Gahhh! Finally, I've found time to update! *sigh* As fun as it is finishing one vacation and going on another one three days later, it sure leaves a lot of catch-up homework in its wake. And at the end of the school term, no less! But yeah, I'm back now, and now that my life isn't overrun with school I'm going to try and get back to my regular update schedule. ^_^

Oh, and some of you nave noticed that I've used two different spellings of Megan. It's not supposed to have an 'a' in it, but Microsoft Word is always arguing with me about how to spell my characters name. :/ So yeah, it should be fixed for the remainder of the story. (Someday I'll go back and fix the other chapters... maybe.) But anyways, enjoy!


10 – Quest for Knowledge

I spent every waking hour of the next day trying to think up ways of breaking out. When the doctor injected me with my daily dose of virus, I visualized grabbing the needle out of his hand, jabbing him with it, and then making a run down the hallway. As I was cleaning up, I studied the guards' patrolling habits and stared at my cleaning supplies, wondering if there was any way I could use them to overpower my captors and then flee. In my barrack, I stared at the electrified fencing for what seemed like hours, wondering if I could shut it down long enough to unlock the gate and sneak all eleven of us—soon to be ten, if Rachel's quickly intensifying moaning was any indication—out of here without raising suspicion. But everything I came up with seemed stupid and amateurish, too risky and bumbling to have any real chance of working. Besides, even if we did escape, who's to say we wouldn't be recaptured? And what about all the other kids who would still be trapped here? It seemed cruel to have to leave them behind.

I had, of course, tried going to the one person who actually knew about these kinds of things, but Vera wasn't very supportive. "Escape?" she had laughed at me, "You're funny, kid."

I glared at her in annoyance, not in the mood for her belittling remarks. "I'm serious. I want to get as many people out of here as we can, before the virus changes us all."

Vera stopped smirking, and stared me down with her eerily familiar brown eyes. "How do you know it hasn't already?" My breath hitched for a moment, and my stomach welled up in knots. She continued, "Listen, kid, don't make things harder than they have to be. Don't try to fight them; you'll only get hurt or worse."

My stomach lurched again, but this time more from the virus' than from intimidation. I grimaced. "I'll get hurt or worse anyways if I don't do something." I pointed out, " and Max has escaped places like these before."

"That's because Max was a freakin' superhero with a stupid amount of luck," Vera replied, not bothering to hide the distain in her voice, "And look where she is now! Not even I'm dumb enough to try busting out of this place." She scowled at me. "I'm not helping your little suicide mission, so just give it up before you kill yourself playing jail-breaker."

I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt, having Max's likeness condemn me to failure like that, but the rejection only made me more determined to try. "I'm going to escape," I told her, standing my ground, "whether you help me or not."

"Yeah, right." Vera shakes her head. "Good luck with that."

"So you won't help me?" Silence. "Fine, your loss."

I spun on my heels and marched back to the door, trying to make a confident departure. I pretended not to hear Vera when she muttered, "Some people just don't know when to quit."

So basically, that visit accomplished nothing.

After lights-out that night I lay in my bunk, tossing and turning restlessly because I couldn't sleep. I was feeling a little ill, but the virus wasn't the reason I felt so uneasy. Time was ticking by, and I had yet to find a plan that could get even one person out of this prison, let alone a whole group of girls. There had to be some way out of the facility; no security system was perfect, especially this one. But it was an imperfect system against a bunch of imperfect kids, and my brain was no better than anyone else's at figuring this stuff out.

"Pssst," Anna whispered quietly, "Ella, are you still up?"

"Yeah," I replied, sitting up in bed, "I can't sleep."

"Sick?"

"No more than usual. You?"

"I'm doing alright," she murmured, "I don't think I could say I feel good, though. The virus is getting worse."

"At least we're not as sick as lots of the others," I reasoned. We'd all had a grace period at the beginning, once our bodies had adapted to the injections, but everyone's health was slowly beginning to deteriorate again. There were only a couple of us girls who could still move around without too much discomfort, but it was getting to be an effort even for the healthiest of us—and that seemed to be the case with all the girls' barracks. The doctors had even started getting a couple of boys do some cleaning because most of us girls were close to bed-ridden, too miserable, sick, or grief-paralyzed to do anything else.

