by Eliza Taye
I glared at her. I wasn’t disease-ridden.
“You cannot know the gravity of the consequences of your actions, Dylan Baker.” Mayor Aldridge leaned away from him, taking several steps backward. In a commanding tone, she uttered, “You both will stay here to think about your actions. When I have deemed that you have contemplated enough, then I will release you, Dylan.”
Dylan threw his head in my direction. “What of Allie?”
“Allie is not allowed to leave here alive. Whether or not I will allow her to live here among us or eliminate her is up to me.”
The guards dragged us over to hanging tethers hidden within the shadows. Both our hands and feet were clasped together in handcuffs at the end of the tethers, making it necessary for us to stand in our bound state. Fury boiling inside of me, I shouted out, “They will come looking for me! They won’t stop. If you don’t allow me to leave, they’ll search for me, and then they will find Oceania for sure.”
Mayor Aldridge spun around on her heels, a smile still on her face. “What? You think the police force of Sunnyville, California will be able to trace you all the way here to Oceania?” The laugh attempting to be held back was apparent in the twitch of Mayor Aldridge’s mouth.
I couldn’t stop my lower lip from drooping and my eyebrows pulling together. “How do you know where I’m from?”
The withheld laugh erupted from Mayor Aldridge and she walked up to me. “Do you think that I don’t have my own informants in the above world? Do you think I would keep myself isolated with no warning of impending problems?” The demeanor of the mayor changed to an angry state. “I have been watching you for a while, Alexandria!”
My eyes grew wide and words struggled to form in my mind as Mayor Aldridge tossed something into my face. Glancing down at my feet, I saw a copy of the business card the private investigator had handed to me weeks ago.
“Yes, the private investigator you encountered was one of my men. There’s no young couple missing in Sunnyville…come on, girl! You have to be smarter than that.”
I pursed my lips and glared at her intently with as much venom as I could muster.
“I know you live with your grandmother during the summers because your mother is a workaholic. I know you found the beach by accident and ran into Dylan there. I know that you’ve been sneaking into my city and mingling among its residents. I know anything and everything there is to know about you, Allie. I know that you will tell about Oceania, even if you promise not to. I won’t risk the safety of an entire city because of the stupidity of a girl who just wanted a friend to spend her summer with!”
With that, the mayor turned and somehow gracefully stomped out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
Chapter 23
My gaze was transfixed on the floor, my chin pressing against my chest with every intake of breath. Inside, I felt hollow, dejected…stupid to have not seen this coming. We’d been discovered and now I faced a perilous fate.
Guilt rising in my chest, I peered over at Dylan. He, too, was thoroughly examining the featureless floor, his hands hanging limply from the cuffs around his wrist.
Pity erasing the worry I felt at my own situation, I murmured, “I’m sorry, Dylan. This is my fault.”
Dylan snapped to attention. His eyes betrayed both anger and confusion fighting for control over him. “How in the world is any of this your fault, Allie?”
Returning my eyes to the floor, I shrugged slightly, the cuffs restricting any further movement. “If I hadn’t come here with you to Oceania this wouldn’t be happening.”
“You must have lost too many brain cells while experiencing hypoxia. I worried that you were without oxygen for more than three minutes. You must have gotten permanent brain damage.”
Dragging the left corner of my mouth up in a sad excuse for a smile, I replied, “No, I didn’t. I—”
Craning his neck to face me, Dylan interrupted before I could say anything else. “Allie, I brought you here. I knew the rules and I allowed you to come here anyway. You would have never discovered Oceania without me. All of this is my fault. I’m imprisoned because of my own doing, not yours. Unfortunately, I dragged you along as well. I’m very sorry for that, Allie.”
I still didn’t believe him. I didn’t think it was right to let him shoulder all of the responsibility for our capture. Some of it had to be my fault.
“Don’t feel bad, Allie. Somehow we’ll find a way out of this.” Dylan surveyed the room and uttered under his breath, “Somehow.”
