To Be Free (3 page)

"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 see 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 questions, 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.

"After the government passed
the law that same-sex couples could legally get married and be
recognized, people stopped having children. There were less
children and more violence in regards to the church picketing and
mugging people who they suspected supported this decision or were
gay themselves," he states, licking his dry lips. "It got to the
point where people were either not having kids at all or moving
away because of the violence, and the people in the United States
were no longer procreating the way they used to.

"The church rallied a force and
took the White House, kicking the president out and hanging him,
then proclaiming that whoever supported or was gay would face Court
Martial Law. Then... well, you should know the rest."

I nod sullenly. The church set
up these facilities, founded the Vigils and fought a civil war that
was basically pro vs. anti-gay, and the pro-gay lost. They were all
shot and their families were brought to these facilities, and
scientists created the screening examination - the S.O.E. - for
sexual orientation. Every pregnant mother must announce her
pregnancy to the court no later than two months after conception,
and three months after conception they do the S.O.E. If it's
positive, she gets an abortion.