Anna nodded, saying, "Sometimes I hope that maybe there's a reason we haven't as gotten as sick as everyone else, that maybe it means our bodies are fighting the virus and winning." She sighed, "But then other times I think it's too late for us. We keep going down one by one—I keep waking up to the noise of someone screaming down the hallway, and when I see the doctors rushing past us with a gurney, I think, 'There's no way we're getting out of here, I could be next.'"

"Do you think," I paused, but then continued, "Do you think that Megan and the others are dead?"

"I don't know," Anna shrugged, shivering slightly, "I try not to think about it too much. It's just a scary thought, you know? Dying all alone, never seeing your friends and family again..."

"Yeah," I agreed quietly. Breathing deeply, I made a noise that fell somewhere between a shudder and a sob. "I'm scared, Anna—really, really scared. I've heard what genetic experiments can do to people, and sometimes... sometimes I feel like no matter what I do, I'm going to die anyways." I steadied myself with a deep breath, "But I can't give up, because if I do I'll die for sure."

Anna cracked a tiny smile at me. "If anyone makes it out of this place in one piece, Ella, it'll be you."

I shook my head, and managed a smile back. "It'll be both of us. If that virus tries anything, we'll fight it kicking and screaming."

"Definitely."

We talked for a few more minutes, before finally we grew drowsy and lay back down in our bunks. And even though I still had no plan and no ideas for getting out of here, I went to sleep feeling better than I had in days.


"So the place is pretty empty now?" Iggy asked, eager to get going.

"Yup," the Gasman confirmed, "Like two thirds of them are gone."

"It's amazing how much attention a mutant sighting and half a dozen burning buildings can attract. They'll be preoccupied for hours, I bet." Iggy smirked, "Let's get going." He and Gazzy took flight, gliding covertly through the air as they closed in on the Collector outpost. They landed silently within the outpost's chain link perimeter, taking shelter amongst the parked transporters. After waiting a few moments to make sure they hadn't been seen on their way down, the boys quietly made their way towards the building itself, Gazzy's eyes and Iggy's ears primed against stealthy Collector guards.

"There's only one guard at the main door," Gazzy whispered, speaking so quiet even Iggy could barely hear him, "Should we try to take him?"

Iggy shook his head. "Too conspicuous. Let's look for a back entrance."

Sure enough, the building's back entryway was unguarded and dead quiet. It was locked, but nothing that Iggy couldn't cure with his lock-picking kit. "Quick," he motioned for Gazzy to follow him inside, "before they see us on the security cameras."

As they snaked their way through the dim, unused hallways in the bowels of the outpost, Gazzy observed, "This place is like a ghost town. Why is it so dark here?"

"They probably only use part of the building, I bet. And, I could be wrong, but I think I hear snoring on the other side of these doors," Iggy remarked, "If these rooms are the Collectors' sleeping quarters, they wouldn't need much in the way of lights here. See any cameras?"

"No," Gazzy said, "There aren't very many here, I don't think. This place doesn't really seem like much of a clone soldier headquarters."

"It was probably a community center or school or something before the takeover."

"Well that would explain the door over there marked 'Happy Tots Preschool'."

They fell silent, however, when they turned a corner and found themselves in a bright, fluorescent-lit hallway, with voices and footsteps echoing from the rooms up ahead of them. Backtracking into the shadows, Iggy told the Gasman, "Are there any rooms down that hall that aren't crawling with Collectors?"

"A couple of them look empty, but they're right near an open room full of Collectors." Gazzy leaned around the corner and craned his neck to see. "I think they're all using computers or something. Oh, and there's a camera mounted at the head of the hallway."

Iggy took a moment to mentally weigh his options. "Can you sneak over to those doors really quietly and check to see if they're locked?" It was a risk, but if this hallway was one of the Collectors' main centers of operations, perhaps there would be a computer that was hooked up to their main database.

"Sure. Be right back!" The Gasman darted down the hall like a ninja, barely making a noise as his feet crossed the tiled floor. Iggy held his breath, listening as Gazzy jiggled the first doorknob lightly. Locked. But Gazzy wasted no time and moved on to the next door, and to Iggy's delight he heard the knob turn and the door quietly creak open.

Following the source of the sound, Iggy crept over to the open doorway and stepped inside, easing the door shut behind him. He felt out the lock on the knob and twisted it shut, before turning to face the Gasman. "I hear a machine," he noted, "You found a computer."

"Yeah, it's booting up," Gazzy explained, "Though I haven't seen one like this before. It's weird."

