Imprisoned (29 page)

My anxiety went up several notches as he laid out all the complications we were sure to face. If we were caught, I could only imagine the horrible punishment we’d have. The more I thought about it, the more I began to get cold feet. “There are so many things that can go wrong. I’m really scared.”

“I know. Me too. But think of the alternative. Do you really want to stay here?”

There was more truth to his statement than he knew. If I didn’t get to the tunnel by November tenth, I feared I’d be stuck in this world for good. In fact, I still wasn’t certain it would work to go to the tunnel early—although I was willing to try. I wasn’t even certain that November tenth was the magic date—I only assumed it was because when I had come from my world to this one, I’d gone back in time to the beginning of September. That made me think that November tenth was like a cut-off and if I didn’t get to the tunnel by then, the window to my world would be closed. “No, of course I don’t want to stay here.”

For just a moment I was tempted to tell him the truth—I’d come from a parallel universe where it was okay to be overweight and I was trying to get back there—but as I played the words in my head, I knew the craziness of it would just confuse matters and we needed to stay focused on our task.

“So it’s on, right? Tonight at midnight?”

A shiver went through me. I wasn’t sure if it was from fear or elation. “Yes.”

During class I hardly listened at all, my mind on all the things that could go wrong. I was extremely excited that freedom was finally so close, but also terrified. Several times during class I felt my anxiety level increasing as I pictured us being caught and dragged back to be beaten and humiliated in front of everyone. As the images paraded across my mind, my hands shook and I kept them balled in my lap.  

During English Billy sat near me, and one time I turned to him and almost said to forget the whole thing, but when he looked at me and I saw the anticipation on his face, I knew I couldn’t back out. I smiled and turned back to the front and tried to only think positive thoughts.

At the end of class, Billy walked with me to the elevator. “You okay?” he asked.

“Just nervous.”

“I know. Me too.” He smiled and nodded. “Hang in there. Let’s meet again before counseling.”

“Okay.”

At dinner, I kept thinking about how the next day at that time I could be back in my home world, eating dinner with my family. The thought kept me going.

When I stood to leave, Alyx touched my arm. “I need to talk to you. Meet me in our room in a few minutes?”

“Okay.”

I dropped off my tray and went to my room. After changing into my workout clothes, I sat on the bed, intensely curious about what Alyx wanted to discuss. A few minutes later she arrived.

“Hey,” she said as she closed the door.

“What’s up?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.”

I had no clue what I might have said and decided I should make that clear. “Yeah, so, I wasn’t exactly myself last night.”

“I noticed you seemed a little out of it. What was that all about?”

“In my counseling session they made me eat four power bars.”

She looked confused. “So?”

“You know how I told you there are drugs in them?”

She nodded.

“Well . . .”

“Oh.” Her eyes drifted away from mine as she processed that. “Wow. I guess I didn’t really get it.” Her gaze came back to my face. “And I’m
eating
that stuff at every meal.”

“We all are.” I was glad she was finally catching on to the seriousness of it, but disappointed it had taken her so long. Although I had to admit, if I hadn’t experienced the effects first-hand, I wasn’t sure I would have really understood it either.

“So, like I said,” she continued. “I was thinking about what you said last night.”

“Alyx, I don’t remember what I said.”

Her face reddened. “You said that Austin told you he was waiting for me to leave so he could be with you.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.
I had said that? Out loud? To her?
No wonder she had slapped me.

“And then you acted like you were just joking. But please, Morgan, tell me the truth.”

I stared at her, trying to read her thoughts. Did she
really
want to know the truth or did she just want me to tell her that I’d made the whole thing up. As I looked at her, I knew she deserved to be told the truth. “He really said that.”

Her shoulders slumped and her face seemed to sag. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.” She spun around and began pacing. “You tried to tell me before but I wouldn’t listen. But you’re right. I know you’re right. I see him flirting with the girls in the gym
all the time
.” She stopped pacing and stood in front of me. “I was blind before, but now that I know the truth, I’m not going to let him use me anymore.”

Thrilled that she didn’t blame me and glad that she had faced the truth, I asked, “What are you going to do?”

She pursed her lips, then after a moment of thinking, grinned. “I’m going to get him back, that’s what.”

“How?”

She began pacing the small space again. “I don’t know yet.” Then she whirled back to me. “Help me think of something, Morgan. You hate him, right? You told me so.”

“Well, yeah, but . . .”

“Then help me come up with something good.”

I thought about our plans to escape that night and wondered if there was some way I could use this to help us. Then an idea sprang to mind. An idea that would alleviate some of the risk. I didn’t know for sure what Austin and Alyx had been doing, but I decided to make a guess. “Alyx, don’t be offended, but if you were to tell Austin that you were pregnant, would he believe you?”

Her face went bright red and I knew I’d been right.  “Yeah, why?”

“What if you told him you thought you were pregnant, and you needed his help to get out of this place and get checked out. Would he help you?”

“Wait a minute. Is this about the,” she glanced at the door, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “The escape you and Piper talked about?”

Was my suggestion that obvious? “Piper changed her mind, but yes, it has something to do with it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re doing it on your own?”

I wasn’t about to confess that Billy was involved. “Yes.”

“Wow. You’re really something, Morgan. You surprise me. I would never be that brave.”

“Come on, Alyx. You broke all kinds of rules when you spent time with Austin. That takes courage too.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Do you think Austin would fall for it?”

She laughed. “He’d freak if he thought he’d gotten me pregnant. I think he’d do anything I asked.”

My hopes skyrocketed. If we could get Austin’s unwitting help, our chances of success would increase dramatically.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked.

