I gather as many EPrison uniforms as I can, only slipping on something once, managing to stop my face from going under, only by a smidge.
Panic makes my heart hammer harder, but I still keep moving.
The moment any of this really hits me, I know I’m done for, so I continue working, keep my hands and eyes busy making the strongest possible squelchy knots I can out of all the clothes I’ve gathered.
I console myself with the thought that my makeshift rope will be at its strongest whilst wet. It’s all about the silver linings.
Then I’m left with a rope of sorts, knowing that it’s too short, but I’ve run out of ‘fresh’ bodies. I can’t handle the thought of what would happen if I tried to take a sticky gooey uniform off a body, what sort of things the cloth will pull up with it.
Then I look around again. What can I use to anchor this, so I don’t go through all the effort of heading down just to end up getting smashed on the rocks below anyway?
There’s nothing I can see on the wall that’ll work. The bodies—well I’ve disrespected them so much already. What’s a little more disrespect amongst friends? I’m getting ridiculous now, I know I’m heading towards hysteria.
Still, I move to the other end of the moat again and drag along one of the biggest dead bodies with me. I tie a somewhat tight enough knot around his wrist, then push him as far down as I can, covering his body with piles of all the others.
I’m so sorry, I tell them in my head. I’m sorry but I will try to make this up to you.
Then I grab the other end of the rope and, knowing there’s still a chance of death for me, but not caring one bit more because I simply can’t stand being in this muck much longer, I throw my sore legs up and over the edge of the moat, and ease myself to the other side.
Grabbing on to the rope with my left hand, I wipe my right as much as I can on a portion of dry brick, then I do the same with the other hand.
I pull hard on the rope, feeling slight movement as the other bodies inch towards me. I pull on it a few more times, hoping I’m as light as I think.
Then, without a single hope that any of this will work, I push off the moat’s side and slowly lower myself, placing my feet on the moat’s wall until I’m as far down as I can get. Then I pump my legs once, twice, probably seventeen times.
“Just do it Romy!” I finally say, and I push myself so far back, letting go of the rope as I launch myself into the air backwards, somersault once, and hold my breath as I land, back first, into the ocean water.
Back
I swim as fast as my legs can kick, to the dark rocks beneath the west part of the EPrison. Who knows what sort of security the warden has here? Still, I haven’t spied any drones or anything all that worrisome.
I have a feeling she knows people don’t stand a chance of escaping this place. I’ve barely made it here. And now what? It’s not like I can throw myself back into the ocean and—what—swim all the way out to Apex?
Something doesn’t seem right though so, before I climb out, I sink and turn me to look out to the open water.
Unnatural shadows and ripples show up in the middle of the ocean, exactly where they don’t belong. If I weren’t familiar with the strange dips and bizarre look of the water, I’d think there was some unworldly animal lurking beneath its surface.
But I know without a doubt, that the Sorens are here, just docked a few kilometres off-shore. The general and her troops. Waiting, hiding under their Soren invisi-cloak. Close enough that I could reach them within the hour. Yet another complication I don’t need.
I remember that our little makeshift boat and gear is in the island somewhere, likely on the other side. Still, I wouldn’t take it and leave my team behind. Because I know they’re still in there somewhere—they have to be.
And I’ll go look for them, to warn them about the Sorens. We’ll need to escape.
I take a few minutes to stretch out my limbs. There’s a new ache in my left shoulder that isn’t going away, but that’s fine. If I have to fight my way to find my team, that’s what I need to do.
The rest of me is mostly intact. It’s good enough for me. Might be smart to take time for a breather, but my instincts tell me I don’t have much time, they tell me to keep moving. Whether or not Father’s holo has something to do with it, I know not to ignore my instincts.
So I pull my eyes off the dips in the ocean and make my way across the rocks, flinching with every sharp scrape of the rock on my bare foot. My other foot’s fine of course, since I can’t feel anything there. For a moment, I regret not having both made of plastic and metal.
Still, an hour later, I make it to the door that brought us here in the first place, hoping that Blair’s grandfather is still the Keeper. I knock on the door and wait.
When his sharp eyes stare out at me, I brace myself to beg him to let me in. But he throws the door wide open, and pulls me in before I can say a word. To my biggest surprise, he wraps me in his arms with a long hug.
“They thought you’re dead, girlie!” he says in that lazy drawling accent. “Blair and all the others. They’d been looking for you everywhere! How—what—how—!”
“Where are they?” I say in a panic. “When did you see them last?”
“We-ell—” he says, “they’re all gone, see. They thought you’d been killed. They’ve sailed away.”
They—
What—?
My stomach sinks and I take a shaky breath in.
I stare at the door, then back at him again. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I saw them last?
“When did they leave?” I ask, trying to remember how long a whole day’s dream takes in the ‘real’ world. Dreams take a longer time, but how long—?
“They left, musta been four days ago. Girlie, you devastated my boy’s heart. He didn’t want to go, he didn’t believe it, said he had to see your dead body first. But the others insisted. Frankie. They had to, you see—”
Frankie, I think, trying to fight the rising anger in my chest. Of course she’d leave in a right hurry.
