Nick Webster

A New Friend

            Over the course of the next two days, I learned so much.  Nikki taught me the language that she and everyone else was using to communicate with each other.  They were speaking a language called Russian in a country called Russia.  It wasn’t a very creative name for a language, but that didn’t bother me.

            I also learned the difference between men and women.  I had an intuitive feeling that there were two sexes in the world although she was the only girl I had interact with so far.  Everyone else was a man.  I was a man.  Well, actually, I was a “boy.”  Nikki was a “woman” or a “girl.”  The difference between a boy and a man was age.  Men are all grown up, have bigger muscles, and fully developed brains.  I didn’t have all that, which is why everyone else seemed so much bigger than me.  I thought they mutated me or something, but it turns out that one day I’ll be as big as all the other men in this world.  I looked forward to growing up!  The thought of that made me smile.

            Similarly, Nikki was a girl instead of a woman.  That means she still has time to grow too.  But what’s the difference between a girl and a boy, you ask?  I’m so excited to learn about these things that I would be happy to share with you!  Boys go to Mars to get nice cars, and girls go to Jupiter to get stupider!

            I’m just kidding.  That was a joke she had read on a thing called the internet.  She only shared told it to me because she thought I would like it.  I didn’t really get the joke, though.  I did learn that boys and girls are needed to make babies, but they must first grow up and become men and women.  It’s possible that we came from a man and a woman but not according to Nikki.  I’m really not sure one way or the other.  I don’t really know exactly how babies are actually made anyway.  I think Nikki and I are just worried about surviving right now rather than where we came from or how we came into this world.

            Most importantly, I’ve learned a lot about our situation.  We were “born” in a laboratory in Норильск, Russia.  I emphasize the “born” part because Nikki believes we weren’t actually born like a normal pair of humans.  Nikki isn’t 100% sure of how exactly how we were made, but she told me the company where we were made has been researched the creation of genetically modified children.  We are simply creations that they did not expect to run away.

            How do I intake that information?  To know that I have no parents… to know that I was simply some experiment that other people used for their amusement… to know that I’ll never have a home… to know I have no purpose on this Earth… what am I to do?  What am I to think?  What is Nikki thinking about all this?  Will I learn the answer to any of these questions?  Only time will tell.

            Nikki escaped over a month and a half before she helped me escape.  When the scientists made me lose consciousness, they really did so for a while.  She’s had a lot of time to learn these things, plan for my escape, and she’s doing a great job of figuring out the next step for us – all while learning the language of the people in this country.

            Right now, we’re on the east side of a small lake outside of Оста́шков, Russia.  It’s about 10 miles outside of the city where we were created.  Nikki told me this house was abandoned when she found it.  I found it odd because I had a strong feeling when I first walked in that this house had the smell of another person in it.  Yet, there was no one here.  Nikki is definitely smarter than I am, so I trust her and what she says.

            Nikki’s a wizard at computers.  She doesn’t know how or why, but she just says using computers comes very natural to her.  She told me that I shouldn’t use them without her monitoring.  The same people who created us could potentially find us if we are not careful.  They can track down our searches and location just by logging into the internet that I mentioned earlier.  And if you don’t know, the internet is a way to connect to other people from across the world.  They operate in the “digital” world where you can communicate with each other, spread your ideas, and even purchase and sell items.  It sounds extremely useful, but I don’t know how to manage any of that.

            Fortunately, there are over six billion people on the planet.  That means there’s a lot of people using the internet all over the world.  Not all six billion people live near us, though, so we still must be careful.  We also can be tracked based on our patterns of searching, so I simply left all the internet usage to Nikki who knew what she was doing.

            Lastly, this house is Nikki’s “hide out.”  She says within the next few days we’ll have to leave this place because our pursuers will likely have enough time to find us.  They’re very resourceful people.  They are trying to catch us will eventually find us if we stay in the same location.  Nikki will also need to get another car at some point.  She said that cars have a license plate on the front and the back which is registered to the government.  We can’t exactly take it off because we’d be caught by the police since it’s against the law to have a car without a registered license plate.  The police would stop us and try to catch or kill us.

