Early, the next morning, before any of my roommates had awoken, I was greeted by the searing sunlight that arrived through my large grimy window. Wincing to avoid it, I turned over on my opposite side, pleading for it to leave and allow me to have a few more hours to sleep. Yet, the burning illumination continued to relentlessly bear down upon me, and I was forced to grab some clean clothes and head for the showers.

It couldn't have been much later than five in the morning, but I was never one for sleeping much anyway. Then again, I hadn't known anyone in my unit who was prone to napping for long periods of time. Not only were our genetics programmed to keep us from dozing, Lydecker had instilled in us the very motto of, "soldiers don't sleep". Either way one looked at it, I was destined not to rest.

Still, I yawned, plodding down the empty hallway, while rubbing the crusted sleep out of my eyes. When I reached the community, co-ed showers, I neatly bumped the door open with my hip. With precise carefulness, I hung my clothes outside a shower stall, next to my towel. Then, I stepped inside the stall and removed the remainder of my pajamas, dangling those next to the towel and day clothes. Although, in my time at Manticore, it was fully accepted for males and females to take showers together, I had never been one for stripping naked when I was out in the real world. I was constantly on guard, constantly looking over my shoulder, so I figured that any privacy I could find these days was good privacy.

The warm shower water was a welcomed feel so early in the morning, and I ran my fingers through my dark hair, loving the waterfall that cascaded down my back. For a moment, I remembered the time when my unit leader had taken me down to Texas. I was thirteen then, and had already been living on my own for two years since the escape, so I was perfectly able to take care of myself. Nevertheless, my commanding officer took special care in making sure that my other siblings and I were well supervised. Everything was too close for comfort for the captain. Yet, when we had gone down south together, I remembered how we had swam together in the wonderfully warm water, laughing and bobbing for treasures on the bottom of the gulf. After all, it was just fun and games, and nobody would notice a bunch of teenagers splashing around in a tourist town anyhow.

Back in that Detroit shower, I smiled, scrubbing at my dirty face with bare hands, wondering when-if ever-I would go back to that warm water and swim there again. It had been one of the precious rarities when everything had seemed right in the world because Lydecker wasn't looking over our shoulders, and I wasn't frantically worrying about if our barcodes had been spotted.

Not long after the Texas trip, I had came to Detroit, where I was currently living. Somehow, through false smiling and wistful lies, I managed to move in with two girls who were in their twenties now, and also five years older than me. They took care of me like a little sister, and never once treated me harshly as had been done by other people that I had stayed with. Despite that they were both strippers down at the local bar, they never once asked me to join them or degraded me for my shyness. It was then that I realized just how much I would miss them when I had to leave. As cold-hearted as it may have sounded, it wasn't a question of if I would leave because I knew to be an effective soldier, I would always have to keep on the move; it was merely a question of when.

Sighing heavily, I turned off the shower, watching the tendrils of steam curl upward toward the light and poked one hesitant hand out, beyond the shower curtain, fumbling blindly to find my towel. Just as I had felt my pair of jeans, the towel touched my hand coming from below, where it wasn't supposed to be, and a deep voice said, "Here."

I jumped approximately my own height and forced down the urge to scream in shock. Furiously fumbling, I wrapped the shower curtain around myself and poked my wet head out to see who had attempted to hand the towel to me. Yet, my distressed anxiety subsided to anger, when I saw that my captain was sitting on one of the benches, lazily clutching my towel between his fingers.

"You want this?" he asked.

Snapping it away from him, I wrapped it tightly around my body and stepped out of the shower, making sure that no inappropriate skin was showing that didn't need to be seen. As I came out of the stall, he rose to his large feet, so that we stood at a rough eye level; he was a couple inches taller than I was.

"What are you doing here?" I whispered, praying that someone wouldn't decide to interrupt this conversation.

"Time to get moving."

"But-"

"Look, I know you enjoy it here and all, but you can't stay here much longer. Somebody tipped Lydecker off that there's an X5 in Detroit, and his men are all around."

"Who?"

"Who? How am I supposed to know 'who'? If I knew 'who' it was, I would've killed them off a long time ago."

Exasperated, I sighed, realizing that he was right, and I needed to leave if I valued my life and freedom. "Fine," I replied, "when do you want to leave, Zack?"

"As soon as you're dressed. Don't even think of going back up to your room to get anything. Simply take what you have, and we'll leave then. I think I may have some extra clothing in the Jeep I snatched."

"Where are we going?"

"Somewhere out on the west coast…Don't worry about it," he replied, handing me my clothes. "Now, get dressed, Tinga, we have a long trip ahead of us."