“Already done, Jane. As soon as I heard the crash, I figured you were ready to go.”
“Mom is still alive, Evelyn—at least I think she is, and so are Dad and Tate. Marcus and I are on the second floor, and the prison cells are underground.”
Getting to the door at the end of the hallway, Jane noticed it actually had a handle on it. Marcus pushed it open and they stepped into the stairwell.
“Marcus, we have to get my family.”
“That’s where we’re headed. Tell Evelyn to meet us in the field you ran across, with the shuttle, in five minutes.”
“What about the guards, Evelyn?” Jane asked.
“From the security system, there are twenty guards on site, but most of them are near the landing pad on the opposite side of the detention facility. I have locked the doors and will try to keep them contained, but be careful, Jane—there are still a few guards in your area,” Evelyn added.
Jane ran down the flights of stairs behind Marcus, the open grates of the industrial staircase clattering under the weight of his boots and her floppy rubber shoes.
“So, you know where everyone is?” Marcus called back over his shoulder, focusing intensely on the stairs. “What floors are they on?”
“They’re all on L9, Marcus. My dad and brother were in the cells right next to mine, and my mom is right there too,” Jane replied. “Go get my dad and brother. I’ll get my mom.”
“You were all on the same floor?” Marcus said with surprise, shaking his head and clearly frustrated. “I’m sorry, Jane. If I had only figured that out sooner—”
Down two flights of stairs, they came to a landing and a door labeled L9. Looking down through the grates in the stairwell, Jane could see that it went down a lot further. There was obviously more to this place than met the eye.
Marcus opened the door and peered through the crack. Seeing that it was clear, he opened the door, grabbed Jane by the hand, and led her through.
“We’re on floor L9, Evelyn,” Jane said. “Open the doors … Actually, open all the cell doors on all the floors … Get these people out of here, Evelyn,” she added, being pulled behind Marcus.
“Whoa!” Marcus said, turning his head and stopping in the hallway. “Don’t do that! This place may be filled with dangerous people, and it’ll be a lot harder for me to keep you safe with them stampeding out of here.”
“Marcus, if the people in here were really dangerous, they’d already be dead,” Jane reasoned. “The only reason people are in here is because they are of value to the government—you’ll have to trust me on that,” she added, patting his shoulder.
“Now—go get my dad and brother, and then help anyone else you can find.”
Marcus looked at Jane with a doubtful expression as they heard all the steel cell doors slide open.
“This is an evacuation,” Evelyn announced over the intercom system. “You are being released. Please move quickly to the stairwell at the end of the corridor. Go up one flight and exit at the ground floor. There is a shuttle waiting outside for you.”
Smiling and looking at Jane, Marcus quickly turned and ran down the hallway. “Hurry, people! Get moving!” he shouted repeatedly.
Evelyn continued to announce the evacuation over the intercom, and Jane ran down the hall, quickly coming to her mom’s cell. Peering inside, she saw a woman on a cot facing the wall, in the same position she had been in moments ago when Jane saw her on the screen in the interrogation room. The woman hadn’t moved, even with the evacuation announcement now blaring over the intercom.
Jane held her breath, unsure she wanted to step into the cell. The woman’s legs and back seemed contorted, and she was dressed in clothing easily as repulsive as her own. The woman didn’t look it, but as long as Jane stood there, the woman could still be alive and she could still be her mom—Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to know if either of those things weren’t true.
“Mom?” Jane asked, finally working up the nerve to say something and forcing herself to take a step closer.
The woman didn’t move.
“Mom?” Jane asked again, stepping further inside the cell and moving to the head of the cot. Putting her hands on the woman, Jane shook her gently.
“Mom,” Jane said again to the unresponsive woman, slowly rolling her onto her back.
Jane’s eyes immediately filled with tears as she saw her mom’s face, emaciated, pale, and sickly.
“Mom!” Jane cried. “Please, Mom, wake up. It’s Jane. I’m here.”
