “That’s where the fan is for the Dome,” Rin explained, pointing to the solid wall in front of us where the wall stopped the water, ripples showing where it flowed under. “This is what it will be like when the Commission power is cut. The Dome is not on now, so the water won’t be as turbulent.” She tapped Clark’s shoulder and he turned around, shining his light where she was pointing. “Hiroki and Minsoo will attach ropes to those bolts where the grate was and help people to swim under the wall. When we have everyone, you will need to cut the ropes on both sides and take them with you so that we leave no evidence, just in case.”

  “Won’t they notice the grate is gone, though?” I pointed out.

  “Maybe, but that’s not as bad as leaving the ropes,” she admitted. “We’ll get everyone into this tunnel and over the walls, then they have to get to the ladder, and out to the fort.”

  “What about the people who get out on that side?” Clark asked, pointing his light to the other walkway.

  “Jump over,” Josh shrugged. “It’s not bad. The experiments will help.”

  “That’s true,” Rin agreed. “The experiments all understand that they are expected to help because the humans will be more flustered.”

  I took another deep breath and slowly let it out, my brain buzzing.

  “Make sense?” Rin asked.

  “Lily and Clark will also come through here…” Josh motioned to the water.

  “Right, you’ll come through last,” Rin agreed. “Then Hiroki and Minsoo will come back into the Dome and we will pretend like we were fighting.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Part of the Eight Group.”

  “What about their wet clothes?” I asked.

  “We’re going to have replacement clothes waiting in the Dome,” Rin assured. “They’ll be bloodied up to make it look like we were fighting longer.”

  “And we just follow and make sure we have everyone as we go into the fort,” I nodded. “Okay…”

  “Okay?” Rin looked at both of us. “We’ll try and show up as soon as possible, but we don’t know what Dana will do when he realizes he has so many experiments missing.”

  “Understandable,” Clark agreed.

  “Let’s get back to the fort before the Dome gets turned on,” Rin nodded. “Oh, and also, the emergency lock down will cause the emergency lights in here to turn on,” she said, motioning to the ceiling.

  “There are emergency lights in here? Why?” Clark blinked.

  “Repairs. This is under a lot of pressure from the earth, so emergency repairs need to be made from time to time,” Rin explained, moving to the wall, Josh boosting her over.

  Mark helped us all over the wall and then we made our way through the tunnels, pretending that we were escaping to see how fast we could climb the ladder. Rin, Clark, and I ran ahead as Josh and Mark replaced the grate and metal doors.

  We reconvened in the strategy room of the fort, looking over the map of the Commission again as Mark took a piece of paper out of his notebook and began drawing something.

  “Mark is going to deal with Ward Eight and most of Ward Nine while you are moving through the holding cells. Griffin will be dealing with Wards Three, Four, and Six at the same time. Josh and I will be following protocol when the Ward Tens are out.” She turned to me. “Lily,” she said seriously, “can you break out Cody? He’s in this cell.” She pointed to the cell on the outside of Ward Nine that met the hall leading to the holding cells.

  “Sure.”

  “Can you also get Tori?” Josh asked, pointing at the only marked cell in Ward Ten. “She should be the last one…”

  “Okay.”

  “The holding cells have a different code for breaking open the cells than the experiments,” Rin told me. “You will have to memorize four different codes,” she pointed to the door that connected the car elevators to the holding cells. “One for this door, one for all the cells in this area,” he motioned to the holding cells, “one for Cody and Tori’s cells and the code to get into Ward Ten.”

  “Okay,” I repeated, a little nervous about my ability to recall memorized numbers under pressure.

  “They’re seven numbers each,” she told me, smiling. “Mark will write them down for you.”

  “Oh,” I said quickly, turning to Mark, remembering something. “Mark.” He looked up. “Do you know what cell your sister is in?”

  This made every eye in the room turn to me in shock. Clark blinked a few times before he turned to the stunned Mark.

  “You have a sister?”

  “How…do you know about her?” Josh hissed.

  “Sean told me,” I said, worried that I had brought up a taboo subject.

  “We can’t go out of our way for her…” Rin said solemnly.

  Mark pointed to a cell we already had marked. It was on the main hallway, not at all out of the way.

  “Mark…” Rin said slowly. “Did you pick this cell?”

