Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  I stop struggling immediately, surprised that he had found me, and even more surprised at the intense relief I felt at seeing him. The illumination from the headlights reflected of the tears that had gathered in his eyes. In that moment of staring into his eyes, it was as if we shared an empathic connection. No words needed to be said. I knew exactly what he was feeling.

  The sound of the car door opening, gave me pause. Staring at Mark’s face, I listen carefully as three men got out of the car.

  “Do you hear anything?” a familiar voice asked. My wide eyes shot even wider at recognizing Sean’s voice.

  Marks gaze held mine, both of us remaining still and silent, listening carefully to three men outside.

  “… No.”

  Even though the voice was mostly unfamiliar, I was sure that the man was Eyna. I held my breath, terrified that both Sean and the Machine of Neutralization were just outside, five steps away from finding us.

  “I thought you said you heard something,” Dana’s voice said, cutting through the night air like a knife. My entire body tensed once more.

  I really had almost been caught.

  Reality had not hit me until that moment.

  “I thought I heard screaming,” Eyna murmured. I heard a few footsteps, but they stopped. “But I don’t hear anything now.”

  “Are you certain?” Dana pressed. “Not even footsteps or breathing?”

  “No.”

  “Coyotes?” Sean suggested.

  “What do coyotes sound like?” Eyna asked innocently.

  “To me, from a distance, it can sound like someone yelling in distress,” Sean explained.

  “Yes, but you do not have the hearing of an animal,” Dana said sharply. “He should be able to hear if anything living is nearby.”

  A heavy silence fell over the area and I knew that Eyna was listening intently for any sounds of breathing. My eyes, still locked with Mark’s, somehow went wider. I was worried that the sound of my skin moving over my muscles would be too loud and give away our position. Mark was also very still, his hand remaining over my mouth, muffling my breathing sounds.

  “…I don’t hear anything.”

  Dana let out a childish groan, reminding me of previous interactions with him in the Commission.

  “They have to be around here somewhere,” he said strongly. “With the number of people that they broke out of the Commission, there is no way that they could have gone very far from those water tanks.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sean assured. “We’ll find them.”

  “We better,” Dana snarled.

  The sound of shoes moving over asphalt filled the air again before the cars doors opened and the three men climbed into the vehicle. The engine turned over and the tires moved, driving Dana, Sean, and Eyna away.

  Even when the car was out of earshot, I still found it impossible not to hold my breath. I continued to stare into Mark’s eyes, as of hypnotized into complete stillness by his sharp gaze.

  However, when he blinked, and a few tears rolled down his face, my body is when slack and I lunged forward, wrapping my arms around him tightly and screaming noiselessly into his chest. His own arms held me tight, his head resting against mine, the moisture from his falling tears hitting my scalp as he cried.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Mark would not leave my side, but I was thankful for it. I felt as though my life had completely changed, as if I had narrowly avoided death and, in the process, seen the beauty in a free life. I felt more invigorated to go south and regroup with the other revolutionaries in Mexico to see if there was another way for us to bring down the Commission.

  No one else knew what it happened. They woke up blissfully unaware that I had almost been captured by Dana the previous night. I was constantly asked if I was all right, since my crying the previous night had left my face blotchy and red. I brushed it off, telling them it was nothing, unwilling to admit to my moment of insanity the previous night.

  Mark pulled me along with him around the bunker that day as he made sure we had everything we needed. I followed obediently, grateful to have him by my side.

  It did not take much to get us ready for the trek south. Since we had already sent so many groups on their way, we knew exactly what we needed to grab. And since there were only six of us left, we spent most of the day waiting for nightfall rather than preparing. All six of us double-checked and triple-checked that all lights and functions were off in Fort Daniels, not wanting Dana to think he had been so close in catching us. We hoped that the bunker looked as though it had been abandoned for a while—a further insult to Dana.

  But soon there was nothing left occupy our time. We sat around the main room, going over the route and the list of safe houses, being sure we all knew the proper thing to ask and the proper handshake to let those we met at the safe house know we were refugees.

  “I can’t believe this is it, “Jeff murmured. We all nodded slowly in agreement. “For what it’s worth, Lily,” I looked up, startled by the address, “I still believe in what we did.”

  I blinked at him, dumbfounded. I had convinced myself that everybody had hated me for rallying them against the Commission, particularly when it led to such a bitter defeat. Jessica nodded as well.

  “I agree,” she said. “There were only one hundred or so of us, and yet we managed to push Dana so far into a corner that he had to blow up government buildings to turn the people against us.” She shook her head. “That means we scared him enough to take drastic measures.”

  “Exactly,” Jeff agreed. “That just proves that what we were doing was right.”

  “…If that’s so, why didn’t work?” I murmured.

  Mark leaned over and took my hand, squeezing it tenderly as he offered me a smile.

  “I think it did work,” Jeff insisted. “And I know that what we did with Mykail was difficult, but I think it helped rile up the people even further. Eventually, a larger group will be able to rise up and finally take down the Commission of the People. We started the process. We basically laid the foundation.”