Her mom didn’t move. Jane put her hand on her mom’s forehead, still not getting a response from her, and felt the heat and sweat on her brow. Bending down to put her ear to her mom’s mouth, she could just barely make out the sound of a gurgling, raspy breath. “You’re alive!” Jane mumbled, choking out a laugh of joy through a sob and tears.
“Help! Somebody help me!” Jane yelled, turning toward the cell door, realizing then that her dad and brother had just arrived, both in shock and with tears in their eyes too. Jane’s dad rushed to her mom’s side.
“Christine! You’re alive!” he cried through a croaking breath, but she still didn’t respond.
“Dad, she has a fever. She’s really sick. We have to get her out of here.”
The commotion in the hallway was growing as people clamored down the hallway toward the exit. Jane could see that some people were helping others, but everyone seemed to be struggling.
“We need to stay together,” Tate spoke up, coming over to the side of the cot. Gently, but with a strength that didn’t seem possible, he scooped up his mom and cradled her in his arms. Nearly unconscious, she hung lifelessly, making a noticeable groan as Tate lifted her.
It was clear to Jane that even if her mom hadn’t been deathly ill, she never would have walked out of the prison on her own. Even in his vulgarity, the senator was right, as her mom appeared to be paralyzed, probably at the waist, from the crash.
With her dad, and her brother carrying her mom close behind, Jane ran into the hallway and to the door to the stairs. Opening the door, she was immediately struck by how few people were in the stairwell.
“Evelyn, is everyone out of the prison already?”
“Marcus is down on the bottom floor, but there aren’t any people down there. The cells are empty. There were fewer than fifty people in the whole prison, including your family.”
“Marcus, there aren’t any people down there!” Jane yelled down the stairwell, relieved that even though there were probably hundreds of cells, the facility wasn’t full. “Get out of there! Hurry!”
Jane’s dad continued to cry after her mom, clearly emotional and on the verge of a breakdown, certainly still affected by the drugs in the apple he ate. Grabbing his hand, Jane pulled on him to get up the stairs to the main floor.
Cresting the top, Jane pushed her way through the door, only to find the hallway blocked by prisoners trying to push past the few guards blocking the exit. Weakened and enfeebled from their time spent in the cells, the prisoners were no match for the guards.
Seeing a woman’s head crack sideways after being hit with the butt end of a rifle, Jane pushed her way toward the front of the crowd. Enraged and screaming at them to stop, she met the gaze of a guard as she pushed past the last of the prisoners. The guard looked at Jane. Sizing her up with a smirk, he raised the butt end of his rifle as if to hit her next. Smirking back, Jane quickly took aim with her pulse pistol and fired a shot between his eyes. The guard immediately collapsed in a convulsing mass on the floor.
Hearing the crack of the pistol and seeing his comrade fall, another guard turned and trained his weapon on Jane, and for a moment, staring down the barrel of the gun, everything seemed to stop.
Not a second later, Jane was on the floor having been tackled by the mob, and she could hear the intermittent sounds of gunfire overhead. Jane tried to push people off her, knees, fists, and feet pounding into her as panicked people fought their way through the corridor.
“Dad!” Ja
ne screamed over the growing roar of the crowd as she finally scrambled to her feet, having lost her pistol somewhere on the floor.
Jane looked around wildly in the chaos. The guards were nowhere to be seen, and people were running through the open door into the darkness outside. Jane couldn’t help being carried by the current of prisoners, and started to lose her footing as she stumbled over the body of the guard who was writhing on the floor, yelling and covering his face.
Finding her way to a wall, Jane stopped for a second to turn back. Both her dad and Tate, with their mom slung over his shoulder, were further back but were pushing with everyone else toward her and the doorway.
“Dad!” Jane called again. Grabbing his hand as he came close, she pulled him toward the exit.
Rushing through the door, Jane could see that Evelyn had landed the shuttle not fifty yards from where they stood. As the crowd of prisoners ambled—drugged and zombie-like—toward the shuttle, Jane looked back to see Marcus pushing what appeared to be the last of the people through the doorway.
