Joy turned her head towards the sound of approaching footsteps, and when she saw Jon her smile was nothing like the one she would given Frey. This was an open-mouthed smile, showing all the teeth and on the border to laughter. She crossed the space with long, graceful strides, her arms spread wide. Her fingers then stroke his cheek as she hooked her arm with his. Tina could have been invisible for all Joy seemed to see her. Tina just strolled past, dropping the papers on the table next to Lallie and Harry before turning towards the exit again.
Jon had walked right past Frey. Frey looked away, startled at the anger within her.
He’s not Jin! She yelled at herself. But somehow, her mind wasn’t convinced of that… Frey turned towards the elevator as Tina came up to her.
“You going up?” Tina asked as she glanced at Jon and Joy.
“All the way to the top,” she said.
Tina followed Frey up to the rooftop, saying she could use the fresh air. The sun was high in the sky, and the sky was a clear blue, as always.
Frey plunked down on the grass and fell back, her hands cradling her head. She pulled in a deep breath and held it for a while.
Tina sat down next to her.
“Hey Tina,” Frey started. “You said there was someone from Base who was tossed into Hole?”
“Yeah.” There was a short pause before the big woman continued: “I can’t say for sure that’s where he ended up, but he did vanish. It’s very hard to hide a body in Alya since all have their own id markings.” Frey pretended she hadn’t heard that part. “There’s no prison in Alya. The max sentence here is to get sent to Hole…” She looked at Frey. “Sorry.”
“Don’t. It’s not your fault.” Frey sat up and folded her legs. “I think I’ve seen a few of them in Slum- I mean Hole.” She had always found it strange there would be a man or woman wondering around, a vacant expression on their faces as they stumbled through the streets, looking so out of place. Their clothes had seemed too clean, hair and skin like a beacon of light for everyone else. It made sense now. “Just thought they were strange in the head or something. Still didn’t explain the lack of scars and dirt. The clothes were worn, but nothing like what you get when you live your life in Hole,” Frey said.
Tina had her muscular arms crossed over her leather top. “Are they still there, you think?”
Frey just shook her head.
Tina sat silently for some time. The sun moved over the sky and the small wispy clouds floated above like puffs of cotton. The glass buildings reflected the sunlight in an eye watering display of light, and Frey was again thankful to be so far up that they avoided the worst glare. She had stopped trying to figure out how the projections could stay visible in the glaring reflections.
“You think the people who got banished found something they shouldn’t have?” Frey asked.
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “They all seemed gone in the head. Why would the government make them forget? Wouldn’t they want people to remember what they had lost?” Frey pulled a stray strand of hair from her eyes.
“So everyone who was sent to Hole learned something they shouldn’t have…”
“Like Stanly’s work partner,” Frey said. “But how do we know that really happened?”
“I do, since I was there together with Stanly. I was still working at Base then, but after that incident, the government started relying on machines to do all the work. He was with us one minute and gone the next…” Her eyes almost closed. She looked away. He voice sounded raw and throaty.
Frey reached out and touched her arm. “He was your man.”
She could almost see Tina’s iron wall crumble. “No one knows,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “And I knew that if anyone would connect the two of us together, they would take me as well. They would never have allowed us to be together. They would have killed one of us and thrown the other in Hole!” Big tears ran down her cheeks. Tina shook as Frey stroke her head, holding her tight all the while.
They sat like that for a long time as the sun warmed them in the quiet and calm clearing. Frey was glad there was no one around. She knew what it was like to hold your emotions pent up inside, to pretend nothing was wrong and to put on a brave face for everyone else to see. She thought that if anyone from the outside would manage in Hole, it would be Tina.
Tina’s sobbing eased after a while, and eventually she rubbed her red eyes. “No one can know, Frey.”
“Won’t tell a soul,” she promised.
Tina took a huge gulp of air and let it out in one shaky breath. “Thank you,” she smiled at Frey, her eyes red and swollen. But the smile was genuine and Frey gave her a small smile back.
“I’m so sorry, Tina.”
“Then both are apologizing for things that aren’t our fault,” Tina laughed.
The image came up in her mind on its own. Whatever could have prompted the memory to come back then and there, she had no idea.
Frey’s hand went up to her neck where her bandana was. A wild hammering was pushing at her chest. Her heart beat hard and fast and she felt dizzy at the speed of which the blood was pumped into her head. “Tina…” She said, staring into the distance.
Something in her voice must have alerted the woman, for Tina moved closer, putting a hand on Frey’s shoulder, frowning. “What is it?”
Frey remembered holding the man, listening to his rambling, feeling his warmth disappeared. “Did your man happen to own a blue shirt, tiny white vertical stripes, even on the collar? Grey eyes?” Tina grabbed Frey’s shoulders, this time pulling her close. It was on the boarder to painful, but Frey didn’t resist.
“You saw him?! You saw him in Hole?!” There was hope in her eyes. But the hope faded as Frey slowly shook her head.