  “How many people do you think will still be ready to rally against the Commission of the People in Mexico?” I asked. “I think people will be too interested in maintaining their freedom to go back to fighting.”

  “… I don’t know,” Jessica admitted with a heavy sigh. “Perhaps we will also change our minds when we get there.”

  Mark squeezed my hand once more, as of telling me that everything would be okay regardless of our decision whether or not to continue fighting the Commission when we got to Mexico.

  Jessica decided to take a nap before starting the trek, and Jeff and Clark ended up playing a card game to pass the time. I watched the card game absentmindedly until Mark tapped me on the shoulder and motioned for me to follow him. I got to my feet mechanically, figuring that he still wanted to keep an eye on me while he gathered whatever else we needed for our journey south. However, he led me to the strategy room and closed the door. I watched him walk to the table and grab one of the notepads, pulling it closer and scrawling a single word.

  “Why?”

  I started the word for a long time, trying to decide how I was going to explain my reason for trying to turn myself over to Dana. Finally, with tears in my eyes, I whispered to him, “I was trying to save you.”

  He shook his head and pointed at the single word scribbled on the white paper once again.

  “I thought…I thought that, if I turned myself over to Dana, I could convince him not to come after you.” I shook my head quickly, trying to sniff back the tears. “I could not bear it if you were hurt or killed because Dana wants to capture me so badly.”

  “I would never let that happen,” he wrote on the paper.

  “I know,” I murmured. “It was a stupid idea, but I did it so that Dana would not come after you, and wouldn’t find the route that we took to Mexico. I just thought…if I gave him what he wanted, he would leave the rest of you alone.”

  “Dana
will find someone else to obsess over. He’s like a child. His attention will eventually be diverted to something else.” Mark explained. “And I could not bear and if I let something happened to you.”

  I nodded slowly, my eyes averting to the ground in embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” I murmured. I knew there was nothing I could say to apologize for what I had done. Even though I had thought it would be the right thing to do, I knew, even while planning my actions, that I would hurt Mark. Mark turn back to the notepad and wrote one more message.

  “Don’t ever do something like that again.”

  It was difficult to tell if Mark was actually angry at me, or if he had just been scared enough to seem angry, but I knew he had every right. He did not say anything to anyone for the rest of the day, taking me back into the main bunker to watch the card game between Clark and Jeff intensify. Laughing at the antics between the two, I almost forgot that we had to leave the bunker that night.

  But the time came. Mark, who had been keeping a diligent eye on the clock somehow, stopped the game between Jeff and Clark and tapped his wrist to tell us that it was time.

  It was not until we were standing, brushing the dirt of the bunker floor off our pants that the sadness came over me. The bunker had become something more than a hiding place from the Commission of the People. It had not quite become a home, but it was a safe haven. But it also been the site of many tragedies, including Josh’s death. It had been the site of squabbles as tensions had run high from limited food and sleep. It had become the site where we had all gotten to know one another, learning everyone’s painful pasts and the reason that the Commission had marked them as criminals.

  The bunker had been a symbol of hope when Clark and I have discovered it. It had been a refuge for many. And it also had been the place where some lives had ended.

  Leaving it was surprisingly difficult.

  We gathered our backpacks filled with the limited food left in the bunker, one set of new clothes for each of us, a little bit of money in secured pouches, and a blanket rolled up at the bottom to protect us on the colder nights. Mark and Jeff each carried a tent for when we would be camping in the wilderness. With all of our limited belongings slung on our backs, we moved to the tunnel that would take us to the hillside and allow us to move further north of Central before swinging around to avoid walking through the capital city.

  When we were at the door, I stopped, frozen. With a deep breath, I turned around and looked at the large dome of the main bunker. So many memories had taken place there, etched into the steel walls. I could almost hear the singing in the laughter, as well as the pained cries, resonating off of the walls. The cold, dark space filled me with such mixed emotions, I did not know how to process them. Oddly, leaving Fort Daniels felt like leaving home all over again.

  Clark walked over to me, and placed his hand on my shoulder. With a heavy sigh, I turned to look at him.

  “It almost doesn’t seem real,” I muttered. Clark nodded in understanding.

  With Clark’s gentle yet insisting hand, I turn back around, turning my back on the memories of Fort Daniels, and stepped out of the bunker. The click of the door closing sounded like a bomb going off in the tunnel. I took one more breath, and put the memory of our failed revolution behind me.

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Mark did not stop until we were safely away from the lights of Central. We walked in the darkness for what felt like hours, the lights fading further and further behind us as we climbed higher and higher into the hills. It got colder of the night wore on, which caused me to be chilled to the bone as my sweat from the uphill trek became trapped to my body. Mark stopped when we were completely surrounded by trees, the foliage so thick that even the moonlight could not penetrate to illuminate our makeshift campsite. It was then that I finally looked at the clock and realized that we had been walking for six hours, stopping around four in the morning.

  That first night, Mark and Jeff did not set up the tents, deciding to take turns keeping watch while the rest of us huddled under our blankets, pooled together for warmth in the cold forest.

