Marked

“Juan! Juan, snap out of it!”

No amount of screaming seemed to pull him out of his shock so Rachel slapped him. There would be plenty of time to hate Abby for working for the poachers but for now they had to focus on living through the next few hours.

“What’d you do that for!?” He exclaimed, cupping his cheek as red spread across his face, her fingers leaving behind an outline of white against his other-wised sun-kissed jaw.

“We gotta go! Get up, we need to be ready for when the guards arrive.”

“Rachel, what in the hell is going on?”

Rachel approached the unconscious guard and stripped him of his weapons. She took his gun, made sure the safety was on and chucked it at Juan where it collided with his chest. He fumbled to get a hold of it while he rose from his perch on his knees.

“Abby is working for the enemy, that’s what’s going on and we gotta get the heck out of here.”

Next, she took the guards Taser and rummaged through his pockets for a pair of the silicone bands he’d used to bind her. She flipped him over, bound his hands, and stood, all in a matter of mere minutes.

Now was not the time to fall apart or think--now was the time to act. “Let’s go. Pick him up and help me get his finger on the scanner.”

Juan did as she instructed. Rachel maneuvered the guard’s finger onto the scanner on the wall where the it lit up red and refused to let them through. She tried again—maybe she’d used the wrong finger-- but none of them seemed to work. Growing frustrated, she tried his fingerprint one last time but all it did was earn her another ‘denied access’ voice message.

“Abby must have anticipated we would use him to try and escape. His fingerprint is locked.”

Juan let the guard slide out of his hands and cupped the back of his neck with both hands, the gun-still held in one hand, poked out from under his curly hair.

“Well shit, now what?”

She glanced around the room, trying to come up with a plan but nothing was coming to her. That’s when she spotted the camera glinting black in the corner of the room.

“Give me a boost.” Juan wove his fingers together to create a foothold for her which she used to propel herself up and slam the thin, cylindrical taser against the glass of the camera with enough force to shatter it.

“Get on the other side of the door. Now that they can’t see us, we’ll try to surprise and overpower as many of them as we can.”

“I can finally see what my brother saw in you now. You can kick some ass! Let’s do this thing!” Juan clapped his hands together and went to the opposite side of the wall. He seemed pretty calm, given that a hoard of guards were surely on their way to collect them so Abby could ship them off to the city to be marked. She drew from his calm and steeled herself.

They both waited, Rachel’s struggling to get her breathing under control after the mention of Hector’s name. She refused to let herself think about the fact that his sacrifice had probably been in vain. That was the most difficult thought, the thought that, if she allowed herself to think about too much, would make her want to curl up into a ball and render her useless. Not today.

When the first sounds of boots clapping against the tile floors reached her, adrenaline took over. She nodded to Juan, waiting for the moment when they could spur into action.

There was no way of knowing how many of them there would be, but she had enough pent up anger inside her that she almost anticipated the encounter.

A few thuds erupted from the other side of the doors—they were taking longer than she had expected to come through and panic gripped her, fast and fierce. What if they were setting up a trap for them?

She didn’t get a chance to find out when the doors slung open and a figure emerged. Rachel slammed her full body weight into them, sending them both crashing into the doorway and toppling onto the floor.

“What the hell, Wilson!”

Rachel untangled herself from Yalina’s limbs and glanced around her, confused. Four guards were strewn in the hall, their eyes closed, jaws slack. The lights above laughed at her with their silent buzzing, the hallway stretching out with the promise of freedom.

She whipped her head back to look at Yalina who held a taser in her hands, her black hair like a bed of seaweed against the white of the floor.

“Yalina, Abby is working for— ”

“I know, I heard everything.” Yalina interrupted while sitting up. “There’s no time to talk, we have to get out of here.”

“But how?” A gun appeared in the doorway first and then Juan stepped out, taking in his surroundings.

“They’re not looking for me, only you two so we’ll use my fingerprint to get us out.” Yalina explained. Rachel took a gun from another guard and stood to follow. She glanced at Juan.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all for leaving and all but we gotta go get Simone first, you know.” Juan said.

Yalina rolled her eyes, and reached around the corner, her hand pulling a wide-eyed Simone from out of the shadows. “What did you think? That I was new at this? Let’s go.”

“I heard everything, Ray.” Simone muttered as they made their way down the corridor. Yalina paused at the end of it, cautioning the others to wait behind her. Once she was sure it was clear, they all moved again, towards the elevator. “I’m so sorry I doubted you.”

“It’s okay, Simone, you didn’t know. Let’s just focus on getting out of here for now.” They all crammed into the lift, letting it carry them to the very top floor. She became acutely aware that they were underground, making her feel trapped and suffocated.

“Access is restricted to this floor to anyone that doesn’t have clearance so don’t touch anything,” Yalina ordered.

