The Chase

by Bradley Caffee

  Willis tilted his head. “But how?”

  She gave no answer but instead stepped closer to Jaden. Bringing his face down to hers, she kissed him on the forehead. “Take care, my son.” With that, she walked to the shadows and disappeared into an opening that shut behind her, leaving no trace that there was ever a door.

  It all made sense to Willis in that moment. Jaden’s unknown background. His tattooless ear with no sign of countless recodings from the junior training center or even of his parentage. The burden he carried about law-passing if he won the Chase. Even the plan Blacc had shared with him. It all came together. Jaden was the son of a slave. Jaden was the unknown boy of a nameless mother, and he hadn’t grown up like the rest of the runners on the station. Whether he lied about himself to enter Chase training or was strangely recruited late by the Alliance, Willis didn’t know. What he did know is that Jaden could destroy everything the Alliance had built.

  And if he could not, his mother hoped Willis would.

  The three stood in the hallway for a minute before disappearing into Willis’s quarters. At the mouth of the hallway, near the mess hall doors, Jez stepped out of the shadows into the red light. She clenched her teeth and glared at Willis’s door.

  They hadn’t seen her standing there. Coming out of the mess hall to look for Willis when he’d been late, she had seen and heard everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I can’t do it,” the woman whimpered.

  “It’s the only way we can save him. They’ll take him away as soon as he’s walking,” a male voice nearby pleaded.

  Something was different in the dream this time. Usually the images were fuzzy and appeared distant. This time, Willis was eerily conscious of the dream.

  The woman dabbed at her eyes but couldn’t quell the steady stream of tears. “What if he hates us for it?”

  Who is she? I have to see her face clearly. He strained to see her features.

  “He won’t. Not when he’s old enough to understand,” the man caressed her face with one hand. “Here, you hold him. I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to watch.”

  Willis waited for the jolt of imagined pain that would wake him from his sleep, but instead one more image appeared. The man stepped into his field of vision. He had strong features and appeared strikingly similar to Willis. His hair was the same color brown with some grey patches, and his body was well toned like that of a racer.

  Yet, despite his obvious strength, he had tears welling in his eyes. He took his large hands and placed them around Willis’s leg, one above the knee and the other below. The hands looked huge and powerful compared to the leg. The man’s tear-streaked face gazed at his.

  “I love you, Son. Please forgive me for this.”

  Dad?

  “We love you, little one,” came the woman’s voice behind him.

  Mom? Willis silently panicked.

  With that, the man’s hands jerked his leg in opposite directions at once.

  Pain. Excruciating pain.

  “Dad, no!” Willis screamed as his body shot upright in bed. His violently shaking hands lost their grip as he tried to turn to the edge of the bed, and his sweat-soaked body slammed to the floor. He winced with the pain and slowly hoisted himself up to his hands and knees. It was then the weeping started.

  His body quaked as the swells of sobs came like waves during a violent storm. Lowering his head to the cold floor, he allowed the bitter truth of his recurring dream to overcome him. The emotion poured out of him with each tear dampening the floor with his rediscovered reality.

  Willis wasn’t the prodigy of two proud parents who longed to serve the Alliance by offering up their son to the Chase. He was the kidnapped child of parents who had attempted to rescue him from the same nightmare they had lived. With their own hands, they tried to cripple him to save him.

  It was the silent secret of his one recoding. The Alliance had forcefully taken him from his home before the damage was permanent and recoded him to alter his memory of his parents. They wanted him to believe the tale of his parents’ willing sacrifice, so he would never question the Alliance.

  Jaden’s mother had changed all that. He’d fallen asleep questioning everything, including what he believed he remembered about his parents.

  It must have been those questions that allowed him to remember more of the dream.He hated using the word dream because it was not. Memory. It was a memory. What he’d been told—the messages he’d received from his parents urging him to serve the Alliance—they were all fake. But this—this was memory. His memory. Another memory he’d lose if they recode him.

