Inside

by Kyra Anderson

“Are you kidding?” Clark barked a laugh. “I could never do what you’ve done. Lily,” he put both hands on my shoulders, looking me in the eye, “just because things are really fucking hard right now, does not mean that you’re not strong enough to handle it.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Everything will be alright in the end.”

  “How do you know that?” I whispered.

  “Because I have to, otherwise, our situation really is overwhelming,” he half-joked. “But truthfully, it’s because I believe that you are strong enough to survive anything. So I know you will.”

  I scoffed, brushing a stray tear off my cheek as he released my shoulders.

  “Yeah…pillar of strength right here…”

  Mark put an arm around my shoulders and hugged me briefly, giving me a strong nod in agreement with Clark before turning to Griffin as he walked up to us.

  “How is Mykail?”

  “…not good,” I muttered.

  “I’m so sorry, Lily…”

  I took a deep breath, trying to focus my mind on anything other than my own emotional pain.

  “Have we heard from Tori yet?”

  “No, not yet,” Griffin admitted. “Any day now, though. I’m sure they made it fine.”

  I turned to look around a bunker as a way to hide my irritation at everyone saying that they were sure everything was alright, or fine. I hoped against all odds that everything would be fine and that everything would work out, but I also knew that even if it worked out for everyone else at the bunker, there was a very different fate awaiting Mykail—and me.

  “I’m just going to go check on him, and then we’ll go over the next group and start preparing them,” I said, turning to walk to the rec room. I was surprised when no one followed me, but I was not about to ask anyone to join me.

  I knocked lightly on the rec room door purely out of habit and then slowly peered in. Hiroki was sitting in a chair by Mykail, who had his eyes closed, his breath coming in short pants as his face creased in pain. Hiroki saw me walk in and stood, walking over to me and dropping his voice.

  “His fever is really high,” he whispered. “Peter tried to give him something to bring it down, but he’s been hallucinating, so…don’t talk to him for long. Let him get some sleep so his fever can break.”

  I nodded, pursing my lips against every word he uttered.

  “Thank you, Hiroki.”

  The member of the Eight Group stepped outside the door as I walked over to Mykail. I pulled the chair closer to his makeshift bed, the sound causing him to open his eyes and look at me.

  “Lily…”

  I sat in the chair, taking his hand in both of my hands.

  “I’m here…”

  “We…should go on a date…” he said with a soft smile, flinching as a bolt of pain radiated through him. I tightened my grip on his hand. “We never really did that…”

  “I count our nights in together as our dates,” I told him gently.

  “I could take you to a restaurant.”

  “No, Mykail, you don’t need to take me to a restaurant,” I assured him, trying not to let the words tear me in half. “Why do you suddenly want to go on a date?”

  “Because you deserve it,” he said with a small smile, his eyes turning back to me. “All I ever wanted to do was be deserving of you.”

  “Mykail…this is not a good time…” I choked.

  “I know, I know…I’m dying…so hearing all this is really unfair to you,” he breathed. “But I wanted to tell you the truth.”

  I squeezed his hand, shaking my head.

  “Do you really want to die, Mykail?”

  His exhausted eyes closed and he let out a long breath.

  “No one ever wants to die,” he murmured. “But…I’m not afraid of it. And I welcome it as a relief to this pain…and I’ll come back. I saw an angel a few hours ago…a real one…”

  “That’s the fever, Mykail,” I breathed quietly, running my hand over his head. His skin was almost too hot to touch, and the sweat that coated his skin and matted his hair to his forehead. I tried to move it aside as he tried to explain his hallucination.

  “No, the angel…he told me that I’ll come back…as a better person…”

  “…I’m sure you will…” I hissed, choking on the words. “The pain will be gone soon.”

  “I know,” he said, his voice becoming slow and slurred as he tried to fight sleep. “I’m ready for it.”

  I swallowed back a sob, sniffing to keep the accompanying tears back.

  “I’m sorry I’m so selfish…” I breathed. He smiled gently, cracking an eye open at me and moving his hand out of my grasp to place against my cheek.

  “You’re not selfish,” he murmured. “You’re beautiful…”

  His hand went back to mine, trying to squeeze it comfortingly, but lacking the strength to do so. I watched as his eyes closed and he drifted into a fevered sleep, hoping he was dreaming of angels.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  When the phone rang in the Communications room, Griffin darted over to pick it up, all of us putting the international news about the Altereye Space Search on mute to hear what was going on. I watched Griffin, surprisingly nervous even though we had been getting calls on that phone regularly to let us know that our groups were making it safely to the final safe house.

  “Tori,” Griffin said with a huge sigh of relief, leaning back in his chair. I also visibly relaxed knowing that Tori was safe, and Mark stepped forward from his spot at the door, clearly eager to hear news on his sister. Griffin pressed one of the buttons on the refurbished older phone and put the call on speaker for all of us to hear. “How are you doing? How did it go?”

  “Not bad,” Tori’s voice said, her voice clearly showing her exhaustion. “My entire group made it alright with only a badly bruised leg and some very blistered feet.”

