Dark World: The Surface Girl (21 page)

              Well – we were
all
prisoners. We just hadn't fully realized it until now.
              I felt a tap on my back. I opened my eyes just enough to turn my head and watch as the little girl sniffed back her own tears and gently curled her tiny twig-arms around Reese as best as she could in his greatest moment of despair. I was touched, unblinking at her incredibly brave act of kindness and empathy. I slowly uncurled one of my arms from Reese's trembling torso and gently drew her closer, inviting her into our comforting embrace. She was lost in an underground colony that until very recently I had believed to be the only civilization of human beings left on the planet. Even if she knew nothing about us or why we were being kept down here, she had answers, or at least the potential to help us find the answers, to our desperate questions. We needed her for our survival, and she needed us for hers.
              I turned my bloodshot gaze back to Zane. “And... my parents? Were you able to intercept the GP?” He took a step forward and gently pried my arm away from the little girl. He slid his fingers through mine and gave them a soft squeeze. “Things didn't go exactly as planned, but your parents are not in government custody.” My heart tightened in my chest like a rubber band. “We couldn't get to the GP but when the government came for your parents, they weren't in their barracks.”
             
They weren't there.
             
How could that be? Where would they have gone – and why?
              Suddenly, utter gratitude for my stupid, simple life-saving action hit me like a sledgehammer and I unintentionally let my other arm slip away from Reese. It was my note, it had to have been! My brief, vague, inexplicable request scribbled on a tiny, torn piece of paper that I left behind when I crawled through the vent had to have saved their lives. As insane and inappropriate as it was, my lips parted, my head tilted back and my vocal chords released just a few high-pitched laughs of pure, complete delight. I had done everything wrong; I left my barracks on a whim with no realistic plan and no survival skills, crawled through a vent with the blind hopeless notion of magically finding Reese and 'saving' him, but the only thing I had actually accomplished was nearly getting my parents killed. They must have found the note and my dad must've gotten my mom out just in time. How had they gotten past the flatfoot guarding our barracks? Had my dad figured out why I left? Did he know I had left to try and find Reese? Who found the note, my dad or my mom? What had my dad told my mom and how did he get her to escape with him? She must be so afraid, so angry, so confused...
             
No. Stop.
             
I couldn't fret about my mother right now. Even if she was terrified, she was 
alive. 
I knew my dad loved her very much and I knew in my heart that he would do everything he possibly could to keep her safe.
              “So – so they got out in time...” I muttered out loud. “Does my dad know where this location is? Will he know to come here?” Zane shifted his weight.
              “He knows roughly where it is, but getting here will be difficult for him.” Something in his tone caused my relief to dwindle.
              “...Why?” He sighed. I glanced at Reese again as the child continued to cling to him. His eyes were completely glazed over with giant teardrops that streamed down his cheeks like a waterfall. He was silent. He was grieving. He was in his own world surrounded by a sadness he might never overcome, and he wasn't hearing anything.
              “The government's system is,” Zane paused again and ran his tongue over his lower lip. “fragile. I know it’s difficult to view it that way because we're conditioned from infancy to see the government as the be-all and end-all to our civilization, but when you're ruling with lies, it’s like living inside of a giant house made of glass. If someone finds the bravery to throw a single rock, the whole house shatters. Do you understand what I'm saying?” No, I didn't, not really. Or maybe I did. I already knew that life as I had always known it was over; it would never be the same but was he trying to say that the lives of everyone in The Complex were now in danger? “The government has lots of secrets, Ruby.” He pointed toward the girl. She widened her eyes in fear before tucking her head against Reese's arm. “She is proof of that. Now, there's a pattern. They have Reese, and you, sneaking into the passageways on camera. They have the test results of your father's nasopharyngitis, which is a strain no more harmful than any other that we have recorded, yet a strain that cannot be traced back to anyone or anything within The Complex.” He paused again. I leaned forward and narrowed my eyes in a silent demand that he continue. “Because of the combination of your father's untraceable strain of nasopharyngitis and the discovery of you sneaking into the passageways, when they came for your parents an hour ago, they had plans to take them into custody on suspicion of treason, just like they took Reese's parents. But, yours were gone.”
              “Do you know how they escaped? There was a flatfoot guarding our barracks.. that's why I had to leave through the vents.”
              “The guard was found unconscious, with a head injury and a spilled cup of tea next to him.”
             
