KILL

ESCAPE

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

-Albert Einstein

Death isn't what people make it up to be. Everyone seems to fuss about it. What's out there? What happens to us? We all want to know what's out there. There are no definite answers to our questions, just theories piling up, drowning us. When did we start caring?

I never cared. The world around me can keep its secrets, thank you very much. When everyone I knew was asking questions, learning rules, I was busy learning how to swim upstream. Out of them. Order is fine. I just can't be tamed for too long. I always needed to break free from my constraints, the bonds holding me into a "happy" life I couldn't stand. It was a thirst for freedom, not rebellion. If you can live in order, I'm proud of you. I never could. I guess I can understand the need for answers. It's just like my need for freedom. Same thirst, different goal.

I knew I'd be escaping a settled life until I died. And when I died, I was about to escape. Almost.

It was dark that night. I was always looking for a way out of the barricade. The barricade surrounded our city, protecting us from whatever's outside. Apparently, according to the officials, we would've all died if it was not for the cement wall staring at us prisoners. That's how I saw it. We were stuck in here, without knowledge of anything outside. A city of 2 million people wasn't big enough for me. I needed the whole world. I was a captive beast in a world of organization. There could be other humans out there, for all I knew. What a mistake it was to assume that.

On the night I died, I was checking the perimeter of the barricade for what seemed like the millionth time since I first decided to escape. It killed me to be here. I searched and searched along the edge of the line this time, near the poor section of the city. It was there where I found the hole. I had my flashlight with me, shining against the dull gray of the wall. I was running, something I loved to do. But this was all buisness. Just before the barricade looped closer to the north of town, into better neighborhoods, I spotted a hole. This puzzled me. Of all the years I have run this route, I have never seen any deformities or mistakes in the wall. Just smooth unforgiving gray, blocking me from my goal. It was a gap in the blockade, surrounded with blue cracks fraying from the center of the anomaly. I touched it. My first mistake. The edges expanded, pulling the cracks away to reveal a blue panel. This was new to me. In my whole life, I'd never really believed I'd actually find an exit.

Immediately, I heard a somewhat robotic voice.

"Input password, please," it said.

A keyboard popped out. I ran my hand through my dirty blond head of hair. Why did it have to be password protected?

Then I remembered the paper. It was stuffed the back pocket of my jeans. Pulling it out, I can see my father's dying face as he handed the slip to me on his deathbed.

"For your future," he had whispered, before I was pulled out of the room, kicking and screaming. That was the last time I saw him alive. I was 9. That's when I first began to question our "safety" and well being. Six years later, I was still fighting for my freedom. I kept the slip with me at all times, in case "future" might come knocking at my door. Better give it a try.

On the sheet were these numbers:

11/26 9/26 12/26 12/26 5/26 17/26

Great. That's useful for a letter keyboard. Then, a lightbulb popped up. There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Therefore, 11/26 is a "k". I quickly typed in the rest.

K_I_L_L_E_R_

Odd password. Whatever. I pressed enter.

The panel split in two, revealing a wide hallway with wall to wall windows promising freedom. I made my second mistake of the night, and stepped inside.