Static

CHAPTER EIGHT

I DID IT! I WROTE DURING WINTER BREAK! I DIDNT THINK IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN BUT IM SO EXCITED FOR YOU GUYS TO READ THIS CHAPTER AND I REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOY IT, PLEASE COMMENT AND VOTE IT REALLY MEANS A LOT! THANKS!  *Imogen above*

Alice was wrong. Taylor never joined us in the back of the monitor house. We had no more visitors since she left. The darkness was our only company joined by a constant chorus of screaming metal that never seemed to go hoarse.
I did sleep. It wasn't restful by any means and when I woke I was just as exhausted as I was when I eventually went under.
Blake did not close his eyes for a second, he wouldn't dare.
"What more can they do to us? You should at least try and get some shut eye." I had been begging for him to rest but each time the subject came up, he would respond by saying he wanted to think. Then he would turn the tables and force me to close my eyes.
"Hey." I say groggily, just now waking from the darkness of sleep only to be tossed into the black of reality. I had been curled up on the cold floor last I remember, but when I woke, Blake was laying beside me, his arm under my head and my body pressed tight against his side.
I quickly recoiled, embarrassed at our uncomfortably close proximity.
"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. Sleep well." Blake asks and I hear him shuffling around.
"No." I reply bluntly. I did not sleep well at all.
"Alright, well bad sleep is better than no sleep at all, I suppose." He mused, I imagine him cracking a lopsided grin as he said it. It almost pained me that I couldn't see his eyes twinkle.
"Why are you so chipper all of a sudden?" I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and stretching my arms.
"Chipper is not exactly the word I would use." He commented. By the direction of his voice I could tell that he had stood. I joined him on my feet.
"I was thinking all last night, racking my brain for a plan to get us out of here and go find Taylor." At this point his voice had dropped to a whisper and I had to strain my ears to hear him over the grinding metal that was starting to drive me insane.
"OK, what did you come up with?" I asked almost too casually. This was big news. I wanted out of this place as much as the next guy but following through on that desire was next to impossible.
A thought had crossed my mind as I'm sure anyone would think. I've escaped this place before, can't I do it again? But the answer was most likely no. The security was amped up to its highest level since I was here last. I got out last time with nothing but a speeding heart. This time my heart might just stop.
Blake explained his plan down to every last detail. He touched on everything that could possibly go wrong and then solving those problems.
He had apparently thought harder about the plan that I had assumed. I was prepared to shoot down any suggestions he had with drawbacks and reasons why it wouldn't work. But, the more and more he elaborated on his scheme, the more I began to realize that there was nothing for me to object.
His plan was seemingly perfect. It was well coordinated and though it seemed nearly unfathomable there was just enough chance that I had confidence in my actually work.
When he was nearing the conclusion of the speech, I still have yet to find a flaw. My anticipation was growing, silencing the rational part of my brain. When he wrapped up his thoughts I remain silent, pondering the idea in the dark.
"Well. What do you think? I mean, we could do it." Blake says when I didn't respond fast enough. I looked up at him even though I can't see his face and give him a smile that he would never see.
"Yeah. Yeah we could." The idea plants itself in my head, festering there like a weed, growing entangling any other thoughts until they stop struggling and die off. Blake's plan is the only thing left in my mind and I love it. Blake must not be able to sense my enthusiasm.
"So do you like it?" He inquires, sounding borderline embarrassed. But, I knew that was not the case. Blake was just concerned I wouldn't encourage the seeing through of his master plan.
"Are you kidding? I love it." I say, not quite excitedly but more of a reserved reassuring town. Somehow, his arms find me in the dark, he reaches out and grabs my waist, pulling me into him so that my face nearly against his chest which was heaving softly from his steady heartbeat.
The movement was so sudden that I let out a faint gasp of surprise to which Blake chuckled. I tried to squirm away, laughing lightly as I do.
"Shh." Blake said, teasingly.
"Just enjoy the moment." His voice was so easily laughable by the way he sighed like he just reached Nirvana.
"Your such a perv." I joked, pushing back harder against him. But Blake was strong, much stronger than I would have thought, not that I pegged him as weak, and he held me still.
Suddenly his mood turned serious.
"How come you never told me your name before?" He asked. Touching on my name matter was a meaningful subject to me and it woke emotions I had only recently begun to deal with. I stopped stuffing in his grasp and actually leaned into him. It was comforting to be held by someone else instead of struggling under my own weight all the time. It was almost like just being close to him sent me into some kind of safe haven where I would never have to worry again as long as I hugged him tight. I didn't know how he did it, how he managed to make me feel as light as a feather, as warm as summer, and as sheltered as though I were wrapped head to toe in cotton. I felt protected, like nothing could reach me. It was just him, just Blake. Just us.
Ok, cheesy, I know, but truth be told, the feeling was indescribable and I cherished it. Every freaking second of it was mine. From the thump, thump, thump of his heart to the sheet of warmth that seemed to be draped around me.
I nuzzled my face further into his chest, my hair strewn around my face but I shut my eyes so it didn't matter. Blake wrapped his arms tighter around me as if he could sense my need for closure. I felt Blake's chest vibrate as he mumbled something but I was to focused on his presence to hear what he had to say. I angled my head reluctantly away so I could listen.
"What'd you say?" I asked, a lazy grin decorating my face. I was drunk on his sent, intoxicated from his touch. Blake took a deep breath.
"Nothing Imogen, it wasn't important." The sound of my name on his lips for the first time made me shiver. I hadn't heard it spoken aloud in three years. I expected it to turn my insides to ice but the way Blake said it, it came with sunlight, not a blizzard.
I was so distracted by typical hormonal teenage thoughts that meant absolutely nothing that I didn't bother to try and force him to tell me what he deemed unimportant.
That was when the door opened, flooding the darkness with light and crashing into us like a tsunami. I shielded my eyes, not accustomed to the unexpected brightness and Blake clearly wasn't either.
Instead of letting go of me to protect his eyes like I soon he would have, he pulled me closer. I huddled against him and tried to see the door at the same time.
When I gave up trying to peer around Blake, since it became difficult because he was in my way and the light made it nearly impossible to look remotely in that direction, I looked up.
Then I saw it. The metal cages above me, like dog crates only made of iron and cobalt not plastic and tin. There were dozens of them hanging by chain-link cables that swung back-and-forth, groaning as they protested against the weight. The floors of the cages were solid slabs of iron but the walls were rusted bars. Beyond the walls, hunker down in their frail forms with their gangly limbs scrunched against their bodies, were kids.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes jumping from cage to cage, finding the same result inside each one. Both girls and boys at all ages of adolescence were locked away and we're swinging above our heads.
I was too unnerved to speak, so to get Blake's attention, and nearly tugged on his shirt and pointed to the ceiling. His reaction was similar to mine.
I saw in disbelief in the his eyes and the fear and anger, in that order. The light had opened us up to see the source of the screening. And although it was the metal that was doing all the talking in the dark, it was the kids who are now hogging the conversation.
I braved the source of the light and looked over at the door. My eyes began to focus and slowly the shaft of light became a doom glow that was interrupted by a woman figure dressed in the traditional zone uniforms that I had worn every day of my life for the past three years.
She wore white from head to toe with red stitching marking her name and age of her heart she had a mess of ringlets that were a dark brown and wild on her head. Her squared Jott and broad shoulders shadowed some of the light that was now wounding the darkness.
I could not tell from her distance but I knew The girl well enough to imagine the two vacant grey eyes on her dark skin that grazed only the edited version of the world that the monitors wanted us cursed people to see.