Shun

When I woke, I expected to find myself still locked away in that jail cell. To much of my surprise, I found myself laid up in a bed and surrounded by walls that weren't made of rocks and stone. I brought my hand up to my pounding head. It felt like the pain had gotten worse than before.

When it subsided, I looked around the rest of the room. Furniture and pictures that were hung on the wall filled the room. My eyes stopped when I found Alice sitting in one of the chairs. I blinked a couple of times. What was going on? I looked down at myself, and was shocked by the state of my body. It looked as if I had been attacked. Then I remembered, I was attacked.

Memories of the Officials busting into my cell replayed in my mind. The aching wounds on my body cringed as they relived every hit and strike. In the chair next to the bed, Alice began to wake up. She looked around, sleep still weighing her eyes down. "Huh?"

She finally noticed that I was awake, and her eyes turned from half-open, to fully alert. "Shun!" Alice shot up from her chair and was now standing beside the bed that I was laying in. Still holding onto the side of my head, I asked, "Where am I?" I kept looking around the room, seeing how much cleaner and nicer it was than the ones we had back in the Wastelands.

"You're at a friend of my Grandfather's. But that's not important. What is important, is the fact that you finally woke up." I found a window and stared out of it from my bed. The sun was trying send its light through the closed curtains. "How long have I been out?" I asked, wondering how concerned I should be about my current state.

"Not that long. Since late last night. It's around noon right now," she replied. I shifted around on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position. That was how I discovered how stiff my muscles were. I gave up on moving and decided to ask, "How exactly did I get here?"

Alice looked at me as if I had asked a stupid question. "What? Last I remember I was left beaten in a jail," I said sharply. She finally saw that my question had been a serious one, and sighed. "I took advantage of a the chaos going around and broke you out. That's when I ran into my friends and they helped me carry you here."

I was surprised that her friends, people from the City, even bothered to help me. I would have thought they would have left both me and Alice for the Officials to catch. Then I remembered what Alice had said to me before all of the hell got worse. She had made a point to say that she was going to get me out of that jail, and she did.

Here I was, laying in a bed away from the Officials, for the time being. "Thanks," I told her under my breath. She looked at me, her eyebrows raised in a questioning look. "Huh?" I sighed and repeated, "I said thanks. For getting me out of that jail like you said you would. I guess I owe you a major apology for accusing you of all of that stuff."

She smiled down at me. It showed me how tired she was. I was surprised that she could even find the energy to stand. "You don't have to apologize. It was all just a big misunderstanding. A failure to communicate," she said in her singsong voice. Alice then sat down on the edge of the bed and said, "If anything, I should be apologizing to you."

I stared at her, not knowing what she was talking about. "You? Apologize to me? For what? You haven't done anything wrong. Hell, you just got me out of a prison. Whatever you think you did, I believe that made up for it." She closed her eyes and shook her head.

"No. You wouldn't have been attack so soon if I hadn't told Runo everything. She wouldn't have been hurt either. If I had just kept my mouth shut, then neither one of you would be hurt right now." Whoever this Runo was, I felt sorry for the girl if she was in as much pain as I was.

Alice stared down at the floor, occasionally letting out a heavy sigh. "Alice, but if you didn't tell her and if all of that didn't happen, then I would probably still be in that jail waiting for those Officials to decide on what to do next. Yeah, some people might have gotten caught in the crossfire, but you have to try and look on the positive side of things. Everything bad that happened isn't your fault."

She rubbed her eyes, either to wipe away the remainder of her sleep or to get rid of a tear. I couldn't tell which from behind her. My eyes found a painting on the wall. It depicted a lush green meadow, much like the one that I used to have dreams about when I was young.

For some reason, it made me think of the map that was in my pocket. I shot upright in the bed, and immediately regretted it. My battered body screamed in pain, causing me to fall back against the pillow. Alice was standing up now, looked panic-stricken at the fact that I was gritting my teeth in pain.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Nothing. I just did something really stupid," I said through gritted teeth. I waited a moment for the pain to ease up. It did a little bit, enough that I wasn't borderline screaming. I took a slow breath and told her, "Those Officials got the map from me. That's why they beat me earlier. I just remembered it."

The last of the pain left my body, and left the initial aches behind. That was something I could tolerate, but not that other pain. Alice made sure that I was ok before sitting back down. "I expected them to do that. I just didn't think they'd go to those kind of extremes to get it."

