Run

I rushed to lace and tie a pair of oversized, battered combat boots onto my feet over three pairs of thick socks to make them fit, then tucked the tops of my pants onto them. My adoptive father was holding out an old fatigue jacket for me to slip into. It would be too big, but keep me warm. I tugged on an extra sweater over my head; hand knitted by my adoptive mother from several different colors and textures of repurposed yarn. I could hear the woman in the next room, crying as she moved around.

With a sigh I stepped forward and slipped my arms backwards into the jacket sleeves as the shoulders were lifted and smoothed into place by large, gentle hands; the same ones that had carried me from the crash site and taught me to survive. Jyohan’s hands lingered on my shoulders tenderly for a moment. “Be brave, Child of My Heart.”

“Thank you, Papa…” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and huffed while blinking away my tears before stepping into the communal room of the tiny cabin where Gynnie was aggressively putting together a pack.

Sitting at the table and blinking tears into their breakfast porridge, were the twins, my ten year old adoptive brothers. They would follow me in an instant so I knew I had to act strong to keep them here. Keep them safe.

“Come back when you’ve saved the world?” Blayne asked, hopefully then yelped when Blayze kicked him under the table.

“Hope so. Take care of Mama and Papa so there’s a place to come back to, yeah?”

They nodded, then rushed to embrace me.

For three years this had been my family when I could remember nothing before waking up on their mountain. Nothing but the nightmares. Three years of scouring the crash site, reusing the twisted metal parts to strengthen their home… Then Jyohan had found it. The key that had unlocked the door in my mind.

I felt my parent’s kisses as they settled the pack on my shoulders and bundled me in scarf, hat and mittens. “I love you all…” I mumbled as I stumbled out the door and away, praying to any gods who cared to listen, that the danger would follow me and not stop to punish them.

I went to the crash site and lingered long enough to pull the catalyst of all this trouble into the sunlight. A heart shaped antique gold locket. When Jyohan had pulled it from the ash and remains, I’d known somehow that it had been mine from before, but it wasn’t until we had opened it that my mind had also unlocked. I pulled off a mitten to open it again and look at the contents. A lock of hair, a picture, and a computer chip. I gave myself a mental shake, tucked the locket away, replaced my mitten, then set off.

To the south east of these mountains was the research facility where I had been created. A little girl as an answer to the viruses and radiation that had supposedly crippled the human race for generations. The Outies were often deformed and had much shorter life spans. My family was a rare exception. I wondered if being so high up the mountain had protected them, or if there was more to it that the Innie government was involved with.

A sound brought me back to the present and I mentally scolded myself for getting distracted. An Outie hunter with classic facial deformities was staring at me from the edge of a clearing as I trudged along. I nodded in greeting but didn’t stop.

I avoided most signs of people over the next several days until I neared the research dome. When I was a few yards out but still under cover, I hesitated as someone in a biohazard suit carried a screaming infant away into the underbrush, then hurried back.

I detoured to investigate and found a newborn with a deformed shoulder blade and a club foot. I processed my older memories from before and recalled seeing something like this happen, only from inside of a dome I was visiting for experiments. I’d been told at the time that one or both the parents had been exposed to radiation...

I crept back to the road and raised my hands as I approached. I tried to walk with confidence to the gate and was relieved to see that the uniforms matched my memories and not those of my pursuers.

“Halt! You people know you aren’t getting in! Off with you!”

“I am Elsbet Gee. Experiment Alpha of the Dawn Star Project.”

“Impossible! That entire team is dead or prisoner. You’re a spy!”

“We were shot down on our way back. I’m the sole survivor. Lost my memories and was cared for by an Outie family in the mountains until we found this and it triggered my memories.” I pulled the locket out of my collar. “Scan me if you like. I won’t resist decontamination or being detained until my story’s verified.” I watched him through the gold forcefield of the dome as he spoke animatedly into a private channel. Eventually a small gap appeared in the humming layer of energy and I was waved through a metal door into a decon room. I withstood the procedure as well as the following strip search and bio scan before I was allowed to put on a tan jumpsuit like the ones I used to wear.

After the few remaining contents of my pack had been searched, I was allowed to gather them up and take them with me to a drab gray cell, where I handed over the locket before I was shut inside. I then settled on the metal slab bed to wait, hugging my sweater and missing my family in their snug, tiny home; the cozy fire, singing songs together, eating happily the food we had worked hard to gather, hunt, or grow. I was dozing from a combination of exhaustion and boredom when a familiar, unpleasant voice wrenched me back to consciousness.