The doors burst open with such momentum that they slammed into the concrete wall, groaning against the rusty hinges. Two guards held up Dr. Wilcox between them, his feet and shins sweeping against the cold concrete floor as they dragged him toward the last remaining set of tethers. Stringy wisps of his gray hair glistened as they passed beneath the single shining light on the ceiling. Based on his drooping head, he was clearly unconscious. One of the guards held him up while the other cuffed him to the wall in the same manner as Dylan and me. Without a word, the guards rapidly made their exit, slamming and locking the door behind them.
“Dr. Wilcox!” Dylan whispered loudly. When the man didn’t respond, Dylan yelled, “DR. WILCOX!”
With a snort, Dr. Wilcox’s body jerked to a straight position, his eyes blinking several times in quick succession. Groggily twisting his head to the side, he glanced up at Dylan with squinting eyes. “Dylan?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Rage welled up inside me as the murky memories from when I first awoke from my near-death experience flooded back to me. “Why did you run away and leave us when we were being captured?” I spat.
“What?” Dr. Wilcox still acted as though he was drowsy. “I didn’t flee merely to escape…I fled to get help. I needed someone to assist us in order to get away. Unfortunately, I had only a half hour before they found and captured me too. I presume they immediately knocked me out and dragged me here.”
“Oh,” I didn’t know what else to say, but I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. I hung my head, ashamed that I would think badly of Dr. Wilcox.
“So, did you find anyone to help us or invent something to get us out of this predicament?” Dylan strained against his bonds to lean closer towards Dr. Wilcox, who was wedged in the gloomiest corner of the room.
Dr. Wilcox opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the door opening once again.
The doorway was cast in shadow and the figure simply stood motionless. At first, I thought it was Mayor Aldridge or a guard, but the silhouette was all wrong. All I could make out was that they had long hair and a short stature. Based on the body style it was definitely a feminine figure. With her right hand, she still clutched the doorknob, but with the other, she held something rod-shaped. My heart skipped a beat as I wondered if this person was here to torture us.
In a split second, the figure moved swiftly, dashing over to us.
It was Samantha.
“Hey, you guys. It’ll be just a moment and I’ll get you free.” Samantha raised the object, which turned out to be a laser cutter, and carefully cut through Dylan’s bonds first.
I cringed when I felt the heat of the laser cut through the cuffs on my wrist, sighing in relief when the oppressive bonds were gone.
Within no time, she’d released me and then Dr. Wilcox. “Hurry, we don’t have much time. The code breaker you gave me, Dr. Wilcox, will have surely alerted the guards. They could be here at any moment. We need to find somewhere to hide within the warehouse before we can try to figure a way out of here.”
Following Samantha’s advice, the four of us rushed out of the interrogation room and into the blinding light of the warehouse. Just as we’d cleared the door, the grinding sound of the lift descending reached our ears.
“Quickly, this way,” instructed Samantha in a low tone.
We followed Samantha down a row of crates and to a layer of boxes easily large enough to hide us. Crouching low, we waited for the lift to settle on the gr
ound floor. Faint voices too low to identify came from that direction. With a thud and a ding, the doors opened and I identified one of the voices as Mayor Aldridge.
“How in the world would anyone gain entry into the interrogation room? This passcode is Zeta clearance. Only I have the code for it. Only I can open it.” The mayor’s voice shook slightly, but she didn’t raise it past her normal commanding tone.
“I don’t know, Madam Mayor. We will look into it.”
“Just open the door so we can see if they’re still in there,” came her impatient reply.
Samantha turned to us and whispered so low I could hardly hear her, “When the mayor goes into the room, we need to run for the lift. It’s the only way in or out of this place. If we get inside, they will have to wait for it to return in order to follow. It should buy us some time before they begin pursuing us.”