Mom!
             
Mom had to have brought that filthy monster a cup of tea probably laced with belladonna, one of her favorite herbs with sedative qualities, but how on earth had my dad convinced her to do that? I closed my eyes briefly as an estimated description of the scene unfolded inside of my head. Mom, with her hair combed to perfection and an apron wrapped around her waist over her uniform, must have walked out of the barracks cautiously with the tea – which didn't even seem possible knowing how frightened she was of flatfoots. She must have struck up some type of conversation with 
the thing
, causing him to let down his guard. It was the only explanation that made any sense, even if it didn't seem likely. She loved my father with all of her heart, though. As terrified as she was of everything, if he asked her to do something, maybe her love for him gave her the strength to overcome her fear. I glanced over at Reese, still lost in his overwhelming grief, and suddenly I believed in the possibility of my mother finding her strength. After all, there's nothing I wouldn't do for Reese
              “But, where are they?” I asked in desperation. “Why will it be difficult for them to get here?” Zane shifted his weight again. The fingernails on his right hand absentmindedly scratched the knuckles on his left.
              “We barely made it in time, ourselves.” I wrinkled my nose. What did that even mean? Had they almost been seen?
              “We were lucky this time. We overheard a few flatfoots and government officials talking outside of the hallway that lead to your barracks, hence how we know about your parents’ escape and the flatfoot assigned to guard you all having been incapacitated. They're planning to lock down the entire complex. Then, they’ll search and interrogate every single citizen, one by one.”
             
Oh my god.
             
“Do they know about the Order?” I asked immediately, but my panicked thoughts refused to allow Zane time to respond before more words streamed out of my mouth. “What about all of your families, the families of everyone else in the Order that's already here? What will happen to them?” I already knew; they would be taken into custody, just like Reese's parents. Mothers, children, everyone found with a missing family member would be either tortured, or put to sleep. Zane was right. We were living in a glass house and the glass was shattering around us. The shards were coming down like rain and piercing the skin of countless innocent people. “When are they doing this? When are they locking down The Complex?” Anger boiled up inside of me again as it took on a life of its own, turning my blood into ice and causing carbon dioxide to be expelled from my lungs in short, intense bursts that should have been fire. I darted my eyes back to Zane, rationally knowing that there was nothing more he could do to help anyone, especially my parents, but my anger had flesh-hungry fangs that needed to sink into
someone.
“So what do we do??” I raised my voice in desperation. “We have to help them! We have to do SOMETHING!”
              “No,” Zane answered as if prepared for and even expecting to be lashed out at. His demeanor was calm and his expression firm which only caused my animalistic fury to grow.
              “DO YOU HAVE FAMILY?” I shouted at him as my fingers curled into my palms. “DO YOU EVEN CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM?” A quick glance at Reese was the only thing that had the potential to sooth the wild beast that wanted to take me over completely, but as I watched the girl cling to him even tighter and biting her lip toward me in fear, I took a deep breath and held it in, forcing the tornado to shrink. It wasn't gone – by far – but I managed to hold it at bay at least enough for me to hear my own thoughts.
              Zane strode forward intent on quickly closing the gap between us. I instinctively leaned away from him, but before I could do anything else his large hands clamped down on my shoulders. “Listen – of course I care!” He hissed through his teeth. The anger that had flowed through me and threatened to take me over shifted and was now threatening to possess him instead. “I have a family! I have a TEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER. But rushing off without a plan is not going to save her. We wait. We wait for the government to initiate the lock-down. We wait to see if your parents make it back to us. We wait until we can come up with a plan.” He paused again and finally loosened his grip on my shoulders. I shook my shoulders to try and lessen the pain. I didn't dare allow myself to ask the follow-up question that was swimming through my mind like a menacing shark.
Then what?
             