  It would be hours until it was time to get up. He lay on the icy floor, one arm draped across his eyes. With his other hand, he rubbed furiously at the number behind his ear. It was no longer a source of comfort but a symbol of what was taken from him.

  “You okay, Willis?” Jaden approached the table.

  Willis looked up from his untouched morning plate. He’d spent the entire meal picking at his food without eating it. Normally, Jez would have nervously tried to get him talking, but she too seemed lost in her own thoughts. Her eyes had kept darting angrily left and right as if she was attempting to decide between two unlikable options. Thankfully, Toad had caught the idea, and the team had said nothing during breakfast. Presently, the mess hall was empty except for the two of them. The others had all finished and left.

  “Didn’t sleep well.” Willis looked down at his plate.

  “Yeah, that was pretty intense last night.” Jaden sat down at the table. Willis glanced up and caught Jaden studying his face. “Listen, Willis. About my mother—”

  “Don’t worry.” He placed a finger at his lips. “I’m not saying a word.”

  “Thank you.” Jaden glanced away for a moment pausing. “Last time she showed herself to you, the administrators weren’t kind to her. If they found out she’d done it again—” He stopped, his eyebrows furrowing as his voice trailed.

  “They’d hurt her and recode all of us.” Willis bit his lip.

  “Probably.”

  Both sighed and allowed quiet to fill the room. They picked at their food.

  Willis sighed, breaking the silence. “What’s it like?”

  “What is what like?”

  “Knowing your parents.”

  Jaden was slow to respond. “My father died a long time ago. That’s how my mother ended up a slave. She couldn’t care for us all alone, but she’s a good mom.” He stared beyond Willis like he was viewing the memory in the distance. “When she could no longer afford our basic needs, the Alliance took my brothers and sisters to work elsewhere. I was younger, so I stayed with my mother. When Blacc came on a trip to the surface, he saw me running with a load of supplies my mother had forgotten for her work and must have liked what he saw. He followed me to see where I was going. A day later, he arrived with officers and told my mother I must be the luckiest rehabilitation child in the Alliance.”

  “So that’s how you ended up here?” Willis pointed at the table with his fork as the blanks on Jaden’s story filled in.

  “Yes. I guess Blacc thought I’d lose that race on my first day and give him the excuse to have the doctors recode me. And when I didn’t, he couldn’t recode me without reason. It would raise too many questions.”

  “And how did your mother get here?”

  “She traded in a lot of favors to get transferred here to the station when I came here. I wasn’t sure it was the right choice, but she insisted. Willis, don’t you know your parents?”

  Willis paused and sat silently. “I thought I did.”

  “And?”

  “That all changed last night. Something happened to me. Something about meeting your mother.” He stopped, considering his words. “It helped me remember.”

  “Remember what?” Jaden probed quietly.

  “That my parents weren’t proud citizens wanting to serve their Alliance. That I was taken. That they never wanted to give me up. That
they did the unthinkable to try to save me. That everything I believed about them was a lie that the Alliance crammed into my head robbing me of who I really am.” He spat these whispered words through his teeth as his eyes filled with tears, Willis shoved his tray of food, causing it to fly nearly halfway across the mess hall. He buried his head in his hands. “I want to know them. I want to go home.”

  Hearing his own words, Willis realized that everything was different. He had always been about winning. He served the Alliance. He would win to live up to his parents’ expectations. He would win because it was what he was made to do. None of that mattered any more. Now, winning was about his family. He had to go home. He couldn’t allow himself to get recoded, or they’d rob him of his memories again.

  Jaden sat silently, his eyes showing limitless compassion. Turmoil began to well up inside Willis. If he planned to keep his memory, he had to win. If Blue Team made it to the final elimination run, Willis’s win would send Jaden—and Perryn—to recoding. Saving himself would be condemning them. The conflict tore at his soul.

  “She’s right you know.” Jaden broke the silence.