“He’s gone Tina… I held him when he died. He fell from a height that broke his back. There was nothing I could do for him.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Tina let her go. She sunk down, her back sagging as she hung her head. “I gave him that shirt…”
Frey again put her hand on Tina’s. “Tina. That’s not all.” Frey reached up to untie her bandana. “I think he was trying to get this to you somehow…” She said as she dropped the small white capsule in Tina’s hand. “It was hidden inside the collar.”
Tina was staring at the white thing in her palm. Her hand shook as she reached out to press her thumb against its side. There was a small click and the white capsule opened with a tiny hiss.
Frey frowned at the spectacle. She had held the thing plenty of times but never been able to get it open.
There were two things that now lay in Tina’s open palm.
A tiny memory card, and a Yellow Pill.
They both stared at it. Frey didn’t know what to think. She had been walking around with a Yellow Pill this whole time, tied around her neck without knowing it.
Tina was the first one to gather herself. “Oh, my God! Do you know what this means?!” Tina said, her eyes filling up with tears again. “He did it! He got it out!” She held her hand out to Frey as if she would be able to see them better pressed under her nose. Frey only nodded as she tried to comprehend how this could have been. She shook her head. It was almost too much. “I don’t understand… How come you were able to open it?”
Tina closed the small, and now empty capsule again and handed it to Frey. Her voice was soft. “Fingerprint sensitive.”
Frey held the white thing. You couldn’t even see the opening anymore.
Tina stared at her hand again. “I can’t believe it,” Tina said. “I really can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I…”
“He got it out,” she said in a husky voice. Tina turned her face up to the sky, big tears running down her cheek. “He did it.”
Chapter 17
Li was back when Frey and Tina stepped into the white room. Everyone was gathered except for Luke, still with the desert dwellers.
“Oh! Good news, ladies!” Li called t
o them as he heard them approach. He held up one of those sheets of glass screens. “I have the structure you asked for already. I was lucky there was a conference, which gave me enough time to make a decent copy.”
“And we have good news as well!” Lallie exclaimed as her brother grinned. “We can crack the code!”
“Its goanna take us some time, but we think we might have found a way inside,” Her brother added.
“We still have the best news,” Tina said as they came up to the table.
Frey looked over her shoulder as she felt a presence close by and looked straight into Jon’s chest. She met his eyes, but didn’t return his smile.
Tina opened her palm, letting the two objects clatter to the table without further delay and the others gasped. There was a flood of questions that didn’t stop until Tina held her hands up for silence. “One at the time!”
Frey felt Jon’s hand on her shoulder and saw Joy wrinkle her nose. “Where the hell did the two of you get this?” He asked.
Tina looked over at her. Frey knew they couldn’t reveal Tina’s connections to this…
Didn’t really think this far, did I…
She breathed in and held the breath there for a while. In the end she told them as much of the truth as she could.
“Wait, so you have been carrying these around the whole time?” Joy shot at her, her voice shrill in the big room. “How could you keep that from us?!”
“I kept nothing from anyone. I had no idea what was in the capsule and it wasn’t really easy to open. Since I arrived, I had other things on my mind. Can’t deny I forgot about it until-“
“How could anyone forget something like that?” Joy sneered, and Frey could feel the blood pump into her arms. “The little pup might even have kept it from us on purpose!”
Frey was ready to answer. Hell, she was ready to pounce on the delicate woman doing some serious damage, but Jon’s hand was on her shoulder, squeezing hard and keeping her in place.
“Stop it.” His voice was calm, but it rang out with a silent command. Frey had heard Jin sound like that only a couple of times. It wasn’t nice being on the wrong side of his anger when he was like that.
Joy froze.
Frey stared straight ahead, wanting to push his hand away, but knew it would be glued to her shoulder the way he was now.
Li finally broke the silence. “Youngsters! We have work to do, and in my eyes we now possess all the tools to do them. Frey, Jon and Tina. You come over to the side with me and lets leave the other to keep working. Time is of the essence, as we all know, and I would like to be briefed on our status.”
The trio followed Li to the back of the room while Lallie, Harry and a furious Joy went back to work.
Tina must have seen Frey’s reaction because she easily brushed his hand off and put her own arm around Frey. Jon seemed surprised, but wisely didn’t argue with the big woman.
“Now. I want a full debrief please.”
The three of them took turns to update him on their plan.
“That would definitely buy us more time,” Li said, scratching his chin. He spent a few moments lost in thought. “When Luke is back we will have another meeting and go through everything we-“
An alarm went off suddenly. As Frey was getting her hands up to cover her ears, it was already gone.
Harry growled and Lallie hung her head. “Okay, bad news first,” he said over his shoulder. “The Yellow Pill is coded as well…”
“Good news,” his twin said, lifting her head. “The code’s the same as on our pill, so if we crack one, we crack the other.”
“That leaves the memory card…” Joy said, not looking at any of them.
“Coded,” Lallie said.
“Same code again,” her twin added. “This might take some time.” Then they turned their attention back to the screens.
Li turned to the three of them. “Oh, and one more thing… I was at a pharmacy today, and there were about twenty people waiting to get their generating pills. But there wasn’t any…”
“What?!” Tina and Jon said at the same time.