“Everyone’s out!” Marcus shouted, waving his arms wildly, catching Jane’s eye. “Go! Go! Go!”
Checking to make sure her brother and mom had also made it outside, Jane turned and pulled her dad as he stumbled with her through the dirt.
“Come on, Dad, run!” Jane said as much for her own sake as for his.
“Run!” she heard her brother yell from just behind her.
With the prisoners ahead of them piling into the shuttle, and the deafening roar of the engines growing, Jane pushed her dad up the ramp and watched her brother run inside with her mom. Hardly having time to turn around, Jane felt Marcus grab her by the hand and yank her up the final few feet as the ramp closed behind them.
“Evelyn,” Marcus shouted into the air, “get us out of here!”
Jane felt the hull rumble under the weight of the extra passengers, and the instant surge from the shuttle’s powerful engines. Collapsing on the floor, Jane grabbed the side of a seat to brace herself momentarily as the shuttle rocketed upward into the darkness.
Still holding Marcus’s hand, who had sat down next to her, and exhausted and unable to process everything she felt and everything that was happening, Jane let go of the seat, put her hand on her head, and sobbed in pain and in joy.
BETRAYED
The airlock clicked as the shuttle anchored itself to the docking bay. As the door opened, several medical personnel rushed on board with a stretcher and supplies, and immediately started tending to Jane’s mom. Not but a few minutes later, Jane watched as the clinicians—having secured Jane’s mom to the stretcher—rushed her out of the shuttle with Tate and Jane’s dad close behind.
“All passengers, please report to the infirmary,” Evelyn announced over the intercom system, though it was nearly impossible to hear anything over the commotion of nearly fifty people relieved to be free from the nightmare of the prison—but wholly unsure about what the future held for them. “Medical personnel are available to help you.”
Jane hadn’t moved from her spot on the floor and watched the prisoners stream past, some under their own power and others needing considerable help. As the last few people shuffled off, Marcus stood, having been sitting next to Jane, and disappeared down the corridor that led toward the cockpit. As the voices and whimpers faded outside the shuttle, Jane sat and enjoyed the silence of being alone but no longer isolated.
Jane could hear Marcus’s footsteps on the metal floor of the shuttle before she could see him, but as he came into the light, she could see that he was carrying two bottles of water in one hand and something else from the galley in the other.
“I wasn’t sure what your stomach could handle,” Marcus said as he knelt beside her, “but you ought to try to eat something.”
“Thanks, Marcus,” Jane said, smiling through still red but now dry eyes. Grabbing the bottle of water, Jane put it to her lips, tilting it up quickly and nearly choking, finding her throat was too dry to swallow properly.
“Take it easy, Jane. Just take small sips.”
Jane nodded, wiping the water that had spurted out of her mouth off her chin with the back of her filthy hand. Taking a few more sips, and feeling the cool wetness of the water soothe her parched mouth, she looked over at Marcus.
“Thanks for helping me, Marcus—and for helping my family. I don’t think I could have done it without you.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that, Jane,” Marcus said with a smile. “You seemed to be doing alright by yourself. But you’re welcome anyway.”
Jane slowly finished off the first bottle of water, and Marcus handed her the second.
“So—where were you anyway?” Jane asked. “I mean, why didn’t I see you until the end?”
“You mean when you smashed Senator Biggs in the head with a chair?”
Jane choked on her water again, laughing, and couldn’t help but have some come through her nose.
“Yeah,” she said, still choking, but smiling even though she was more than a little embarrassed.
“That was a really nice move, by the way,” Marcus added, standing and moving toward the rest room. Coming back with some towels, he offered them to Jane.
Sheepishly, Jane took the towels and started wiping off her nose and face.