  “Tori, have you talked to them at the last safe house to see how many groups have passed through? Did anyone not make it?” Clark asked, leaning forward.

  Tori hesitated for a moment, causing everyone to tense once more.

  “From what I can tell, three of our groups have not made it to the last safe house, one from each of the routes. Therefore, it’s hard to tell if that’s the Commission’s doing, or if they ran into some other trouble or got lost and just haven’t made it yet. It’s almost impossible to tell what happened to them. They might still arrive.”

  “And did you run into any trouble?” Griffin pressed. “Any Commission problems?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Tori said. “But Cody’s group is also here and they took a different route than me and they also ran into some trouble. It seems that about a week away from the last safe house, there is a pretty heavy line of Commission security helping border patrol. My gut is telling me that Dana knows we’re either going to cross the border or that we’ve already begun doing so and he’s setting up a line to make it almost impossible to get through.”

  Everyone in the communication room at Fort Daniels looked at one another, worried by the statement.

  “Are you going to stay at the safe house and wait for everyone else?” Griffin finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The safe house is in the heart of Monterrey, so it’s not particularly large. It might become too crowded if I stay. I might see if I can get a place outside of the city where we can host anyone who comes down until they are ready to leave or have decided what they want to do.”

  There was a silence that surrounded everyone as we all realized that she was talking about the end of the revolution.

  I already knew that most of the people would disappear once we got to Mexico and would not want to put themselves in more danger by poking at Dana once more, particularly if they had already made it safely out of the country. As Mark has also said, everyone was tired and we were all ready to no longer fear being discovered by Dana.

  But I also knew that Dana was not going to let a border stop him, particularly when it came to me. H
e would find a way to hunt me down, and he would take anyone near me as well. I glanced at Griffin, Clark, and Mark, who were also casting glances at each other, trying to discern what the other was thinking.

  “…we’ll cross that bridge soon enough,” Griffin told Tori with a forced smile on his face, even though she could not see him. “So, any problems with the safe houses?”

  “Not on my route, nor on Cory’s route. Seems that the network is still intact. The women at this safe house more-or-less maintain the networks pretty well. They said that they don’t get as many refugees since the Coalition went under, but they get a few every month who have heard about the route in various ways,” Tori explained. “But I do think you might want to speed up how many groups you send and when you send them. It’s been nearly two months since the first group left the fort, and it seems the Commission’s presence along the border is getting stronger. It won’t be long until Dana is releasing pictures to locals and law enforcement, and border patrol to be on the lookout for our faces.”

  The words sank into my bloodstream, running through my veins and making me shiver, though I shifted my body in hopes of hiding my fear.

  “Alright, we’ll start sending groups a little faster,” Griffin agreed.

  “Is Mark around?”

  “You’re on speaker, he’s standing right here,” the larger experiment said, looking over at Mark as he took another two steps closer to the phone.

  “Mark, I just want you to know that Eun is completely fine. I’ll stay with her until you get here, even if we have to find another place to stay. I will be sure to keep in contact with the ladies at this safe house and they can tell you where we are when you get here.”

  For the first time in months, since Josh died, a small smile came to Mark’s face. His relief was evident.

  “He’s saying thank you,” Griffin said with a small laugh. “Ask the ladies to do some research into someone who can help him get a voice, if possible.”

  Mark’s smile grew and he lightly punched Griffin in the arm for the teasing.

  “Sure,” Tori laughed. “I’m going to go now, but I’ll call you when I have to leave the safe house,” she said. “Of course…if no one answers…”

  “It means that we’ve all left for the border,” Clark said strongly. “And it means we’ll see you soon enough. Just leave information at that last safe house about where you went so we can find you.”

  “Will do, Clark,” Tori said brightly. “Travel safe. I’ll see you all soon.”

  We all called our farewells to Tori and the call disconnected.

  “It probably would be for the best that we leave anyway,” Griffin said slowly. “The sooner we can get across the border and get situated, whatever that means for each of us, the bigger lead we’ll have on Dana, and that could make us more difficult for him to find.”

  “Dana is tenacious,” Clark said, shaking his head and raising his eyebrows. “How do we know that, even four years from now he won’t still be looking for us?”

  “There’s no guarantee, that’s true,” Griffin agreed. “But we have to do what we can. He won’t recognize any of the humans that we freed. Only the experiments and former kids of the Commission are the ones in the worst danger.”

  I remained silent, worried about what words would come out of my mouth if I opened it. In my mind, I was telling them not to worry about being captured by Dana, even years down the line. I knew that I could turn myself over to him, and most of his attention would be diverted to me. I knew that there was no way for me to stop Dana completely if he wanted to hunt down the other experiments or Commish Kids, but I also knew that his heaviest fascination was with me, and I could use that to my advantage and keep most of the former revolutionaries safe.

  “It seems, though, that Tori is putting a lot of trust in this last safe house and their ability to set up whatever papers and documents are necessary for people to continue living in Mexico. Perhaps the downfall of the Coalition was to our benefit. If they’re not sneaking hundreds of people every month into the country, the government isn’t already watching them, which means we can get through Mexico largely undetected.”

  “Until we get to the last few groups,” I muttered.

