07. For Freedom

 

“I don’t believe you.”

 

“Goddamnit Ran, why would I we be lying?!”

 

Ran shrugged a shoulder at them, fixing his glasses higher up his nose.  His arms were folded across his chest, and his gaze was as intimidating as ever.  “It doesn’t make any sense.  They wouldn’t be killing us on purpose.  Don’t bother me with your stupid conspiracy theories.”

 

Ex made a loud noise of frustration and started yanking at his hair. 

 

“Calm down Exy, let me try,” Kibo said in a quiet voice, putting a hand on Ex’s shoulder.  He gently pushed Ex behind him, where the redheaded boy could curse at Ran in peace.

 

“Look, Ran,” Kibo started, trying not to be bothered by the glare his cousin was giving him.  “It all makes sense.  They try to distract us with really cool stuff so we don’t think about how weak we’re getting from all these diseases.  Trial and error, you know?  Um, how does that saying go…?”  He bit his lower lip as he tried to think.  Finally, the old cliché donned on him.  “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”

 

“What does that have to do with anything?”  Ran leaned against the hallway wall.  Kibo and Ex had dragged him to a far corridor, where the make-shift library was.  No one went there, aside from Ran, of course.  He was the only one who made use of the old, decaying books there.  How he could manage to read the blurry text, no one knew.

 

Kibo sighed, tugging at his hair anxiously.  “They don’t care about us!  Well, not us us, but us as people?  As individuals!  They just care about us as experiments.  They just care about us as results!  They’ll only care about us if we don’t die!”

 

Ran shrugged again, sighing this time.  “Why is this a surprise to you?”

 

Ex and Kibo both looked at him in shock.

 

Ran took off his glasses, shaking his head at them.  He calmly wiped his glasses lens with the hem of his shirt, with another sigh.  It wasn’t a depressed sigh, more like a, “you’re an idiot” kind of sigh.  After squinting at his glasses and deciding them clean, he put them back on.

 

“I don’t see why you two think this is a surprise.  They are scientists.  If they had any real emotions for their subjects, then it would be too hard for them to part with their experiments if they were to fail.  Or in our case, die.  It’s the way of a scientist.  Don’t let your feelings get in the way.”  Ran held up his hand to his mouth as he yawned; only aggravating Ex’s short temper even more.  Seemingly oblivious to Ex’s twitching fists, Ran continued on relentlessly.  “Of course the scientist’s let us die without hesitation.  They want a new breed of human doesn’t need extra help to survive.  They want a super human who is completely immune to everything.  They won’t waste their time on saving us and giving us medicine or vitamins that are essential to our survival.  They want a human who doesn’t need those things to survive.”

 

Ex rubbed his forehead, a habit that he did more and more often these days.  After thinking things over for a bit, he finally let his hand drop to his side listlessly.  With obvious hesitation to admit that Ran was right, Ex said slowly, “Okay, I guess that makes sense.”  His expression hardened as he tried to throw Ran off again.  “But then why would they lie to us?  Why would they tell us that we were the Forties, not the Hundred-and-Forties?”

 

Ran smirked.  “And here I thought you were bright.”  He only got another glare from Ex.  “I’m sure you know that if a sick patient is happy, they recover faster.  If they are more cynical, the less chance of them pulling through.  Read it in Reader’s Digest.  They seem to specialize in miracle stories like that.  There’s a whole shelf of them in the library.”

 

“…So you’re saying that they wanted us to be happier.  If we knew how many failed projects were before us, we would have had optimal chance for survival because we were depressed,” Ex mused allowed.

 

“Bingo,” Ran said, sounding unimpressed.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go use the bathroom.”  And with that, he pushed his way past the two other boys.       

 

When he turned the corner and disappeared from view, Ex sank to the ground.  He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead again.  “I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe how stupid I was.  How come I didn’t realize this before?  It all makes sense, from a logical point of view.”

 

“From a Ran’s point of view,” Kibo murmured as he sat down next to Ex.

 

A few minutes passed of unhappy silence.  Ex was still cursing at himself for being so naïve.  Kibo was absorbed in thought about how he could cheer Ex up.  As a few more minutes passed, neither of them came to any sort of conclusion.  But it was Kibo who stood up first.

