The Complex Law: Young Adult Dystopian Page-Turner (The Complex Trilogy Book 2)

by Heather Hayes

"The yard keeps them very busy this time of year. Didn't you see them out there when you came in? They might have left for lunch."

  "At 10:45 am?"

  "When you start your work day at 6:30, you get hungry sooner."

  I worry that he is eyeing my mother down, hoping to get her to crack. She stays strong though. "Speaking of getting hungry sooner, was cook done with the coconut clusters upstairs? We should all go up and taste test them for her."

  "I remember the last confectionary wonder I tried here; it was excellent. I would be a fool to turn away such an offer, Mrs. Hamble."

  "You would be a fool indeed."

  I laugh silently and humorlessly. I can't believe that food is enough to distract them again, but I can hear them going up the stairs. I turn to the boys and Ernestine and whisper, "I can't believe it. Someone sent them here! There is only one person who wasn't here when the peace officers came."

  "Jefrey," we all mumble together.

  "I'm going to punch his lights out," Rocky says.

  "Are we sure it was Jefrey? What if it was Avra's dad?" Garth asks.

  "Avra's dad doesn't know we're staying here." Scott insists with a hard edge to his voice.

  Garth keeps defending his brother, "But Avra does. Maybe they interrogated her until she cracked."

  I bristle at his statement, yet shrug my shoulders. "I don't know, but I don't think this safe house is safe anymore."

  "Where else can we go?" Scott wonders out loud.

  "I don't think our house is safe." Ernestine says. Garth nods his head in agreement.

  "I think we need to find a place that is not connected to any of us," Rocky adds.

  I remember an offer of shelter. "We could go to Maxine's apartment. She offered it before we escaped."

  Ernestine seems hesitant. "That might be a good temporary place, but once the video goes live, she will probably have to go into hiding as well."

  The reality of what Ernestine says hits me square in the face. "We are doing the right thing, aren't we? I feel terrible about what we're putting our friends through."

  The door opens and my parents and brother walk in. My mother looks defeated. "I'm sorry, but I think we are going to be under constant surveillance for a while. There is a peace officer sitting in a car across the street. You will have to stay in here as much as possible. Go clean up your rooms and bring your things in here."

  Greggory looks at the windowless walls and bunk beds and shakes his head. "This is crazy, I will get that video on the air as soon as possible. Good people like my parents shouldn't be ostracized like this. Especially by a government that is supposed to be for the good of the people."

  I brush my hair back from my raccoon eye. "It's for the good of people with no physical flaws."

  Greggory stares at my birthmark. "Yeah, why are we letting people with mental and emotional flaws dictate what happens to those with physical flaws? What a hypocritical society."

  Mother wraps her arm around Greggory. "We are about to fix that. We are more determined than ever, right?"

  "Right," Greggory agrees.

  Chapter 25

  I feel like I am going to go crazy looking at the same blank walls all day. Will Maxine's apartment be any better? Where is Jefrey? Not here. Scott says that a bunch of clothes and bags are missing from their room. I think Jefrey knows that if he tries to come back here, we'll destroy him. The note he wrote me on my birthday suddenly comes to mind. Don't forget me. How did I not see that it was a goodbye note?

  Good news comes in the form of my mother at dinner time. "Maxine dropped off video footage today."

  Yay! I ask her excitedly, "Can we watch it now?"

  "No, Brock is on his way. When he gets here, we'll all watch it together and decide what needs to be on the final video."

  I look at Garth's feet dangling from the bunk above me. "Okay, I can wait that long." I tickle Garth's foot just for something to do.

  "Ah! You asked for it, Elira Hamble," Garth says as he jumps off the top bunk and attacks my armpits.

  "Ah! No! Ha, ha! I was just teasing you."

  Mother clears her throat. "I wish you two didn't have to share a—room. But since you do, I insist that you stay away from each other's beds."

  Garth stops tickling me and stands up straight. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Hamble. We're just running out of things to do in here. Ernestine is a good chaperone. It won't happen again."

  "Even so, Garth, I'd like you to move to the bunk above Scott instead."

  Garth's eyes droop. "Yes, Mrs. Hamble."

  When Brock arrives, we are thankful for the chance to leave the bunker to watch the video footage. Brock seems angry and stressed when he arrives. Great, his wife probably yelled at him for helping us again. His bad mood won't help us get him on our side. This video probably won't improve his sour mood either.

  I am right. Brock seems to get more and more angry as we watch cooks mixing medicine into the food at the complex and severely disabled children being hauled out and buried. I am extremely shocked to see the 16 girls in our old school room not giving the boys on the other side of the glass any attention at all. Wow. Things have changed.

  I stand up when I see a tall blonde. "Wait! Go back. I think I saw Shasta." Mother backs up the tape and plays it again. "Right there, in the corner. Look at Shasta, Garth. Look at her face, and her hands." Shasta's eyes are glazed over and her long, thin hands are red and blistered.

  My father speaks up. "My friends tell me that they're so heavily medicated that they don't complain when they get cuts and scrapes on the job, so no one treats their wounds."

  I feel a lump form in my throat. Shasta's dead-looking eyes are permanently plastered in my memory. My poor friend. The video shows me places in the complex that I was never able to visit. I see ten and twelve-year-olds sitting at rows and rows of sewing machines making fashionable clothes that they will never get to wear. Their jumpsuits are as white, gray, and black as ever.

  I see teenagers mixing chemicals and filling cleaner bottles. When one spills a harsh chemical on her leg, the leg of her jumpsuit is immediately burned through and her skin disintegrates before our eyes, red and blistered. She is given a wet rag that she holds to the wound as she cries without tears. It's strange to watch people with no emotions.