“I called Stanly, and he said that all pill production to Alya had stopped completely while the pill production to Hole have escalated insanely.” He scratched his cheek again, and Frey noticed there was some stub there. “Stanly had reported it as a malfunction, but gotten back a reply that all was in order and that he was to make sure the pills to Hole kept flowing.”
Frey recognized the clenching and heaving feeling in her stomach. It was all connected.
She looked at Jon, standing there, a split image of Jin, and for the first time she suspected she might not want to find out what the hell was going on.
Chapter 18
He was looking down the street below. The bars were blocking his view, but still allowing enough for them to see the chaos. Constant gunfire and screams seemed to fill every passing minute of the day. It wasn’t a distant sound anymore, where you could walk down another street to avoid it.
Piles of froth lay scattered over the streets from the discarded pills. Cars and buildings were on fire and bodies lined the gutters to feed the multiplying population of rats. There didn’t seem to be one single person who didn’t own a gun anymore. He shuddered at the thought at what the gang areas might look like. Everyone fought one and the other, thinking the “true” Yellow Pill was hidden behind the neighbor’s walls. People had gone crazy.
Jin squeezed Kirk’s shoulder, trying to reassure the boy when he himself felt like the world was coming to an end. The boy looked up at him with wide eyes full of fear, and Jin bent down to pick him up, walking away from the window. “Lets go see if anyone wanna play something,” Jin said as Kirk clutched at his shirt with claw-like hands.
With every package there had been more and more pills, but they’d all had the same markings on them and were discarded until the roads were trampled full of froth. But with every package there’d also been weapons.
Now it seemed to be the only thing the city had left. No more food arrived, as if the Yellow Pill had needed all the extra space.
Father Patrick followed him up on the roof. A grunt escaped him with every step steps as if walking pained him. But the old man didn’t complain. Jin tried to do most of the work, but knew the extra lines in Father Patrick’s face came from worry.
“We have enough to make us last a while longer,” Jin said as he helped the old man down on their usual spot. Wailing and roaring from flame and fighting, was like a nightmarish background noise. Father Patrick didn’t let the kids up on the roof anymore.
Jin didn’t know what they would do when they ran out of food. If not for Frey’s constant gathering, they would have starved long ago. Jin could see the great garage burning from where they sat and wondered if his and Frey’s Volvo was covered in flame yet.
“You’re right Jin,” Father Patrick said as he looked up at the fading dome. “You’re right.”
He could feel himself getting stronger every day, and his mind was clear for the first time in what felt like years. Jin knew the old man had feared for him as they had barred the doors, since there were no pills to fall back on if he became crazy from the craving.
Sometimes the nightmare version of him seemed like distant memory.
“I had a strange thought today.”
“What?” Jin asked.
“Well, I thought, whoever had tried to take Frey would have been in for a surprise,” he coughed a few laughs and Jin couldn’t help but join him.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “She’s not an easy one to corner, that’s for sure.” He smiled, thinking of all the times he would pull her out of danger. She had always laughed it off after. And how many times haven’t I pulled you to safety? He heard her say in his mind, and had to agree that was true.
“Maybe she did it…”
Jin turned to Father Patrick. He was leaning his head back, looking up at the dome. “I don’t think they caught her. I think she got away.”
Jin f
elt worried. He wondered if the old man was getting a fever. He had been coughing a lot lately. “Well. If someone would make it, it would be Frey,” he agreed and knew that to be true.
Chapter 19
Li was waiting on them in the meeting room. Luke was already there, his big frame leaning against the wall as usual.
“Gone long enough, you big log,” Tina said and smacked his hard stomach like a strange personal greeting. Luke just grunted in reply.
Tina and Frey sat down next to each other.
Li had placed the holographic map of the building on the table, showing Dome. The east wall was marked green. Luke nodded at the bag next to the map and Frey pulled it towards her. “I bought what I thought you might need.”
Frey looked inside to see chalk powder and climbing shoes. There was a white robe inside as well, like the one she had stolen to get out of Dome.
Frey nodded her thanks. As she put the bag next to her, Jon and Joy came in. Jon’s hair was ruffled and Joy purposely pulled her blouse straight with a nasty smile.
“Thought you were down there pulling your weight,” Tina shot at Joy.
The woman’s face got red at that.
“She was,” Jon said, sounding very defensive.
Tina raised her eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What? Both of you working on the organic structure of the body or something?”
Jon went bright red, Joy only crossing her arms, sniffing loudly. Li choked on his coffee, and Luke looked up at the roof with a moan. “No fighting.” But Frey thought it looked like the end of his mouth came dangerously close to something that could be called a smile.
She looked at anyone and everything except Jon and Joy.
Li was wiping his robe as he put the coffee cup down. Before he had the time to remind them all that they had more important things to do than bicker, Harry and Lallie came bursting into the meeting room. They were both bent over and breathing hard. Harry held a glass screen with information in his hand, half pointing it at them. He and Lallie looked up at the same time, and Frey now saw how much they resembled each other. “We cracked the bloody code!” He yelled at them as if they were forty feet away, and not four.
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