A Place Where There Is No Darkness

Five

For a few seconds, I was in a whirlwind of shattering glass. Oddly enough, I almost didn’t feel the wood breaking around me, but when the window burst into thousands of diamonds, the sound echoed in my ears and the shreds buried themselves deep into my exposed arms, neck and brow.

My foot caught on the hard stone wall and twisted; it launched my upper body forward and momentarily brought me out of balance before it jolted free and sent me tumbling over through the hole. The sharp pieces of broken glass ripped my clothes and tore my skin. I would have screamed if my lips had moved fast enough but they didn’t and so I almost ended up choking on my own breath.

And then it was over and there was fresh air. It brushed against my cheeks and cleared my throat. It caught in my hair and for just a fraction of a second, I was floating and there was no earth and there was no gravity and there was no weight. I just was.

But, of course, reality had to ruin the party and in the next moment I was falling, fast, towards the ground. My stomach churned and looking down didn’t really feel like an option, so I tried to concentrate on the landing. The last time I’d seen the outside of the prison, a blanket of grass had covered the ground beneath this particular window – grass that had looked gracefully soft and fluffy. But that had been three years ago and lawnmowers were a common utensil here in prison, much more so than, say, a ruler or a freakin’ screwdriver.

Though before I could elaborate on that though, the ground – thankfully – came closer and I had to let instincts take over. My arm rolled under me to break most of the fall together with my bent leg. The impact was great but I took the force out of it by rolling and jumping up, stumbling a few steps and then falling unglamorously on my butt.

Talking about rusty here.

Every bone in my body ached, every muscle was tense, every movement pierced right to the core. But I didn’t have time to regain my strength. It was only a matter of seconds before the guards found my escape route – after all, a hole in the wall was not an easy thing to miss – and, calculating the minutes quickly in my head, I probably had about thirty-three seconds left to appear in front of the main prison gate.

My muscles be damned, I would not be late. Not for this one.

I pushed my aching body up and looked back at the prison. I wasn’t foolish enough to marvel at my success because every i***t knows that that’s how you get yourself jinxed. Thinking that you’ve accomplished something when it isn’t yet true – it’s one of the most dreadful decisions you could make; letting your body know it’s over before it is, abandoning concentration and wariness, trusting that no one is threatening you anymore could very well turn out to be fatal.

So instead, I looked back and smiled sadly. In a way, prison had become my home and running away felt like betraying something of my own. It felt like forsaking the only thing that had ever really been mine. On the other hand, of course, it was still oddly exciting.

I was free. And if only for a minute, if only for thirty-three seconds – I was free.

“Bye,” I whispered, then turned and ran. Sweat trickled into my eyes, my right arm was throbbing from the inside out, my stomach was complaining, but it was refreshing. It was liberating.

Twenty-two seconds.

Fifteen.

Three.

And I reached the gate.

***

I stopped, bent down, put my hands on my knees and took a few deep breaths. Every one of them caught in my throat and made it burn, only few of them actually reaching my starved lungs, but, nevertheless, I straightened, my trembling joints aching, stumbled to the gate, leaned against it and looked around.

There was no one there. No one but the normal townspeople, walking about, minding their own business, never looking up from their phones or their path. No one noticed a lone, sweaty sixteen-year-old girl, gasping for air and frantically searching her surroundings, never letting her eyes catch on anything, taking in as much as she could in as little time as possible.

One minute went by.

Two.

There were no police cars, no police men – except for the ones who were surely approaching me from the inside of the prison. I glanced back nervously. I could hear voices in the distance, could hear a commotion, I could even hear the siren from the inside of the prison, but an innocent passer-by would never have made out the faint sound. That, of course, was intentional – no one would want civilians to panic in case of an emergency. No one would want civilians to know what was really going on, not until it was absolutely necessary.

Still, everyone who mattered knew of my escape by now. Every cop in that building knew. Every cop in the city probably knew. Every stupid gun, from the smallest ones to the huge rifles, would be trained on me in a few minutes. Every possible reinforcement would be called in. In a few minutes, I would have no more protection, no more advantage; in a few minutes they’d find me and I would be an open target, unable to move and unable to escape.