Marcus was quiet for a second. “For lack of a better way to put it, Jane, the detainment facility is a strange place. Everything is monitored by video and audio. Nobody but the caretaker is allowed onto the lower levels where the cells are—he’s the person who brings food and water to the prisoners.”
A shudder ran up Jane’s spine.
“What?” Marcus asked.
“The caretaker,” she replied, feeling nauseous. “I’m telling you, I’ve never been as afraid as when he was singing to me outside my cell door.”
Marcus jerked his head back a little, a look of disgust forming on his face. “Singing? What the hell was he singing?”
Another shudder ran up Jane’s spine. “I really can’t talk about it right now, Marcus. Maybe one day I’ll tell you, but just know if I ever see that man again, I’ll put a bullet in his forehead, and I’ll sleep better for it,” she added, looking straight into his eyes.
Marcus raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly, seeming to understand.
“Well, he’s the only one down on the lower levels of the prison. The line we hear as guards is that the prisoners are hardened criminals, and they are isolated for safety reasons. There was no way for me to come down there without raising suspicions.”
Marcus sat back down on the floor next to Jane.
“The only reason I was able to be in the interrogation hall was because I was on Senator Biggs’s security detail. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could watch what was going on in the interrogation room through the two-way glass in the hallway.
“I couldn’t communicate with Evelyn through the earbud, because I couldn’t risk being caught by surveillance. I figured the best thing for me to do was make sure Evelyn could hear everything, so I planted the earbud in the belt, and I figured out where the emergency exits and stairwells were. From there, it was just me trying to stay close to you, and waiting—for what, I wasn’t sure, but I figured either you or Evelyn would make a move at some point.”
“And you figured I was making my big move when I hurled a chair at your boss?” Jane asked, giving Marcus a tired but relieved smile.
“Right,” Marcus replied, also smiling. “I had to wait until you did something, though, because that was the only way I could be sure you found out what you needed to find out—plus, I knew it wouldn’t be too difficult to get out of there. Almost all the guards spend their time on the opposite end of the facility, playing cards and processing prisoners from DF-23 who are being transferred elsewhere.”
Jane looked away from Marcus and at the mostly empty bottle of water she held in her hands.
“Marcus, they probably aren’t hardened criminals—the prisoners in there—and they definitely a
ren’t being transferred.”
Jane paused, thinking about that moment in the open graveyard, and Senator Biggs telling her what he intended to do to her and her family. “People are being executed, Marcus. They are being stripped of their clothing, and their bodies are being dumped in a valley up in the mountains.”
Marcus laughed an unsure laugh, as if he were politely laughing at someone making an off-color joke, and then caught sight of the serious look on Jane’s face as she turned back toward him.
“Really, Marcus,” Jane said. “They’ve killed millions of people—tens of millions. I’ve see it with my own eyes.”
Marcus stood up and looked around at nothing in particular, clearly shocked by the news he had just heard. A moment passed, and Jane could tell Marcus was trying to figure out how to express himself.
Looking back down at her, he held out his hands in disbelief.
“Jane, I had no idea. I don’t think anybody knows about this. Not even the guards. I guess the pilots of the shuttles must know—and the warden—and obviously the senator knows—”
“And someone higher up than the senator knows too,” Jane interrupted, “because of what he said about wishing I would just shoot him.”
“True,” Marcus agreed. “But most people have no idea this is happening.”
Jane nodded in agreement and held her hand out to Marcus for some help getting up.
Marcus took her hand and helped her to her feet.
“We have to do something,” Marcus added.
“I agree,” Jane said, “but first, I have to check on my mom.”
Jane drained the last of her bottle of water. As they walked toward the shuttle door together, Marcus pulled another bottle from a cargo pocket in his pants and handed it to her.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked, swapping bottles with her.
“More relieved than better. I think it’s just going to take a while.”
“Here, try eating this,” Marcus said, handing her an apple he had pulled from his other cargo pocket. “You really should try to eat something, and this may be as easy as anything else for you to get down.”
Jane and the Exodus Page 20
