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“My last conviction was under the age cut-off, so I didn’t lose eligibility. Even if I’d come clean about breaking out, I had a few months to spare.”
“So?”
“So, I’m trying to warn you, little bird. My boss didn’t do this to me. He had bigger fish to fry.”
“Then who did?”
He closed the book slowly and laid it on the retractable shelf near his sink. “I broke my mother’s heart. You might know something about that.”
“Surely your mom didn’t—”
“Didn’t want to deal with me in space. I reckon she would have, though. Mothers are like that. But my brother, that’s another story. He was sick of watching me hurt her.”
That took a long time to sink in. I shuddered. “Your own family.”
“They made sure I’d never see the Ark. And now, my family is the one in here. So’s yours. The Remnant doesn’t exist, you know. Fairytales. Hope keeps people sane.”
I leaned across the book and placed my hand on his, mulling over his story. His nickname seemed cruel now.
We were still for a moment, but my breathing didn’t slow. His, by contrast, was as steady as the waves of the ocean. I wanted his calm, his acceptance, but I knew I wouldn’t find it here. His thumb flicked up to touch my forefinger. Every instinct I had told me to keep the starpass a secret, but it was the only play I had left.
I pressed the silver and blue card into his hand. “Isaiah. My journey doesn’t end here.”
He ran a thumb over the letters, and his dark glasses couldn’t conceal his surprise. “Alright, little bird. I’ll show you how I did it.”
Minutes later, we were standing in front of the walk-in freezer in the kitchen. Isaiah heaved the door ajar and waited for me to step inside.
“Back there.” Isaiah indicated the far wall with his cane, and I climbed inside. The cold hit me immediately, but the pleasure of a momentary chill faded when the frigidity coated my skin. Thanks to a raid several days earlier, the shelves around me were bare. There was a sucking pop sound as the door closed behind him. “All the way back.”
“Wait. It’s dark.”
“Always dark for me. Leave it closed. Don’t want to be followed. Go on.”
I stumbled forward in the cold. A few steps later, a pale green pin of light came into view on the back wall of the freezer. When I got closer, its dim light fell on the things around me—shreds of cardboard boxes and my own outstretched hands.
Isaiah’s hands appeared a second later. He slid a flattened palm across the wall before us until his fingers met a seam. This he followed to a screw, which he loosened with a thumbnail, then twisted until it dropped into his outstretched hand.
I shivered as he repeated the process three more times.
“Here we go.” Isaiah took a slow breath and heaved the panel onto the floor. “Watch your feet.”
A gaping hole yawned in the wall in front of me. “What is this?”
“Used to be the vent to the air conditioning. My guess is the workers didn’t much care about fixing it up when they installed the freezer during the last renovation.”
“How did you find it?”
“I was always looking, back then. Always searching for my way out.”
“Wish I could say the same.”
“You follow this to the outside. Leads to the south gate. You can’t get to it any other way, so it’s not as secure as the rest. I got out by climbing the old unit and hoppin’ down the fence. Here.”
He shoved an industrial-sized kitchen mat into my arms, which he must have picked up at the entrance to the freezer. “I had to take this with me, when I made my journey, so that they wouldn’t know how I did it. Won’t much matter now whether you leave it there or not.”
He was right about that.
“What’s it for?”
“Razor wire on the fence. Won’t stop ’em all, but you’ll make it just fine. If you want to come back, in the very end, I’ll be here.”
I stood facing him, paralyzed by the moment. “Isaiah, please. Come with me. I already got one starpass, maybe we can figure something out. You can’t stay here.”
He smiled again and shook his head. The green light shone against his teeth as they swung back and forth. “It doesn’t suit you, you know.”
“What?”
“Your name. Char is the end of the story, the cooked goose. Maybe you were right, and your story’s just getting started good. But look at me. I’m blind. They’ll never let me on the transport. And if they see you with me, you’ll have the same fate. And then you will be Char.” He chuckled, a soft, deep sound that swallowed the steady hum of the freezer. “But don’t think that this will be your freedom. You may find nothing but a bigger cage.”
“Or maybe I will fly.”
“Maybe so. Maybe so.” He grasped my arm, briefly, by way of a farewell.
A door slammed, its sound muffled by the walls of the freezer. I hesitated, one foot in the vent. “Did you hear that?”
“Kitchen. People want food.”
The freezing air made me suddenly aware of the tiny beads of sweat on my forehead. “No one here thinks there’s food in the kitchen.”
A series of methodical clangs danced around us. “Someone’s looking for something else, then,” Isaiah whispered. Cabinets were being slammed open. A louder bang announced that one of the pantries had been searched.
“It’s Kip. He’s going to find us.”
I expected Isaiah to protest, to say that I couldn’t possibly know who was out there, or that Kip had surely already left the prison by this point, but instead, he said, “Better go, then.”
The bangs were getting closer. I knew, without any doubt, that it was Kip, and that he would find me. “He must have waited, then followed me. They’re looking for the Remnant. They knew I’d go to you. Isaiah. Come with me.”