            What is the government and who are the police, you ask?  Well, for now, both of those are our enemy.  The police are supposed to keep law and order among the citizens of the city and state.  They will be the people after us, and they’re the people who were in the cars with lights at the gas station where I had the tracking device removed from my armpit.  Nikki is not sure how they would respond if they saw us.  Sometimes police will kill criminals, but most of the time, they’ll apprehend people.  Nikki said our assumption should be that they’re going to kill us.  Right now, it’s a game of survival for us.  Neither of us should be taking any chances.

            On the other hand, the government is composed of a bunch of people that oversee communities across the country.  They’re responsible for commanding groups of people around, such as the police.  Vladimir Putin was the current President of our country.  He controls much of the government, which will be pursuing us.  Nikki believes that the company that created us was funded by the government although she couldn’t figure that out for sure.  Either way, we were in a massive amount of trouble, and we were eventually going to need to figure out a plan on leaving the country before we get caught.

            The house that we stayed in was cozy and nice.  There were two stories and a basement.  It had old shutters that would make noise whenever the wind blew against the house, but I liked everything else about it. I slept in a bedroom upstairs.  Nikki slept somewhere else in the house.  The strange thing was that she was always awake when I went to bed to fall asleep and when I woke up in the morning.  She refused to sleep in the same room as me, so honestly, I don’t even know if she slept!  She didn’t seem to need as much sleep as I needed.

            One of the biggest reasons that I didn’t quite believe Nikki about this house being abandoned was the bedrooms.  Two of the bedrooms, including my bedroom, had several clothes in the closet and in the dresser.  They were way too big for Nikki, so there would have been no point in her buying them.  She has been here for a couple of weeks, so why wouldn’t she fill the closets with clothes her own size?  It just didn’t make sense.  I don’t know why she would lie to me either because I was her only friend too.  I think.

            I did a lot of exploring throughout the house the first full day I was there.  Nikki went out to the city and came back with food and extra clothes for me, and I took advantage of that opportunity to see if there was anything in the house that I should know about.  I didn’t find much, though.  There really wasn’t anything special about the house.  It was clean and well organized.  The basement was creepy and weird, but I don’t think either one of us needed anything from there.

            On the third full day, we finally had a surprise.  Around 6 a.m., there was knocking on the front door.  Who could it be?  Were we compromised?  I was still asleep, but Nikki came upstairs and woke me up.  It was two police officers at the front door.

            Nikki gave me a knife instructed me on what to do next.  We were going to take out the officers like I had taken out the scientists back at the laboratory.  I wasn’t really comfortable with this decision, but I also didn’t know what else to do.  Hesitantly, I followed her lead. 

            We both went back downstairs to prepare to attack them.  After a couple more knocks, one of the cops started walking around the house.  The front door was locked, so they couldn’t get in.  The other police officer stayed near the front door.  He backed up from the front door, and I could hear him start to talk on his radio.

            Nikki had me hid in the kitchen, which was in the back of the house.  When the officer was far enough away and when his back was turned, she unlocked the door and hid from the officers.  It took a few moments, but both the officers entered the house together.   They split up.  Since we were split up in different rooms, and it was going be much more difficult to take out two armed officers at the same time.  I guess they thought we’d be easily caught.

            When both police officers walked, they were loud.  That was their second major mistake.  Hearing you enemy’s every movement was a huge advantage for you.  I decided to hide in a cabinet adjacent to the corner near the door into the kitchen.

            When an officer started walking through the door, I had to time it perfectly.  When I heard him right outside the cabinet, I popped out of the closet and jumped and landed on the back of his shoulders.  I first used my knife to slice the wrist that was carrying his weapon.  He loosened his grip on the gun, and in one swift motion, I kicked the gun out of his hand and stabbed him under his chin but above his throat.  I jumped off him, and he just grabbed where I stabbed.  He bent down on one knee and stared at me while coughing while coughing and hacking up blood.

