To Be Free Read online

  "I can't wait," I reply sweetly, and after making a face he follows after the first man, leaving us to the silence of the quiet screams and moans of agony; the sobs of those who've lost it all and hope to die with all their being. Most of them will die in the next twenty-four hours, if they're lucky; the chance of being one of the people with what they’re looking for is around 5%. They're great odds, so long as you're not one of the 5%.

  I catch the movement of the man as he gets up to his feet, massaging his wrists - given the height difference between him and the cell, I'd say he's around six feet - and carefully walks over to the eastern end of his cell, near where I'm at, and touches the bars carefully.

  He's either fearless or stupid, and I'm heavily leaning towards the latter as he touches the bar, jolting back with the sting of electricity. His eyes are a piercing brown shade, a hazel that shifts with the light, and full of that life most lose quickly around here.

  "I wouldn't waste my breath on escaping if I were you," I inform the man as I card my fingers through my overgrown fringe. The light brown hairs are damaged after being uncared for this long, washed once a week as it is. He turns that piercing gaze onto me, our cells separated by mere inches. "Trust me, you'll be let out soon enough, and you'll wish they'd never taken you out."

  Frowning, the man uses the sleeve of his issued attire - a long-sleeved white shirt and pants that don't do anything to keep out the cold at night - to press his hands on the bars, leaning towards me as best he can in his prison.

  "Why do you say that?" he asks, and for a second the voice throws me off. Not only because of recognition, but because I wasn't expecting to hear a voice like his - light at first, but deepens as he speaks like some sort of roller coaster. It's not one I'd associate with him.

  I can't say where I've heard that voice, though - my little stint of amnesia's getting worse as the weeks go by, and half my life is lost to me now. The parts I've wanted to forget ever since they happened haunt me still, however.

  "They always test the newbies," I state, shrugging a shoulder. "See that window up ahead? We have the privilege of watching the gruesome results of whatever they decide to do - although you'll get the same test as everyone. If you're what they're looking for, you survive. You're trash, you die."

  His frown deepens at me, clearly displeased, but I've used up what little tolerance I could dredge up for him. Besides, if things go the way they have for a while, he'll be dead and my turn to the chopping block will arrive soon.

  I plan to be out of here by then.

  "Who're you?" he questions, ignoring the fact that my thoughts have drifted away from him. I sigh loudly, enough for him to hear my irritation, before I turn my piercing gaze back onto him. He flinches back instinctively, the way everyone does when they meet my eyes and realize that I have the eyes of a witch.

  "Number Nine," I state, withholding the knowledge of my real name to him. Sure, I remember it the way I remember how to breathe, but there are some things you keep to yourself for the sake of protecting yourself.

  He frowns at me, clearly unimpressed, and I shrug. Then I lift up my shirt to show him the scar they've burned into my skin over my left pectoral.

  "When you survive the first test, you're given a number. You're no longer who you say you are, and you'd better forget that you ever had a name - here, you're a lab rat," I hiss, lowering the hem of the shirt and hiding the IX burned on my skin. "They test on you as much as they want until they have results and when you're no longer needed for the results to be satisfactory. Then they break you into pieces to be used by those who're too good to be in a slum like this."

  "But... why?" Twenty-One Questions asks, and I try not to sigh again. When I first came here I had so many questions, and there was no one to help me.

  Besides, chances are he's dead in a matter of minutes. It won't hurt.

  "Because of that," I state, pointing to the ceiling of our cells. He looks up curiously, muscles locking in place when his eyes catch sight of the words.

  He shakily whispers the words Bill 911. Adam's apple bobbing up with his nervousness, he mouths the words that I've memorized already.

  By order of the Holy Order of Christ, Pope Benedict the XXVIII has ordered that any and all Unnaturals who have been captured are to be given to the research facilities scattered across the United States of the New Order, and have their names and rights taken from them. From that day forward, they are specimens to be tested on and to be discarded. All Runners captured are to be taken to these facilities.