  I drifted in and out of sleep, partially because I was cold and partially because I could not believe my reality.

  The trip to Mexico had seemed like a dream to me for so long that starting the journey felt surreal, as if I would wake up in Fort Daniels again at any moment. The fact that I had also believed I would have been captured by Dana before starting the journey did not help me grasp the reality of our situation any easier.

  As soon as I saw light behind my eyelids, I opened my eyes. It took a while for the dawn to become bright enough to penetrate the thick trees of the forest, but once we were able to see clearly and yellow light poured between the trunks of the trees, Mark shook each of our shoulders, pointing to tell us that it was time to start walking once again.

  We walked along the lower ridge of the hillside, barely able to see the sprawling suburbs of Central as we walked. We did not follow any specific trail, which made me wonder if Mark knew where he was going. The trail we had scribbled on maps for the other groups that had made the journey much shorter than the path he was taking.

  However Mark walked with purpose and the rest of us stayed quiet, worried that being so close to Central would accidentally draw attention to us before we were even able to leave the vicinity of the city.

  We walked the entire day, mostly on flat ground, before starting a descent out of the hills and into the flat planes that surrounded Central. We were careful to stay far enough away from any houses or buildings, being sure we could never see any details of windows or doors, meaning we were sufficiently hidden from anyone in the nearby structures. We did not want anyone to glance out their window and happen to see us. Mark kept his glasses on, just to be safe, and we were sure to keep an eye out for him as well.

  We managed to get around Central and to the south side of the city without incident. However Mark did not stop there. He continued to urge us to walk further, which was easier to do since moving onto flat ground. However, after a long day of walking, our pace was slower. Eventually Mark had to concede that we needed to stop for the night.

  We assigned shifts to remain awake and keep an ear out for anyone who might be getting too close to our camp. Since everyone agreed that Mark needed to get some sleep, as he was the leader of our group, the rest of us decided to stay up in pairs to keep one another awake. Jeff and I had a first shift while Mark, Clark, and Jessica piled into the one tent that we had set up for sleeping.

  “Never thought I would be doing this again,” Jeff said with a small smile.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Camping…or surveillance, I guess,” he answered. “I haven’t done this since basic training.”

  “How long were you in the military?”

  “Only a couple years,” he muttered. “Let’s just say that I was trying to find a way to afford getting out of my small town. But I had a problem with the authority in the military. I ended up going against direct orders of my superior, which led to my discharge.”

  “I thought you were brought into the Commission on drug-related crimes?” I said slowly.

  “Yeah…” Jeff muttered. “Once I was discharged, I had nowhere else to go but back home. With a drunkard dad and a mom with numerous lovers throughout our tiny town, I needed to get out of there as fast as possible. So, yeah, I turned to fencing. Got busted, brought into the Commission, and sat in the holding cell for two and a half years.” He turned to me and smiled, though it was difficult to make out his features in the dark. “And then you came along.”

  I turned away, not sure what to make of the tone of his voice.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I heard rumor that someone was foolish enough to try and break us out,” Jeff said with a smile. “I’d been in those holding cells for two-and-a-half years and no one had escape, let alone broken anyone else out. When they said when it was going to happen, I was sure that it would nev
er work. I didn’t want to get my hopes up. And then, all of the sudden, the lights went out and a minute later you were in front of my cell. Didn’t look at any of us. You just punched in the code, pointed where we needed to go, and then ran to the next cell.”

  “Seems like it was so long ago…” I said quietly. “I don’t remember that night very well.”

  “It was a frenzy,” he said. “But everybody was so intent on escaping that hell hole that we went along with it, not knowing if we would ever get past the guards, or if you would really be able to swim in the river in that dark room. It was surreal for us as well.” Jeff sighed, pulling his jacket around him tighter as the chilling night air surrounded us. “I do remember a lot of thoughts went through my head that night, though.”

  “Like what?”

  “At first I was horrified that someone so young already knew what was going on in the Commission and was risking their life to go against the entire government practically alone.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “But then…I felt like a coward. When I was your age I would’ve never risked my life like that for strangers.”

  “But you did,” I contradicted. “You joined the military. That’s exactly what the military does.”

  “But I didn’t do it for that,” Jeff said. “I joined for selfish reasons. I just wanted to get away from home. And then I went to illegal routes to get money to do the same thing when the first plan didn’t work out.” Jeff cast his eyes to the ground. “You’re far braver than I ever was.”

  “Don’t they say that bravery is a more honorable side of stupidity?”

  “It’s not stupid to fight for what you believe in,” Jeff insisted strongly. “And it’s definitely not stupid to try and better the lives of your fellow humans.”

  “I just wish it would have ended better,” I muttered.

  “At least we survived.”

  Jeff and I discussed what we thought Mexico would be like, and what sort of life we would lead there as refugees. When we were both starting to get tired, Jeff carefully woke Jennifer and Clark to take over the watch shift. Mark woke up briefly from the noise, but went back to sleep once the tent door was zipped closed again.