She was looking at the gashes on my arms when she said that. I found myself looking at them as well. There would definitely be scars once the wounds healed. Proof of the pathetic fight I put up against the people I hated the most. I was sure I could have done better if my hands weren't tied behind me. But I doubted I would have been strong enough to last very long.

That reminded me that when I was in jail, my hands were still bound together. I looked at my wrists, and saw the red line from where they used to be. Alice said, "We were able to cut the restraints off, but it wasn't easy." I rubbed my wrists. The raw skin burned when I touched it, so I stopped so I wouldn't make it any worse.

"You know, I was really worried that the Officials had done enough damage on you that you wouldn't make it," said Alice suddenly. By the look of my body, I could see why she would think that. Along with the fact that I had been out a good amount of time. I also had no idea how bad I had looked while I was unconscious.

I had to have been a horrible site. My eyes found a pile of red-stained clothes in the corner of the room. "What's with the red cloth?" I asked in order to ease the awkwardness that had built up. "You were coughing up a lot of blood last night," she told me. I didn't see how I had any left in me.

"Was I really in that bad of shape?" She nodded. By the way Alice made my condition sound from when she got me out of the jail, my recovery had been a speedy and miraculous one so far. Somebody knocked at the door of the room, and in stepped the guy that I saw sitting next to Alice at the fire the night I was caught.

Now that I was closer to him, and not looking in from the fence, I saw that he had to be around my age. Maybe a year or so younger. He said, "Hey, Alice, that woman wants to talk to you." His eyes then shifted over to me. "I see its awake." His voice was filled with disgust, and his eyes showed just as much.

Alice stood up and said sharply, "Dan, stop." The brunette growled and left from the room. Alice turned to me and said, "I'm so sorry about him. He has the mindset of an Official. But he put that to the side to help get you here, so he isn't all bad. I'll be right back."

She walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. That seemed like a good idea. That way, I wouldn't have to deal with this Dan person's ego or arrogance. People like him, with that kind of mindset, was the reason that the other Outcasts were suffering.

A hollow feeling emerged inside of me when I thought about them. How many of them were already dead by the hands of the Officials?

Alice

I glared at Dan when I walked by him. He didn't have to say anything to Shun, but that was Dan for you. Loud-mouthed as ever, and always looking for trouble. I made a mental note to make it clear that if he didn't like Outcasts so much, then to keep clear of Shun.

None of us could afford his personal issues getting in the way of us. I found the old woman sitting in the kitchen. As much time as she spent there, it reminded me of how my grandfather would stay in our kitchen all day. "You wanted to see me?" Last night I had finally learned their names, since my grandfather forgot to mention them to me. The woman's name was Ellie, and her husband was Howe.

Ellie smiled and patted the table. "Sit." The world was falling apart, yet she still smiled. And it wasn't a fake one either. It was a true, genuine smile. The kind that was hard to come by, even before the Officials went mad. The woman placed her hands over mine and said, "I don't want to sound like I'm pushing you or anything, but you know you and your friends cant stay here much longer."

I nodded to let her know that I understand. As safe as this place felt, I knew we couldn't make a home out of it. Our homes were long gone, things of the past. None of us could ever go back to them until things blew over. If they ever did. The woman continued to speak.

"Howe went into town to pick something up this morning, and came back not too long ago saying that the Officials were checking every home for refuges and people hiding them. It will only be a matter of days before they show up here." Of course the Officials would be doing something similar to a home check.

Except, you were more likely to be killed during this one, rather than thrown in jail. Ellie stood up and strode over to the center if the kitchen. She reach over and pulled a hook-shaped piece of bent wire from the wall. Then, she bent over and hooked it into a hole in the wooden floor.

When she pulled up, a secret door popped up, one that was even more well hidden than the secret compartment in my home. I blinked, thinking that the metal hook was for decoration. A key never even crossed my mind. She told me, "When the Officials make it to here, I want you and your group to open this door and go down there. Those steps take you to a tunnel that goes under the City and out into the Wastelands."

Not even a paranoid elderly couple would go to these kind of extremes if they felt they were in danger. This had been planned from the very start. "Why is this here?" I asked, wanting answers now more than ever. Her face grew grave when she said, "A cleansing."

chapter title based off the song Renegade by Daughtry. -plays dramatic music- and the plot is thicker than blood :p (i just made that up o.o) lol. i am tired tired tired tired...TIRED. so, i bid thee farewell until tomorrow. :p read, review, and other things. ~Copperpelt~