Krysta and I agreed yesterday to see Jet together. We made a plan to ask to be excused from class, to use the restroom, at a specific time and we would meet up in the bathroom and then head to the stairwell. I press the handle down on the door to the bathroom and glance at the clock on the wall in the hallway. Krysta is running late.
I pace back and forth in front of the row of sinks, avoiding my reflection in the mirrors. The door to the bathroom clicks and then is pushed open and I freeze in my tracks. Krysta pokes her head in. "Alright, let's go."
I follow her down the hallway, to the stairwell and we slip in through the door. I am careful to hold it as it closes, so the noise of it shutting does not draw attention. Jet is waiting on the landing below ours for me. He looks surprised to see Krysta trailing behind me, but does not say anything about it.
"Hiya, Jet," Krysta says as she plops down on the stairs a few steps above the bottom.
"Hey." He looks at me, eyebrows lifted and I just stare back at him. "Okay, then. So they've got Tasha and Isaiah on the sixth floor. You know for sure that they are up there?"
"Pretty sure," I say.
"Yeah, I mean, where else would they take them? They took a whole bunch of us from our rooms yesterday." Krysta leans forward, forearms resting on her knees. "Did you hear about the madhouse that was classes yesterday? Because it got heated pretty quick up here. Guess they didn't do a very good job at nabbing all the affected ones."
"Tasha was talking to a few Wardens when I got to the infirmary, Beck was there too. He was telling Tasha he had orders to have shots administered to some of us. That is when things got hectic and she smashed all the vials."
Jet is silent as his gaze bounces from me to Krysta then back to me again. "The sixth floor is heavily guarded." He folds his hands on top of his head with a sigh. "I'm talking more Wardens wandering the halls than you can imagine. I've only been up there once, for my interview, but it's all accessed through keycards and retinal scans. There's no way we'd be able to sneak up there and bust Tasha and Isaiah out."
"Well we don't have to worry about getting them out just yet, right?" Krysta asks. "I mean, we just need to find a way to get in there. Once we're in, there will be five of us and getting out will be a piece of cake."
"Five of us?" I ask.
"Yeah," Krysta says, making a face at me. Then she counts off on her fingers, "Jet, you, Isaiah, Tasha, and me."
"Whoa, wait. Who said anything about you two going up there?" Jet asks, his eyebrows climbing.
"I want to go," I say.
"Elyse, I don't know if—"
"I want to help them, Jet." I say, cutting him off. He looks at me, his face contorted in a mixture of uncertainty and defeat. I know there is no way he would be able to make me stay. "Krysta and I may prove to be useful."
"Yeah, what she said," Krysta pipes in.
Jet's mouth twists and his eyebrows pinch over his nose. "So you have a plan then? The two of you? To get all of us up there?"
Krysta and I exchange glances and I am not sure what it is, but I get a feeling that we both have similar ideas.
"I dunno if it would get all of us up there," she starts.
"But it might get me and Krysta up there," I finish.
Jet groans and runs his hands over his head from the back to the front, mussing up his hair and causing it to stick out in some places. "I'm really going to regret asking, but what's the plan?"
YOU ARE READING
NUMB
General FictionI have been Numb my entire life... Elyse has lived in the Compound, a facility that houses children deemed Numb, almost her entire life and it's been mostly uneventful. But lately something is starting to cause her peers to become unstable, violent...
