Why is he helping me?
I stare at him wondering what to make of him. He’s the director’s son. Am I really safe with him?
I must be looking confused because Rian explains further, “They’ll escalate. Quietly, for the most part. They won’t announce it. But they’ll lock down external feeds. That’s when they will start tracking attendance and surveillance.”
Shaking my head, I ask, “How do you know that?”
He pauses for a moment, as though he’s debating if he should tell me. Then he says, “My father helped design the protocols.”
Of course he did. I don’t even know why I bothered to ask. That’s when my stomach drops as my mind starts to race.
So this was it. He’s luring me in to make it easier to report me.
I can just see him watching them escort me away into some sterile government office, telling me everything will be fine as he smiles at me smugly.
“If I walk out there,” I say slowly, “will you tell them I’m here?”
I don’t really want to know the answer, but I have to ask. I have to know for sure what he plans to do. I have to know if I can trust him.
He doesn’t answer immediately. He just looks over my face, all while my heart begins to beat harder.
Way to make a girl wait!
“No,” he finally answers with a quiet certainty.
My breath catches, “Why?”
He’s too close to me. I can feel his breath brush over me against my temple as he exhales.
“Because I don’t think the scanner malfunctioned when it scanned you,” he continues, speaking lower now.
“What… what do you mean?” I ask breathlessly.
Why I’m reacting like this, I don’t know. Nor do I understand why my heart seems to skip a beat. I must be having a bad reaction to the pizza I had during lunch earlier. Or maybe it was the Thai food from dinner last night.
“I think it was seeing something it wasn’t built to recognize,” he hesitantly says, as though he was reluctant to say it.
My chest feels hot. Is this fear I’m feeling or something dangerously close to relief?
I’m not an anomaly!
Yet, that Gentech worker was afraid; I remember seeing it in her eyes. Afraid of what I am… whatever that may be.
I look up at Rian and the air shifts as our eyes lock. He’s not looking at me the way the Gentech worker was. He looks at me with wonder and curiosity. There’s no fear behind his gaze.
“You’re not afraid of me?” I ask, slightly realizing that his hand is still wrapped around my wrist.
“I should be,” he admits, without breaking eye contact.
I should be hurt by that admission, but instead I’m thrilled. It’s reckless, but I don’t care. “Oh, so you’re saying you’re not?”
His fingers tightens briefly around my wrist, “I don’t think you’re the dangerous one.”
I stop breathing for a moment, too lost in his gaze. I could vaguely hear voices barking out orders somewhere in the gym. However, they aren’t my concern at the moment. Something is happening between Rian and me, but I can’t figure out what.
He steps closer to me and I can feel the line of his body just inches from mine. This isn’t good. I can’t let him break down my defenses. I still don’t know if I can trust him.
“If they find you,” he says, “it won’t be good.”
No kidding, Captain Obvious. Of course, I only say this in my head.
“You need to leave the building,” he continues. “There’s an old service exit behind the east stairwell. It doesn’t always sync to the lockdown grid.”
“How do you know that?”
“I helped reroute the camera feeds last semester when the gym flooded.” He lets out a faint huff, which almost sounds like a laugh. “They never updated the backend.”
And now we’re back to showing off again, I think as I give him a slight smile. I just hope it’s not an obvious fake smile. However, something is still off.
“Why are you helping me?” I finally ask again, this time more direct.
He’s silent for what seems like a long time. Then he says, in a calculated way, “It’s because you looked terrified.”
My chest tightens up painfully.
It’s not because Rian sees me as… me, and not an error. Or that he has a way with words that seem to make you feel vulnerable. No… I’m pretty sure that it’s because of the spicy noodles from dinner.
One thing is for sure, I definitely will not open up to him about how I’ve always felt slightly… off. Or, that my parents never let me attend overnight trips. How my marker had never quite behaved like everyone else’s. Especially not about how I sometimes feel like I’m pretending to belong.
No… I’ll only say safe things.
“I can’t…”
“Shh… listen,” he says, cutting me off. “I think it’s clear to move.”
Was he just distracting me this whole time!
Moving towards the curtain, Rian’s hand slips from my wrist, and I instantly feel the loss; the abrupt cold.
“When I signal,” he whispers, “we’ll make a run for it, so don’t look back.”
“Rian…” I begin, shaking my head of any distractions.
He grabs my hand, pulling me out of the exam room. We sneak out by the other exam rooms as quietly as possible. I can see the back gym door just ahead and I quickly move towards it. However, Rian tightens his grip on my hand and pulls me back towards him.
Shaking his head, he motions to the locker room doors, before guiding me in their direction. Bootsteps echo again, somewhere close by on the other side of the makeshift exam rooms. Just before the patrolman rounds the corner of the area, Rian drags me into the guys locker room.
Shocked, I cover my eyes with my free hand, even though I know we are the only ones in the room.
“Give me a second,” he says, stopping in front of a row of lockers. “I just need to grab something.”
He took a few seconds to go into one of the lockers, before grabbing my hand again. We quickly rush through the room till we reach the other doors, which lead out to the main gym wing hallway.
Cracking the door a little, he peeks out looking for signs of patrols. After a few seconds, we step out into the hallway. The east stairwell is several feet down the other end of the hall. There’s not a lot of coverage to keep me hidden if need be.
My only option is to run to the other end of the hall.
“There’s only one surveillance camera at the intersection of the halls,” Rian whispers, glancing back at me.
I look over to where he’s referring, where the gym hall connects to the hall that leads back to the rest of the school. I glance back at him, wondering how we can sneak past that camera.
