To Be Free Page 4

"You came from Germany, right?"

  I look at him a moment, not having expected that question in the slightest. He doesn't look at me, though, so I shrug and look ahead again as I answer.

  "Circumstances made us leave my homeland," I reply carefully, trying my absolute hardest not to think about that right now. Just vaguely mentioning it sends a shiver of dread up my spine and the anxiety creep up on me, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of my face as I concentrate on anything but that. Now's not the time for a panic attack.

  "Can I ask?" he questions, looking at me from the corner of his eyes. He either doesn't notice the fear creeping up on me or mistakes it for pain concerning my legs. I shake my head.

  "Maybe I'll tell you someday," if I ever have the courage to relive that nightmare, I add.

  "Fair enough."

  We walk through to the equipment part of the lodge, where you can buy what you need to go on their hiking trail, hunting grounds, ski hill or any other of their offered activities here. I point to the clothing section and we make our way over, the suits untouched from the end of the season, if a bit dusty.

  I pull away from Quinn now, setting the lamp down on the shelf nearby and pulling a suit from the pile that looks like it'll fit him. He tilts his head curiously, confused.

  "Since we're going to be Running, we need an advantage," I start, handing it to him after holding it up and confirming he'll be able to slip in. "Probe Units will come in handy."

  "Not very inconspicuous," he mutters, demonstrating by placing his hand beneath one of the sensors. It lights up blue.

  "That's why you get one of these," I continue, rolling my eyes as I pull out another cloth and hold it up to gauge for the right length. "Refractive Synium - hunters use it to conceal themselves and trick prey. You know how it works, right?"

  He makes a face, shaking his head as I throw it up at him. Quinn catches it.

  "I was a Lit. major," he admits, making me quirk an eyebrow. "Me and science don't get along too well."

  "Well then, aren't you in the wrong era," I muse, pulling out another long enough for me - as I stand at five feet eleven inches, it's a tall order. Pun intended. "Refractive Synium is made of Etherinium, the stuff found in the deepest reaches of the earth. Follow me so far?" Eleven nods and helps me back up when I pull myself up with difficulty, and I smile my thanks. "It's refractive by nature, and it's melted down and made into synthetic fibre. It takes the light around the wearer and refracts it, making them see things they don't - the lack of a human body, in this case. It's also very good at keeping warm and is heavily similar to super-fibre cloth."

  "How's this work, then?" he asks, motioning to the suit in his hands. I take one for myself, checking the size before glancing around for the shelf of boxers.

  "Macromite - it reacts to heat and a pulse," I state idly, picking out two pairs and tossing one to the man. He arches an eyebrow. "The macromite is treated like the component of a computer in this case, and they use it in a lot of life-support and medical machines now - don't give me that look, my major was Geology."

  Quinn laughs, and I grumpily accept his offer to help me walk to the changing room at the southern end of the store, skirting by the register. We go our separate ways to change, and in the solace of the little cubicle I breathe a sigh of relief, glad to have a moment to myself.

  Peeling off my wet clothes is among the most uncomfortable experiences I've had since coming to the N.O., but once I'm zipping up the suit up to my Adam's apple and the macromite is shining a light blue as it monitors my health, I smile. The suit's a near-black, made of super-fibre threads that bend lithely to my movements. It clings to me the way a second skin would, the sleeves covering my middle fingers and thumbs but leaving the other three exposed, a circle of the mineral on the top of my hands. A line of the mineral stretches up my arm, a blue light travelling from my hand to the pocket at my shoulder, and travels down my sides, front and back and down the sides of my legs to the top of my feet.

  The best thing about these is that you can forgo shoes, as the suit comes with built-in soles that lessen the impact of falling.

  Once the cloak sits on my shoulders, the clasp tied at the base of my neck, I pull out and head for the equipment section while using the shelves and walls for support.

