The first to get back, after Ty with the bandages, is Claire. She drops an armful of knives and tubs of who-knows-what in the corner before rushing over to us.
“What happened?” She says loudly, “Aydin, what happened?” At first, I don’t respond, then I say calmly and quietly, “I don’t know exactly what happened, but between the time they left and the time they got back he had gotten shot, probably by a guard.” Before going back to wrapping his abdomen in the thick, white bandage Ty had found. Mutyrey was sitting at the end of the bed, bouncing his leg and tapping his fingers anxiously on his knee.
“Can you have him not do that? It’s making this kinda difficult.” I say softly to Claire, who is happy to comply.
Once I finish tending to Dan’s injury he lays back against the rough wall and closes his eyes, finally able to rest without me stabbing him with a needle. I run my fingers through his hair again before collecting our contraband and tucking it neatly away into my boxspring and wait for Meg and Jaydia to get back.
“If you get cell searched and they find that stuff you are gonna be so screwed, Ayda, you know that right?” Claire makes an extremely valid point.
“That’s why it’s all in here, to decrease the chance of our stuff being in a cell that gets searched. And I’m probably the least likely to do anything stupid and get searched anyway.”
“They search all of the cells every day,” Claire says, staring blankly at the wall and leaning against the side of my bed, fiddling with a plain, golden ring on her finger. For a second, we’re all silent, then it suddenly dawns on me to ask her, “How long have you been here?”
“August 20, 2018. 11:45 AM.”
“This is where you’ve been? We thought you ran away.”
“Pft. I wanted to, don’t get me wrong, I did, but I couldn’t leave you behind, baby sister.” She says with a satisfied smirk, but still staring off into space at the wall.
“We’ve been over this,” I say laughing, “You’re the baby sister. I’m older than you by almost an hour.” At that moment Meg and Jaydia appear and close the door behind them, setting their armfuls of stuff in the corner. At the same time, Claire and I jump up and start organizing the stuff. They have a few sleeping bags and extra pillows that can easily be hidden under the bed, and a few things that can’t. A lock pick set, circuit boards, and a few screwdrivers, a hammer, nails, and screws.
“Where’d you guys get all this stuff?” I say in awe, sorting through everything.
“Various locations, but mostly the guards quarters. They have a lot of stuff in there.” Meg says, panting for breath.
“Yeah, they do! It took us ages to sort through it all and find anything we could use.” Jaydia adds, brushing a strand of black hair out of her face.
“Nice. Could we get back in if we need to?” I say, not looking up from our pile of stuff for more than a second.
“Oh yeah, easily,” Jaydia says enthusiastically.
“Do they keep the inmates belonging there?” Mutyrey asks. Apparently, Dan had been interpreting our conversation for him. I don’t have a problem with it, it was just kinda surprising for some reason.
“I think so, but I’m not sure,” Meg says, twirling her hair around in long strands between her fingers.
“We could always check. We could get in and out in 5 minutes if we calculate it out.” Jaydia adds.
“When do we plan on going out to do that?” I say, finally finished sorting out our contraband, and now tucking it away into our stash.
“Tomorrow after classes we could do that. We’ve got about an hour and a half of free-time between the end of class and working period that we could use.” Meg points out.
“Sounds good. Until then, nobody else gets shot and don’t get sent to solitary.” I say, stitching up our stash, tucking my blanket down between the board and mattress to hide it, and leaning against the wall by the head of my bed, my arms crossed over my chest.
“We need to go to the showers. If we’re not there soon they’ll know something’s up.”
“We were supposed to be there 4 minutes ago, but Dan had to get himself shot, so that didn’t happen.”
“Alright, alright, be nice, but seriously, let’s go,” I say with a laugh, then roll onto my shoulder to face Dan, “Will you be okay to walk there?”
He nods and signs something to Ty, who then translates for me, “He’ll be fine. Kid’s been through worse before.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I won’t question it.”
“You probably shouldn’t, honestly,” Claire says with a smile. “Let’s go shower. I haven’t taken one in two days.” I pull my sister to her feet, from her position against the bed and follow her down the hall to the showers.
Two lefts, two rights. End of the hall.
I count the turns and add them to my ever-growing list of locations and directions. As we separate to go to the different locker rooms Meg taps my shoulder and says quietly, “If we shower quickly we can go check it out tonight.”
“Let’s not. It’s getting late, and we already said we were doing it tomorrow.”
“Fine…” She says in a falsely disappointed tone.
I ruffle her hair up before looking for an open shower. Thankfully, they aren’t open, they’re all stalls that can be locked from the inside. I disappear into one, undress and take the braids out of my hair, putting the elastic from the end of the main braid on my wrist, and shower quickly, working the shampoo and conditioner through my hair for a few minutes each before rinsing them out and moving on. After I finish rinsing the soap off of myself I shut the water off, dry my hair as well as I can with a towel hanging on the wall, dry my body off, and redress into the blue jumpsuit we all wear.
I’m one of the first people finished, so I hang around in the hallway for a few minutes to wait for the rest of the gang. Sadly, the wrong gang gets there first.
Markus.
“Hello, sunshine. Had a nice shower?” He says with a falsely cheery voice, obviously to irritate me. I decide to ignore him. For a second he waits for my response, then another one of his friends speak up.
“Princess, he’s talking to you.” If he wasn’t one of Markus’s friends I’d probably like him, but he is, so I don’t, and again, I choose to ignore them. Instead, I peer around the corner into the hallway to look for guards. There’s one at either end of the hallway, and several in between, but none nearby. Suddenly, I get slammed into a wall, my head smacking against it, Markus’s arm across the front of my shoulders.
“I asked you a question, darling.”
“You’ve got the wrong girl, Markus. Or don’t you remember me killing Adrien?” I say with a sly grin and a slight laugh.
“Oh, we remember, honey. And we’re gonna pay you back for it.” Markus replies sharply, bringing out a strange, almost Alsavi accent I had never caught before.
“Have fun with that. You couldn’t even save your friend. How do you plan on doing anything to me?” I spit back, my dark smile still tugging at my lips still.
“Easily. You’re outnumbered, and out powered. Even with a weapon, we could take you down easily.”
“Let’s find out. 6:30 tomorrow in the gym.” For a second he glares at me, trying to find the loophole in our deal that I would undoubtedly take advantage of, then, deciding there is none, he lets me go and says, “Fine. Just you and me tomorrow.”
“Just you and me,” I say with a satisfied grin.
“It’ll be nice to have you walk into a fight ready to lose for once.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I say quickly, before disappearing into the girls' showers to find Claire.
YOU ARE READING
A Perfect World
FantasyA young girl by the name of Aydin Hale is caught in the crossfire of an ancient battle. It started with breaking her sister out of jail, how did it turn into a full blown war? A battle between Fate, Destiny, Balance, and Karma? Along the way, Aydin...
