Rising From The Ashes

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

It was working. Just a week into me taking on the role of the repentant girl and I was already having good results. I’d only been punished just twice throughout the entire week, which was hardly anything compared to weeks past. Finally it seemed I was learning. And of course I was planning as well.

At first I’d made the false assumption that escaping this place could be no harder than sneaking over the wall. However, I soon learned that crossing over would have been a piece of cake compared to getting out of here. First, the security was imaginably more heightened with cameras and guards lurking all over the goddamn place. Second, there was the problem of the many locked doors I had zero access to. And third, it appeared almost as if there were no exit. Of course there had to be with Officials coming and going, bringing new fugitives like me every once in awhile. And yet I could not for the life of me figure out where they had brought us in.

There are no windows anywhere, which complicated things further. I couldn’t see outside to gauge where I was or what I would be up against even if I did manage to escape. All week long I’d been scoping out the doors in the practically never-ending hallway, hoping to learn something that could help. There were thirty-six overall, twenty of which were the girls’ rooms. Then there was Dr. Cartwright’s office, the group therapy room, the dining hall, the three classrooms, and the first and second room I’d been punished in. This left eight more unknown rooms.

I knew that at least one or two of the unknowns would be more punishment. Then they had to have a room for security, with the video footage from the cameras. Then one of the remaining five or six doors had to lead to an exit. I needed to find a way to eliminate which rooms it couldn’t be and the best way I could think to do that was to talk to the girls who had been here long enough to know. Of course, that presented a problem within itself.

No one here would speak to me. At least not where others could see and I wasn’t exactly getting much time to myself. The first person I wanted to talk to about it was Lily since she seemed to know which girls were trustworthy and which weren’t, but then I had to find a way to go about doing this.

My chance came unexpectedly one day when we were offered free time during one of our class periods. We were supposed to be working on an independent project, some kind of creative outlet like drawing or painting, but I ignored these instructions and cornered Lily the second the teacher stepped out of the room.

“I need to talk to you,” I hissed quietly. I didn’t want to attract the other girls attention, but they all seemed deep into their paintings or what not at the moment.

“It’s really not a good time,” she whispered back, glancing around anxiously.

“We won’t get a better one than this,” I insisted and after a second she nodded, acquiescing.

“So, I’m going to try to escape,” I started and she huffed in frustration.

“You don’t think that’s been tried before? There’s no way out, Kaydance. None,” she stated bitterly.

“There has to be. And if we could just figure out what’s behind each door then our chances of choosing the right one is even better. There are just eight that I’m uncertain about,” I told her.

“Say you do narrow it down to one or two of the rooms what then, huh? How are you going to get in? How are you going to get past whatever alarm system they have set in place? How are you planning to get past the guards?” she asked. By the frustrated look on my face I knew she could tell I had no plan just yet.

“I’m working on it, okay? It’s not impossible. Yeah, it’ll probably take a lot of planning and risk and help from the others, but if we’re thorough then we could do this!” I insisted.