“Ain’t nothing for me out there. I’ll stop him.”
“You can’t. You can’t stop Kip. You haven’t seen him when he’s… You can’t stay here.”
“It’s the only thing I can do.”
“Take my hand.”
His hand was warm and firm, and a lot stronger than his final protest. “Charl—”
“Come on. We’re leaving. Your journey doesn’t end here, either.”
The duct was warm, but relatively ventilated. My hands shook as I replaced the grate. Normally, my hands were as steady as paperweights, no matter the stakes, but I was always unpredictable around Kip. It wasn’t the first time my body had betrayed me in his presence.
I wore the mat on my back like a cape, clasping it in place with my left arm while holding my right arm in front of my face, so that I wouldn’t run into anything. Isaiah followed at a short distance.
Almost immediately, my hand swiped into another wall. I panicked momentarily, sweeping my arms all around, before finding that the passageway had turned sharply and narrowed to a crawlspace near my right foot. I dropped to my knees and pressed into the darkness, trying not to think how very like a rat I was in that moment. Trying especially not to think about the possibility of other rats sharing the tunnel with me. But as soon as I heard a noise I couldn’t assign to Isaiah, I surprised myself by hoping it came from a rat, and not Kip.
I don’t know how I knew it was Kip who was following us, but I was absolutely certain that he’d find the grate. That was what he did. He found me. He pulled me back, no matter how much I wanted to get away.
I had crawled maybe ten yards when the gritty texture of the vent glinted into view, so I had to be close to the outdoors. Sure enough, within minutes, I could make out the slits of a grate, and beyond that, the green of grass and the dark gray of the prison walls.
I ran my fingers across the slatted panel for an instant before deciding that my best bet was probably to kick it out. I lay back, bracing myself with the mat underneath me, and slammed my feet into the thin metal as hard as I could.
The grate went flying through the air and landed four feet away.
Isaiah’s muted laugh floated out of the tunnel behind me. “I should have mentioned that I never screwed it back into place.”
Was this a game for him? I bit back a sharp response. “Did I mention he has a gun?”
“I know. I heard it scraping the ground when he started crawling.”
Kip had reached the tunnel, then.
I popped out onto the grass, squinting in the sunlight, and stood up next to the old air conditioning unit, turning to help Isaiah. I got the impression that he needed a lot less help than I’d expected, but perhaps more than he realized. The afternoon air was only slightly cooler than the warmth of the ventilation shaft, but infinitely more pleasant. Full of hope, but tinged with my rising panic.
The ancient gray air conditioning unit was tall and thick, with its far edge positioned about a foot from the prison wall. I grabbed the mat from inside the vent behind me and threw it up onto the first ledge I saw. From there it was a matter of climbing as efficiently as possible without dropping the mat. I created a few frantic footholds by bashing in whatever ventilation slats I found, and before long, I stood on the top of the unit, my back to the prison wall.
“Okay, we have to—”
“Jump over the fence. You first.” He waved a hand near his ear.
“I-Isaiah. I can’t. You first.”
“Afraid I won’t follow? Not to worry. I’m right behind. Got me all fired up, now.”
I sucked in a breath. We were pretty far off the ground, but my knees were about level with the top of the fence, which was several feet away. Thick coils of razor wire spun across its top, adding three more feet to its height. I slung the heavy mat over the razor wire, and, stepping back for a head start, leaped onto it for all I was worth. The wires gave slightly under my weight, and I never quite caught my balance. Almost as soon as my thighs touched the mat, I was falling face-first into the ground nearly twelve feet below.
I scrambled, limbs flailing against air and rubber, and managed to shift my upper body backward, so that my feet were beneath me when I began to fall in earnest. Time swung by in a single, heart-stopping arc before I hit the ground, hard. My legs buckled, and I threw my weight to the side, absorbing the secondary impact with my hip.
I breathed in, trying to contain the pain, and consoled myself with the knowledge that, where I was going, gravity wouldn’t be my problem.
It was several seconds before I stood shakily to ascertain the damage. Something dark in my peripheral vision caught my attention, and I realized with a jolt that my entire left arm was bright red with blood.
My throat made a noise like a long, low groan while I searched for the source of the blood, which turned out to be a slash along the side of my left hand. I must have grabbed the edge of the mat during my mid-air acrobatics, leaving the skin exposed to the razor wire.
The blood coated my forearm and blotted onto my prison scrubs. This, combined with the rest of my appearance, was not going to fly at the OPT facility. Assuming I made it that far. I removed a sock and tied it as hard as I could around my hand. That would have to do for now.
“You ready?” I shout-whispered at Isaiah.
“As ever,” he said back.
“You’re about ten feet from—”
“I remember.” Isaiah sent his cane sailing over the fence. He followed soon after, pausing only briefly atop the mat. He landed next to me, allowing his body to hit the ground once his legs had broken the fall.
“Okay, I’m impressed.”
Isaiah smiled.