  All specimens must be a Survivor of the screening pre-birth examination that gauges what sexual orientation the child is, and have been confirmed as a Survivor through another screening. Any and all results not heterosexual are to be considered illegal as of this day onwards, and any citizen protecting the Unnatural will face Court Martial Law.

  As cited in Bill 911, section 1.a, the United States of the New Order of the Church of Christ's Charter of Rights, adapted from the United States of America's Constitution.

  "You set off the test, you pay the price," I conclude, looking away again. "You've only yourself to blame, and you should've Ran while you had the chance."

  He scoffs, looking away.

  "I don't know why I didn't," he mutters, thinking aloud as if he expects me to give half a fuck about what he's got to say. "Guess I thought I could actually raise my own family and pretend it didn't exist."

  I laugh, the sound foreign to me as it makes me shake and makes my eyes water. He turns to me with rage in his eyes, his fists balled at his sides, and I press my hands to my eyes to keep the tears from flowing out of sheer stupidity.

  "Pretend that something in your blood didn't exist?" I splutter, looking up at him. Eight and Five are laughing quietly to my left, having heard the exchange. He's scowling at me. "Jesus, what planet do you come from, you idealistic bastard?"

  "California," he states flatly, and I snicker.

  "The last true land of the brave and free, before the N.O. took that, too," I snicker, regaining my composure. My sides are aching with the laughter, as it's been... four years, I think, since I've laughed like that. The last time I was that merry was in Germany before my family thought it'd be a good idea to go to the N.O.

  I look as the hydraulic doors open, admitting two Vigils and a scientist brandishing a syringe. The scientist has a gas mask over his face, the lenses clear and allowing us the sight of his eyes as he scans the line of specimens awaiting his questing touch. We can't see his lips, but I know they're curved into a smile.

  They stop outside Twenty-One Question's cell, unlocking it. Like an animal who knows he's going to witness something horrible, he presses himself to the far back of the cell.

  "It hurts less if you just go with them," I announce from my seat against the western bars, watching carefully as the man looks at me briefly. The Vigils enter his cell and walk towards him, holding him by the arms, and he doesn't fight them.

  He does, however, hold my gaze until they're outside my cell and the scientist injects him with the liquid trapped in the syringe. It's enough to rend compliant, not enough to numb.

  "For what it's worth," I begin, our gazes locked. He's scared, that much I can tell, "I hope you die."

  The man's confusion is palpable as they pull him away, and I lean back against the bars and shut my eyes, escaping to the world where I can continue to plan my eventual escape, and leave the thought that that man might just be Eleven, if what I saw is true.

  If he is, I've less time than I thought I did.

  I Now Pronounce You...

  QUINN

  "For what it's worth, I hope you die."

  What kind of encouraging words are those? Who in their right mind would tell that to someone who's already practically shaking in their pants?

  Though... I suppose the man had a good reason for telling me this.

  The men lead me along through a pair of hydraulic doors that spit us out into the large, sectioned-off room that I could se
e through the window, the hysteria I've felt bubbling in my body trying to claw its way up my throat. Somehow I manage to swallow it down.

  I follow their insisting steps to a walled-off section where the only way to peer in is through the two-way window or through the door they lock securely behind us. There are a few other windows scattered to allow in some light, the fluorescent lights overhead offering further assistance in that department. They lead me to a metal operating table and lower me onto it, and though I want to fight and I try to will my body to move, it doesn't listen to me. The drug the man injected me with is making my limbs weigh fifty pounds each, leaden and immobile at my sides.

  They tie me down to the cold metal table, the man with the mask rifling through a folder while standing to my right. There's a small control pad near where he stands, and as he reads the folder he taps his fingers rhythmically on the surface. I turn my head away from the men tying me down, rooting my eyes to the ceiling and trying to breathe evenly.

  This isn't happening, I whisper to myself while I see the Vigils start to leer. Their blood lust is practically palpable, hands shaking with excitement at the manslaughter. It's then that I realize that they enjoy what they do, that they do this by choice. This can't be happening!