Zane was running on desperation, just like I had been. I understood his rage, his panic and the utter helplessness that was eating away at his insides. He was handling it better than I had, at least. I had run off with no realistic plan or method and I hadn't helped anyone in the process.
Or, maybe I had, inadvertently. Zane said that when they came for my parents this morning, they were already planning on taking us all into custody because they knew that I had snuck into the passageways, and they knew my dad's strain of nasopharyngitis had not come from inside The Complex. We would have had no way of knowing any of that if I had stayed. The Order had done the best they could in getting a message to us, but they had no prior knowledge of just how much danger we were in and therefore could not have warned us about our grim fate. If I had stayed, my parents and myself would all have been taken as prisoners.
              Realizing that I had potentially saved myself and my family with my ignorant, desperate, ill-thought out plan washed over me like an internal massage, instantly loosening my muscles from their tensed, tightened grip around my skeletal system and freeing more space for my lungs to expand with each breath I took. I turned toward Reese again, bypassing the reminder that he was still lost in a black hole of grief as I threw my arms around him and rested my head onto his shoulder. I loosened one hand and gently rested it on the little girl's back to remind her that she was still under our protection. I turned my head back toward Zane. “Then, go come up with a plan.” I said to him quietly, but firmly; defiantly. “We can't just leave everyone to die.” We locked eyes as if challenging each other. I could tell he didn't appreciate my attitude, and probably not even my presence. His resentment of me was understandable; I was temporarily safe while his own daughter was potentially being tortured or put to sleep, right at this moment. If she didn't survive, he would resent me even more and that wouldn't exactly help him feel motivated to want to save my parents. His own family would be his first priority.
              The moment these facts hit my consciousness, I tore my eyes away because I realized Zane could no longer be fully trusted. Reese, myself, the little girl, Reese's parents and my own were not his priority. I didn't blame him, his own family was now in danger and that would consume every thought he had and tailor every plan he made because he loved his family like I loved mine. What it meant, though, was that the three of us were truly on our own.
              Zane's gaze softened with empathy but he couldn't seem to find more words of comfort when he probably couldn't even comfort himself. I understood. “Suki, come with me.” Willow's mom pressed her palms to the floor and rose. She leaned down and gently rested her palm on top of my head for just a brief moment before turning to follow Zane, leaving the three of us to cling to each other in utter darkness once again. Reese finally shifted. I brought my hands up to his face, gently resting my fingers on the slight prickles that were growing out of his cheeks. I pressed my forehead against his and breathed slowly, softly. How deep in grief had he been? Had he heard a word Zane said to us, or had he just been too sad to process and to care?
              “Baby..” I'd never said that word in reference to Reese before. I'd never even considered it. Loving him had been a very secret daydream but I was not the same person I was just a few days ago. We were fugitives now with a very probable death sentence hanging over our heads. Maybe we could pull off a miracle, save The Complex and re-emerge on the surface to live happily ever after but the realist in me knew that we were sitting in the middle of a man-made lake of government deceit on a thin layer of ice, and it was cracking all around us. We knew we were being lied to but we didn’t know why. There was still so much to discover. Would we be able to find answers or would we be put to sleep within a day? Not knowing the answers to even those questions caused all of the fears built around my forced inhibitions to melt away like butter. My eyes fixed on Reese's and refused to look away from his pupils until I knew he was looking back into mine instead of past them. “Baby..” I whispered to him again. “Your parents may be still be alive. We're fugitives... they might be keeping your parents alive for leverage.” I hated my words. I hated how disgusting they tasted while they rolled past my tongue and out into the world, but I couldn't deny their truth. I'd known for six years, since the moment I lost my emotional innocence watching the flatfoots drag Grandpa Logan away, that there was no limit to what the government was capable of or how far they would go to devalue the life of an individual.