We began to jog directly away from the prison walls, Isaiah’s cane sweeping the ground in fast-forward, but I quickly slowed our pace. I was weak from hunger, and from getting kicked in the head, so anything over a brisk walk was not on the menu. I turned back once, to say my final goodbyes to the prison that had been my home for years. As I watched, the grate popped out again.
The goodbyes didn’t take very long.
A thicket of trees spread before me, and I pulled Isaiah behind the first one we reached. I remembered from the stories that a town lay behind them, populated mostly by prison staff and their families. In ages past, an escapee sought refuge here at his peril, but I doubted there were a lot of people left in town, since all the guards had spots on an OPT. We moved from tree to tree, hiding our path until we were deep enough into the trees that no one could see us from a distance.
Then it was full speed ahead. Or as full speed as we could manage.
The second house we came to had no lights on. Perfect. Probably belonged to one of the guards, and he or she would be knocking at the gate of the OPT launch site by now. I let myself in through a back window and paused only a moment to take in my surroundings before turning to assist Isaiah. Again, he needed my help a lot less than I expected. We headed straight for the kitchen, but I stuck near a window, keeping one eye out for Kip. When I was satisfied that he hadn’t seen which house we entered, I relaxed slightly. Our best move was to stay here until he assumed we’d moved on.
I wanted a shower, but first things first. The house was old and small, with cheap linoleum on the kitchen floor that had begun to peel at the edges. I wondered how much Isaiah could ascertain about his surroundings, then noticed that the house smelled old and small, too.
The icer was stocked, though, as was the pantry, so to me, it was Buckingham Palace relocated to upstate New York. Two ham-and-jelly sandwiches for me, three ham sandwiches for Isaiah, and then we broke into the potato chips.
“So good,” I mumbled, not caring that the crumbs were sticking to my face.
Isaiah raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you to chew with your mouth closed?”
“Sorry.”
We climbed the narrow staircase, and I hopped into the rickety tub for the greatest shower of my entire life, leaving Isaiah to explore the other rooms.
I had no idea whose OPT pass I carried, but I knew they wouldn’t look like an escaped prisoner. So I ignored the fluttery, urgent feeling in my chest and took the time to blow-dry my hair. A raid of the bathroom cabinet revealed lipstick, deodorant, and moisturizer, along with a dried-out tube of eyeliner. I applied the lipstick quickly, grateful to my mom for the second time that day, since she had spent the better part of my time between stints in juvy forcing me to learn how to wear makeup. Or trying to, anyway.
I ran the eyeliner wand under the tap for a few seconds, swished it around in the tube, and swiped a thin line across my eyelids. The result was a lot more responsible-teen-headed-to-the-mall, or wherever it is normal teenagers go, and a lot less bruised-and-bloodied convict.
The cabinet under the sink produced Band-Aids, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a worn-out, empty makeup bag. Gritting my teeth, I ran the alcohol over the cut on my hand, which had opened back up in the shower, and taped it shut with a Band-Aid. I used a wad of toilet paper doused in alcohol to dab at the cut above my eye from Cassa’s shoe. Then I threw the toiletries into the makeup bag and headed for the bedroom, stark naked.
The first room was a bust. Granny panties, nightgowns, and a drawer full of bras big enough to wear as hats. No thank you.
I hit the jackpot with bedroom number two. Whoever lived here was about my size. I found vintage-looking lace underwear in the drawers. I pulled on a set and stuffed a second into the makeup bag.
The closet was even better. Crisp brown pants, flowy blouses, and smart-looking dresses hovered over a neat row of shoes for every occasion. This girl really had her act together. I had never lined up a pair of shoes in my life.
I selected a blue skirt and a heavily tailored sleeveless top made of the same material and paired them with camel-colored heels. I had no idea what one wore on an OPT, except that almost everyone there would either be super smart or super rich. My mom would probably tell me to find some pantyhose, so I returned to the underwear drawer with a sigh. I reflected that there probably weren’t seasons in space, either, so I selected an additional outfit: a black, long-sleeved cotton shirt, black boots, and a pair of black pants.
I was just about to leave when I noticed a brown leather satchel-style purse slung over one of the coat hangers. A quick search of its contents turned up a wallet and ID. Magda Notting, born 2015. She’d be nearly fifty years old, then, much older than I expected, based on what I had seen of her clothing. She’d also be ineligible for a spot on one of the Arks. I wondered where she was. Probably waiting it out at a friend’s house, or something. I hoped she wasn’t alone.
I worked the black clothing into a roll and pressed it into the top of the satchel. I never considered putting the starpass into the bag. It went under my shirt, secured to the skin just below my collarbone with a series of Band-Aids. I took a final glance in the mirror and forced myself not to think about how we’d get Isaiah onto the OPT with only one starpass. I didn’t know if I was the kind of person who’d sacrifice my life for someone else, and that scared me as much as anything else. I clopped my way out the door and down the steps, uneasy in Magda’s heels. Uneasy in general.
“Isaiah?” I called. “You up there or down here?” Maybe he’d stepped outside. I was halfway through the sitting room, and maybe five feet from the door, when a rush of ice spilled down my spine, and I stopped short.