  The kitchen scene shocks me. The food we were fed was always very simple. The catering food that they make looks fancy and delicious. Those poor kids, spending their days making decadent food that they will never get to taste. They don't know that of course. They probably think that the next dorm up gets to eat what they are making. Each dorm you move up, the food does get better, after all. It keeps residents from asking why the things they make aren't used by themselves. The complex management is horrible, but they are smart. When we see a close up of a ten-year-old boy pouring hot, liquid plastic into a mold with blistered fingers, Brock absolutely loses it. He stands up and screams and pulls his hair.

  My parents and friends look at my brother in shock. I'm pretty sure I know who that ten-year-old boy reminds him of. I jump up and hug Brock. He hesitantly puts his arms around me at first, then hugs me back, tightly. "Are you okay, Brock?"

  "The complex is worse than I thought. I can't believe you lived like that for 14 years, Elira."

  I pat his arm. "It has gotten worse since I left. Those poor people."

  "I-I've been in and out of doctors offices all week. They have all confirmed that our baby has a serious defect. I can't send my baby boy to the complex. He has a heart condition. It doesn't matter if I become a senator. By law, my son will be sent to the complex when he is two. I hate it. I want to watch my boy grow up in our home. It's so wrong."

  I look into his eyes. "That's why you must help us. Change the law, Brock. Change it for Shasta, Avra, and your
innocent baby boy."

  "Chantilly doesn't want me to. She says that our baby shouldn't live with us if he can't keep up with us. I never realized that she cares more about how people view her than about her own family's well-being."

  Mother shakes her head. "She's wrong, Brock. She'll realize it when she sees your son's sweet face."

  He rubs his hair in frustration. "I hope so. I was still unsure of what to do as I drove here today, but now that I've watched this video, I am convinced you're right, Mom. The complex law has to go."

  My mother jumps off the couch and hugs him. "I know what you're feeling and I'm so proud of you for doing something about it."

  He looks sad and defeated. "I—I have to."

  My dad is shutting down the television when my mom stops him. "Wait, Ross. Greggory told me that the advertisement that he has been working on for Geronimo's Germ Away is supposed to air on the news tonight, lets watch it."

  "Okay. Let's see what our boy has done." My dad finds the national news channel and we all sit back and watch who was robbed by whom and what the government's take on the upcoming holiday is, when breaking news hits.

  "This just in, a second escapee from the complex of deformities has been apprehended tonight." We all gasp and look at each other.

  "Jefrey Yesterly was the person responsible for the capture of his fellow escapee Avra Brown last week. He gave additional information last week insisting that it was accurate information that would lead to the capture of two or three others. That information proved to be unreliable. Tonight, Yesterly gave the authorities the address of where he claimed the escapees' safe house was located. That information proved to be inaccurate as well. The head officer on this case began to be suspicious of Jefrey after he was sent on a second day of false errands, so he took Yesterly in for questioning. It was revealed that Yesterly, also known as Jack Dodge, had large purple blotches all over his body, and that he was in fact one of the six original escapees."

  A scream erupts out of me, "That traitor!"

  "You know, John, this story seems bizarre to me. I would think that the escapees would stick together, not turn each other in."

  "That's what I would think too, Sally. It just goes to show that money can turn even friends into traitors."

  Garth gets up and starts pacing the room. Scott walks to the television that still has a picture of Jefrey on it and hits Jefrey's digital face. "I can't believe he did that to her. And me! I hid in a garbage bin for an hour! He sold us all out. So Garth, are you with him, or with us?"

  I can tell Garth is insulted. "I'm not with him. Don't you guys know me at all? I am fuming mad. The idiot! How can he love money that much?"

  Ernestine clears her throat. "I think that when Elira chose you over him, he took that pretty hard. He has been different for weeks."

  Garth pounds the wall in frustration. "This is ridiculous, my own brother tried to turn me in."

  I wrap my arms around him. "It's not your fault, Garth."

  He looks down at his shoes. "At least his brainless plan didn't pay off. The people that gave Jefrey money to stab us in the back stabbed him in the back too."

  We all fall silent. The only sound in the room is Greggory's advertisement for Geronimo's Germ Away cleaners. When it's over my mom stands up and turns off the television.

  She sighs. "I know you're all upset at Jefrey. I am too, but it's done. There's nothing we can do about it. At least we know that Avra's dad didn't turn her in. We have to get Avra out before they torture or work her to death, and we have to get the law changed before they take Brock's baby boy. There's no way around it; our complex revolution begins now." All of the heads in the room nod in agreement. I am thrilled that my brothers are finally on board. Mother has one last question for us. "Who is ready to stand toe-to-toe with The Complex Chief and Alexander Prystine?

  About the Author

  Heather Hayes loves a good story. She believes a good story will entertain you and leave you feeling like a better person for having read it. She loves living in Idaho with her husband and five daughters. If she isn't writing, she is probably watching a volleyball game, cooking, skiing, reading, or planning a trip to somewhere new.

  A Message from

  Heather Hayes

  If you liked uncovering the complexities of the United Cities with Elira, please tell your friends about it and leave a review on Amazon; it helps me out more than you know. The last book of

  The Complex Life

  The Complex Law

  The Complex Leader (December 2018)

  If you like a good story for younger readers, check out my other books:

  Unexpected Magic

  A Tale of Regrets

  Rissy's Summer Son

  The Fantastic Backyard of Imagination