  Quinn comes out while I'm putting dried-up food and some flashlights in a backpack, and I idly instruct him to look beneath the register for a safe of some sort and pillage it if he can. He ducks underneath to do as he's told while I place two canteens, all of them full, in the backpacks I'm loading, and I toss in a fire-starter for good measure. Once I zip them up I tie a bedroll and a tent on each, clipping some climbing gear on the side as well.

  I weigh them, satisfied that they're not as heavy as I'd imagined, and bring them over to the man raiding the safe. He's pulling out wads of hundred dollar bills, folded into thousands, and puts a total of three thousand in each backpack. Once we're done, the lamp unlit as our suits offer enough light to see the things around us, we carry the bags out - I grab two first-aid kits on my way out, having almost forgotten.

  "What exactly is the benefit of the suits, anyways?" he asks as I slip into one of the bedrooms. The roar of the thunder can be felt in my very bones as it rains hell outside, and I close the curtains well enough so that no light will slip through and give away our position. He closes the door behind us after shutting the others, just in case.

  "The macromite lights up yellow when our nerves register pain," I inform him, sitting down on one of the beds and rubbing my legs carefully. "See? The lights along the side of my legs are yellow, while my arms are blue. Not only that, but the super-fibre protects against most injuries - including bullets."

  We sit in silence for a while, he on one bed and I on the other, and the only thing filling the void of noise is the rain beating the roof mercilessly and the thunder groaning in the distance. I look at my hands, turning them this way and that and watching how the light plays along the nearly-bare room. The only things in this dusty room are the beds, a breakfast table and a door leading to a bathroom.

  "I was fifteen," he whispers, more to himself than me, but I look up slightly anyways. A thought that someone both doesn't want you to hear but it comes out anyways is usually important. It means it was important enough for them to feel the urge to tell you, and even though it could be just a silly thing, it's still worth listening to. "I'd been dating Meredith on-and-off for the past year; it was expected of us to pick a partner before we turned nineteen, so the pressure was getting on. Most of my friends and classmates had partners since they were fourteen or even thirteen."

  Quinn doesn't add to that for a bit, and I almost forget he's even there as I look back to my hands. Then he continues.

  "There was this guy, a very nice guy we all called Kenny, who was my closest friend. He and I were on the basketball team together and we'd been friends since preschool." I look at him from the corner of my eyes, noticing the sad smile gracing his lips. "He called me in the middle of the night and told me he was scared that he was gay. Explained to me that he didn't find any girl attractive and he thought he liked this guy at school, and I snuck out after curfew and met up with him at his place - his parents were out for the weekend."

  He shakes his head, sighing as if he can't even believe he's telling this to a total stranger. Leaning back against his hands and looking to the ceiling, the Californian continues.

  "He was petrified - sure I was bringing the Vigils with me at first, poor guy, but after realizing that his best friend wouldn't do that to him he let me in. We sat on his couch and talked for over an hour, and I told him that he shouldn't be afraid of it - you know, supportive bullshit in a dystopian society." Quinn laughs once dryly, a laugh that's meant to hurt himself. "I'd never given my sexuality much thought before that night, as the very thought could mean you die, but after what happened..."

  He falls silent, reliving a memory I'm not privy to and a million miles away. When he speaks, it's softly and b
arely loud enough for me to hear above the thunder and rain outside.

  "He looked so scared, so alone and so desperate for anyone's love and acceptance that I felt I'd be a bad friend if I ignored it," he admits, falling down with his back to the mattress and throwing an arm over his eyes. I lean back against my hands and watch him, my full attention locked on his words and his defeated body language. His voice is thick as he continues, breaking many times in one sentence. "I've kept lying to myself about it for seven years and what it meant, why I did it, but... the simple reason why I kissed that boy and made love to him that night is because I, too, craved that kind of acceptance. I was alone in a world that wanted to kill me, to suffocate me, and we both crashed and burned that night. We both did the one thing we'd been told not to do since birth, and two days after that he was taken away. I never even got to say goodbye."