“They had to,” he rushes to say, “else they’d be dead too, see. She’s on a rampage.”
By she, I know he means the warden. I’d expect them all to be dead. Of course they had to go. I can’t really blame them, can I? How did they get past the Sorens though? Did they sail away in the opposite direction?
Now what? How will I get out of this place? How will I stop the Metrills? How—
“What you need, girlie,” he says, “to survive this place, is to blend in. I don’t know how you did it, what you did. But she won’t let you survive a second time.”
Then he ushers me through, telling me to make my way straight to the market “to blend in.”
On the floor of the marketplace, I make my way to the stalls with massive containers of water. I’m still in shock but remind myself that I have to keep moving.
“How much can I get for this?” I say without hesitation. I grab on to the thick ends of my black hair as I watch the market stall fellow calculate in his head.
“Three gallons,” he says without flinching. I sit in front of him, not thinking about it as he snips and cuts and takes away all the hair. I’d have given anything for even a cup of water. Three gallons is liquid gold. I chug back as much from one as I can while he attaches the others on to a harness of sorts that he then slips over my shoulders.
My thoughts are still foggy, but more clear now with water sloshing in my belly.
Now. Food. I look over at the fruit and nut stalls and my eyes land on a small child. I can’t tell if it’s a girl or a boy—I’m still astonished that there are so many children in this prison. It’s simply not right.
Still there’s something feminine about the child, though it could be just that it looks so—fragile. She sits so still in a lotus position that I nearly think she’s a statue.
Then she picks up what looks like a small stick and starts chewing on it.
But more shocking than that is how
her eyes pop out of her skinny face, her bones sticking out every which way.
I can trace lines and dry patches where I know her bones are under her skin.
It’s jarring—to see so much food around a sight like her. I don’t wonder why her mother doesn’t feed her—her mother’s malnourished state is much the same as she negotiates with other people how much food they can barter for.
I can only imagine the sort of punishment they’d receive if they were to steal any of that food. Whatever punishment it is will be worse than starving to death, of that I’m certain. A fly lands on the child’s eyelid but she doesn’t flinch, least of all shoo it away.
When I swat at them and brush them off me, they land easily on me again. I wonder how long it would take me to stop bothering to keep them away.
She lifts her left hand, and I notice a fluffy bird’s feather in her palm. As she watches, it slowly rises two inches up in the air, but stays afloat as she stays still. How—?
Then a tiny chicken, probably the owner of said feather, chirps and turns the corner, with a slight limp in one of its scrawny legs.
The girl plucks the stick out of her mouth and picks the chick up. She fashions a tiny splinter for the chick’s leg out of the stick and a sliver of cloth, then lets it go as she goes back to floating her little feather.
There’s something intensely selfless about the action. The chick could mean nourishment, survival, but instead she fixes it. It’s something beyond my comprehension. I’d eat that bird—so would most people I know. Then I look around, convinced that all the other children are similar.
I walk up to the stall, meaning to barter for some fruit with my water. But I see, to the right of the stall, a basket full of bits and parts of bots. I ask the lady if I can take a look and she says, “For one gallon, you can have the whole lot, gahl.”
But I already see a few things that’ll be handy. I unload a gallon of water and sit in front of the basket to see what I need to make this work. The little child ignores me as she continues to float her feather and chews on a new stick. Is that all she’s had today?
I keep working until I’ve fashioned a workable bot out of the machinery they had.
“What you have there?” the saleslady drawls.
“Watch this.” I let the thing loose over the fruits. It doesn’t look like much—just an ugly bot out of parts of old fans and percolators and the moving parts of an ancient music box.
The lady moves to pick it up until she realizes its actions and sounds keep flies and other insects away from the fruits.
“It’s not much,” I admit, “but it will help keep your goods fresh for longer. It can be charged under the sun.”
Its movements over the stall are random, clunky. Its definitely not my most elegant work, but it will do the job nicely.
She stares at me with her mouth wide open. Then, when I grab my stuff to move away, she hands me a massive basket of apples, two loaves of bread on top, nuts, cured meat.
She pops some on my back as I think this would be enough to feed my entire team for a week. Rationed of course, but more than enough to keep us satiated for a while.
Then I remember the child chewing on a stick and know that, if my team were around right now, they’d do exactly as I’m doing, handing most of the food back to the saleslady.
“No no no,” she insists, tears falling from in her large eyes. “We owe you all this and then some more. Please take it.”
“Please,” I whisper back. “I didn’t make the bot for any—not for any of this. Please, take it. It’s my gift to you.”
She cries softly. It’s not much, it’s only temporary, but she still holds on to me so hard as she takes much of the food back, and bends to give the child an apple.
I can only guess what’ll happen to them. How will they survive this place? I’m suddenly hopeless. Because I want to get them out of here. I want to get everyone out of here. But how?
And what’s the point? The Metrills are already on their way now with Project Atlantis. Who knows how much longer we have? If I save all these people somehow, get them out of the EPrison, just to end up “free” for a short time on Earth somewhere, just to end up being—what—blown up when the Metrills succeed?
