"Iris?" Sergio asks waking up. "Is that you?"
"The one and only," the girl's voice rings through the cells.
Sergio nudges me and I glance at the girl and do a double take. She's only about eight and wearing a dirty sweater and torn skirt. It's hard to tell what colour they might have been to start with but I think pink. Despite the dangerous situation she's in she grins and jangles the keys.
"Good girl Iris," Sergio praises and the kid almost glows with pride. "Now let us out."
"Who's she?" Iris points at me and I swear she sounds jealous.
"Let's not do this now 'Ris," Sergio shakes his head.
I put my hand on his knee and tell Iris that I'm Sergio's girlfriend and if she lets us out she can be one of my bridesmaids. I elbow Sergio in the ribs and he agrees quickly. Satisfied the little girl skips forward and fits the key in the lock.
"You promise?" She asks.
"Yes," I answer and Sergio nods behind me.
"Okay," the girl is all chipper again and unlocks our cell.
The sound echoes around the corridor and I wince, thinking that any second now the prison guards would come running and stick us all back in the cage. Iris grins and rolls her bright green eyes at Sergio as if to say, she's dumb. For an eight year old that girl has an attitude, can't really blame her for that. We've all got to cope somehow.
"Don't worry Princess," Sergio whispers in my ear. "Iris will have put the guards to sleep."
"Permanently?"
"Who cares?" The girl shoots back with as much venom as an eight year old girl can muster, and it's quite a lot.
"Sergio stop," I say as he drags me towards the exit, he can move quite quickly when he wants to.
"Blair, if this is about the guards..."
I interrupt him, "The other mooners. We should get them out."
He stops pulling and looks at Iris, who shrugs and says, "We've got time before the humans wake up."
Sergio closes his eyes, his forehead wrinkling deeply, and all along the corridor I hear the cells clicking open. Iris and I start to run up and down, collecting prisoners from their cells. I barely glance at Kotey's body lying on the floor, the old man in the next cell over refuses the invitation. He's dying and we both know it.
Everyone who wants to escape crowds around Sergio. He smiles but leaves the directions to the now skipping Iris. People seem confused but are willing to follow the little girl, we live such strange lives that we entrust a mass escape to a child, a skipping child.
"Here we are," Iris stops suddenly.
I nearly trip over a thin girl with white-blond hair and Sergio quickly reaches out and steadies me. I look around and see that Iris has disappeared. There's a screen right by an older looking teenaged boy's ear. It shows something completely different than the rest of the corridor, it shows a forest. I am really not surprised at anything the mooners can do anymore.
"C'mon Blair, it's safe," Sergio mutters in my ear. "It's hard to explain but I swear to you it's safe. It's like a portal to the forest outside Tree Top City."
"And I just walk through it?" I ask taking his hand.
He nods and I see that everyone is waiting for us and Iris has gone. Now the guards will be waking up soon, we don't have much time to escape.
YOU ARE READING
Project: Hero
Teen Fiction"You might be a killer, but I don't think you're a monster." The government has taken over the nation in a totalitarian state. But there are a select few who stand in its way. And that is those with the moon Tattoos. Each possesses a strange power a...