  Mark shook his head, his eyes averted downward as he picked up his pen again.

  “We should break his sister out,” I said strongly.

  “And we will, if you already decided on the cells,” Rin nodded. “But if we had broken her out on purpose just because i
t was Mark’s sister…Dana would know immediately he was involved.” She turned to him. “Mark, can you act angry when you find out she’s missing?”

  Mark looked at her, exasperated, as Josh laughed.

  “He’s one hell of an actor,” I chuckled.

  “What is that?” Clark asked, pointing to the drawing Mark had sketched.

  I glanced over the drawn boxes with numbers in them, looking like the keypad of a phone.

  “That’s about the size of the locks,” Rin explained.

  “For practice,” Josh added.

  “I have one more question,” I said, turning to Rin. “I want to bring Mykail here. He can help.”

  “Okay,” Rin nodded, waiting for me to continue.

  “How do I get him here?”

  Everyone went silent, looking at one another, trying to see who had a plan for transporting the angel.

  “…we could drive him…” Josh whispered.

  “In the van?” Rin looked thoughtful. “I guess we could…”

  Mark shook his head, pointing to his eye and then tucking an imaginary strand of hair behind his ear.

  “Oh, right,” Rin whispered. “Can he fit with his wings in a normal car?”

  “Maybe lay down?” Josh suggested.

  “Cover him?” Rin added. “I guess that could work…”

  “We can try it with my parent’s car in the garage,” I said hopefully. “Then we’ll know if it works.”

  “Okay, let’s plan for that, and we’ll see if it will work,” Rin nodded. “I guess, in the meantime, all we can do is practice the codes, make sure we understand the plan, and be sure to talk to everyone involved and get them ready for Thursday…”

  * *** *

  The Commission meeting was simple and short because Dana had a meeting with Leader Simon that he had to get to. He told short updates on the Sweeps, and then told us that the Censor Board was hard at work trying to find the source of the message that we had put on their computers, but they had been unsuccessful. He explained how the American people were getting restless and news casters were asking the Censor Board and the Commission of the People what to say to the people about the messages that were appearing as pop-ups, emails, and sidebar advertisements.

  You are going down, Dana… was my triumphant thought.

  Dana’s eyes continued to drift to me, and it did make me nervous that he could tell just from looking that I had had sex with Mykail, but even when the meeting was over, he did nothing to approach me or talk to me.

  I went home that night, tired, yet excited to tell Mykail about the plans we had solidified.

  I was more excited, though, to spend Sunday with him.

  We made the most of our day together. I had told Clark that I was going to stay home that day because I was possibly coming down with a cold, something he had been asking me all Saturday, and he quickly agreed that I needed to rest.

  So, while he worked with Mark on programming the blackout that would happen in the Commission on Thursday, I spent the day with Mykail.

  And Taylor had been right. The second time having sex was far more pleasurable than the first.

  We were like honeymooners, unable to keep our hands to ourselves, regardless of where we were in the house. We drank in each other’s bodies and held each other as if letting go would mean certain death. We smiled and laughed and loved every moment of that Sunday, no matter how fast it flew by.

  Before I knew it, Monday came around and Clark and I stopped at the coffee shop on the way to the Commission to meet with a small group we had texted, pretending to just hang out when we were really going over the final details of the plan. We told them where to meet Clark to go to the water towers and learn where they would be positioned. I was going to do the same with another group of Commish Kids the following evening.

  Thursday came closer and closer, and even though I should have been frightened of everything going wrong and all of us being caught and thrown into the Commission as experiments, I wasn’t. I was excited, exhilarated to be playing this incredibly dangerous game with Dana, sure that we were going to win and take his prisoners out from under him, hopefully throwing him off his game.

  And I was so happy to be with Mykail that I felt nothing could go wrong. I was invincible.

  Mark would slip us little notes telling us that everyone understood the plan and were ready to go. Clark and I would practice the codes to break into cells and continued to walk through the plan and cell numbers to be sure we both knew everything we needed to as second nature, knowing the pressure of the situation would change our ability to recall information.

  On Tuesday night, after I had met with my group at the movie theatre, shown them to the fort, told them where they would be positioned, what we wanted them to do, and being sure their tracers were removed, I went home and leapt on Mykail in the living room, both of us struggling together on the couch as we made love.