            The other office heard the commotion in the kitchen and came running.  Nikki intercepted this officer, but I could hear her running as well.  I don’t actually know where she had been hiding, but she apparently knew where this officer was and could still intercept him before reaching us.  She ran through the other doorway in the back of the kitchen and jumped up on the cabinets by that doorway right by where I was hiding.  With perfect and graceful timing, she jumped into the air and landed on this officer’s front chest and shoulders as he rounded the corner.  She didn’t have a weapon, so I took care of the first officer and ran over to help her.  Before I could even make it over there, Nikki had poked the officer in the eye with her finger, taken control of his gun while he was still holding it, shot him in the foot, twisted his wrist, and made the officer shoot himself in the head.

            I was stunned.  I had quick, natural combat skills, but Nikki was unbelievable.  She made mincemeat of that office without a weapon in half the time that I did with my officer.  The officer was clearly stronger than she was, but I guess she knew all his weak points and could easily control him.  I don’t think would be a good idea to double cross her.  I had no intention of doing so, but still… it good to know for the future.

            We don’t have any immediate neighbors, but that police officer had probably radioed in for backup or let other officers know they were entering the house.  I guess they weren’t expecting us to be resourceful and dangerous.

            “We have to leave right now,” Nikki sternly ordered.  She didn’t waste any time.  She started gathering items in the kitchen that would be essential for the next chapter in our journey.  She collected some sharp knives, food, bottles of water, and a couple of towels for now.  In the middle of collecting everything, she said, “Are you glukhoy?  We need to leave.”  There were still many words that I didn’t understand.  There are only so many hours in a day to learn them.

            I didn’t immediately respond to her, though.  I was standing mesmerized by everything that had just happened.  I was anxious and thinking, so I started to think out loud, “Is this what our lives will be like forever?”

            Nikki stopped temporarily, looked at me, and said, “No, but for now, we have to move.”  I knew she was right.  I didn’t want to stick around for whoever else was going to come to the house and try to hurt us.

            I didn’t have a lot of possessions.  I went upstairs, grabbed a suitcase that was in one of the closets, and then packed the few pairs of clothes that Nikki had previously obtained for me.  That was about everything I owned.  Everything else that I would have otherwise grabbed were supplies to survive, such as water and food.  Nikki was already taking care of what we would need to survive.

            I went back downstairs only to find that Nikki was already ready to leave.  She had brought all her stuff out to the car and was coming back into the house to hurry me.  I hesitated before leaving.  “What… are we going to do with the bodies?” I asked.

            “There’s no time to worry about that.  Bad people are on their way.  We need to leave,” she responded.

            It left me uneasy.  Nikki isn’t showing any signs of guilty or remorse from what just happened, which scared me.  At the same time, she was right, and we needed to leave.

            I grabbed a small suitcase and followed her out of the house.  She hid the key in a different hiding spot in case we ever needed to return to this house.  I don’t think we will, but you can never be too sure.

            The new hiding place was on the other side of the house.  However, something caught my eye along the edge of the property.  There was a spot in the garden that looked different than the rest of the garden.  I hadn’t yet noticed it, but I also hadn’t been paying attention to this part of the yard on the outside of the house.  I stood there staring at it for a moment.  Nikki noticed, grabbed my arm, and started dragging me toward the garage.  “Let’s go!” she angrily muttered under her breath.

            I stumbled a little bit when we walked into the garage.  For some reason, my eyes were immediately drawn to the corner of the garage that I hadn’t noticed before today.  I’m not sure if it was instinct or what it was, but my eyes were locked on a shovel in the corner of the garage.  It had dirt that looked fresh on it.  I started to put two and two together. 

            Nikki was in the car already, but I demanded, “There were people who lived here, wasn’t there?”

            Nikki didn’t even look back at me.  She just said, “Either you need to get in the car or I’m leaving you here.”

            Frustrated, I ran around to the passenger side of the car and got into the vehicle.  I just stared at her with disbelief.  Without even looking at me, she sounded annoyed when she said, “Take a picture.  It’ll last longer.”

