Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  “Is that all?”

  “For now, yes,” I grinned. I hugged her again. “Thank you so much. It would be a big help.”

  “No problem,” she assured, hugging me back. “And if you need me to help you up here with anything, I don’t have to know all the plans, but if you want me to look into something, you let me know and I will do my best.”

  “Really? You mean that?” I said, tears of happiness rising to my eyes. It was nice to know I still had Becca as a friend, particularly after everything that had been happening recently.

  “Of course,” Becca said strongly, pulling away and looking at me seriously. “I told you, having the Commission gone is a lifesaver for me.”

  Mark turned to me, confused. Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, Becca looked at him, dropping her voice to a whisper.

  “I like other girls.”

  Mark’s straightened in surprise, and then looked away, uncomfortable. Becca and I both laughed at Mark’s awkwardness.

  “Does your phone still work?” she asked.

  “No,” I sighed. “I was planning on calling you from a payphone in two days to get an update on what you’ve got, and call you again another day depending on what you tell me.”

  “Okay,” Becca agreed. “But be sure you call after four,” she reminded me. “And remember, I’ll be at Archangel on Fridays, so you better be sure you call me at the right time.” She nudged me playfully. “Remember? Remember when you weren’t such a badass and you used to have a normal life?”

  “To be honest…it’s really hard to remember,” I tried to tease. She laughed but, once again, I was sure that she did not understand I was telling the truth. My life before the fort seemed a distant memory. The mundane days of going to school and sitting in class were muddled into one, dream-like portion of my life. I could hardly remember the times before war against Dana.

  Becca left, running out of the cold as Mark and I hustled back to the fort. When we were in the drainage pipes and walking to the fort, nodding to the two people we had posted as guards, I turned to the leader of the Eight Group.

  “Do you trust Becca?”

  Mark was still, his hands remaining in his pockets as he walked with me. After a few steps of him staring pensively at the ground, he sighed and raised his hand to his face, rubbing the corner of his eye in a familiar, yet ominous, warning.

  “Be careful.”

  * *** *

  It was time I faced the problem I had been avoiding all week.

  I paced for what felt like hours in the strategy room alone, trying to summon up the courage to go through with the plan I had come up with earlier. My stomach was tied in knots, my hands shaking as I wrung them together.

  I had to face him.

  Before I could second-guess myself yet again, I walked out of the strategy room and made my way to the storage rooms, ignoring the curious eyes that followed from the main bunker.

  I approached the familiar faces outside the storage room. They turned, surprised to see me walking with such purpose. Josh, who had been speaking with Rin, looked me over.

  “Lily…”

  “I want to see him,” I said, surprising myself with the strength and steadiness of my voice.

  The experiments looked at one another worriedly before Josh cleared his throat.

  “Are…are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want one of us in there, too?” Rin asked.

  “No. This is something I need to do alone.”

  Hesitantly, Josh nodded to Ichiro, who opened the door. I took a deep breath and started forward.

  “We’ll be right out here if you need us,” Rin said. I nodded, summoning up any bits of courage I had to walk into the room.

  And there he was.

  He was chained to some of the larger pipes, though I could see the strain put on his wings, making it painful for him to sit against the pipes. He looked at me, his eyes tired and his face dirty, but not hurt. There were some light bruises on his right side and scrapes on his left from his wrestling with Mark. The scratch on his forehead had scabbed over and was almost healed.

  “Mykail.” I nodded to him in greeting. I saw a bottle of water near him and slowly walked to it, picking it up. Giving him water would allow me a few moments to adjust to being back in his presence. Seeing his eyes made the memories rush back. The memories of how I had been so captivated by those eyes, the times when I had seen love and happiness in them…the painful nostalgia threw me off-guard.

  I unscrewed the top, pressing the lip of the bottle to his mouth. Carefully tipping it, I poured water into his mouth. After giving him a few gulps, I set the water down and backed away, composing myself for the confrontation.

  “I figured it was only fair that I listen to what you have to say,” I said.

  “Before anything, I want to say I’m sorry…” Mykail whispered, trying to shift, though the chains kept him tightly bound on his knees. “I never wanted to hurt you like this. I really wanted to tell you the original reason Dana put me in your house, but…”

  “But?” I prompted.

  “I was terrified,” he admitted, looking at the ground. “I really do love you, Lily…”

  The words hit me like bricks, but I remained as calm as I could.

  “You must understand that it is hard for me to believe those words,” I told him. He nodded slowly. “Tell me your side. Don’t lie to me anymore.”

  “Dana wanted me to go to your house and to…coerce you, I guess, into acting out against him. He never told me why he wanted you, only that he wanted you in the Commission. He wanted to have you, whatever that meant.”

  “And what did he want you to do while you were with me?” I pressed coldly. “Did he want you to make me fall in love with you? Did he want you to have sex with me?” Mykail hesitated before answering.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “He wanted me to seduce you…”

  “Congratulations, I guess you succeeded in your mission,” I snarled.