  “Who?”

  “My mother. You are the hope for the Alliance, the real Alliance.”

  “But you would—and Perryn—you would both—”

  “Willis, that doesn’t matter. There’s a bigger picture here. No one is more likely to win than you, and the law you pass could change everything, now that you know. Perryn wouldn’t tell you any differently.”

  Willis couldn’t believe the permission Jaden was giving him, but he was right. No one was more likely to win than he.

  “A message?” Sheila stammered. She stood in the doorway of her office, preventing him from entering. Willis remained in the hallway, determination washing over his face.

  “I want you to send my parents a message.” Willis repeated the words again, making sure to speak each one distinctly.

  “Why? How?” Sheila stepped back as if afraid to be too close to Willis. Then, she waved him inside. Peering up and down the hallway, she closed the door.

  “I don’t know, but you’re the only one who can help me.”

  “Willis, you don’t know what you’re asking. If I’m caught—I—my sister—” She flopped down in her chair, resting her head in her hands.

  “Look, I can imagine what will happen to you if they catch you, but I need to find something out. I need to know if this is all going to be worth it.”

  Sheila straightened at the desk in her quarters. Her hands were trembling as she reached for a pen.

  “Okay. I might be able to send a coded text to them when I transmit my next article, but the message would have to be incredibly short to go unnoticed. It’s still no guarantee they’ll get it. Willis, we need to be very careful. It’s one thing to talk face-to-face like we have, but I’m on a very short leash with the Alliance. I have no doubt they’re monitoring my transmissions.”

  “I don’t want to get anyone hurt.”

  “What’s the message?”

  Willis stood there thinking. He wanted to give her the shortest, vaguest message possible that would communicate what he meant to say.

  “Tell them, ‘I remember,’” he said finally.

  Sheila sighed and nodded. “I’ll let you know if anything happens. I’ll be transmitting later tonight.”

  Willis jolted at the sound of someone at the door to his quarters. The clock revealed it was the middle of the night. He rubbed his eyes and made his way to the entrance to his quarters.

  He opened the door. No one was there.

  All that he saw in the empty hallway was a torn corner of yellow, lined paper on the floor by his feet. He picked it up, remembering Sheila’s yellow notepad. A tear escaped the corner of his eye as he read the two-word response to his message, ‘COME HOME.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Willis stood with his mouth agape staring at the track. The administrators had outdone themselves with the design this time. He craned his neck backward to see the top of the six-sided column that rose to the top of the ten-story sphere. Covered in small platforms, hand holds, and ropes, it was a climber’s dream course—and a non-climber’s nightmare. The column was broken into eight levels, each offering six different means of reaching the next stage. A platform ringed the column at each interval, allowing racers to move around the column to reach their desired obstacle.

  “Why couldn’t we get this track?” Jez shook her head. “I’d wipe the floor with all of them.”

  Willis nodded. “Maybe that’s why, Jez. Or maybe it’s because it greatly favors Creed’s stronger team.”

  “What do you mean?” Toad questioned.

  “I mean that Blue Team has never been great at climbing. Jaden is the only one who will be able to keep up with Creed and Walker.”

  “And you think—” Jez looked at Willis.

  “I think that the administrators want to see the best two teams compete in the final elimination. That’s all.”

  Red Team had been invited as a team to view the race. The four of them stood near the starting gate. Willis gazed at the Blue Team. The four of them were huddled together. Jaden’s face was intense without masking its usual friendliness. He drew with his finger in the air explaining something to the team.

  Willis’s eyes met Perryn’s, who he hadn’t realized was watching him. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her lips were tight together as if deep in thought. Her eyes blazed with fire. She came to win today. He couldn’t help but feel anxious for her. He allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up slightly into a smile, perceptible enough for her to see. Her eyes brightened, and she took a deep breath, turning back to Jaden.