"Weird how?" Iggy asked.

"I don't know," he replied, "It just looks really different from a normal computer, and... what?" Gazzy's fingers clacked across the keyboard. "Okay, I definitely haven't seen a computer that worked like this before. What are these Collectors using as an operating system?"

A long, painful stretch of time passed while Gazzy tried to figure out the foreign computer system. Iggy was getting anxious. "What's wrong?" He asked, pacing back and forth nervously, "I thought Nudge taught you how to hack like a pro!"

"I know, I know, I'm working on it! It's just... difficult."

"Gazzy!"

"Don't worry! I think I have it now." After a few more minutes a quiet pinging noise sounded, and then a breath of relief. "Got it! Heh, Nudge would've been proud of that one."

"Yeah yeah, you were great, now find out where Ella is!" We don't have time for this, Iggy thought to himself. They'd wasted enough time here already; they couldn't stay undetected forever. "Is there a search engine? Start by searching for Ella by name."

Gazzy typed in 'Ella Martinez' and hit the search button. "Nope, nothing."

Iggy's heart sank. "Well then try some keywords or something!"

"Like what?"

"I don't know; girls, prisoner, contribution to the Empire?"

More typing and clicking. "I still don't see anything."

"Well then see if you can find some sort of action log for the date they took Ella. They'd keep records of this stuff, right?" Just then Iggy heard the noise of footsteps in the hallway. Please don't come here, please don't come here, please don't come here...

"Found it!" Gazzy exclaimed, speaking just a little too loudly.

Iggy shushed him. "Shhh! Gazzy—"

"Hey, who's in there?" a stern voice barked from the other side of the thick steel door.

Iggy turned to Gazzy. "Print off as much as you can, then prepare yourself for a fight." The commotion in the hallway was growing, and there was no mistaking the sound of heavy boots trying to smash the lock.

"It's almost done..." Gazzy muttered, as the printer clicked and lurched eagerly. "Okay... done! Come on, we can push these foamy roof tiles out of the way and crawl out of here!" There was a rustling of papers as Gazzy shoved the documents into his pants and jumped onto a table that sat in the corner of the room. "Give me a boost up!" he whispered urgently, pushing the roof panel aside so he could crawl through the opening. Iggy complied, and then scrambled to find balance as he climbed up into the ceiling inched away from their entry point.

"I don't think this will hold us for much longer," he whispered to the Gasman, struggling to find balance on the flimsy paneling, "Let's lower ourselves into the room below and then get back into the hallway." He pushed another tile out of the way and jumped down, Gazzy following quickly after.

Next door they heard the lock finally give way, and the Collectors swiftly flooded the room where they had just been. "Okay, now!" Iggy yanked the door open, and he and Gazzy took off back down the hallway as fast as they could. The Collectors followed swiftly after, and the boys immediately found themselves in close pursuit.

"Right!" Iggy called to Gazzy, and they darted to the right in an attempt to shake the Collectors of their tail. Iggy's senses were in overdrive, and he felt as if he could hear and feel everything around him all at once. The only time he ever felt this spatially aware was when his brain was in full-out panic mode.

"There's an emergency exit straight ahead!" Gazzy shouted, which urged Iggy to sprint even faster. There was so little space between him and the goons that even the slightest trip-up would kill any chance of escape.

After what seemed like an eternity, Iggy and Gazzy pushed through the emergency exit together, and as soon as they were clear of the door they spread their wings and took off into the sky. "We made it!" Gazzy cheered.

But then the first shot exploded into the night, missing Iggy's left wing by less than a foot. "Evasive manoeuvres!" he cried, "Get out of range, quick!" Iggy made himself as vertical as he could be, pushing his wings hard against the dense night air. The Collectors continued firing, but Iggy and Gazzy had dodged bullets before. The Collectors kept firing, but Iggy was too tricky for them.

When he was at a safe altitude, Iggy turned his body horizontal and cheered, "Hah! We showed them! Good job, Gazzy!"

However, Gazzy was uncharacteristically quiet as he trailed behind his friend. "Iggy..." there was a pained edge to his voice, and Iggy became acutely aware of the Gasman's ragged breathing and half-hearted flapping.

"Are you okay?" He asked, slowing down so that he was at Gazzy's speed. "Did they hit you?"

"I... I think..." Suddenly Gazzy gasped, and he started to go down.

"Gazzy!" Iggy dove after the boy.