The Mayor wrenched open the handle to the interrogation room, entering it followed closely by her guard. As soon as they were out of view, Samantha waved her hand forward in a gesture for us to go. Dr. Wilcox and I took the lead, while Samantha and Dylan brought up the rear. There were only a hundred yards between our hiding place and the lift—an easy sprint.
I ran in first with Dr. Wilcox right behind me, Dylan hopped in and reached back for Samantha when the guard reached out with something I’d never seen before and jabbed it into Samantha’s back.
Samantha immediately crumpled to the ground and started convulsing. Her mouth parted slightly and I could have sworn I saw a bolt of electricity flash from one side to the other. She continued to convulse and then lay still, her blonde hair falling over the right side of her face.
Without pausing, Dr. Wilcox slammed down the gate to the lift and pushed the button for it to ascend.
“SAMANTHA!” Dylan shouted, grasping the bars of the lift with white knuckles.
The last thing we saw was the guard yanking Samantha’s limp body up off the ground as we rose past the basement’s line of sight.
“We have to go back!” yelled Dylan at Dr. Wilcox, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him closer so he could scream into his face.
Calmly, Dr. Wilcox replied, “You know we cannot, Dylan. If we go back, we’ll be in the same situation as before, if not worse. We have to keep going. Samantha came to assist us of her own free will. She knew she was going against what the mayor wanted.”
“But she didn’t know she’d be electrified. They could have killed her!” Dylan kicked the corner of the lift and swore. “Dr. Wilcox, she’s like my little sister. What kind of brother would let their sister take the fall for them?”
“A desperate one.” Dr. Wilcox shoved Dylan backward, and then grasped his shoulders so tight that I could see the imprint through Dylan’s shirt. “You need to think more clearly. You and Allie are in a lot of trouble. I don’t know where in the city you two could hide. It’s clear that getting Allie out of the city is probably not going to happen. There are a lot of dicey situations going on right now and lives are at stake. We cannot afford to make any more mistakes. You need to get your head on right and act clearly, son.”
Dylan merely scowled at him with red eyes. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were red from fury or trying to hold back tears. All I knew was that I was seeing an anger from Dylan that I didn’t think he was capable of.
The lift made it to the top of the shaft, jolting as it reached the floor level. Dr. Wilcox slid the gate up and locked it into place. Cautiously, the three of us stepped out into an empty hallway. Without a word to each other, we followed Dr. Wilcox through the hallway and to the outside of the building onto a deserted street.
Unlike before when we were being so hastily ushered to the inside, we could actually gaze around. There was no one else in sight, no one walking on the streets or in the other buildings.
“Where are we?” I wondered.
“In one of the expansion zones. Hurry, we need to find a train to catch in order to take us to Central. Everyone should be getting off work soon and it’ll be the most crowded place in the city—easy for us to disappear into the crowd.”
We followed Dr. Wilcox to the nearest train station, Dylan still glaring with hatred at Dr. Wilcox. Not wanting to add fuel to the fire, I kept my mouth shut.
Eventually, the train made its way to Central and we switched train lines. The area was so crowded that we had to pack ourselves into the only available train car. Mixing in with those individuals, we disappeared into the crowd and quickly left Central and the sadistic mayor behind us.
Every few minutes, there seemed to be a stop where some people got off and even more came on. Trapped in the center, I was squished against at least four other people, including Dr. Wilcox and Dylan. We were pressed so tight together that there was no point in holding on to the bar to stabilize ourselves for stops.
After we left the edges of Central and the largest residential district, the sea of people in the train car began to thin out and I could finally take a normal breath again. On Dr. Wilcox’s instructions, we got off the train at the very next stop—the Entertainment District.
Surprisingly, it was much more inhabited than when Dylan and I had first gone there several weeks ago. We exited on the other side of the district, the area where I hadn’t been to before. Shops crowded each side of the street boasting all kinds of fun experience simulations: amusement parks, jungle adventures, skydiving, rock climbing, hunt your own dinner and more.