I would have to go, I realised. I would have to abandon this meeting point, abandon this plan. I’d done all of this for a great big pot of nothing. No one was going to help me. No one was going to help Willy.

No one was coming.

I would have screamed if I hadn’t been sure it would attract too much attention. I almost didn’t mind at that point and maybe I would have screamed anyway, abandoning reason and wariness, but just at that moment, a person dressed in black came along, one I didn’t even notice until they grabbed my arm and pulled me along. A black cloak was thrown over me, which with the dropping autumn temperatures was nothing unusual, and a hood that covered most of my face was placed on my head. Behind me, police men stumbled out of the prison property and I couldn’t help but glance back – luckily, I wasn’t the only one. They just stood there, staring dumbly at the crowd of people before them, their eyes even roaming over me once, twice, but never stopping, never suspecting anything.

And why should they? I hadn’t left the prison wearing a long, black cloak.

It was all too quick that my saviour – although I didn’t like to think of him that way – and I rounded a corner and the dumb faces of the prison guards disappeared behind a wide bush.

„Who … “ I started, turning to the person beside me, looking him up and down. It was definitely a man, I could tell that much from his stance and figure, but other than that, I drew a blank. He just jerked his head, pulling me into another vacant street.

“Walk,” his gruff voice ordered and it was in that moment that I recognized it.

“Mitchell?” I inquired, my eyebrows wandering towards my hairline.

“I said shut up and walk,” he growled.

So I did what I’d been told. We rounded another corner, crossed another street and then entered a completely normal-looking cab that probably wasn’t normal at all. Once behind the safety of the tinted windows, Mitchell took off his cloak but subtly shook his head when I wanted to do the same. I grunted but left it on.

“It’s Mitchell, right?” I tried again, ignoring the cab driver whose dark brown eyes were staring at me in the front mirror.

“If my name even is Mitchell,” the guy mocked exasperatedly.

I cracked a small smile. “Knowing the FBI, it probably isn’t.”

He rolled his eyes then looked away and through the window as if there were anything interesting to see out there. The conversation was obviously over.

But I’d had three years of silence, three years of listening to my own thoughts, interrupted only by the occasional chat with one of the guards. It had been ages since I’d had a normal talk with someone cleverer than the dog I’d got when I was two – admittedly, it had been a really ingenious dog –, and it had been even longer since I’d led a conversation not trying to trick my companion into doing something I could benefit from. I was literally starving for a good talk and while this guy was many things, hot-tempered being only one of them, he sure wasn’t dumb. I could see it immediately, with only one look, and I found myself aching to hear his opinion on many things against my better judgement.

“So, where are you from?” I asked casually, more to fill the silence with unimportant chit-chat than out of real curiosity. I wanted a conversation, after all, and I couldn’t just start it with: “What do you think about global warming?” or “What theories do you have on the Bermuda Triangle?” I would have to stick to the simple stuff at first.

He turned to me, frowning. “What, you wanna share life stories now?” he barked. “Because, no problem, let’s hear yours first. How did you get involved with the Elite?”

I stared at him, shocked, my lips in a tight line, my eyebrows arched unbelievingly. Now this had taken a turn for the worse fast. For a few moments, nothing moved; even our driver seemed to freeze behind the wheel despite the curviness of the road ahead. My mouth opened and closed uselessly, once, twice, trying desperately to squeeze out the words but failing miserably with nothing more than a faint breath leaving my lips. In the end I gave up, let my head hang and shook it dejectedly. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I croaked, the sudden need to get out of the car and take a few gulps of fresh air – however polluted – rising from inside my stomach and burning in my throat, demanding more attention by the second.

“That’s exactly the problem,” Mitchell retorted. “I have no idea – that’s why I’m asking you.”

“I can’t tell you,” I whispered, my eyes stubbornly keeping away from his, unable to face his smug expression, those blue orbs as serious as ever. “And even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

“Of course not,” he agreed sarcastically and shook his head. “Of course you wouldn’t – after all, you’re not actually on our side.”

