The Mantis Effect

Chapter Eleven

How much longer would I have to walk into this black void before anything changed. When would the air smell less dank? When would there be light? I needed light. I needed to know I didn't just flee down this tunnel to walk in blackness until my legs gave out.

Rodriguez pulled out a flashlight and looked around.

"We must be three miles deep by now. We should be coming up on a hatch at any time now, right?" He asked.

Titus looked to the ceiling.

"We keep going till we find it," he said.

He hadn't spoken at all and I knew he was trying to figure out how he was going to explain it to Hap when he woke up. Oh god, Hap. Poor Hap. He would split the sky with his screams and crack the ground when he beat his fists against it. He would never be the Hap who smiled all the time and for no reason at all. I felt ill.

"There it is," Rodriguez pointed.

And there it was, a hatch door protruding out of the ceiling. It was what we had set out to find. Our holy grail. I wish I had known what we'd have to sacrifice to find it. I wouldn't have entertained the idea that night in the infirmary if I had. None of us would have.

Titus set Hap down and disconnected from Stone. He crawled up the ladder and began to crank the handle. Rodriquez held the light on the door for Titus to see and Stone took the turn to carry Hap.

The door lock opened with a slight rain of dust and dirt down on us. It took his strength for Titus to push that door up and away but when he did the outside breeze came rushing down and hit us like cold water. It smelled new and unfiltered and for the first time since we hatched this plan I was afraid to go out there.

One by one we crawled up and out. I was the last to come to the surface. The night was dark and chilly but the sky was full of stars and the moon lit the silhouette of the mountains. We made it. We made it to the outside.

I felt the rock and sand under my feet and knew that every pebble I stepped on and every breath I took was afforded to me at a cost I wasn't prepared to pay. The only way to honor that now was to keep moving, to not get caught. To be as free as I could for as long as I could. That much was owed.

I looked to my comrades, though the outside world as all we wanted it wasn't enough to move us now. Now we were absorbing the weight of it, but to do that was a hefty and dangerous thing. Now was the time to move, the run. I looked to the mountains and they looked arduous. They looked imposing. They were certainly going to be a hardship and yet I stood before them, ready.

"Come on," I said.

"We have to keep moving."

I fought every fiber in my body that weighed me down like wet cement and told me to give up, because I would never give up now. One step after another I moved me no matter the hurt.

"Where will we go?" Rodriguez asked.

"Past the mountains and after that we'll chase the sun from horizon to horizon until we find them," I answered.

"Who's 'them'?" Titus asked.

"The Rover militia, free people, people like us. I don't care. Whoever will join the fight," I said.

We had escaped but we'd never be free; not until we brought that place and its structure crashing down the heads of monsters like Shepherd. I realized now I would not be content with just saying that I was free, I needed to seize it with my own hands because we would not suffer at theirs again. I would not be controlled and contained for their piece of mind. I would not exist behind the glass for them to ogle and fetishize over while trying to retain the fragments left of me that they had not quite cut away yet and I would fight against that ever happening again. And with that I found my truth; I would not carry on the legacy of the Mantis Effect.