Dr. Wilcox veered suddenly into one of the stores on our right, stepping into what I assumed was Oceania’s equivalent of a futuristic arcade. Screens with individual stations were scattered throughout the one-room venue, with no windows other than the one in the front door. The only sources of light came from the screens themselves in which virtual projections like those at Dylan’s house was displayed. Every piece of equipment the players used were merely projections of the same blue-light material I’d seen at Dylan’s.
At the furthest corner from the door was a restaurant that served pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, and the like. We found a place nestled in the back where we could sit and talk. The arcade was so loud that there was no chance anyone could overhear us.
“We need to find a place to effectively disappear for a while. We have to get in contact with someone that can find a place for us. The mayor has surveillance cameras everywhere. I’m sure she’s searching them right now for us.”
“That’s not our only problem,” I added, glancing from Dr. Wilcox to Dylan. “What I said before is true. If I don’t show up at home tonight, my grandmother will call the police and go looking for me.”
“Yeah, and then they’ll find out I don’t really exist in your world.”
“Yeah, she’ll freak out.”
“All right, we’ll figure out a solution to that, but for now, we need to hide somewhere where Mayor Aldridge won’t think to look. It has to be somewhere she doesn’t have surveillance.”
“The only place she doesn’t have surveillance are basically private bathrooms. Even every apartment unit can be turned onto the surveillance network if she suspects someone there is up to criminal activity or harboring a criminal.”
“Yes, but she needs a search warrant for that.” Dr. Wilcox looked to the left in thought and rubbed his chin. An idea must have come to him because he turned to us and uttered, “There is one place where there is no surveillance!”
“Where?” wondered both Dylan and I at the same time.
“Aquatics.” Dr. Wilcox clapped once and then pointed at nothing in particular. “And I know just where we can go to get what we need.”
Chapter 24
Dylan pounded on apartment number 716. I glanced nervously down the opulent hallway lined with elaborately designed woven carpet streaming down the center of the floor. I couldn’t help but feel that we were breaking some social norm with our incessant knocking in a place of such grandeur. No one peeked their heads out of any of the other apartments, so I returned my gaze to the ornately decorated door in front
of us.
The door swung open to reveal a very lavish foyer lined with dark cherry-colored carved wood matching the front door, fresh flowers in an antique vase on a golden stand, and a panoramic painting of a landscape.
Max’s thin frame only garnered a small amount of space in the wide doorway, his teeth shining brightly in his signature grin. “Hey, Dylan, what’s eating you? Unsatisfied with your birthday gift?”
“Max, just let us in.” Dylan’s mood hadn’t improved very much from Samantha’s capture. Not in the mood for jokes, he brushed past Max, forcing himself into the Granger household.
“All right then, welcome to my home.” Max bowed slightly and raised his arm out to the side as Dr. Wilcox and I quickly walked in.
Dylan glanced around and then turned to Max. “Are your parents home yet?”
Closing the door, Max followed us into the adjoining living room. “No, my dad was just here, but he had to go back out.”
“Good. We need your help,” stated Dylan, going straight to the punch.
“Yeah, whatever you need.”
“Your dad is a maintenance engineer for the Aquatic Department right?”
“Yeah,” Max looked from Dylan to me, and Dr. Wilcox still standing awkwardly near the door.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you a crazy story, but I’ve gotta shorten it because we’re running out of time.” Dylan walked over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Allie’s a Land Dweller. She’s been visiting Oceania for the past couple of months. I’ve been bringing her here and she’s been exploring. The mayor has found out about it and she imprisoned Allie and me along with Dr. Wilcox. Samantha…” Dylan swallowed hard but continued. “Samantha rescued us, but she was captured in the process. We need a place to hide within the Aquatic Department—we know there’s limited surveillance there. We also know that you can get us in if you use your dad’s code.”
“Wait, you mean there are human survivors on land?” Max gawked at us, his jaw dropping and eyes bulging. It was the first time I’d ever seen his smile disappear.
