Oxygen Heart

"Come on!" he shouted as he grabbed my arm and started running south. My feet slipped away from me as they followed him, but my eyes stayed glued on the Enforcers. Their shiny silver beams pointing at us, their lenses blowing up our picture in the main square.

My world was silent and screeching at the same time. They saw it. They saw me. They saw me with it. I was done.

My heart flooded and lungs deflated as my head whipped around to look at where he was taking me. I looked, but the world was a blur.

"Keep going," he screamed.

And I did.

Until he pulled back some dead sticks and exposed a tiny cave in the ground. A hideaway? I thought they weren't allowed to have these.

He pulled me inside and covered the entrance behind us.

"Where," he panted, "did you get that?"

I held it in a clammy fist, "I...." but I couldn't tell him. Who was he? All I knew about him was that he lived in the outskirts and had a hideaway. No, I couldn't trust him. "I...have to go."

"Where are you going to go?" He spoke with a deep arrogance. "They just saw you with it. Your picture is in the main square. You can't leave."

My blood turned cold. He was right.

He marched up to me, inches from my face. He lifted my fist and took it.

"Where did you get this?"

The heart-shaped locket glistened in the tiny beam of light coming from a crack above.

"I don't know," I whispered.

He looked at me. His honey brown eyes pierced my soul. He dangled it in front of me. "You need to get rid of this. NOW. Or we're all done."

His know-it-all attitude was becoming exhausting. "I'm not getting rid of anything, it's mine. And who are you to tell me what to do with my things anyway?" I snatched it back from him.

"I'm sorry, but you have to understand that you just put us all in a lot of danger now that they know it's here."

I looked at him.

He spoke slowly “So...it's real, huh? The locket key?"

I nodded.

His brow furrowed. "But...the legend says that it was left on..."

I nodded again.

His eyes widened. "You’ve been there?”

“Earth? Yeah.”

“What’s it like?”

I saw visions of the greens taking over the grays, climbing them higher and higher. I saw the sands whirling in the wind, the colorful plastics bobbing in the seas.

“It’s better than when we left. But still not good.”

He nodded and stuck out his hand, “James.”

I took his clammy palm in mine.

“Lydia.”

“So Lydia, what made you walk out in the open with THAT?” he pointed to the locket.

I remembered the look in my mother’s eyes as she sipped her last breath of air and handed it to me.

“It was my mother’s dying wish.”

“So you got it from your mother?”

I nodded. “She was the engineer.”

James’s shoulders tensed. His beefy fingers curled up. “So she’s the reason we’re all in this situation in the first place.”

“No.”

He looked at me. But it was hard to read him.

“They told her that they would make enough oxygen with it for everyone. Not sell it to the elite.”

"Yeah, well they lied. The hideaways are the last damn places left where you can breathe without fainting."

I held up the locket, admiring the intricate pattern carved into the precious metal. "That's why she gave it to me."

He rolled his eyes and laid on the dirt beneath us. His eyes wandered past the tiny beam of light. A picture of a little girl stared at him. "It's impossible;" he said, "The only way you'd be able to insert that thing into the main circuit and change the free oxygen levels would be to get past the Enforcers, get over the Capitol wall, break into the oxygen room, and avoid all the security on the way."

A tingle ran up my spine. I knew that. Mom had told me, but it didn't feel real until now.

He kept going, "They have lasers leading up to the oxygen room, eight watch dogs at all times, and the Enforcers have heavier weapons the further you go in. And it certainly doesn't help that they got you on camera in the main square."

It seemed more and more impossible each time he spoke. "Wait...how do you know so much?"

He rolled over on the ground and folded his arms over his chest. His lips were suddenly glued.

I pried. "Can you help me?"

The glue came off. "No," he muttered. He stared at the picture of the tiny girl.

But he knew too much to let him go. "But you...you must've been..."

"I was. I used to work in the oxygen room. I tried to change the settings myself. And it didn't go well." His gaze never left the picture.

"But you didn't have the locket. I do. This is the only way to unlock the settings. My mom told me, just insert it into the center key and it will fit perfectly. You didn't have this."

"I'm not going back there." His voice boomed and echoed off the cave walls.

My heart jumped out of it's place. I looked at the sticks covering the cave entrance. I could leave. I could do it on my own. But he was right. There was no way I'd make it past the Enforcers as I went. He knew them, he knew how they worked. Suddenly, I needed him.

I kneeled beside him, looking at the picture of the little girl. "Did they take her?"

