Just Jump

5

“Hey!” She shouts after me. “Where are you going?”

“The X Ward.”

“To look at the X files?” She jokes.

I fake a laugh. 

“What, you seriously thought I was just gonna let you navigate this labyrinth by yourself?” She twirls a strand of blond hair around her index finger.

“Well, I kinda wanted to be alone,” I say.

“Too bad,” she shrugs and jogs to catch up to me.

We walk in silence until she blatantly asks a question just to annoy me. “So… you know where we’re going?”

“Of course I know where we’re going,” I scoff.

"You have no idea, do you?”

“Not the slightest.”

“If someone catches us out of the ward, we’re totally screwed,” Sheila says quietly.

“That hasn’t happened yet, so I’m not gonna worry about it yet.”

“Why are we going to the X Ward anyway?” She asks.

“I wanna find Ray’s birth certificate. If he’s really eighteen, we can get out of here.”

She makes a pfft sound. "Ben, there are people on their deathbed in here and they're nowhere near being let out."

“Sheila, there’s a whole world out there! I’m not just going to sit around being a test subject in a so-called orphanage.”

“Why do you need his birth certificate? Just break out.”

“You think I haven’t thought of that? I don’t –” I break off midsentence as I hear footsteps down the hall.

“What?” Sheila asks.

“Shh,” I push her against the wall as the voices start.

“Which ward? J?” A man’s voice says.

“Yes,” this one sounds like a younger man, maybe in his early twenties, although I can’t shake the feeling that it sounds familiar.

“Why?”

“Self-awareness, sir.”

"How can you be sure?”

“The little one’s mutating.”

“The one they call Darcie?”

“Yes, sir. She’s informing the others. I left after the other two left."

Sheila squeezes my arm.

OW, I mouth to her.

“We have to go back,” she whispers as the voices grow louder.

I nod.

“On three,” she looks down the hallway and cringes. “Three!” She whisper-shouts, shoving me into the middle of the hallway. 

We both hit the ground running. Thankfully we haven’t ventured that far and getting back to the ward is a simple task.

Ray looks up from his book, his face still entirely blank. “We have to get out of here,” he says tersely.

Darcie nods. “There are people coming and they’re go-”

Paul bursts into the room out of breath. “We have to get out of here.”

“Yeah, thanks, we’ve established that,” Sheila says.

“Where were you?” I ask.

He shrugs off the question. 

“Wait a minute, that was you in the hallway,” I accuse him.

His black eyes seem to spark. “What?”

“That was you! You ratted us out!” I shout at him.

His brow furrows in what I hope is confusion.

"Has it been like this the entire time? You’re just going behind our backs telling them about everything?” 

“No! No! It’s not like that, Ben! I just –”

“You just what?” I snap.

To my surprise, it’s Ray who stops us. “Guys. We don’t have time for this.”

I force myself to swallow my anger.

“The only accessible exit is in the X Ward,” Paul spits. “In case you care.”

        “We can’t go straight to the X Ward, that’s where they’re coming from,” Sheila points out.

        “There’s another way,” Paul says through clenched teeth. 

        “Hey,” Ray warns.

        “The Precinct is set up like a circle, with all the different wards on the circumference. We have to go through the center.”

        “But… that’s where they all are,” Sheila says.

        “Guys?” Darcie peeps. “Why can’t we just go around the circumference the other way?”

        We think about this for a moment. “Oh yeah,” I say after a minute.

        “Alright, come on. We have to leave before they get here.” Ray picks Darcie up, opens the door, and looks out tentatively. He turns back to us and gestures out the door.

        Sheila turns to me and I realize her hand is resting on my leg. I nod at her, and she, Paul, and I join Ray in the doorway.

         "This," she says to me, "is never going to work."