The Black Box

42

After what felt like hours, Avi didn't think I was much of a threat so she let Jason untie me from the chair.

"When do the guards change positions?" I ask him.

"Every few hours."

"When's the next change?"

"In half an hour. So be ready to sprint." He leaves my jail cell.

I feel like when I was in the hospital. That feels like a really long time ago but it was only a week or so.

I hear the doorknob turn and Avi walks in. She walks towards me and looks me over.

"I know that Cyril can't interrogate, that's why I'm here." She calmly sits opposite from me. "Where's the virus?"

"What virus?"

"Don't be stupid, Peter. I know that you're smarter than this." She motions to me sitting across from her.

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

"That you're helplessly stuck here. Forever."

I will be stuck here, for as long as she wants me to be.

"How long is forever?"

"Eternity." Her pale pink eyes flash. She takes her glove off of her hand and almost touches my nose. "I'm this close to killing you." She slowly takes her finger away from the space above my nose. "You have one chance to tell me where you're hiding the virus or I will kill you."

"Have you ever heard second chances?" I ask her.

She glares at me. "I'm only going to ask you this once and only once, where is the virus?"

"In The Break," I tell her. "It's not in a place where I know of but its in The Break."

"Are you lying?"

"Absolutely not."

She studied me for a second. She presses a button on her collar and speaks into it. "Search The Break until every rock is overturned and searched throughly. Bring me a dirt bike. We won't have Ashes outsmarting us."

She actually believed me. What a sucker.

"Thank you for spilling what needed to be spilt." Avi leaves the cell.

And I thought that was supposed to be an interrogation.

I look around the room for anything I could do but it's absolute nothingness.

Something bangs against the hallway outside my cell. After it I hear a thump and my cell's unlocked. Jason motions me to hurry up. He runs before I stand up. I run out into the hallway after him. The hallway's completely white, with the occasional one-way glass on the cell doors.

"Let's free your friends. They're in these cells," Jason yells back as we turn a right. We furiously type in the code into each keypad and the cells unlock. Once everyone's freed, Jason opens a door and we run through it. We run through a very long hallway that gradually slopes upwards, like a hill.

At the top there's a door. Jason unlocks the door and we're free. We're on a flat snowy terrain overlooking the ground below. On the horizon I see the granite hill, a little bump in the straight line.

The Break is a little closer to where we are. Behind the crumbling buildings are a series of tunnels, leading to who knows where. Soldiers standing at gunpoint, waiting for someone to come out into the open. Other soldiers are ripping The Break apart, trying to find the imaginary virus.

I turn around and everyone's walking away from the edge.

"Where are you guys going?" I ask.

"We're leaving. Escaping," says Jason.

"But we have to go back for the others."

"They can escape on their own. They probably know how to. Avi's gonna find out you guys are missing and will kill me."

I turn to look over the edge, at The Break. I see a dirt bike propped against a wall of a building. Avi turns a corner and I lay on the snowy terrain, making sure she can't see me. I didn't realize how cold it was up here and I'm shirtless too.

"Come on. We have to go." Christie's on her stomach too, looking over the edge too.

"What about your brother?"

"I think he can escape. He's smart."

Before I can reply and tell her that we should go back, Avi looks at the mountain we're on and admires it. Jason runs over to us and she spots him. Her face turns into a twisted rage and points to the edge. Soldiers start to fire at us. The bullets bounce off of the dirt and stone, missing us by just inches. Avi's getting on her dirt bike and is surely gonna kill us.

"We have to leave!" Jason runs for his life towards our friends.

Christie and I jump to our feet and start to run.

"Not so fast," says a voice behind us. Avi takes her helmet off and she almost looks pretty, besides the fact that she wants to kill me. She takes her gloves off and flexes her fingers. "You are so dead."

"Christie run!" I tell her.

"I'm not leaving you here. I'm the protector here!" She yells at me.

I turn to her. "You sure?"

She nods. "If I don't live-"

"Don't even think about that."

"-tell Navi I didn't want to leave him. Or you." She goes on her toes and kisses me on the lips. "Now go."

I run, in shock, away from her. "I love you," I whisper.

I turn back and see Avi walk up to Christie and she puts her bare hand on Christie's shoulder. I'm just out of earshot and hear, "...say goodbye to your boyfriend."

Christie looks at me and I can't hear her but I can read her lips. I love you.

She disintegrates into thin air, in front of me. Her ring is on the ground and Avi flings it in my direction. I pick it up and put it into my pocket.

"Ah, teenage heartbreak." It sounds like a whisper.

I catch up to my friends, tears streaming from my face.

And we just ran.