His mouth was glued again, but his lip quivered and his eyes welled. He didn't have to answer. I knew. And there was nothing to say. The room grew too heavy for words. So we lingered in silence for what seemed like an eternity.

He spoke. "I can't get her back. But they're going to keep hurting people unless we stop them."

I sat upright. "So you'll help me?"

He sighed. He grabbed a stick and started to draw figures in the dirt. "This is how the Capitol is set up." "This is the oxygen room." He drew an x in the center of the map.

Damnit.

He stood up and went deeper into the cave. I stared at the x in the dirt.

Whoosh. Something was coming at me. I put up my hand and caught some fabric.

He reappeared. "Good reflexes. We might actually be able to do this."

I looked at the cloth in my hand. It was shiny and black. Just like... "An Enforcer suit?"

He shook his head. "Not quite. But I made one similar. It won't make you invincible but it will give you some protection from the beams."

He got up and went to the cave opening. He pushed back the sticks. Dusk was starting to descend.

"Come on," he said.

I wasn't ready. There was so much I didn't know. So much I had to learn. So much as stake. "Now?"

He chuckled. It was the first time I saw his teeth. "Not now, there's some people I want you to meet. We're going to need an army to stand a chance at this."

I rose slowly. Where would we find an army? The elites were too busy in their oxygen chambers. The mids were too busy working at the Capitol. And the lowers were too busy working and fainting from lack of oxygen. It was just me...and him.

"Come on," he repeated.

I followed him out of the hideaway. The air was thinner out here. He took my hand and led me deeper into the forbidden lands. We walked through a maze of metal scraps and old plastics for what seemed like miles.

A great wall of graffiti and metal appeared in the distance. I looked to him. He nodded and tugged me along.

Soon, we were at a door. He knocked four distinct times. A slit in the door opened and two green eyes locked with mine.

"Who is she?" the owner of eyes demanded.

James took the locket from my hands. He held it up.

The eye slit shut immediately. The door opened. A woman with black hair, skin pale as snow, and piercing green eyes stepped to the side to let us in.

James took my hand and led me down a hallway. There were voices from deeper in the building and the walls were lined with...plants? There were plants here. But no one was allowed to own plants.

We stopped once the hallway opened to a massive room of pale, thin people. Maybe forty or fifty of them. Their echoing voices halted to a silence when they looked up. James was holding my locket for all to see.

The green eyed woman was behind us. "So it's real?"

James nodded. "This is Lydia. She's from Earth. Her mother made the machine."

All forty or fifty pairs of eyes in the room shifted to me. My face burned.

James turned to me. "Lydia, these are all people who are against the Enforcers," he looked down. "We used to be them."

I looked around at all the sets of eyes. "All of you?"

Heads nodded slowly.

"So we're going to do this together?" I asked.

A short man stood up from the crowd. "Hell no. I'm not going back there, James. And you know none of us should." The silent room turned into a rumble of agrees and complaints.

I looked to James.

James held up his hands. "Hold on, hold on, HOLD ON." The volume fell. "Now we can either stay living in the shadows like we have been, but this is the FIRST TIME we've had an actual opportunity to get out there and change it so we don't have to live like this any more. Look at us." The room looked around. "So white, we haven't left the caves. So thin, we don't have enough food. Getting sick, not enough oxygen no matter how many plants we can get to grow down here."

The eyes of the room seemed to soften.

He continued, "I know none of us want to go back. But this is the only time we have a real shot. We either help her do this, or we all die down here. I don't see another option, do you?"

No one responded.

He nodded. "That's what I thought."

The room stayed quiet. Eyes looked down, necks were rubbed, hands were wrung.

The small man stood up again. "What do we need to do?"

James smiled. One by one, each set of eyes stood up and formed a circle around us. The green eyed woman was the last one to join.

James looked around. He nodded. He locked eyes with me. "They have her picture in the main square. They know she has the locket. We need to distract some Enforcers, keep her out of sight of the civilians, and get in there to change to settings."

"But what if they see her? Or any of us? They have all of us in the main square." A tiny voice chimed.

"We're going to have to be stronger than them and more prepared. It's going to take all of us. We're going to need to start training tonight. We'll go in shifts so we don't use too much oxygen at once. Are you in or not?"

"Yes." The green eyed woman said.

"Yes."

"Yes."

"Yes."

The room echoed from every direction.

James smiled. He looked to me. "Ready to save the world?"

"Yes."