 

“Come on, Exy.  There’s no use beating yourself up about it.  It’s okay.”  He offered his hand to Ex, along with a small smile, which he hoped looked reassuring.  “Even though it is how it is, that doesn’t mean we have to like it.  We can still escape.”

 

Ex finally looked up, and offered a small smile back.  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.  I also guess that counts Ran out as one of our escapees, huh?”

 

Kibo laughed.  “Yup.  If he’s perfectly fine with dying in the ground, then that’s his problem.  You and me – we can still get out of here.  And we can take Cari and Axie and Rave with us.  And that creepy little kid you seem to like.”

 

Ex burst out laughing.  His laughter echoed through the cold metal walls, seeming so out of place in this place of death.

 

 

Axie sat on her bed, listless.  Cari was sitting next to her, crying into her hands as quietly as she could.  They should have been in the cafeteria, but neither of the girls had an appetite.  None of the Forties did, really, but some of them, who hadn’t been so close to him, were managing to eat.  Ex was holed up in the boy’s dormitory, with Kibo trying to comfort him.

 

“Why?” Cari cried, looking up at Axie between her fingertips and between her tears.  “Why did Rave have to die, too?”

 

Her throat too hoarse to speak with, Axie could only shrug pathetically.  Her eyes were red, but drying.  Her body was too tired to cry anymore.  They had been alerted of Rave’s death earlier that morning, an hour or so before lunch was served.  He hadn’t undergone any experiments after the West Nile Virus, but the effects of the virus had finally got to him.  Kibo told them that it had been him and Ex who found him dead.

 

“We had went to wake him up so he could eat some breakfast leftovers,” Kibo had said between sobs.  “But he didn’t move or anything when we shook him.  Then Ex checked for a pulse and found none and…”  He had broken off crying at that point, but the girls didn’t have to hear anymore.  At least he had gone in his sleep, everyone was saying.  At least he died a peaceful death.

 

But still, Axie thought, why did he have to die?

 

She was almost about to give into tears once more, when the girls’ door burst open.  Standing in the doorway, in no better shape than them, was Ex and Kibo.  They both had a small sack tossed over their shoulder, made out of their bed sheets.

 

“What are you doing?” Axie hissed, jumping up from the bed.  Upon seeing their expressions – still upset from the death – she let her tone soften a bit.  “What are you doing?” she asked again, in a much quieter voice.  “You know that boys are forbidden from the girl’s dorm.  You should get out of here before someone sees you and rats you out.”

 

Ex waved her off with a hand.  “Screw that.  You two have to hurry.  We’re getting out of here now.”

 

“Now?” Cari asked, her voice coming out in a whisper.  She cleared her throat and tried again.  “Now?  Right now?”

 

Kibo nodded nervously, looking down the hallway every now and then.  “We don’t know who’s going to die next.  It could be one of us.”  He bit his lower lip, looking from one face of his friend to the other.  “I don’t want any of us to die.  We have to get out of here, before we get even sicker.”

 

Solemnly, Axie nodded.  Her brother and Kibo had brought this up to them before.  Had it only been a few days ago?  Everything didn’t seem as threatening then, so she hadn’t thought much about their desire to escape.  She had thought that Kibo and Ex were too wound up, too uptight, too suspicious.  Now that Rave had died, nothing they had said seemed that outrageous.  Now she wanted to get out, too.

 

“But how are we going to escape…?” Cari ventured uncertainly.  “No one knows which door is the exit.  And even if we did know, how would we open it?  We don’t have the keys.  We don’t even know which professor has them!”

 

“I don’t think we can steal them,” Kibo said thoughtfully, fiddling with a loose thread from his bed sheet-bag.

 

“Maybe we can knock the doors down?” asked Axie, standing up.  As she walked around the girl’s room, which looked more or less like the boys.  She gathered some of her belongings, tossing them all onto her bed.  As she yanked the four corners of her bedspread to tie them together, she looked at the two boys.  “They can’t be that strong, can they?”

 

Ex smiled at her.  A half hopeful, half reassuring kind of smile.  “I hope not.  Why don’t we try breaking into some now?  If two of us keep a watch at each end of the hallway, then the other two can work on opening the door.  The scientists won’t find us, but we’ll find a way out.”