  “No, I didn’t,” Mykail said quickly, his eyes shooting wide. “Listen, I really pushed for us to get close at first. I wanted to push you to do something faster so that I could get out from under Dana’s influence, but you were smarter than that,” Mykail told me sincerely. “You did not fall for my tricks or his. Yes, we got close fast, but…as we did…I actually fell in love with you. And it wasn’t just your fiery spirit or your commitment to take down Dana, it was all the little things. The way you laughed and smiled…the way you looked when you got angry at the little things at school…every moment with you made me feel more alive than I ever had before…and I realized that I could not do what Dana commanded me to do.”

  I swallowed hard, trying to keep my composure.

  “How am I supposed to believe that?” I hissed, my voice tight.

  “I know I can’t ask you to believe me,” Mykail said. “I have no right to ask for something like that. But I want to tell you the truth. I owe you that.” Mykail dropped his head again. “Honestly, when I heard that Mark, the incredible leader of the Eight Group, had a plan, and that the plan could work…I decided that, rather than avoid telling Dana anything, I needed to tell him things to get him on the wrong track.”

  I looked at the ground.

  “Lily, if there was any way for me to prove this to you, you know I would.”

  “I want to believe you, Mykail,” I murmured. “I really do. I honestly felt that I loved you and knew you…but that shattered so quickly, I’m starting to think that maybe I didn’t love you as deeply as I thought I did.”

  “What I did was unforgivable,” he said. “I don’t blame you for distrusting me.”

  “I distrusted you before I heard what Dana said,” I whispered. He looked at me, confused and worried. “There was a moment when I realized that I was the only one who trusted you completely…and because of that, I began to wonder why it was that none of the other experiments trusted you. But rather than stand beside you and say that
they just didn’t know you, or that they were being paranoid…I trusted them more than my knowledge of you.”

  Mykail looked down, ashamed. I swallowed hard.

  “I won’t forgive you for playing me, even if you did turn away from Dana at a certain point. The fact is, I will never know if what you’re saying is true. I will try my best to think well of you…but I can’t trust you…and I don’t think I will ever forgive you.”

  “I understand,” he murmured. “I want to thank you, Lily…for coming in here and telling me that. And thank you for at least listening to what I had to say.” He sniffed, the tears making his voice waver. “You were always better than I deserved.”

  I stood up, clearing my throat before walking over and kissing him on the cheek. I walked out of the room, feeling pained, but somehow lighter.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  There was an interesting story on the Saturday morning news that caught my attention as I was going to find a payphone to call Becca. I walked into the communication room to get Mark, who insisted on being with me whenever I left. He was standing in the back of the room and Tori and Griffin were sitting at the computer with Clark, everyone’s attention fixed on the news.

  “…the culprits of the tagging have not been identified, due to their use of masks in the video, which quickly went viral,” the male anchor explained. I watched the video change to a clip taken on a phone, jarring as the person taking the video ran to the group of young men and women excitedly spray-painting a brick wall, laughing, wearing Thomas Ankell masks.

  “…This thirty second long clip shows the taggers spray painting profanities at the entrance of the Third Tier building. Here are pictures this morning from police, depicting demeaning slogans, violent scenes, and the image that has become the symbol of the Central Angels—wings. School will open normally on Monday. Officials hope to have the graffiti cleaned off the school by then. Central has yet to make a statement about whether this is the work of vandals or if this is also connected to the terrorist group, the Central Angels.”

  I studied the pictures of the tagging. While some of the words were blurred out to censor the profanity, it was clear what the messages were saying.

  Fuck Central!

  This is War!!

  There was a picture of a distorted angel violently stabbing a large C and the flag of America was painted as being on fire.

  “What the hell is this?” I whispered.

  Everyone had been so absorbed in what they were watching that they jumped and turned to me.

  “Lily, you scared us,” Tori chuckled, a hand on her chest.

  “What’s this about tagging a school?” I repeated, appalled to think that some of our revolution had done something in such a demeaning and terrifying manner.

  “It wasn’t ours,” Griffin shook his head. “There’s no way it could have been. Everyone was in last night.”

  Remembering accounting for everyone as they returned the previous night, I accepted that it was probably the work of some young teenagers who were trying to make a splash in the media. While I did not like the idea of our public supporters getting violent and defacing property, I had to let it go.

  But there was something about the story that continued to bother me.

  Mark went with me into the city and to the post office, another place with an outside pay phone.

  I called Becca with Mark standing close by, keeping an eye out for possible eavesdroppers.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Becca.”

  “Hey,” she greeted, a smile in her voice. “How are you?”

  “Not bad, you?”

  “Great, actually,” she laughed. “Listen, rather than talk on the phone, can you come over around seven tonight? I have something for you.”

  “Uh…” I said, suspicious. I turned to Mark. “Hold on.”

  I pressed the receiver to my chest and whispered what she had asked. He looked thoughtful, torn about the idea.

