Immortals

Chapter Six // Mia

"Hey Mia, you have some time?"

I didn't, truly. I had a long day and had planned to get an early night's sleep. But Emery was at my door, his voice a mix of earnest and urgent tones I couldn't ignore.

"Yeah, what's up?"

As soon as Emery was through the door, I saw it. The passport I had given him earlier that day.

"Did you get a translation? Already?"

"Yup."

I couldn't believe it. Emery actually got Parker to translate the code? A code from the government he hated with everything in him?
"I don't know how you didn't get it honestly. It was just Morse Code."

"You did it? Not Parker?"

"How do you not know Morse Code?"

"How do you know Morse Code?"

Emery sighed. "Probably not a great thing to admit, but it was a little trick my father utilized to-"

"Alright, I get it."

Back in school, before everything as we knew it ended, Emery and I were never close. He was in the grade above me and we knew of each other through a selection of mutual friends, but we never became friends ourselves.

However, that didn't stop me from knowing about his family and their list of issues. How his parents were dealers in a rougher part of town, doing what they could for more money to pay off their debts. How it all started simple with a hidden patch of marijuana and turned into a mix of stronger drugs and the best kept public secret I had ever heard. How Emery, in his tween and early teenage years, ended up dabbling in this inventory with nothing and no one stopping him, the error that would end up marking him as an Unfavorable at the age of fourteen. How his sister escaped the fate he was bound to fall victim to by shutting out her family's toxic ways at the young age of nine, and managed to save herself and gain the marking of a Favorable in the process.

You didn't need a strong friendship with Emery to know the details, but nonetheless, a strong friendship was what I got and what I held close to my heart as his loyalty and kindness showed through more and more as he sobered up on the run.

"What does it say though?"

Emery pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. "I have it written here."

I could feel adrenaline coursing through my veins as I read the words on the page, the translation of a code that hadn't left my mind all day in my hand and written in a format that was understandable to the average person.

And when I took those words in, I could feel my heart rate spike.

"ORDER OF THE NEW REGIME EAST COAST OUTLET, 1001 MAIN STREET, SPRINGFIELD, MA, 01020. POSSESSION OF THIS PASSPORT ALLOCATED TO DEPUTY SRJ1011, STATIONED AT 315 HILLSIDE LANE, ALBANY NY 12204"

"Hillside Lane. That's not far from here, is it?" I mulled.

None of us had grown up in the area. We weren't all that far away, everyone I had run away with hailing from the same small Putnam County town I did.

It still blew my mind how a group of middle schoolers and high school freshmen made a trip that would've taken two hours on the quickest car route mostly on foot.

Regardless, until the moment of capture in the not so distant past, the Albany area was a safe space.

"Yeah, I believe so. I think maybe half an hour by foot or so," Emery confirmed, pulling me from my thoughts.

Immediately, the gears in my head started turning. It was hardly after seven at night with a half an hour's walk to the address listed, if Emery and I were correct. If we left within the hour, we would be there either within the same hour or shortly outside of it. The rest of the operation from there would be risky, would rely on a lack of security and an empty home. The chances of neither obstacle existing were, realistically, slim, but was it worth a shot regardless?