Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Tonight was the night I was supposed to leave. Everything was all planned out, down to the most miniscule of details. I had a bag packed, filled only with the most essential of items as I wouldn’t be able to lug a ton of stuff around, and hidden beneath a layer of junk in my closet. I’d even written a letter to my mother, the one I would leave tonight for her to find in the morning, explaining why I had to go. I was ready.

The plan was simple. At midnight I would leave my home. I would then head directly to the nearest emergency call box. There’s one on every street corner complete with a red button and an intercom system that links anyone who presses it directly to the Official on call duty. They put them in as a form of protection, a way to ensure we all could contact help immediately if the need for it should arise. And tonight I’d have a need for help and I would press the button.

Most likely there would be a camera linked to the system, but this wouldn’t matter. If they saw me or not wouldn’t make a difference if I was already on the other side. And the only other option would be that I was already caught. So, I’d press the button regardless and then there would be the Official’s voice over the intercom, asking if I needed assistance. The story I would feed them would be a flat out lie, of course. One I’ve practiced over and over to make sure I had just the right amount of emotion in my voice.

I’d say that I’d been attacked by a male! That one had somehow made it over and was most likely just behind me! In a hysterical tone I would beg them to hurry, hurry! Because he would surely be here soon, to kill me, to kill us all, just as they had said. And then I would scream the bloodcurdling scream of a girl who sees her attacker right behind her. And then I would run.

If things went smoothly and the Official believed I was truly being attacked then she would send others to deal with the problem. If I knew the system like I thought I did they wouldn’t want a girl running around claiming to have been attacked by a male. This would be bad for them, you see. Whether it was true or not. Because a tale such as this would imply that they had been negligent, that they had failed to protect us. And if they wanted complete control they couldn’t have people doubting them, even a tiny bit. I was banking on this to make them send a well-trained group of Officials to handle the problem. And the only Officials even on duty at night where the ones on guard duty. It would take too long to summon the others from their homes and so they would have to send some of the ones already on duty. It just showed how little a threat they knew the males possessed to us considering they didn’t even have any other Officials ready for action in case something like this happened. Someone being attacked was such a rare occurrence, practically unheard of, that they’d chosen to take such liberties as not having extra Officials on duty. And this would help me greatly.

There was one area in particular with only one Official on guard that I was planning to cross over at. This area was much tougher to cross than the others as this section of the wall was taller and was built of metal instead of brick, which made it impossible to climb with no handholds or footholds. They were planning to redo the rest of the wall this way eventually, but hadn’t quite gotten to it yet. Either way, due to the difficulty anyone would have trying to cross over at this spot, security was a little lax. And I was almost positive the guard that worked here would be the first sent to check on the girl being attacked. They would leave this section completely unguarded believing, due to arrogance, that the difficulty the wall would provide was security enough. I was planning to prove them wrong.

Over the last few weeks Catherine and I had scoped the section of wall out, getting a feel for the height and such. Then we began to gather supplies. It took awhile to amass all the items I would need because if I purchased them all at once it would certainly look suspicious and so I had to buy a few things at a time and then go back for more later. Now, though, I had all the things necessary.