  "Quinn Terry, age twenty-two," the scientist starts offhandedly. I snap my eyes, already wide, to his position and see him press down on one of the controls. A machine starts to whirr almost silently over our heads, and the lights dim. "It's quite unusual to have someone this old, and the few specimens I've had have always harboured... interesting results."

  They experiment on humans... do they feel no shame?

  I look up just as hydraulics begin to hiss, and witness the ceiling over me pull back and allow a set of surgical needles the size of my wrists start lowering down at around my shoulders. I blanch.

  The man puts down the file and picks up a cylindrical stainless steel pipe and thumbs the button, activating the laser blade that's about the length of my pinkie. The needles hover over my shoulders, their razor sharp points kissing my skin only just as I start hyperventilating.

  "For what it's worth... I hope you die."

  Then they press into my skin and I howl. Wherever the metal touches my skin it burns, and I throw my head back so fast I feel my neck crack with the sudden movement. My muscles tighten with the jolt of pain and the scientist presses the heat of the blade right over my heart, speaking. His words don't reach my ears.

  Then he cuts, and the stab of pain goes right to my eyes. I shut them tightly and scream, my throat raw and protesting the abuse. There's fire igniting my veins and my body is screaming at how tense I've become, and my lungs are starving for air, finding none.

  He pulls the blade back but the pain remains, colours dancing behind my eyes as I feel the storm raging inside me, like wind battering at the windows until they surrender and rain pounding the walls until they fall. A fire so fierce it melts the coldest of metals, until everything around me is a chaotic mess.

  They're shouting, screaming around me but I can't hear them, can't concentrate. My ears are ringing and I can't feel anything, my skin on fire. I manage to crack my eyes open, gasping when the needles pull out of my shoulders rapidly - the movement forces me to cough up blood, and I let my head fall to the side, the heated metal beneath me colder than my cheek.

  Through half-lidded eyes I see that the windows - both leading outside and to the cells - have broken, the shards flying inwards as if someone went at them with a freight train. Pieces of glass lie in the walls, stuck fast, and have impaled a few people still in their cages - that man, Nine, wasn't spared, with a shard speared through his right arm - and the fire alarm is wailing. The sprinkler system is showering the scene; washing the blood away from my shoulders and making it run to the slick floor.

  "Get Eleven to the cages!" I hear, and turn my face towards the sound. There's a thick haze playing around me, and a handful of Vigils start towards me.

  Eleven... that's me?

  I face the ceiling again, realizing that the binds have come undone - melted, more like it - and I manage to sit up, albeit in a daze. I hold a hand to my forehead, blinking and trying to breathe through the lingering pain.

  Turning my head back towards the cages at a thought, I try to spot Nine.

  Right... Nine, is he alright? What the... my eyes widen slightly when I realize that he's no longer in his cage, but there's no bar out of place and the door isn't open. There's a bloody shard of glass and a pool of blood in his place. Well, if he's out, I guess he must be. With those wounds, though, I doubt he'll get very far...

  I turn around when one of the Vigils cries out, falling to the ground without a sound. Those around him watch the area, surveying for any possible threat, but through the red-misted haze around them it's hard to see anything.

  A second one falls, clutching his throat and coughing up blood, and only when the third falls while clutching his pride do I catch it: a small, quick movement in the haze, jumping impossibly quickly from place to place around the Vigils.

  As the fifth falls, the white movement in the haze leaves, the haze falling to the ground with the insistence of the water falling from the ceiling. The alarm wails in my ears, making them ring as the klaxon blares, and the white movement appears beside me in that red haze that falls prey to the water a moment later.

  "Get your ass up, Eleven!" Nine snaps, pulling me off the table so fast I stumble into him. He glares at me with those witch's eyes - nearly sky blue with a dark blue ring around the edge and around the pupil - and pulls me up against him, a hand around the waistband of my pants to help me hold my weight. "We've got to go before they bring Recon One!"