Rachel, Simone and Juan stood pressed against the walls of the elevators—when the doors swung open, Yalina walked out first, her hips sauntering in that casual way of hers. How that woman was able to remain calm through this mess, Rachel didn’t know.

“It’s clear, come on.”

Around another corner, her face split into a taut grin, making her cheekbones threaten to break through the skin. She stopped abruptly, motioning with her hand for the others to halt.

“It’s that time again, Henry.” Yalina said. Rachel, Simone and Juan lingered behind the corner, keeping out of the guard’s sight.

“Where’s your authorization?”

“Oh, crap. I must have forgot it back in my office. It’s just a routine run to see what other intel I can gather from the CN, you know, the usual.”

The man named Henry harrumphed. “Well I’m sorry but I can’t let you out without an authorization card.”

“I completely understand,” She replied. What was she doing?

“Now!” Yalina shouted.

Rachel jumped forward, her taser out and ready. Yalina slammed her fist into Henry’s throat and he clutched at it, gasping for air.

At the same time, Juan burst from the corner and stormed toward the other guard, kicking his knee out from under him and gripping him in a headlock until he passed out from lack of oxygen.

Rachel kicked Henry on the side of the head, enough to send him to sleep for a few minutes. She regained her balance, breathing hard and couldn’t help but think it had all been too easy, so easy in fact, that she doubted they were really out of the woods.

A steel door stared back at her, taking up the entire expanse of the wall. The gun metal grey of the bunker entrance emitted an ominous feeling, as if it guarded the horrors that lay on the other side—the marked ones, the capital, E-91 running rampant in some corner of the world.

Turning back to look at her friends, she saw the same fear of the unknown plastered on their faces. How could they possibly start over after everything that had happened? And without Hector, no less.

“Do you guys want to get out of here or you want to keep staring stupidly at the wall some more?” Yalina asked as she produced a key card from one of the guard’s pockets. She held it up for them all of them to see. That was their ticket out, their key to freedom.

Rachel glanced down at the guards by her feet. She imagined them standing like obedient statues within the city walls, their sense of self gone, their freedom stolen. She pictured Pippa and Tom that way too.

No one deserved to be lied to. Leaving them behind oblivious to their leader’s evil would be the equivalent of handing them over to the poachers herself.

She couldn’t be Abby’s accomplice.

“I can’t leave.” She whispered.

“What do you mean you can’t leave? Are you crazy?” Juan asked.

She fixed each of her friends with a meaningful glance and swept her arm towards the guard. “Guys, if we go now, we’re leaving all these people behind to be Marked. We’re abandoning them.”

Yalina placed a hand on her hip, her eyebrows drawn in annoyance.

“You couldn’t have thought about that before we knocked out all the guards? If you don’t want to go, then what do you want to do?”

“We have to get to Abby.” Rachel replied. “We have to unmask her once and for all. We owe it to the bunker people- your people” She emphasized that last part for Yalina.

“That will be nearly impossible.” Simone interjected. “The guards protect her like she’s made of gold or something.”

“It won’t be impossible, not if we let them capture us.”

“Rachel, there are cameras everywhere. She’ll know by the time they bring us to her that I was helping you out.” Yalina said. “You understand that I’ll be captured too and that I won’t be able to help you escape, right? We’ll be on our own, we’ll be trapped.”

“I know that.”

“So you’re asking us to sign up to die? That’s crazy, Ray, we gotta get out while we still can.”

“I need you to trust me, Juan—all of you. I have a plan but I’m going to need your help.”

“Well you better tell us this plan quickly because the guards are on their way.” Yalina jerked her chin towards the elevator.

Rachel turned around at the sound of clamoring boots. At least a dozen guards erupted from it like a wave of the ocean—among them was Tom and another familiar face.

A jolt of shock raced through Rachel, making a long-forgotten memory resurface, so much that it killed the plan on her lips. A guard with hair the color of chestnuts led the group, his angular face pulled into a grimace, eyes darting around the room with skill.

Eyes the color of storm clouds glared at them as he approached. It was David, the man who had spared her life in the forest outside of Charles’ cabin.

“Hold still! Don’t you move or we’ll shoot!” He ordered.

“Great plan, Rachel,” Juan muttered through gritted teeth.

The guards drew closer, apprehending them all, Tom standing on the sidelines with his weapon up, but his eyes unsure and nervous. David came to a halt in front of Rachel, towering over her much like he had in the woods all that time ago. He grabbed her by the shoulder, and stared her down, recognition sweeping over his face. He pulled out a band of silicone ties and jerked Rachel’s hands in front of her.

She held her wrists out, thumbs and pointer fingers touching, knuckles facing towards him. As he bound her hands, she put as much resistance as she could and glared up into his eyes.

“I would have never let you go back in the woods if I knew you would cause my mom this much trouble.” He grumbled.