Seeming to know my thoughts, he continued, “Don’t worry, that camera hasn’t been updated yet, so the quality of it is very poor. They won’t be able to tell who’s passing by. We just need to make it seem like we’re heading back to class.”
I keep my head down as we walk fast, the way all students do when we’re late but not guilty. The east stairwell sign flickers at the end of the hall and we are just about there. Rian walks beside me in full view of the camera, hiding me, as we pass the hall intersection.
Don’t look back.
My heart slams so hard against my chest that all I could hear clearly was the pounding sound in my ears. As we walk by the glass cased wall of sports trophies, I catch my reflection in the glass.
I’m pale. My eyes are too wide and my hair is disheveled. I’m a mess.
We’re almost at the stairwell door, when we hear footsteps echo behind us.
My stomach drops. We almost made it.
Rian quickly pulls me underneath the stairs and guides me to crouch down in the shadow, as close as possible to the stairs. We barely make it in time when two Authority officers turn the corner. Their boots strike the tile in synchronize rhythm, their uniforms are sharp, dark and clinical. The insignia on their shoulders glint silver.
They’re not school security. They’re higher.
“Subject is still inside the facility,” one of them speaks into his wrist console.
Subject.
That word fills me with emptiness.
The second officer stops directly in front of the stairs. I’m frozen inside and out.
I glance over at Rian and though the stairwell’s shadow is pretty dark, I can still make out his features and how he lifted his finger to his lips.
“It’s all clear here,” the officer by the stairs says.
They both turn back the way they came and we listen as their footsteps get further away.
Once it’s all clear, Rian pulls me up and guides me to the door under the stairs, and I vaguely realize we’ve been holding hands this whole time. For a split second, neither of us moves as the door closes behind us.
The air between us feels charged. Fragile and electric at the same time.
There is another set of stairs in front of us, leading down into what looks like a basement area.
“This way,” he says, starting down the stairs.
“Rian,” I say, following behind him. “I appreciate the help, but if this gets traced back to you…”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that,” I press, “You could get in trouble.”
He just laughs, “I do know. Besides, I can’t get into any more trouble than I already am.”
The overhead lights flicker. Rian pauses for a split second before moving faster as he says, “Come on, we need to hurry. Time is running out.”
We run past the maintenance systems till we stop at a back door.
“Keep in mind, they’ll pull external surveillance next. You need to leave now,” he says, as he fumbles with a hoodie, which I realize I have failed to notice in his hands.
“You heard them, right,” I ask, thinking back to what the officer said and still feeling hollow. “They called me a subject. What does that mean?”
His eyes darken, “I heard.”
He hesitates and it terrifies me even more than the chase and the hunt.
“It means this isn’t about school records.”
My throat tightens, “Then what is it about?”
Stepping closer, he says, “Felicity, when they scanned you… it wasn’t reading a malfunction.”
He pauses again, taking in a deep breath. I can see the fine lines of tension across his shoulders, and I begin to wonder why he seems to have a hard time telling me.
“It was reading an absence,” he finally finishes.
I’m beside myself. I don’t know how to react to that. What am I to do?
“I didn’t do anything,” I whisper, as though we were still in the exam room.
“I know.”
He reaches for my wrist once again. This time, I don’t flinch. As much as I hate to admit it, this feels natural.
His fingers brush the place where my marker should have glowed. His own marker pulses faintly in response to proximity, as though it’s trying to seek its match. However, my marker doesn’t react. He locks eyes with me and I can see the same wonder from before reflect back at me.
“You’re not like us,” he murmured.
I should feel isolated by those words, but I don’t. Instead, they make me feel seen. It was terrifyingly intimate.
“I don’t even know what that means,” I say, still whispering.
His thumb lingered on my wrist just a bit longer than necessary. We don’t move away; we just stare at each other.
In the distance, we hear more footsteps.
“They’re sweeping the stairwells,” he said, lifting the hoodie. “Here. Put this on.”
It smells like him and I’m suddenly hit with a comfort I didn’t expect.
“This exit leads to the faculty parking lot. The cameras glitch for three seconds when the door seals.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugs his shoulders, “I tested it.”
“What… why?”
“I get curious,” he answers, a faint ghost of a smile touching his mouth.
The footsteps are getting closer. I know I must go, but now I suddenly, to my surprise, feel the urge to stay.
“Rian,” I say, way too softly.
He looks at me as though he is memorizing something.
“If they ask you again…”
“I won’t say a word about you.”
I’m fearful now, but not for me, “You don’t know what they’ll threaten.”
His jaw tightens, “Yes… I do.”
I could feel the heavy weight of those words and I didn’t want to imagine what he already knew. He leans closer to me, not quite touching, but near enough that allows me to fully be aware that the space was intentional.
“For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “I don’t think you’re the error.”
I breathe in sharply, “Then what am I?”
His gaze drops to my wrist, “Proof.”
My mind is blown! Proof of what!
“Go,” he whispers, urgently.
I pull the hoodie over my head, before exiting.
Three seconds. The camera above the door sparks and I run. I sprint across the faculty parking lot, ducking between vehicles, my heart slamming against my ribs.
As I reach the gate, I risk one last glance back, wondering if Rian got caught and how he would get out of it. I still can’t stand the guy, but I have a new found respect and gratitude for him.
It’s too bad I won’t be able to tell him. Being the director’s son, I doubt I’ll ever get to see him again.
My chest hurts. Why this pain returns, seconds after that thought, is beyond my understanding.
The gate suddenly slides shut and I run, all the while concluding that it is the noodles giving me heartburn.