"The Mistaken M. Jones"
7. Tick Tock
Earth, in the year 4509
She'd seen a few others get taken into another room throughout the hours, before they'd come back out and return to where they'd been. She didn't know what it was about, but none of them had seemed at all perturbed to have been called, and they looked the same when they came out again, so she wasn't going to get concerned for that, except that she doubted that any of them had gotten here the way she'd done. She looked ahead to the woman who'd come to escort her away, and the only thing she could pinpoint that set her apart so far was that her hair was brown, not at all dyed like the others. She also wore sunglasses, which kept part of her face obscured, and it wouldn't be until a few minutes later that she'd see her uniform looked a size too big.
Primarily, she did notice that she wasn't being led into those same little rooms the others had been taken to. The woman was taking her out a side door, and as she stepped through with her, they were outside, in a blocked off alleyway.
"If this is about my ticket, I…"
"Mercedes…" the woman addressed her, and Mercedes blinked, staring back at her.
"How do you know my name?" she found herself asking, and not for the first time.
"I'd tell you, but that would be a longer story than what we have time for," the woman told her. "They'll come looking for you if they notice you're gone too long."
"Yeah, but I don't…"
"… don't belong here? Yeah, I know that." Her heart hammered in her chest.
"You do? Who are you?"
"A friend, but if all goes well, you won't have to see me again. I can't stay."
"Wait, why not…" She'd been on her own, confused, with no one to talk to for… 04:02:02. 04:02:01. 04:02:00. 04:01:59… for nearly eight hours already, and now that she had someone who seemed to know what was going on, she was going to lose her again? "You can't go."
"Can, and will. But you'll be alright, listen. There will be someone to help you. Several someones, actually. They'll find you, and it might be a little while yet before they show up, but they will come, I promise you. Until then, you need to be brave, you need to stay quiet, and most importantly you need to notice and not be noticed. Understand?"
"I… yes."
"Do you?"
"No… not really," Mercedes admitted. "What's this?" she held up her wrist to show the cuff, the clock. The woman blinked, reaching to it for a moment, then deciding against it.
"All in time," she nodded. "You go back in now, and do as you're told. Don't be the hero, Mercedes."
She didn't know what else to do. She reached for the door, opened it and looked back inside. She looked over her shoulder to the woman, but she wasn't there anymore. Mercedes looked all around the alleyway, and there was no one. She could not have gone, but then… Had she even been there at all?
Deciding at the very least that the woman's advice had not been imaginary, she hurried back inside, to her spot, acting like she was exactly where she belonged, while on the inside she was trembling nervously.
Someone was coming. Someone would help her. She was all for being proactive, but in this place, she just didn't know how. But if someone was coming, then that was a good thing, wasn't it? That meant maybe she'd get answers, and she could go home. So long as they were here, then everything might be alright.
She'd just watched the clock on her wrist tick under the one hour mark when there'd been activity in the assembly hall. The man who'd first found her was back, as were others dressed like him, and all the youths in green were rising, forming into a column to walk out again, and Mercedes felt her panic revive. If they left, would her help still come?
Savelyn had awakened, as optimistic as ever, and Mercedes didn't leave her side as they went once more out to where she'd first woken, this time further. She hadn't been wrong, she really had seen a spaceship, or what looked like it, and now they were all being taken to board it. Her legs raged with the urge to run.
"I can't go in there…" she muttered to herself.
"Do you get nauseous? I think they have an injection for that, they can sedate you for the time of the trip," Savelyn offered.
"I don't want that," Mercedes shook her head. She took a breath. "I don't have a ticket." Savelyn frowned, confused.
"But you must have gotten it, when you had your birthday, when you turned sixteen."
"I'm seventeen," she replied, out of habit. This made Savelyn's eyes widen. They were gray.
"Then how come you're here? Were you ill last year? You didn't skip out, did you? You can't let them find out if you did, that's punishable by…"
"Make lines, Day shifts to the left, Night shifts to the right!" the guard man hollered. Mercedes panicked, again. Savelyn had been her only help thus far, and they were about to be separated.
"I'll see you later," the blue haired girl told her as they split off, but her face said 'be careful.'
Mercedes was nudged into the Day lines, and she nearly toppled into the boy with the carrot orange hair. "Sorry," she told him.
"It's alright," he told her. "I'm nervous, too."
"I didn't say I was…"
"You look it," he told her in a compassionate way that put her at ease.
That ease only lasted so long. They were being escorted through the ship, into a cabin that reminded her of an airplane, with all its seats in rows, but those seats looked more like the kind on amusement park rides where they had to strap you into the chairs before you got flung about. It was all moving too fast, and the next thing she knew, she was strapped into a seat, between a girl with lime green hair and another with lavender colored pigtails.
By the time all the shuffling and buckling was done, she had finally looked at the clock on her wrist again. She froze. 0:00:20. 0:00:19. 0:00: 18… What would happen when it hit zero? Would she be so lucky that it would take her home again, just like that? 0:00:12. 0:00:11. 0:00.10. What if it did something else? What if it exploded? What if… 0:00:05. 0:00:04.
"Attention, passengers," a voice flooded the room. "Prepare for takeoff…"
0:00:02. 0:00:01.
Mercedes shut her eyes.
0:00:00.
TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)
