Bang.
Crash.
I stay huddled in the corner, brackish water dripping on my face and shoulders, completely still. My scent is masked down here, thankfully. Nobody will find me until I want them to. Good.
The game is on.
xxx
The facility had gone out first. I had been working in there, ferrying trays when inmates were allowed to do community service to incrementally shorten their sentences. Two hundred years is hard to shorten, but the work was better than staring at a wall, even if I was burdened by handcuffs, ankle cuffs, and multiple electric shock devices.
My crime?
Well, the easiest was to say it is I can see color, an ability that vanished after the worldwide radiation poisoning of 2018. The gene randomly mutated around six years after, causing adults and children alike complete color blindness. Color became a myth in the decades after that; elders reminisced about blue skies and green grass and those words became indistinct, because how do you describe color?
But the gene mutated again,years later and randomly in select hundreds of children. I'm one of them. Color blossoms in words I hear, numbers I read, and everywhere in the world around me. I'd kept it a secret from a young age, learning of the dangers of color and creativity that the government teaches; knowing what would happen if to my freedom if I said a word about the beauty of the world.
That is, until the mandatory genetic testing at age 17. The mutation was found, and I was exposed as the freak of nature I am. Well, now that you know all about me, back to the present.
xxx
Scuttling through a damp sewage runoff pipe, I hold my breath and ignore the questionable substances coating my hands and knees and feet.
I can faintly hear the soldiers clomping around in their steel coated boots; the walls of my hiding place shuddering with the motions of above.
The dogs bark as they find my jacket, discarded in an attempt to make a bandage for the burn on my stomach. It didn't work, so I left it to change their perception of my path. They should be going to search the woods I haven't been in once. In response to my planning, I hear a tinny voice announce,
"Escaped prisoner in the forest; all units report for debriefing immediately."
This couldn't be working better. All I need to do now is get to the exit point a few meters ahead and I'll be home free. Kind of. I need to make it to the safe zone; an area where escaped Synethesetics like me can live free. It's said to be a fairy tale, but the rhythmic chants whispered when the guards change and the cameras sleep tell a different story.
I mumble last night's rhyme under my breath as I inch my way through slop towards the grate showing faint daylight that cannot possibly come from the artificial sun under the dome of the prison camp.
"Under the sky of a periwinkle blue, walk along with the hue.
The road is hard, but with me and you, we can get the world to see color too."
I arrive underneath the grate, mellow golden light filtering between rusted bars onto what has to be mud; I'm hoping it's mud. I allow myself to fall on my back, wincing at the squish and crunch through my shirt, but plant my feet on the grate and shove with all of my strength.
The banging and crashing of the guards searching for me are distant now, muffled by the plexiglass dome surrounding grey buildings. The grate gives way with a loud creak and a thump, and I hold my breath while listening for footsteps. None come, and so I heave myself out of the sewage pipe, blinking in the sudden light.