“No, that’s not it,” I refuted. “I’m as much on your side as any.”

“Right.”

“Yes.” My hands clamped into fists, my teeth gritted. “Maybe you don’t believe me, but I actually hate the Elite. I haven’t chosen such a life, you know. I haven’t chosen to work for them.”

“Oh, and why did you then? Work for them, I mean. And don’t bullshit me, I’ve had to make my fair share of choices and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you always have one.”

“But sometimes the choice isn’t an actual choice!” I exclaimed, my anger swirling and warping and then dispersing, diminishing into an all-encompassing powerlessness that frustrated me to no end. I added, quieter and much feebler than before, “Because sometimes some options aren’t actual options.”

It amazed me that he didn’t get it. That he hadn’t figured this out himself. Apparently, he couldn’t look five inches away from his small little perfect world and notice what was happening right in front of his nose. Maybe I’d been mistaken after all. Maybe he wasn’t half as smart as I’d thought.

I took two deep breaths and collected my thoughts, choosing my next words wisely so that I wouldn’t give away too much, but make him understand nonetheless. When I spoke, my voice was still smaller than I would have liked. “Other times there are many options, none of them right, and you’re left to choose between the horrible and the less horrible ones. And you just have to pick the one you can live with best.”

“So you’re saying that there’s something worse than working for the Elite? Killing people?”

I shook my head. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said again.

“Oh, humour me, okay?!” He snapped, his angry gaze settling on my face. “Don’t talk to me as if I were dumb.”

“Then stop acting like it,” I shot back. “A man of your profession should know that much better what circumstances can do to a person. A smart one would conclude that sometimes you can’t help it – sometimes life just throws you into whatever s**t it likes. But you – you’re just so eager to judge everyone, aren’t you? You’re so willing to divide the whole world into the bad guys and the good guys with nothing in between and the good guys go to heaven and the bad guys rot in hell for all eternity. Well, good for you that you’re a good guy, Genius, but newsflash: not all of us are that lucky! Not all of us have the privilege to be good.”

He looked confused for half a second. For the first time it seemed as if I’d come through to him, as if I’d wavered some of the solid ideas about life he had placed so carefully in his head. His brow furrowed, then smoothed again just as fast, as if told by a very collected mind to behave. “Everyone can be good, that’s not a privilege. It’s hard work. You have to want it.”

I laughed cynically, shaking my head. “You’re such a naïve little boy, aren’t you? You’re acting all tough and grown up, but down there, under this whole big-guy façade, there’s a small kid who wants to play with Mommy and hasn’t had anything happen to him yet.”

“That’s enough,” he muttered, but I didn’t take notice of it. The boulder had started rolling and was gaining speed, the big words I had been forced to keep to myself in prison starting to gather on my tongue and demanding to be let out and so I let them, I let them run about and hurt and cut and do whatever the hell they wanted, even take on a life of their own.

“Let me tell you something, Mitchell,” I said loud and clear and with a cool tone of voice that let him know just how serious I really was. “Want has nothing to do with it. If want and hard work were all you needed, my brother and I would be the happiest people in the world, let me tell you that much. But the world doesn’t care about want. In fact, it shits on want. It takes it and teases you with it, lets you smell it and taste it and hear its call and then it crushes it and changes it and pushes you over the edge. And where is all your hard work then, huh? Where exactly did it all go so off course, how can it be your fault when you don’t even know what you’ve done wrong? But it is, it is your fault, because life doesn’t give two shits about what you did or didn’t do, or what you wanted for yourself or for your brother – life never stops or turns around or waits around to see what it’s done to you, it just goes on and on and on and in the end – now listen to me, because you’ll want to hear this – in the end you have no choice but to simply stagger along. I didn’t want this for us. But it’s not like you or anyone else is ever going to care about that. Because people don’t give two shits either. They don’t stop or turn around or wait around for you either. The world is cruel like that. And if you haven’t figured that out yourself, there’s not much left for me to talk to you about.”