“Where is it?!”

The solid door had sid aside, with only metal bars between us. I couldn’t silence the whimper as I cringed and buried my face into the fibers of the sweater for comfort and wondered, why him?

“You know the rest of it, so where the hell’s the chip?”

“Not for you…” I mumbled.

He chuckled. He knew he’d always been able to intimidate me. “Well, I run the facility now so I’m the only person here who can receive it.”

“No. Y-you tried to sab-sabotage her. Wasn’t in the crash so she’s gotta be here.”

“Your creator was discharged and imprisoned on suspicion of selling secrets to the enemy.”

Gods, how I hated that smug look on his face!

“That’s right. The belief was that she sold you to them and the ‘crash’ was to cover up the hand off.” He grinned nastily. “So the only way to clear her is to give me the chip.”

“No!” I curled tighter into a ball. How had it all gone so wrong? “N-not for you. Only her.” I turned my face to the wall and refused to answer him until he eventually tired of screaming and threatening me. The solid door was sealed and I was again alone in the silence with my thoughts.

I lost track of time completely because it didn’t feel like I was fed or visited at regular intervals and I began to wonder if this was worse than what the black uniforms would have done. I was strip searched multiple times, the room and my pack thoroughly gone over with a scanner each time as well. I became numb. I stopped reacting to him at all, just laying still with my face to the wall because it was easier to let him verbally abuse my back than to keep repeating myself to his face.

This time when the solid door slid open there was no scrape of food tray or screaming scientist. Instead, the metal bars rattled open. I sat up slowly and looked over my shoulder, half afraid it was going to be another humiliating strip search.

There stood my creator, looking as thin and ill as I felt. I cried out and rushed to her like a child as she opened her arms to me. Before my family, I had called her ‘Mother’, and by how similar we looked, I had long suspected she’d used her DNA, maybe even her eggs to make me in her laboratory. “I’m so sorry, Elsbet… I didn’t know… I thought...” she sniffled then held me at arm’s length, cupping my face with her hands.

I didn’t let her continue. “I need to know two things.”

She nodded, smiling sadly.

“Did you know the radiation levels outside are a lie?”

“What?”

I nodded. My trek through the mountains had thoroughly convinced me. “The animals aren’t deformed, only some of the people and the food is foragable.”

“How do you know?”

Was she trembling? I was suddenly concerned about how much to say, but knew I still had to convince her. “A mountain family took care of me, taught me their ways. None of them are ill or deformed. I came back when my memories returned, but… I don’t think outside the domes are as bad as we’re led to believe.”

“I promise to look into it… The second thing?”

“What’s on the chip?”

She frowned, then sighed. “All of my research. Everything to do with you.”

“I want to put it in and see it for myself.”

She looked hurt. “Why?”

“Because I think the government is lying.”

She sighed deeply but nodded. “Come. I agree, though there very likely will be an audience. We’ll need to be careful.”

“I have to go out of the dome to get it.”

She laughed and in that moment, she was finally the woman I remembered. “Okay.”

She arranged for us to wear suits and for a guard to escort us to where I’d hidden the tiny computer chip, wrapped in fabric and first aid second skin. When we returned and had once again been decontaminated, she kept her arm around my shoulders as she led me to an empty lab. True to her word, the chip never left my possession until it was inserted to the reader. She then keyed up the large plexi screen for the gathered researchers and government bigwigs in the gallery.

As she sorted through the information, I was struck with a growing sense of horror. When she’d said ‘everything’ to do with me, she’d meant it. Every time it was in proximity to me or I’d opened the locket, it had synced with my internal chip to load every memory, thought, bio reading… Strangers were seeing my most intimate thoughts.

‘Mother’ was studying the missing years closely, then suddenly shut it all down, pulled out the chip and pressed it, along with the locket into my hands. “You were right. Your things are by the door.” It took me a moment to realize what she was saying but then I saw the angry faces of our audience, the guards moving in to capture us, and my pack leaning next to the door. She spun and smashed a tray of glass test tubes over the head of her guard. “Run!”

I finally understood. I dodged my guard’s attempt to grab me at the same time as I shoved a piece of heavy equipment at him. His instinct to save the equipment allowed me the time I needed to escape.