I watched them leave, feeling numb, like floating underwater, before sliding the folded paper out of its nest. It was my brother’s handwriting, but not as I remembered it. He’d be thirteen now, not seven or eight, as I always thought of him, so it took a moment to confirm that the lighter, sharper letters were his.
I’m sorry.
Yeah, I thought. Me too, kiddo. Me too.
No one stopped me on the way back to my cellblock, and I was doubly thankful to find it as empty as before. When I slipped West’s envelope into my back pocket, my fingers closed around something sharp and hard. My mom must have put it there.
I pulled the object from my pocket as soon as I was sure I was alone. It was a dark metal card with a single silver band across the top. Raised symbols covered the band, and in my stupor, I ran my thumb over them twice before I realized that they were words.
Stamped across the top of the card was the phrase “North American Off-Planet Transport—Admit One.”
My whole life, I felt trapped. I hated the constant pressure to maintain the appearances that were so crucial to my parents’ lifestyle. I resented every choice they made on my behalf: stuffy uniforms at private school, mind-numbing ballroom lessons at junior cotillion, forced smiles at charity events. No matter where I was or what I was doing, I was never where I wanted to be, and nothing I did made sense, even to me. I baffled the hell out of my parents. But all I wanted was to feel some kind of freedom, some kind of escape. Escape never came.
So my first stint in juvy, at the ripe old age of twelve, was hardly a big adjustment. It was actually more like a relief.
For the first time, I was surrounded by people who didn’t care what I did with my hair or who I hung out with or where I was going, which was always the same answer: nowhere. I was a lost cause, and in here, no one questioned that or tried to change it. Once I got in the system, the only life I could ruin was my own. And everyone here was fine with that.
I knew for a fact I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Why else did I see the same kids coming in and out of here, for so many years that we had our own holiday traditions? Heck, last year, I had a Secret Santa. I had given myself a name, and they called me by it. So don’t tell me I didn’t belong here.
Except that now, I had to get out.
Standing on the floor of my block, dwarfed by the rows of cells above and around me, I felt, for the first time, like a rat in a cage. And the cage had become a death trap.
I pressed the starpass deep down into my shoe, inside my sock, where no one could lift it off me without my knowing it, and tried to think. There were no more guards to bribe or threaten. After the meteor was discovered, and the Treaty of Phoenix was signed, everyone who enforced it, from soldiers to street cops to prison guards, was guaranteed a spot on one of the five Arks. Keep the walking dead from rioting, and you get to live. I could hardly blame them; it was a brilliant solution. How else could you get nineteen billion people to die quietly while half a million others escaped to the stars?
I didn’t exactly have a key to the outside, since like I said, getting out had never been a big priority for me. But I knew someone who might.
Isaiah Underwood was a year older than I was, but it might as well have been fifty. He was legendary in our circles, not because he was the only juvy we knew who had escaped, which he was, but because he came back. Deliberately. I vaguely remembered the day he’d gotten out—alarms, total lockdown, the usual drill. Normally the missing prisoner was just hiding someplace halfway clever, like the laundry or whatever. But when Isaiah left, we stayed in our rooms for two straight days, and they never found him. They finally had to concede defeat and let us out.
I was between stays when he came back, but I’d heard the story a hundred times. Months had passed. Someone else had been placed in his cell. Everyone on his row was at lunch, and he just strolled into the commissary like he’d been in the john the whole time. Isaiah was back, except he wasn’t. First thing you noticed was his eyes, or rather, his lack thereof. It was only when you talked to him that you realized something else was missing, too, but you couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He was more thoughtful, less happy. Older.
We called him the Mole after that.
I took off in a dead sprint, hoping no one would see me. Running was an excellent way to make trouble for yourself. The walls smeared past in a blur of blue and gray, and even the barrier to the men’s quarters didn’t slow me down. It was wide open.
The Mole was sitting on his bed with his white cane across his lap. A book lay on the blanket before him, its precise rows of dots skating underneath long, careful fingers.
“A visitor.” He smiled a white smile, and I raised my hand to greet him out of instinct.
“Hi, Mole.”
“Charlotte Turner. You want some company? It’s too late for that. They say we all die alone, but you can read my book with me until then.”
“No, I—thanks, though. I was actually here because—”
“Charlotte, baby. Have a seat. You know what book this is?”
“No.” I sat next to him on the bed. Another moment brushed past us both, too quickly.
“Pilgrim’s Progress. I reckon we all have a journey to take. My journey’s about over. You’re out of breath. Don’t want yours to end just yet?”
“That’s why I’m here. Mole, I need to get out.”
“We all want out of something.”
“Not you.”
“Even me.”
“Then help me get out of here. We can go together.”
“My prison’s made of stronger walls than these.”
I paused. “But you could help me leave mine, if you wanted to.”
He turned his face to me, as though he could still see me. “You were a beautiful child. Someone should have told you that. A small bird in a big cage. I haven’t seen you since you were thirteen.”
“Tell me the way out.”
He sighed and sagged, as though carrying something heavy. “You don’t want to go out there. Ain’t no good out there for folks like us.”
“That why you came back?”
“It’s all the same. Doesn’t matter where I go. Only difference between us and them is that they don’t know they’re broken.”
“Look, I get it. You’re angry. And it burns you, like all the time, and sometimes that’s the only thing you can feel. And you think that if you give up, if you stop fighting it, then maybe it won’t hurt anymore. You think you’ve found peace because you believe that you belong here. But what if it doesn’t have to be this way?”
He didn’t answer, so I played another card. “What if the Remnant exists?”
The Mole leaned back against the rail of the bed. Something about his easy posture made me feel exposed, as though he knew what my future held. “Even if they did, there’s nothing out there for me, Charlotte. You remember when you first got here?”
“Of course. Everyone remembers their first day in.”
“You told me you didn’t care whether your family missed you.”
“They didn’t.”
“Mine didn’t miss me, either.” His voice was so soft, I wondered if