Inside

by Kyra Anderson

  Becca’s eyes went wide in horror yet again, not realizing that it was likely Lily would want to ask why she had betrayed them. Becca could only stare at the ringing phone, unwilling to answer.

  The call went to voicemail, but Becca did not relax. Sure enough, a few moments later, the same number rang again. Becca closed her eyes tight, listening to the phone’s rattle, unable to face who was calling her. Dana leaned forward, brushing some of Becca’s hair away from her neck, his fingers lingering on her skin

  “Why don’t you answer it?” Dana murmured.

  “…I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “What do I tell her? How can I explain what I…”

  “Just tell her the truth,” Dana said simply, his hand still resting on Becca’s shoulder. “Believe me, if anyone would understand fear of the Commission of the People, it’s Little Lily.”

  The phone went to voicemail once again, and Becca hoped with all her heart that the number would not ring again.

  However, it did. The same number flashed across the screen and Becca grabbed the phone, hanging up on the second ring. Dana sighed, lifting his finger and wagging it at the teenager.

  “Running away from it is not going to make it any easier to deal with,” he said, adopting the tone of a stern parent.

  The phone rang yet again and Becca stared at it, her fingers trembling as they hovered over the accept call button. Gently cooing to her, Dana placed his hand tenderly over hers and forced her thumb to come in contact with the touchscreen, accepting the call.

  Four long seconds passed.

  “Hello?” Becca whispered, her voice weak.

  “Why?” Lily demanded on the other end.

  Becca flinched from the word, turning her eyes to Dana. He nodded once to her, giving her permission to answer, but she still could not form the words.

  “I…”

  “You what?” Lily barked.

  “Look, I’m sorry…”

  “You’re sorry?” Lily snarled, her voice tight with tears. Sean hated it when he saw the way Dana’s face broke into a smile at the sound. “You’re fucking sorry? That’s what you have to tell me?”

  “Lily…there’s nothing else I can say,” Becca said, wondering if there was any way for her to tell Lily that Dana was in the same room with her.

  “No, don’t give me that bullshit. You can say a hell of a lot more. I asked you a simple question. Why?” Lily growled. “Josh is dead because of you.”

  Becca’s eyes shot wide and she turned to look at Dana and Sean, horrified at the statement. Dana made a face as if he was only minimally disappointed to hear that Josh was dead, but the news hit Sean in the gut. He had been very fond of everyone in the Eight Group, and while he understood that death was the only way Dana would let them escape, reality of the experiments dying hit him hard.

  Becca swallowed hard, closing her eyes. Guilt was clawing at her stomach. She began to realize she had made a mistake turning against Lily.

  “…no one was supposed to die…”

  “What the fuck did you think would happen?!” Lily snapped, her voice shrill over the speaker phone. “I told you what would happen if the Commission caught us, and you brought them right to us! I trusted you! Mark trusted you! Why? Why?!”

  Becca’s voice was just as weak as Lily’s when she answered.

  “I had to…”

  “You had to? Well, guess what? I had to watch Josh die…I saw the life leave him while his best friend held on to him. I watched people who knew him from childhood, people who loved him, bury him in an unmarked grave, and after all that pain we had to endure…you…you have the audacity to justify it for your own means…”

  “Look, the Commission knows about me,” Becca said sharply, unable to handle hearing Lily talk about what had transpired. She wished her heart would give out in that moment so she could escape the pain wracking her body. “They told me that I wouldn’t be taken in if I helped them in apprehending you.”

  “What the fuck, Becca?” Lily sobbed. “I have that threat over my head every goddamn day…that was when you should have called me, told me what was going on and run to us for help. We could have—”

  “I don’t believe in what you’re doing anymore, Lily,” Becca growled around her tears, flinching even as she said the words. She felt Dana’s thumb began to rub her shoulder, relaying his pride in what she was saying. “You’re attacking buildings, killing people to try and scare them…How can I stand behind that?”

  “That was not Mykail!” Lily defended. “I told you that!”

  “I don’t believe that it was his brother…” Becca hissed.

  “I will never forgive you for this…” Lily snarled. “You and the Commission deserve each other, you heartless bitch!”

  The call ended abruptly. Becca listened to the silence on the other end of the phone for a long time, the tears steadily streaming down her cheeks though sobs did not accompany them. Dana and Sean looked on and waited, knowing that everything in Becca’s world had shattered. While Danna seemed pleased, and ran his hand tenderly over Becca’s head as though he was proud of her, Sean was worried that the young woman would be unable to pick up the pieces and put herself back together.

  The Mystery Afoot

  Everything was very quiet inside the Commission of the People. It was the early afternoon hours, and most of the scientists who would worked through the night were sleeping. During the afternoon, the Commission was always at its quietest.

  When Dana had peered into Sean’s room and found the younger man sleeping, he took the opportunity to finally investigate a mystery that had been bothering him for months.

