Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

10.2 Egress

Finley emerges from the shadows by the gatehouse with a box on a leaning trolley. My eyes widen. Its enormous.

"That's for me?" I ask, running my hand along the glossy black lid.

He shrugs and carefully unsticks the lid, "It was meant to be a surprise. Not that you'd ever have accepted this."

He pulls out piles of bouncy fabric and shredded paper, and I catch some of it between my elbows. It's shiny fabric, darkening under the rain drops.

"But that's not the point." He continues, reaching down to pull a pair of shoes from the bottom. I scoop a complicated feather hat from the dirt beside me noticing that the shredded paper has started to turn to mush. Fabric won't dissolve so easily.

I eye the box, large for a present, just big enough for a person. I bite my lip, resisting the urge to look at him for confirmation.

"We're really doing this?" I ask. I catch a glance of his wry smile.

"I hope you're not claustrophobic."

I do too.

I dump the clothes amongst the ashes of the drover's shed. I can't believe it's still saving my ass.

Finley gives me a boost to jump inside the box. It smells of books and subtle perfume. I curl my knees to fit and hear rasp of the lid closing over my head. At least I'm not being taped inside. Still, I feel my own heat reflected back at me from the cardboard walls. The trolley lurches and I slam against the side of the box, gritting my teeth through the bumps.

Our journey pauses by the gate and the soft sounds of conversation percolate through the cardboard to me.

"Let me guess. She didn't like it?" Says the gate warden and they both laugh.

"Not even a little bit."

"Mate, you gotta stop this."

"You wouldn't, if you knew."

The warden makes a soft disbelieving sound. Sweat begins to bead under my arms and along my back.

But I lurch sideways again and our journey continues. We're outside the gate! We made it! The burst of joy from dread shocks me. Still I clench my fingers on my upper arms, limbs turning to itchy jelly from the jittering trolley.

The trolley lurches on well past what must be the walls of Seven. But eventually the box stops moving.

Finley rips open the lid and I smell the fresh rain. I jump into the muggy air rather enthusiastically, toppling the box onto its side and the ripping the opening as I struggle to stand. Hedges form a web of darkness under a sky loaded with clouds.

"This is going to be so obvious tomorrow." I bemoan as Finley pushes the box and trolley under a hedge. Tonight they look invisible but I know they won't stay that way for long, especially if someone decides to use the secret path inside the hedge.

Yeah because the body's not obvious.

"I think the warden on the gate will cover for us, but even so." Finley says.

We're done for, I hear unspoken.

I throw myself after Finley, jogging through the hedgepaths. Where in sunlight they'd been rivers of green, at night they're tunnels of darkness, winding through the underworld.

The dark should be comforting, somewhere to hide. But snippets of memory are caught in every shadow. I twist my head away. This way, that way. A body slumped on the concrete, the dull gleam of a blade, Lily's eyes widening in horror. Even as I feel the wasps reawakening in my belly, I focus on my breath hissing in and out through my teeth.