Ame Perdue

Chapter Five

It amazed me just how unobservant people were.

Even with the raging migraine threatening to tear my skull into three pieces, I still had more balance than Travis gave me credit for. People were idiots, underestimating everyone that they could across. People seemed to think that just because I was a teenager, I wouldn't be able to et the better of them. It pissed me off, but I got my revenge when I walked away with their precious items, with them none the wiser. The small touch of him stabilizing me was all that I needed though. In the brief moment, it took little effort on my end to slide his phone out of his lab coat pocket.

I turned the phone over in my hands, making no effort to hide it from the numerous cameras watching my every movement. I scoffed at the back of it. Intricate green swirls imprinted on the back of the case, looking like someone handed a random kid puked and used the vomit as paint on a canvas. My brother believed that you could tell what type of person someone was by their phone case, but all this told me was that this guy really liked the color green.

I wasn't overly concerned with the cameras tracking my every movement, nor did I care that they could see me with the phone. If someone came to steer me out of a certain hallway then I would know for certain that there was something down there that I would need to explore later. As for them seeing me on the phone, for all they knew, I thought this was a dream. In a dream, I wouldn't really care about someone seeing me because I would think that it wasn't real.

Dreams, specifically lucid ones, gave people a sense of fearlessness that they can't achieve in reality. I would know, there were things that I could do in Arcadia that I wouldn't dare of doing in the real world. Such as sword fighting. In my dream world, sword fighting was something that I was natural at.

In the real world, I was pretty certain that I would chop off my toe.

Opening the phone, I raised an eyebrow at the lock screen. I could clearly recall him saying that he had a husband earlier, but the girl on his lock screen would beg to differ. It was a picture of the pair of them curled up on a couch together, popcorn hovering midair between them from where she was throwing it. Her face was wide with joy, her eyes sparkling with laughter. It was obvious that whoever took the picture photoshopped it. The girl was just too pretty. Her eyes were too wide, her skin too clear. All of her imperfections had been brushed away, leaving a doll in its place. Or maybe she was a doll, I wouldn't be surprised if Travis was into that kind of thing.

There was no point in trying to unlock the phone, I hadn't seen him unlock the phone earlier, and with the passcode being a word, there was no way that I would be able to figure out the code before locking myself out. I had to give the guy some credit, I had assumed that he was the kind of idiot that didn't have a password on his phone. He wasn't a complete idiot when it came to personal security. The password didn't stop me. Emergency calls could still be made with the phone locked.

I opened his emergency contacts, dialing 911 from there for the second time in the last few hours. There was a beep before an automated voice spoke, "The number you have dialed has not been recognized." I cursed under my breath.

That was never a good sign. I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my chest. It wasn't the no service message, it was as if 911 didn't exist. I wasn't an expert on the matter, but I had a strong feeling that I was no longer in the United States. I took a deep breath to calm myself; it didn't mean anything, it was just a coincidence. I racked my brain. Someone once told me that other countries used different numbers. What were the other numbers?

I dialed 119 on a whim, not even slightly surprised when it brought me back to the same message as before. I silently cursed whatever education system decided that people only needed to know the emergency numbers for their county. Did they think that it was possible for kidnapped victims to be transported to other countries? News flash, human trafficking existed. If I made it out of whatever this was, I silently vowed to memorize the numbers for the other countries. I was a moron for not having done it already.