I try to fight off the doomed thoughts and make my way to my slum, my shoulders heavy not because of my gallons of water.
Friends
I’m so exhausted, I could sleep for days and nearly crawl back to my old tent to sleep—all this—off. I don’t even care that my skin’s sticky with salt water and seaweed. It’s far better than what I had to bathe in for however long I was in that moat.
Still, I know not to get complacent in this place, so I chug more water and make my way to Annicka’s quarters. If she’s still around, I hope she can help me hide, or contact the others, or get out of this place before the warden hunts me down and makes sure I’m dead for good.
So, when I arrive at Annicka’s, I’m beyond happy to see her mad face in her tent. She’s packed a rudimentary backpack and flitting from one side of the tent to the other, pushing more things into her bag. She stops when she sees me in her doorway, my water on my sides as I watch her wearily.
“You succeeded!” she shout-whispers as she rushes up to me and holds my shoulders tight. I nearly fall into her arms as my knees crumple under me.
“Oh!” she says, holding me up. “You. What happened to you? Everyone thought you’d died!” Realization hits her eyes as she looks me up and down, from my shorn head to my bare, dirty feet.
I want to tell her everything but simply can’t stand anymore. So I lie down on her bed, knowing she won’t care, knowing she’ll understand. I don’t care about anything but sleeping it all off for as long as the warden allows me to sleep.
When I wake again, what could be days later, I wonder if I’ve managed to meditate myself back into a dream because my entire team’s around me, quietly chattering in the dark.
Shadows play on their faces as they sit and—I presume—wait for me to wake and join them. But it has to be a dream, I remind myself, because they’ve all gone. Blair’s granddad said so himself. They all thought I’d died.
Still, as I stretch in my new dream and indulge in a yawn, all their faces turn to me.
Franklin frowns at my shorn hair as she touches her baldness. Blair smiles and approaches me slowly, and Sanaa wipes a tear from her eye. Mazz and Sophie sit in another corner of the tent as well, as Annicka grins at me from across the way. She lights a candle to join the other fifty or so candles around us.
“You’re awake.” Blair kneels in front of my cot, and touches my shoulder as if to make sure I’m real.
Wait—this isn’t a dream at all, I realize, as I sit up.
“I thought you’d all left,” I whisper, fighting tears.
“And we thought you were dead,” Sanaa replies. “So we’re even, yeah?”
“But Blair’s grandfather said you’d left.”
“We had to make it seem that way,” Blair says. “We had to make everyone believe it while we waited here until Annicka was ready to leave. Else Ellena would be after us. We were pulled out of the vault. How did you escape?”
He falls over the words to get to that point. Yeah, I guess, they thought I’d died and had to get on with the mission anyway.
So I fill them in with the little that I know.
“You achieved nirvana?” Annicka says to questioning frowns from the others. Other than Blair, it appears the rest don’t know what she’s talking about.
“I guess so,” I say. “I guess I just needed the right motivation.”
Blair chuckles at the way I brush it off like it was nothing.
As I continue my story, Franklin stands to get out of the tent at the moment I talk about the moat. I try to keep it short, but scratch at my arm as I fight the memory of all those slimy dead bodies.
“And so,” I say, “I gave up my hair for some—sustenance—” I look at the stuff I’d left in the corner. “And here
I am. How did you guys get out?”
I expect that they were taken out of that black cell the moment I was under. I knew they—or at least Blair anyway—wouldn’t have left me in a vulnerable state on purpose.
“We were dragged out,” Blair says, “and deposited in the ocean. We were heading away. But I didn’t really believe you’d died, and seeing the Sorens’ shadow in the water, I knew we had to come find you.”
“He insisted on sticking around until we really knew what happened to you,” Sanaa says. “The rest of us were going to follow Annicka to—well I don’t know.”
To get far from here. But how? And when?
Annicka fills us in quickly with where we need to go, and it’s so simple I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself.
Before I answer, Annicka says, “Well I do believe I’m ready now. Work’s about to start in about two minutes. So—it’s time.”
It would be a great time to get out, I agree. With the mad rush of people heading in all sorts of directions.
But first things first, I fill them in with my idea, to save the people of the EPrison from Warden Ellena and her—eccentricities—to use her own term.
Of course Franklin argues against it. “In case you’ve forgotten,” she says, “we still have a mission. We have to save the world, Romy, and you’re thinking only of the people here.”
“I want to save the world,” I agree, “but we need to save it for them. Don’t you think? Have you seen the way the kids are, in here? What’s the point of everything we’re doing if not to save people like them?”
Sanaa and Blair agree. Mazz doesn’t say anything but nods his head as he looks at his adopted daughter’s face. He’ll do what it takes to help us, of this I’m certain. Still, she’s little.
I instruct him to take her and follow Annicka to our rendezvous point later, while we take care of things here. When the girl grabs onto his arm before he can argue otherwise, it’s clear he knows he doesn’t have a choice there. He can’t stand and fight with us. He has to ensure her safety first.
So they head in one direction while Blair, Sanaa, Franklin and I make our way back to Bo’s tent, to gather our armour.
Romy's Last Stand: Book III of the 2250 Saga Page 18