  He begins leading me through the facility as if he's reading a map, biting his chapped lower lip while he concentrates. I stumble along more than anything, weak and exhausted, but manage to find an extra burst of energy and support more of my weight.

  "There's no way I'm going to sit here and let them dissect us all," he hisses, his hands tightening around my wrist and waistband. "I won't."

  "...dissect us?" I parrot, and he glances down at me briefly through his mop of hair that's a shade shy of dirt brown. He's scraggly, in need of a shave and smells as if he hasn't bathed in a while - but I assume that must be the norm for someone who survives the tests, I tell myself. They get fed the bare minimum and are allowed to shower once a week, probably.

  It makes me wonder how long he's been here.

  "They want what's inside us," he informs me, and when I persist he doesn't elaborate. "Look, Eleven-"

  "Quinn."

  "Whatever," he sighs, irritated. "Quinn, we need to get out, fast. Recon One will be here within the hour, and trust me when I say you don't want to see what they do to Runners. I'll explain later."

  I follow him around the bend, and he bundles us into a maintenance room quickly to let the Vigils running along the hallway pass without seeing us. Once it's clear we keep walking, taking a left into a vast room full of bags. The tiled floor is stained with dried-up blood and it smells like decay.

  I gag, and the man beside me pulls the collar of his shirt over his nose.

  "It's not very pleasant," he mutters through the fabric, letting me go and walking over to a laundry chute placed in the wall. It's about the size of a human body, maybe six feet and a half long and half a meter wide. Nine walks over to the chute and opens it carefully, keeping his face away. "It beats the alternative, though."

  I hobble over to him, peering through the chute and noticing the breeze pushing its way inside.

  "Did you do all this?" I question, and the eerily-eyed man looks at me from the corner of his eyes.

  After having seen him jump from place to place, melting from some red mist as if they were doorways to other places, I wouldn't be surprised. Everyone knows there's something weird happening to the Survivors, something the Council calls O.L.F., and I think I just witnessed it for myself.

  "What, the windows and fire system?" He qu
estions, for once looking surprised. His eyes widen at the question and he tilts his head slightly to the side - the gesture and the tone makes him look more innocent, less cruel. There's a strange light in his eyes I've never seen in people before, but the voice he has is hinting at the knowledge of another language - something European. "No, that was you."

  I take a slight step back, and he looks over our shoulders to the door we left ajar. After a moment he walks over to it and pulls some of the lumpy bags in front of it, muttering an apology as he barricades it.

  "My Other Life Force - or OLF, as the Council calls it for short - has nothing to do with the elements. That's what the initial test does, Quinn; it sends a jolt to that part of us that can control this... power, and it activates it if we have one." Placing the last bag down, he turns to look at me. "Some of us, about 5%, are born with the Gift. We're the unlucky ones - the rest that come here are just unlucky in the way that their hearts yearn for a different kind of relationship."

  "Then... what was that thing you used?" I question, and the man sighs, both annoyed and not at the same time. Pushing his overgrown hair back, he lifts his eyes to look at me.

  "My Gift is Temporal - yours, from the looks of it, seems to be centered on storm-like attributes. I've had three years in this hell to practice using it, so I know how to get around," he shrugs. "Before you ask, I've been waiting for the right moment to escape. That prison was just a temporary home for me. I wasn't ready to Run."

  I look away, biting my lower lip in thought as he walks over to the hatch again.

  "...can I ask something else?"

  Laughing lightly, the man - I only call him such because he seems to be in his twenties, roughly my height - looks at me from the corner of his eyes.

  "Yes, Twenty-One Questions?" he teases, and I choose to ignore the comment.

  "How did we get to this point?"

  His merriment dies as soon as it's come, his smile melting off as he looks towards the bar of the hatch he's holding. The klaxon still wails, now a little quieter thanks to the distance we've placed between us and it, and his confusing eyes stare at the metal as if he's not seeing it at all, but the stories being told by the drops of blood staining the surface.