 

 

A head popped around the corner of the hallway.  “How’s it coming?” Cari called as loudly as she dared, glancing over her shoulder every now and then to check for arriving footsteps.  “Did you guys get the door open yet?”  She didn’t have to ask.  Even from her spot far away, she could tell that Axie and Ex were still trying to force their way through the door.

 

“Just…one…more…push…” Axie grunted, slamming her shoulder against the door.  Suddenly, there was a crack as the lock gave way, and the two twins fell into the room with a surprised shout.

 

From the opposite side of the hallway, Kibo bit his lip anxiously.  He poked his head around the corner as well, on sentry duty like Cari was.  “Are you guys okay?  I think we gotta be quieter.  I can hear you from all the way over here.”

 

Ex waved a hand from inside of the newly opened room.  “We’re okay.”

 

Cat eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness, the siblings carefully made their way through the room.  Ex ran his hands alongside one of the walls, searching for a light switch.  ‘Just as well I can’t find one,’ he thought, ‘the light might give us away.’  His foot tapped against something long and light, which clattered away further into the darkness.

 

“Ow,” Axie swore, taking a step back.  “I stubbed my toe on something.”  She crouched low to the ground and felt around for what she had almost tripped on.  Her hands met something cold.  It wasn’t hard, though.  It was actually fairly soft; like fuzz or fur.  If she didn’t know any better, she would have sworn it was…

 

An ear-splitting scream shattered the silence.  No one had time to think.

 

“Run!” Cari screamed from her end of the hallway, already heading towards Kibo.  She grabbed Ex as he stumbled out of the dark room, looking dazed and confused.  She pushed him towards Kibo, who had barely caught him before Cari started dragging Axie out of the room, too. 

 

Axie had her hands clasped tight to her mouth, trying to muffle the sobs she was making.  Her eyes were staring straight ahead, straight into the room, where she had touched the lifeless body of Sammy.  But Cari had no time to console her.  As soon as Axie was out of the room, she grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door shut.

“Go!” she shrilled, pushing Axie towards the boys who were already running down the hallway.

 

The tall girl staggered forward, tears still running down her face.  Ex, looking concerned, had doubled back for her.  With a firm grip on her arm, he led her towards the cafeteria.  “Come on, Axie.  We all have to split up.  It’ll be too suspicious if we all show up at the same place out of breath!”

 

Kibo tore off in the direction of the boy’s dormitory, and Cari ran off towards the library.  In seconds they all arrived and pulled off an almost flawless act of, “What was that?  Who screamed?”  None of the other cats suspected anything.  Granted, there were only three of them left who were unaware of the escape plan, but none of the three thought anything was out of the ordinary.

 

No one, except Ran, that is.

 

 

Night found the four freedom fighters picking the lock of another door.  It was almost two hours after their bedtime.  Ex had been impatient to start trying doors again, but they had to wait until they were sure that the rest of the Forties and the scientists were asleep.  So they had to start an hour after lights out.  Now they were all huddled around a door in the far southeast corridor that ended as a dead end.  No one really went into this hallway because all the doors were locked, so there was nothing to do.

 

Kibo worked the little piece of metal with acute precision.  He moved it this way and that, trying to get the door lock to come undone.  Ex was standing around, looking into the shadows of the hallway, each time expecting someone to pop out and ask them what they were doing.  Thankfully, no one did so.

 

Finally, a little click of salvation sounded from the door.  Kibo jumped back happily.  “I got it!  It’s open!”  The group gave a quiet cheer, fearful that someone might here them.  Pushing with all his strength, Kibo tried to get the rusting door to open.  It was the last door in the southeast hall that they hadn’t broke into.  The rest of doors hadn’t contained anything interesting or frightening.  Most were supply closets and storage.  No more rooms full of dead bodies and bones.

 

With the combined efforts of all four Forties, the door finally opened grudgingly.  Ex squinted.  The room looked like the size of a closet.  An empty closet.  There was nothing in it.  It was dark, and bare, and empty, and –

 

“Look!”

 

All eyes turned upward.  A complete silence fell over them.  For the first time in their entire lives, they saw the sky.  They saw a ceiling that wasn’t dirty plaster.  A black sky stretched above them, tiny beads of light shimmering down congratulating them on a job well done.  They were too stunned to gasp.  Here was the exit.  Here was the way out.  Here was freedom.  It was right at the top of these stairs.

 

Nothing was standing in their way, now.

 

Nothing except for Professor Gideon.