  Quinn stops, his story over, and just breathes shakily. In and out, breath hitching with every intake and quivering with every exhale. Lying scant feet to my left is a man so broken you can't even tell who he is, a wall of glass around him so that you see what he wants you to see, and for one moment I'm allowed to see the inside. The darkest reaches of his heart.

  I bite my lower lip, my hand twitching with an urge I try to ignore while the man near me slowly suffocates in his own self-depreciating hatred. Sighing internally, I carefully stand and sit back down beside him, by his right hip, and carefully touch his forearm thrown over his eyes as if he's a live wire. He stops breathing altogether.

  "I'm terrible at consoling people," I tell him, and he cautiously starts breathing again, tense. "Something happened to me when I was thirteen and it stretched out until I was seventeen, something so horrible I have nightmares about it and just thinking about it sends me into a cold panic. I don't know how to put into words the things I try to say, so I let my actions speak instead; but... I know. I know the pain of hating yourself so much you stare at a knife and press it to your skin, wonder if it'll be quick enough for it to be painless."

  Quinn removes his arm carefully, watching me, and I want to look away but I somehow hold his red-eyed gaze, hand resting carefully on his shoulder. Every angle around us is brought into sharp relief, a blue light bathing the ethereal scene as the wind howls outside, threatening to knock the walls down around us.

  "I used to stay up nights on end, crying myself to sleep because it hurt to be alive, it hurt to think and it hurt to breathe. I'd stop eating for days and be admitted to the hospital when I got too weak, and I never wanted to leave 'cause it meant going back into hell. I didn't talk and I tried killing myself, I tried so many times I've lost count." I pull back the sleeve of my left arm, showing him the scars. His eyes fall from mine to the markings I've carved into my skin, and they widen at the sight before snapping back up to me. I fix my sleeve as I hold the gaze again. "No one knew of the pain, I stopped thinking and stopped feeling - I became a shell until I snapped. The day I snapped is the day I left that hell, but I entered a new one when I came here and was taken away from home about a year later, when they realized my trauma not only completely changed who I was, but reinforced my aversion to women."

  Slowly he sits up, leaning against his left hand as he continues to watch me. I smile as best as I can through the shaky anxiety growing, the cold claws running down my back at the memory.

  Quinn seems to see that, the growing panic, because he reaches for me, pulls me against him and we fall back down onto the bed. I can only see his neck, his chin pressed against the top of my head, and although the urge to push him away surges so violently I see stars, I ignore it. Instead I close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else, the smell of rain, dust and something distinctly Quinn in my nose.

  He starts humming a song, one I don't know, and it pushes the anxiety away with every tremor. The rain pounding on the roof adds to the lullaby and I feel myself falling even more into a trance, and with the comforting weight of an arm around my waist to hold me there I give in.

  I couldn't have fought it even if I'd've tried.

  A Two-Way Mirror Only Reflects the Image you Project

  QUINN

  The last thing I'd intended to do was fall asleep with him like that, but after running for hours on end and allowing your body to start relaxing, you kind of don't get to decide. Sebastian - God that's such a mouthful; I'll have to ask him about a nickname - looked ready to pass out, so it's not like I could really help it. He looked petrified.

  After detangling our limbs and slipping out of the warm grip of the clingy fucker, I pull off my cloak and place it over him like some sort of makeshift blanket, though the chill of the morning sneaks up on me almost as soon as its warm embrace is off my shoulders. The man unconsciously pulls it up to his chin, curling up a little, and that makes the cold a bit more bearable.

  He always looks so angry, yet like this... he looks so peaceful. So calm and happy. I sit on the edge of the bed a moment, watching him as his chest rises and falls gently and he snores very lightly.

  The notion makes me smile, but the smile fades when I notice the sheen of sweat on his forehead. Carefully I press the back of my hand to it, realizing how hot it actually is, and swear softly.

  The idiot caught a cold. No wonder it felt as if I was clutching a furnace.