  Walking through the Commission in the quiet was a wonderful experience for Dana. Every day, his senses were consistently overloaded—his eyes followed every movement, his ears picked up every cough and sneeze, his skin felt every odd draft of air. When it was quiet and still, he felt the true vastness of the Commission basement. He was able to fully appreciate the stark white walls, the clean glass, and the strange splashes of color that the experiments’ hair and skin set against the stark background.

  The glass walls of the cells were not soundproof, but they were thick enough to provide a sound barrier to any experiment that was screaming or crying after their testing. That meant that there was no echoing in the hallways, apart from Dana’s rhythmic stride as he moved through Wards One, Two, and Three, reveling in the stillness of the air.

  He so rarely got to roam the Commission without Sean shadowing him. He had been trying to be kinder to Sean, to not test his limits as often as before, seeing that the man was beginning to break down. Of course, when Dana had started working on Sean, the moment he had become a security guard in the Commission, he had known that, eventually, Sean would break.

  Yet, he was impressed with the resilience of the younger man.

  When Dana reached Ward Four, he slowed his step and eventually stopped in the middle of the cells. That was the lowest ward that had been broken into by Lily and her crew of misfits. Dana stayed very still, trying to feel the air, the way the vents pumped breathable oxygen into the deep basement, still trying to wrap his head around how so many people could have escaped in such a short amount of time and with such high security.

  Considering that there was only two ways in and out of the holding cells, Dana was not as interested in how the human prisoners had been freed. He could assume fairly easily that Lily and whoever had helped her had started on one end, opening the cells they had already determined, and telling everyone to run out the other end.

  From there, however, Dana had no idea how Lily and the others had escaped without being seen.

  He walked to the cell that Tara had once occupied, which was empty until someone else could fill it. It looks no different than any other cell the commission, but Dana scrutinized it closely, hoping to find some difference that allowed the experiment to escape so easily.

  With slow, deliberate movements Dana typed in the overr
ide code into the cell.

  With a quiet hiss, the lock opened and Dana was able to pull the cell door open. He looked over the hinges and the lock, debating whether it would be worth it to re-furbish all of the cells to have louder doors.

  The quietness of the Commission was crucial. It was not only for Dana’s own mental acuity that he demanded silence whenever possible. The quiet was also for the experiments. Silence was both a relief and a torture. Silence left no room for distraction. Silence was one of the Commission’s greatest weapons.

  He closed the door, watching the lock click automatically, and left Ward Four, walking through Ward Five and Ward Six until he reached the hallway of the labs.

  He walked into Lab One, where Griffin had been taken just moments before the security had gone down, allowing everyone to escape within seven minutes. Dana knew that Griffin was involved and he knew that it would not be difficult for the experiment overpower the doctor at the time. He could only assume from there that Griffin had been the one to walk to lower wards and free the experiments, bringing them to the room outside of Ward Ten to meet with the human escapees.

  A few weeks prior, Dana had run through the holding cells, stopping at every cell that had been broken into and typing in the override code. He was able to do all of that in such a short amount of time that he realized that he had to do it a few more times, slowing his pace to what he believed matched Lily’s pace. Once he had done that, he realized that Lily had an accomplice in the holding cells—he suspected Clark.

  But what had stumped him for so long was how Griffin could get past the security guards that were fighting Goliath as he freed the other experiments. Now knowing that Mark had been involved from the beginning, Dana had to very carefully consider the security protocols that went into effect when a Ward Ten experiment escaped. Mark likely had not helped anyone escape the cells, but he had certainly planned the fight with Goliath so that no one would be seen escaping the Commission of the People.

  Dana had spent hours mulling over the security tapes, watching the fight progress. Once the power had kicked back on and the security cameras had returned to use, they had recorded the fight with Goliath. Dana had watched intently, studying the already-bloodied Mark continue what appeared to be an extensive battle. It was the seriousness with which the Eight Group had fought Goliath that made Dana confused about how the break out had been pulled off.

  Dana’s feet moved easily over the smooth floor of the Commission basement. He counted steps for no other reason than to keep his mind occupied. Even though he could not remember a lot of his own testing that had turned him from William to Dana, he did have an appreciation for how much it altered his brain—he had to marvel at how often his brain needed stimulation and how it felt when there was not enough going on to keep him occupied. Even the mystery of how the criminals had escaped the Commission was not quite enough to sate his constantly-firing brain.

  He counted each step as he moved through Wards Seven and Eight, finally reaching the room where all hallways converged on the way to the Dome.

  His sharp memory remembered the position of each dead guard in that room. He did not feel any remorse or sadness for the men who had lost their lives that night—he had not felt emotion in years. However, he did feel something for the money lost during the great escape. He had had to hire and train new security guards, which was always a problem for the Commission of the People, since there were so many who did not have the stomach as well as the brains to handle Commission affairs.

  He looked down the hallway that he knew the humans from the holding cells would escape through and thought about Goliath fighting and killing so many people. It would have been chaos in that room had the escapees tried to move around the fight. They would have had to wait until the fight had moved out of that hallway.

  But for the fight to move out of that hallway, it had to move closer to the front offices of the Commission of the People, which would mean that their only means of escape would have been the emergency fire exit or the main elevators. Both of those options, obviously, were not the route of escape.