  “Can we meet somewhere else?” I asked.

  “I wish, but I have to be home tonight. My mom is out with her…person and my dad is sick, so it’s my job to take care of him.”

  I turned to Mark and shook my head. He furrowed his brow in thought, not liking the idea of going to her house without knowing what was waiting for us. After pursing his lips, he nodded slowly.

  “Okay, your house should be fine,” I agreed, though there was a tone of disbelief in my voice at Mark’s agreement.

  “Great,” Becca said lightly. “I really don’t want to talk about this over the phone, just in case…”

  “Okay, thank you, Becca,”

  “Sure, I’ll meet you out front of my house around seven.”

  “Great, see you then.”

  I hung up the phone and turned to Mark.

  “You really think this is a good idea?” I pressed. He nodded for me to follow him and we returned to the fort. As soon as we got back, I followed Mark to the normal meeting spot for the Eight Group, which was in front of the storage room in which Mykail remained chained until we could decide what we were going to do with him.

  Motioning a few quick things to the three guarding the room, Rin called a few names. The other fourteen members of the Eight Group gathered around their leader, bringing some attention from the others in the bunker, though no one approached.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “We’re going to do surveillance,” Rin answered.

  “What’s the address?” Josh asked.

  Giving them Becca’s address, I watched Mark point to a few of them, making a few gestures that they understood. The three that had been standing around the door left and Mark turned to another two, ordering them in the same silent fashion. After they left, Mark turned to Josh and nodded once. Josh left briefly, going into the communications room as Mark ordered another three to take up post outside Mykail’s door.

  I felt a little better, knowing that Mark was having some of the Eight Group accompany us to Becca’s house to be sure that that we were not walking into a trap.

  Josh returned with a box and pulled out a few clear earpieces that I had seen the security of the Commission wear, though a few were attached to a box with a clip on it, used as the main communication device.

  I sat with them as they sorted through the earpieces. The two members that had disappeared from their positions at Mykail’s door came to the strategy room and helped sort, trying to find the earpieces that were connected to the main communication devices. As they leaned over, I saw that they each had four guns—two under their arms and two at their hips.

  I was not going to her house alone or unprepared.

  Mark put on one of the earpieces as Josh joined us, the main communication line attached to his belt. The three of us walked into the mains and got as close to the neighborhood as we could.

  Backtracking when we could not find a better way out, Mark lifted a grate in the residential street and looked around to be sure that no one was watching. Skillfully moving it out of the way, he pulled me up, pointing at me to go to the sidewalk corner, which I obeyed while he and Josh closed up the hole.

  No one in the Eight Group was wearing their sunglasses which, even though it was dark, made me worry about their safety. Having a large group of people dressed in black moving though the darkened neighborhood was suspicious enough.

  Josh went one way while we took another turn, walking around the block to Becca’s house.

  “What about your glasses?” I murmured through my scarf, turning to Mark. He shook his head, pulling his hat down over his ears and brow. “Why not?”

  He tapped his ear, where the communication device was seated, the speaker resting just behind the top of his ear, pressing into the skin. The precisely placed speaker would have to be moved for the glasses.

  I was nervous as we approached Becca’s house. Josh had told me not to worry, since no one on the Eight Group surveillance team had seen anything threatening around Becca’s home. Becca was sitt
ing on the curb outside, huddled in her jacket and scarf, waiting. When she saw us, she leapt to her feet.

  “There you are,” she grinned, hugging me as she normally did.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “You smell…interesting.”

  “That’s what happens when you take the subway,” I teased, pointing to my feet.

  “Oh,” she blinked. “Well, I guess that’s true,” she laughed. “Mark,” she nodded to him. He bowed his head in greeting.

  “What did you have for us?”

  “First, I have to tell you what happened yesterday at Archangel,” she started excitedly. “We went to Archangel, and now that all the Commish Kids are gone, the balcony is used for the people who are kinda supporters of the revolution. I went up to tell them about what Carolina Media was doing, and you will never guess what they were doing…”

  “What?”

  “They were mapping out other high-security camps to raid,” Becca said. “They said that if they protested enough, that the revolution would raid more camps because they needed to make a statement.”

  “I would rather not,” I chuckled brokenly. “One was enough.”

  “I talked them out of protesting, but I did get these.” She pulled out some folded pieces of paper and handed them to me. It was difficult to get the papers apart with my gloves on, so Mark took them, opening them and as I leaned over to look. I could not see as well in the dark what was written, but I did see some photos that had been printed out with writing below them.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “They’re pictures and locations of seven other camps around the city,” she smiled through her scarf, her body shuddering in the cold. “It was all over the news that you guys set their supply tent on fire, which made a huge mess and everyone had to be transferred out of the camp,” Becca explained. I cringed at the memory.

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, it got me thinking about their supply tents. There has to be food in there, right? Food that lasts for a while.” She looked at me excitedly. “While we’re gathering the food up here, you could raid the supply tents and steal food.”