  Sighing, I get up and carefully peer out the door to ensure there's no one around, and when I'm satisfied I quickly make my way to the back of the lodge for another first aid kid, bringing it back and rummaging through the bulky thing for some medicine he could take. After coming back victorious I place it on the bedside table along with the white box, looking to the man to gauge how asleep he is.

  He's pretty out of it, so I get up and slip into the bathroom to shower and take care of business, so to speak. I crank up the heat of the water to as hot as I can manage, stand underneath the merciless liquid with my forehead pressed to the shower wall, and think.

  I think about the words he told me, and the pain that graced his features when he begun talking about it - that was the look of a man who'd wished to die with all his heart but was never granted such a wish. A man who'd given up and was offered hope again, only to have it ripped from his grasp and shattered in the process. A man who couldn't trust another soul without losing his mind.

  I also think about Kenny a bit, something I'm ashamed to admit I haven't done in a long time. My memory fails me the way a human's mind is flawed, and I can't quite picture his face nor remember his voice, but I remember that night with frightening clarity.

  He looked so scared. As if he thought I'd kill him myself, and he fully hoped I would - as this dystopian society brought us up to believe we had to die if we were even remotely gay or anything other than heterosexual Christians. If we skipped Church on Sundays and if we swore using God's name we were the scum of society, and those who oppressed others were heroes. Those who killed our own in the name of God were those we looked up to.

  Kenny had looked so broken in front of me, and what else could I have done? I reassured him in the only way I knew how, told him that didn't make him any less of a man in my eyes, and when he looked up and our eyes met, I couldn't have fought the urge to kiss him even if it meant I wouldn't be here today.

  I wonder what would've happened if he'd pushed me away instead of pulled me closer. How fate would've played out.

  It's really, really hard growing up, I muse, opening my eyes and looking at the tile inches from my nose. It's hard and no one understands.

  I wash up and get out, towelling myself dry as best as I can before slipping the boxers and suit back on, zipping it up to my Adam's apple and making a face as I adjust to the constricting material. Sure, it moves well; but it takes a moment to get used to.

  Plucking one of the complementary toothbrushes from the sink I make good use of it, spitting out the foam and leaving the steamy bathroom, glad the plumbing still works even though it's closed for the season.

  Nine looks as if he's in a nightmare, his face contorted in pain and his bre
athing irregular. I leave the towel at the foot of the bed and climb up until I'm beside him, pushing sweat-soaked, dirty strands from his face. He curls up a little in the famous fatal position, as if trying to protect himself, and I decide then it's best to wake him up.

  "Wake up," I call, shaking his shoulder slightly. His hand lashes out and grabs my wrist so tightly my fingers go numb within moments, and gritting my teeth I take my other hand to push him onto his back, shaking him. "Sebastian! Come on, wake up!"

  He shouts a single phrase that chills my blood:

  "Get away from me!"

  I don't move for a second, lips parted as I watch his face contort and his eyelids flutter with how tightly they're closed. His own chapped lips are parted and he's breathing hard, tears escaping his eyes and running down the sides of his face.

  Something happened to me when I was thirteen and it stretched out until I was seventeen, something so horrible I have nightmares about it and just thinking about it sends me into a cold panic.

  "Please, stop." This he says in such a pained, pleading voice that it makes my breath catch, that tone a sound capable of breaking any heart. His hold is loose on my wrist now, and I decide that shaking him won't work.

  Besides, after hearing that tone, in a voice I've only heard sigh in exasperation and scoff in derision... God, it's not a sound that voice should ever make.

  Instead I carefully pull his head onto my lap, remembering something I used to do to Annie when she'd have trouble sleeping. I mindlessly smooth his hair from his face, the strands in dire need of a wash, and I start singing a lullaby. Annie's favourite, from an old game we found in the attic that somehow still worked.

  Once we heard it she wanted me to see if the song had any lyrics to it, and I'd found an old audio file from the beginning of the twenty-first century with what she wanted. She never wanted me to sing anything else for her - just that song, and it's the same one I sang when her beloved cat 'went to sleep' in her arms.