  He longed to run over to her and tell her she could do this, but they were here as observers. Blacc had given explicit instructions that they couldn’t interact with either team, no matter what they heard or saw. Besides, he knew Jez would hate it.

  “Willie and Perryn sitting in a tree,” Toad muttered snickering.

  “Shut up, Toad!” Jez snapped. Her eyes knifed at Toad’s smirk.

  “Whatever.” Toad snickered. “You said yourself, Jez, that they were spending a lot of time together. Now they’re making eyes at each other.”

  “Shut your trap, you little rodent,” Jez snarled. “Willis wants nothing to do with her that way.” Her voice was forceful, but Willis couldn’t help but feel she was trying to convince herself. He’d better pay attention to the Black Team for a while.

  “Look,” Creed stabbed a finger at the air, “the newbie is the real threat from the blueys. You see your opportunity, you take it.”

  “Yes, Creed,” Walker responded.

  “Sure,” Stone-zee sighed.

  Casey Stone looked at the floor.

  “Stone, have I made myself clear to you? You know what to do when the time comes.” Creed stepped forward bowing his head to catch her gaze. She raised her head a little to look at him.

  “Yes, Creed.” Stone’s face fell.

  “We’ll see. You’ll answer for it if you don’t.” Creed glared at her for a long moment. He stepped away pulling Walker into a private discussion.

  Zeke grabbed his sister’s arm and pulled her aside. He whispered, “What was that about? What are you supposed to ‘know to do?’”

  “Nothing.” Her voice rasped in a hoarse whisper, and she once again stared at the floor.

  “You sure, Sis?”

  “Zeke, leave me alone. I’ve got it.”

  Willis could see Zeke’s hands ball into fists again as he glared at Creed. He appeared ready to pounce, but he restrained himself.

  “Blue Team! Black Team! Enter your starting gate.” Blacc’s voice boomed. The teams lined up. Jaden wrapped one arm around Perryn and whispered in her ear, no doubt giving her some last-minute encouragement. Amber and Dex lined up behind them. Creed and Walker stood at the front of their team.

  “Here we go,” Willis said to his team.

  “Runners, this is a
vertical track. You are reminded that there are no protective barriers extending from the floor’s edge as usual so you may pass from one level to the next. The safety of your teammates is your responsibility. Do not waste the investment of your alliance by slipping. You want a crack at Red Team over there, you gotta get through this track first. First team to advance a runner to the line wins the chance to compete to represent the greatest Alliance at the Chase.”

  Tone.

  Both teams crashed through their gate and bolted for the track. Blue Team elected to start at a set of small platforms, each high enough to require the help of another team member to scale onto it. Perryn put her hands together to give a boost to Jaden, who scrambled up and reached down to begin lifting team members.

  One section to the right, Creed and his team grabbed a rope and climbed hand-over-hand to the next level. It was the most direct way to the common platform that ringed the next level of the structure.

  “Come on, guys,” Amber shouted scrambling over Jaden to help Perryn to the next level. “They’re already getting ahead of us!” Indeed, Black Team was already at the top of their ropes and moving along the narrow platform to their next obstacle.

  “She’s right, Perr.” Jaden slapped the platform above his head. “These platforms are too slow. We’re going to have to climb.”

  “Okay, let’s use the hand holds to the right at the next level.” Perryn nodded.

  Willis was impressed to see her taking command so quickly.

  Dex pointed upward at the Black Team. “Are you suggesting we out-climb C-Creed?”

  “Do we have a choice?” Amber shook her head.

  Jaden waved a hand to urged them on. “Just climb, guys.”

  Willis cringed as the teams ascended the second and third levels. Creed’s team gained a slight lead at each platform, and even from here, he could see that Perryn and the others were starting to tire. Jaden climbed frantically as the single Blue Team member with any gas left. At Perryn’s request, he’d charged ahead to try to catch the Black Team, who had split up, giving Walker and Stone-zee an opportunity to move ahead as they climbed the wall.