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“When you’re in there,” he continues, “we will have no way of contacting you.”
“Be back before dawn, please.” Mason tells me in his fatherly way. He’s only five years older than me, but he’s more of a father than my dad ever was. Dads aren’t supposed to leave their children by themselves, after all.
“Yes, Dad.” I laugh jokingly.
“You sure you don’t need a partner to cause trouble with?” Hayden smirks. He’s in a good mood today, which is a nice change. It’s so rare to see him smile that sometimes I almost forget what it looks like.
“I’m not causing any trouble today,” I tell him. “I’m just going in and out.”
“Whatever,” he shrugs, “I still think it would be more fun if I came with you.”
“This isn’t about fun, Hayden,” Aubrey chides, “Emerson is trying to help us. She’s going to help everyone.”
“We’ll see,” I say, reminding her not to have too much hope. I don’t even know if going to the school and following these nightmares will do me any good. For all I know, I could be leading us into a dead end.
As long as it’s not a dead dead end, then I’ll be okay.
“Take this,” Hayden walks up to me and places a syringe in my palm. “It’s a memory serum.”
“How did you get your hands on this? I-” he silences me with a look. That look alone tells me where he got it from; but I can’t say it out loud. It’s his secret to share, not mine. Still, I give him a disapproving look. “You shouldn’t have.”
“It was no trouble,” he is clearly impressed with himself for getting his hands on this. Memory serums are rare, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if he traded half his soul to get it for me. “Use it if you get stuck.”
“Ye of little faith,” I tell him.
“I have faith in you, Em. Crusoe’s little invention on the other hand…” Crusoe frowns and Hayden punches him hard in the arm. Crusoe cries out in pain, holding his sore arm in agony.
“HEY!” A soldier yells from the middle of the road. It’s past curfew, we technically shouldn’t be out. The soldiers generally don’t care about what we do; we are no threat to them. They’re the ones with the guns, the power, and the authority. We are just scum beneath their feet. But sometimes the soldiers can be annoying, like this one seems to be.
“That’s my cue,” I say, putting the serum in my pocket and hiding behind our house to be hidden by the shadows.
“Be back before dawn,” Mason yells out to me.
“Stay safe,” Aubrey calls.
“Have fun without me,” Hayden taunts, their voices fading as they run back inside our perfectly old, falling-apart house.
The soldier, noticing that the gang has made it inside, stops before he reaches the path to our house. He could go inside if he wanted to, but I know he won’t. Most of the houses in Beast Eye are too dirty and unkept for the soldiers to bother with. They would never go inside one of the houses unless absolutely necessary. And even then, they would be reluctant.
They believe our houses are contaminated with some deadly disease. And honestly, I would prefer it if it stayed that way. I don’t need the soldier’s invading anymore of my life.
When the soldier moves back to his usual place on the road, patrolling the streets, I inspect his movements. He has a gun, as all of the soldiers do, stuck to his side like a lifeline. If he sees me out here at night, past curfew, he could easily shoot me; he would probably be more than willing to. But I need to figure out why I keep having these nightmares. And to do that, I need to go straight to the source.
As soon as his back is turned, and the soldier is far enough from our house that I don’t think he’ll be able to hear my hard footsteps on the rocky ground, I take my chances and sprint as fast as I can across the road to the next house.
I hide in the shadows of that house and sprint across to the next one once I am sure no one can see me. I keep going until I reach the large electrical fence, topped with barbed wire, that separates the Ransacked from the Civilised. There is a small gate for the bus to travel to and from Beast Eye every day for the kids to get to school, but other than that, no one is allowed out.
I go down to where the fence looks older and find a small hole. I found it years ago when I was living by myself before I met Aubrey. It’s how I brought Aubrey to my house. I squeezed her through this hole, after sneaking out to see her one night. Occasionally the gang and I sneak out through this fence to go searching for food in the Civilised suburbs. It’s a dangerous game that we play, our way of survival. Others know about the hole, but they are too scared to sneak through. We all know the danger if we get caught. We know that we might die. But we are reckless.
If we are going to die, we might as well die having fun.
When I get to the other side of the fence, I survey my surroundings to make sure no one is coming. There are occasionally cars that pass along the fence, but more often than not, the road from Beast Eye to Genesis City is abandoned.
I am certain that no one is coming, so I step out into the night and make the long trek over to the school where hopefully I find the answers to all of the questions that I have.
Chapter 2 - Emerson Clarke
I’ve been here before. Not personally, of course, but I’ve seen this place a thousand times in my mind. The moon reflects a pale glow on the dark corridor. I recognise it so well that it’s almost like I could call this school my own. Almost.