“Tell him you need his key card right away and that you need him to make sure you can leave tonight at midnight without anyone noticing—have him make sure the Enforcers aren’t monitoring the cameras at that time. Promise him you’ll come right back, but that you know someone who can fix things.” I paused. “He can take that to mean whatever he wants, as long as he helps you get out.” I stopped as I thought of one more thing. “Mention the chip in your arm and that you’re worried they’ll know where you’ve gone. He won’t want anyone to know either, so he ought to make this work somehow.”

“You’re devious, Morgan.” She smiled. “I like it.” She was quiet for a minute. “But what if he wants to go with me?”

I chewed on the inside of my lip as I tried to anticipate how Austin would respond to Alyx’s request. He seemed like the kind of person who only cared about covering his own butt. “Tell him it would be safer for him to stay here, that it would be bad enough if you were caught, but that if he was with you, he would really be screwed.”

She laughed. “That should scare him away.” She was quiet for a minute. “What about you? What are you going to do? Are you really going to leave?”

“I’m going to try.”

She sighed. “I’ll miss you, Morgan.”

I smiled. “That’s assuming I actually make it out of here.”

“Yeah.”

I had hoped for a more positive answer from her, but I knew she was just being realistic. I stood. “I need to go do my workout.” I thought about her task. “When do you think you’ll get the key card?”

“I’ll see if I can get it before light’s out.”

Hope and fear flared in my chest as the reality of my escape plan came into sharper focus. “Good.” I left and went to the gym. As I began my workout, I saw Austin come out of his office. I thought about the news Alyx would be telling him in the next couple of hours and had to hold back a grin. His world would be shattered, but it served him right. Of course she wasn’t really pregnant—at least I hoped not—but the idea of him believing it made me happy. He deserved any stress that this would give him after all he’d done to the kids here.

Naturally, he came over to talk to me when he saw I’d arrived. “Hey, Morgan.”

“Hey,” I panted as I jogged on the treadmill.

“You’re getting better at these workouts.”

“Thanks.”

“Stop by my office when you’re done.” He grinned. “I need to talk to you.”

His demand startled me. He’d never asked me to come to his office before. What was it about? What would happen if I didn’t go? “Uh, okay.”

He nodded, then walked away.

For the rest of my workout I fretted about what he wanted to talk to me about and considered not going. But then I decided I didn’t want to do anything that would put a spotlight on me—not on the day I planned to escape.

Chapter Thirty One

After I cooled down, I headed to his office. His door was closed. I listened but didn’t hear any noise coming from inside, so I knocked. When I heard footsteps approach, my heart began to pound. The door opened a few inches and I saw Austin’s face.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You told me to stop by.”

He looked confused for a moment. “Oh, yeah. Well, this isn’t a good time.”

“Okay.” I heard movement behind him and caught a glimpse of the back of Alyx’s head as she sat in one of the chairs.

He shut the door in my face and a large smile lifted my lips. It looked like Alyx was sharing her “news”. And Austin was taking it about as well as we’d predicted.

Pleased that my plan seemed to be working, I went to my floor and showered, then hurried to the classroom floor so Billy and I could finalize our plans. When I thought about getting back home, I became giddy and could hardly contain my happiness.

Billy and I met in the same place we’d talked earlier. When I saw his bruised and swollen face, I immediately flashed back to the night just over a week before when I’d literally been dragged out of my house and brought here, then body-slammed to the ground by Hansen’s Enforcer partner.

If Billy and I were caught trying to escape, the consequences would be severe.

Suddenly I was terrified to even try it and had a better understanding of why Piper had backed out. Of course the drugs in her system didn’t help, but she didn’t have as much motivation as I did to leave this place. Trying to convince myself that the risk of being caught was worth it, I pictured the tunnel that would take me back to my world and felt a glimmer of courage displace the abject fear.

“Hey, Morgan.”

“Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

“I have to admit, when I think about being caught, I start to get really scared.”

He smiled. “I know. So do I. But then you have to think about what it would be like to be here for another six months or longer.”

I’d been here less than two weeks and already I’d had more terrible things happen to me than had happened in my whole life. I nodded. “You’re right.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. “Here.”

It was a small book of matches. I took it from him and slid it into my pocket. “Do you really think this will work?”

He grimaced. “Do you have a better idea?”

Glad that I had good news to deliver, I smiled, then told him about my conversation with Alyx and what she was going to do.

“That’s brilliant, Morgan.”

“Thanks.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe we should skip the fire and just use the key card.”

“But don’t you think it would be helpful to have the confusion a fire would cause?”

“Or would that make the Enforcers on a higher alert?”

“That’s true, I guess.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s start our fires at midnight, then you use the key card to come to my floor and get me. I’ll meet you at the elevator and we’ll head to the first floor. When the fire alarm goes off there should be a lot of confusion, so we should be able to slip out without anyone noticing.”

His plan sounded solid and I tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong. “Okay. Midnight.” When I saw his grin, it was the happiest I’d seen him, and I realized that maybe he really did want to get out of here as bad—or worse—than I did.

We went to our counseling session and sat with the rest of the group. After we said the pledge, I began to worry what Mrs. Reynolds had in mind tonight—it seemed like she had something diabolical planned for every night we met. Sure enough, once we’d all sat back down, she made an announcement.

“Starting tomorrow, all of you will be given three power bars at each meal.”

There was a murmur that went through the group. All I could think of was they must have decided two per meal wasn’t enough to bring about the effect they were after.

“But because of the extra caloric intake,” she said. “The amount of food given at each meal will be reduced proportionally.”

Of course. After their little experiment on me, they’d realized that diluting the drugs with food made the drugs less powerful.

The murmurs turned to grumbling.

“Now, now,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “This is just temporary. We want to see how effective the appetite suppressants are.”

“What are we? Guinea pigs?” a boy said loud enough for all to hear.