  Afterward, I went upstairs to take a shower, unable to keep the smile from my face as I washed my hair and ran soap over my sated body.

  But when I got out of the shower, I could not stop the scream and the bolt of terror that ran through me when I glanced at the mirror.

  “LL,

  You’re so beautiful.”

  I knew what the “LL” stood for.

  “Mykail!” I called, darting out in my towel, descending the stairs and into the kitchen, where he met me.

  “What?”

  “He’s in the house,” I hissed. “He’s somewhere. He just wrote something on my mirror.”

  “What did he write?”

  “That doesn’t matter!” I snapped. I grabbed two of the kitchen knives, handing one to him. We combed through the entire house, starting with my room and moving through the upstairs before going through the downstairs, checking under beds and in closets. The leader of the Commission was nowhere to be seen.

  “He must have slipped out…” I growled.

  “Lily…” Mykail said carefully. “What if he saw us?”

  “Saw us?” I asked, confused, before my brain clicked into gear. I purse my lips and looked around the living room, feeling nervousness churn in my belly. “He didn’t,” I shook my head.

  “What if he did?”

  “Well…” I said, looking at my feet. “You said yourself he was bound to find out sooner or later…” I walked to him, taking his face in my hands and kissing him tenderly, smiling. “I don’t think he did,” I assured. “If he did, I’m sure he would have no problem letting us know.”

  Mykail forced a smile, hesitant.

  “I’m not so sure about that…” he murmured.

  There was real fear in Mykail’s voice and it angered me. I was furious at Dana, for breaking into my home, for frightening Mykail because he was in love with me, for thinking I was his, for taking people away from their families and turning them into experiments, for molesting Clark, for taking Mark’s voice just to scare the other experiments…and for doing all of this while claiming it was for the best of the country.

  This mother fucker is going down…

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “You know, when my teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, domestic terrorist was not on the list…” Clark laughed nervously.

  I glanced at him as Mark drove away from the Commission building and rounded a corner.

  “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

  “Of course I am!”

  “Well, get over it!” I growled. “Everything’s already in motion and Mark is glaring daggers at you because he put more work into this than anyone.”

  Clark glanced at Mark, who was actually glaring through the rearview mirror.

  Clark took a deep breath and slowly let it out, nodding.

  “Good,” I nodded, seeing his expression change. “Everyone should be setting up their tracers and getting ready to leave for their posts. Everything will be fine.”

  I had no guarantees that everything would work out, but I had to
hope that it would. We were already heading to the designated spot to get into Josh’s car and be smuggled back into the Commission, where we would wait until 20:24 exactly, when Clark was going to start the blackout, at which point we would go through with breaking one hundred and thirty-five people out of the Commission in approximately seven minutes.

  We reached the spot by the river, where Clark and I nodded to Mark, getting out at the stoplight and leaving our tracers in the car. Mykail was going to move my tracers around through the evening to keep up the appearance that I was at home. Melody was tasked with moving Clark’s tracers every now and then.

  Clark and I watched Mark pull away from the deserted stop light in the residential area and drive away, leaving us in the snow to wait.

  We were silent, thinking, running through the plan in our heads as we waited for the van to pull up to the same stoplight.

  We did not have to wait long for the black Commission van to roll to the intersection, slowing as the light turned yellow. The side door slid open for us and Josh offered his hand, pulling us both in and closing the door.

  “Ready?” he asked. We nodded. “Here.” He reached to the seat in the far back, grabbing two black jumpsuits.

  We awkwardly pulled the baggy jumpsuits over our clothes as another member of the Eight Group drove us back to the Commission. My stomach was turning sickly. I was putting on a strong front for Clark, but I was also very worried about what we were about to attempt.

  Josh helped us climb into the back of the van, where a few crates were stacked, leaving only enough room for us to crouch between them and the back seat.

  “Wait until I tell you it’s okay,” Josh instructed.

  Clark and I did not look at one another as the van drove through the streets. As I contemplated how close we were, I realized that I had no idea what the area would look when inside. Seeing a place on blueprints was very different than standing in the same spot.

  Rather than get myself worked up, I started going over the codes in my head, muttering them under my breath, tapping my fingers against my leg as I imagined typing the codes into the locks.

  Josh cleared his throat, signaling to us that we were close. Both Clark and I were scarcely breathing.