  There was no argument about the statement.

  “How fast should the rest of us leave?” Clark asked after the heavy silence became too much to bear.

  “Well, we should leave faster, but not all at once. We still need to keep groups of six going on different routes on different days. Just because we’re now in more of a hurry does not mean we can get foolish,” Griffin said seriously.

  “Mark,” Clark said, turning to the leader of the Eight Group, “what do you think? When do you want to leave?”

  He lowered his eyes to the ground and heaved a sigh, reaching absent-mindedly into his pocket to pull out his smaller notepad and a pen, continuing to think for several more long moments before writing.

  “We haven’t seen much of Dana’s influence lately,” he wrote. “Chris has been attacking, but Dana hasn’t really shown his hand. The public is the one calling for our capture at the moment.”

  “Yeah, but Dana’s probably trying to find the best time to reveal Eyna, claiming that they made him in response to us. Or I should say to Chris…” Clark added.

  “But Dana’s silence has me worried. It’s possible that he’s also using Chris as a distraction for us.”

  “What do you mean?” Griffin asked worriedly. Even though I was also worried about what Mark thought Dana was doing, I was thrilled to see Mark’s strategic brain back at work.

  “He found one entrance to the fort. He’s likely looking for more. We might be so caught up in Chris and Eyna that we’ve forgotten he could find this fort at any moment.”

  Mark was correct, I had not thought about that.

  “Fuck…” Griffin groaned, leaning back in his seat and rubbing his forehead. “What are the likely entrances he could find?”

  “Makay Power Plant if he was thorough enough.”

  “There are so many ways to get in and out of this place,” Clark defended. “And a lot of the tunnels are mazes of dead ends if you don’t know where you’re going. Even if he did manage to find a door, unless it was the power plant, it’s unlikely he would be able to find this fort easily.”

  I looked at Mark, jumping when I saw he was looking directly at me, his eyes appearing almost suspicious. I stared back, like a deer in the headlights, not sure why he was giving me the look. I was sure that we stared at one another long enough to make the others worry and question what was wrong, but they said nothing. Mark’s eyes finally turned away from mine and he wrote in the notebook once more.

  “Even if when we leave, if he finds this fort and all the documents we have on these safe houses, he can track us down.”

  “So we take the documents with us,” Clark said simply.

  “If any one of us do that and we get caught the entire network is compromised and everyone who has helped us will be captured by the Commission.”

  “Meaning that we not only shoot ourselves in the foot, but also effectively cut off a major way for people to escape the Commission of the People,” Griffin added, sighing heavily.

  “We have to destroy all documents.”

  “So, the last groups to leave will burn all the documents,” Griffin agreed. He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Shit…I didn’t even think about Dana finding this place.”

  “Do you think it’s that likely?” I asked, looking at the three of them.

  Just as Griffin was about to speak, one of the humans in the fort sat forward.

  “What the hell?”

  He clicked the news broadcast back on to a breaking story.

  “—reports of the flying man known to be the symbol of the domestic terrorist group called the Central Angels have been coming in in droves. He has been spotted flying around Central, and even though people are taking cover anywhere they can, he has yet to attack the city as the military
and the Commission of the People have set up a protection force around the city and they are currently in pursuit. We have a helicopter camera at the scene with live video of the chase.”

  Everyone surged closer to the televisions when the live camera feed came on. The helicopter had to remain pretty far away from the pursuit, as military choppers also followed Chris as he flew around some of the larger skyscrapers in the city.

  “This is the first time we have seen the military prepared for one of these attacks, though they are still telling everyone to remain indoors and try to get to basements to stay safe,” the anchorwoman continued to commentate over the live footage.

  “This is it…” I whispered.

  Everyone in the communications room knew what I was talking about. This was the moment the Commission would unveil Eyna to the entire world. As I watched Chris fly around with the military helicopters in close pursuit, my mind flashed with millions of questions. I wondered how the public would react to seeing the Machine of Neutralization. I wondered how many international leaders knew about Eyna and were watching intently to see the “perfect soldier” that Dana and the Commission had constructed. I also had to ponder what the reveal would mean for the rest of us in Fort Daniels and how long we had after Chris’ capture before Dana found us.

  As I watched the military and the experiment with wings on his back on live television, I finally understood that I would never be able to match up to Dana. He was too smart, too powerful, and too heartless to play by the rules. I would have never been able to beat him.

  Chris flew to the top of one of the skyscrapers and landed on the roof, running to one side of the building only to stop when another military chopper drew close. The helicopter with the news camera drew closer, watching the confrontation. Several other news cameras were closing in as well, seen in each other’s broadcasts. The military had their guns pointed at Chris as he paced on the roof, looking among them.

  One of the officers drew out a megaphone to yell at the experiment.

  “Don’t move!” he bellowed. “If you try to fly again, you will be shot.”

  “You Commission dogs are just going to kill me anyway!” Chris barked back, screaming over the whirring of the chopper blades around him. He lifted one of his hands into the air, holding up a remote that was difficult to discern. “So…as long as I’m going to die, why don’t I take everyone in this building along with me?”