  Therefore, Dana deduced that, once the fight was out of that hallway, everyone moved into the Dome.

  The Dome had been under construction when Dana first remembered walking into a Commission meeting as Bryant Morris’ assistant. It was completed only three months before Dana killed Bryant. When Dana had taken over, he had been sure that security measures were improved, knowing exactly how loose things had been played in the back when he was an experiment. The Dome had never seemed like a security issue before. There was over one hundred tons of dirt on top of the structure and the electrical in the panels that simulated UV rays made it a dangerous section of the Commission of the People. He had wondered briefly if there had been some outside help, such as a maintenance man who had helped repair the exterior structures of the Dome on the occasions when things had started to fail. However, Dana was able to track each one of the maintenance staff down, and they all had solid alibis for the night of the escape.

  When Dana walked into the Dome the lights were off and the constant humming that generally accompanied the Dome’s use was absent. The area cost a lot of money to run, so it was powered down in the quiet hours to preserve power.

  Dana reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, scrolling through the Commission’s main frame and turning on all faculties of the Dome.

  It took a long time for everything to boot up, each light clicking slowly to life, blinking, machines whirring, air vents filtering, water running…The barrage of noise immediately sparked Dana’s brain and he took a deep breath, allowing the feeling to pass over him, his body shivering and his head turning to the side. He had long grown accustomed to the way new stimuli affected his brain, but when he was alone and surrounded by silence only to be suddenly greeted with so much noise, it was difficult for him not to bask in the moment.

  He stepped over the grass in his shiny shoes, looking at the light panels and trees that were constantly being replaced because they continued to die. The Dome was a magnificent feat of the Commission of the People, no matter how much maintenance and headache it caused. Dana smiled, studying the simulated environment, closing his eyes and feeling the heat from the light panels beating upon him.

  He knew the Dome would take a long time to explore, looking for any weaknesses, or access tunnels that could have been used to aid Lily’s escape. Since Dana was concerned that Sean would find him before he could solve the mystery, Dana decided to focus on areas that he knew had access tunnels.

  He went to the back where there was a thick grove of trees that Eyna particularly enjoyed hiding within. Dana had been worried for a long time that the Machine and Neutralization would find the access tunnel hidden among the roots of the trees, which was why he always was sure to keep a very close eye on his prized experiment whenever he was in the Dome.

  Dana moved a large boulder out of the way, straining a little under its weight even as he managed to push it off the metal hatch it concealed. He then produced his key card and slid it into the slot allowing him to heave open the armored door and peer inside. When the security main frame went down during the power outage of the escape, the electronic lock would have been unusable. There seem to be no damage to the door, meaning it had not been forced open. It also would take far longer than seven minutes for everyone to cross the expanse of the Dome and get into the hatch to escape to safety. Dana would have been able to see them on the Dome cameras when the power came back on.

  Just to be sure of his conclusion, Dana slipped inside the access route, and half-ran, half-crawled up the shaft until he reached the basement of Central Military Base. He looked around the deserted basement, looking for any doors leading directly outside, allowing the escapees to avoid any cameras or people as they fled.

  However, there was none.

  Dana went back to the Dome, and secured the hatch once more. He then moved his attention to the electric panel that was near a grassy knoll
on one side of the Dome. The electrical panel was hidden behind a light panel, and had ductwork that led up to the surface.

  Though Dana was certain it was impossible for a human to fit into the ductwork, he felt the need to investigate it anyway.

  Using his strength, he yanked the panel away from the wall, causing sparks to fly, though Dana barely felt any electricity pass through his hands. He then leaned into the ductwork, looking up to see if there was any possibility that a man his size could fit. Perhaps Lily could squeeze into the narrow passage, but Griffin would not have been able to do so.

  Diana tried to wiggle his way in, but was unsuccessful.

  He did not bother to place the panel back over the electrical work, knowing that he would need to bring in someone who understood the Dome to replace it. He leaned it up against the wall, sending a quick text message to Danielle Markus telling her to call a maintenance man.

  He knew that the message would not go through until he was out of the Dome, since there were jammers installed throughout the Commission of People. He pocket of his phone, not it expecting a response, and continued investigating his mystery.

  He wracked his brain, trying to think of anyway that over one hundred people could sneak out of the Dome.

  There were air intake valves, but again, filing in one at a time would have taken too many minutes for the escapees, which meant that there was no way they crawled through the air ducts. The other electrical ducts were too high on the Dome to be accessed from the ground, so Dana was able to rule those out as well.

  Dana rounded the Dome on his way to the door, stopping at the edge of the river and staring into the water.

  He had automatically ruled out the river due to the strong current, but realizing that the power outage likely turned off the fans, slowing the current. Dana began to wonder if he should have looked at it sooner.

  He put his hand in the water, feeling the strong push of the current. The water that flowed into the Dome exited via a culvert that ended at a water treatment plant. If bodies had appeared at the water treatment plant, Dana would have been immediately notified—particularly since Dana was sure no one could survive in the culvert.