            Those comments didn’t help her out. “You killed the people who lived here, didn’t you?”  She continued to back out of the garage and onto the road, while ignoring my question.

            I looked ahead instead of at her.  I was confused about why she killed innocent people.  I also wondered if I should be more concerned about their deaths or the fact that I’m still with Nikki.  Is she going to turn on me and kill me too?  I didn’t know who had lived here, but did they really deserve to be killed?  There are people out there who are trying to kill me, and I don’t want to die.  I’m sure they didn’t want to die either.  Everything has just been happening so fast, and I wished everything would slow down, so I could process it all.

            Nikki started driving us south, which was back toward the city where we started.  I didn’t say anything as we drove.  I needed some time to collect my thoughts.

            We eventually crossed a bridge, which was right outside of the city.  This time, however, Nikki took a right turn heading west.  I’m sure she already had the next phase of our “escape” planned out.  She seems to have everything figured out before you can even question her.

            After another ten minutes or so of driving, I finally managed to say something.  I’m not sure if they were the right words, but I felt like I needed to say something.  I felt like I needed to confront her on the people that had lived at that house.

            “Why did you kill the people living in the house?” I asked.  I remained calm while asking her, but on the inside, I was angry.  I had to be careful about how I asked her.  I didn’t want to upset her, and I certainly didn’t want her to think I was the enemy.  She seems much more intelligent and combat ready than I do.  There’s no telling how quickly she would dispose of me if she wanted to.

            She immediately retorted, “What about you?  You’ve killed people too.”

            I was surprised by how quickly she responded.  I didn’t really think of that.  My situation was not the same as hers, though.  The scientists that I killed were keeping me a prisoner, but the people or person that she killed weren’t imprisoning or threatening to kill anyone.  But do I point that out?  Again, I’m not wanting to become her enemy, but I have to find a reason to trust her again.

            I paused for a few moments.  “Why did you lie to me?” I asked.  I guess it wasn’t so much the killing of people that bothered me.  It was the fact that she didn’t tell me the truth right away.  She’s the only person on this Earth that I can trust, but she had a major breach of trust by lying about not killing people.

            “I… I wasn’t sure if you could handle the truth.”  She sounded more guilty about it now.  I don’t know.  Maybe in the heat of the moment she doesn’t feel bad about it, but now that there’s time to reflect, maybe she feels bad.

            She continued while softening the tone of her voice, “Look, I don’t know who is trustworthy in this world and who isn’t.  We need food, shelter, water, internet, and other resources to survive.  I… I… I’m sorry.  I… guess my instincts overtook me when she found me in her basement.  I… I don’t know what took over me.”

            We both paused for a few moments.  “Are we going to kill more people for another house?” I asked.

            She took a minute to respond to this question too.  “Where else are we going to live?  These people are never going to accept us.  We’re different from them.  They’ll hate us, capture us, and hurt us.”

            I’m not sure where she came up with all these ideas.  I mean, yes, there were people out there that want us dead or captured.  But what about the man at the gas station where Nikki removed that chip from my armpit?  He seemed concerned about us and was not aggressive toward us.  Surely there would be someone else out there that wouldn’t want to kill us.

            I didn’t say that out loud.  Maybe I should have, but instead, I replied, “Promise me we won’t kill anyone who isn’t going to harm us.  There might be people who can help us out there.  And who knows?  We might gain a friend one day.”

            She turned to me, but I don’t think she was on the same page as me.  She had a strong look of fear in her eyes.  I was mesmerized by that look, but not in a good way.  Our exchange of glances didn’t last for long because she had to look back onto the road.  But I felt like I couldn’t mistake the look in her eyes.  She seemed already lost and full of fear from this world.  She hasn’t mentioned anything about her experiences since escaping.  I wondered if her what they did to her or something that’s happened since she escaped that gave her all this fear.  I decided that now was not the best time to talk about it.

            After a few moments of silence, she finally broke out in what was a near whisper, “Alright.  If you believe we should be peaceful, we will do that then.”  I could see a something coming from her eye.  It looked like water, and she made a noise with her nose.

            “What’s that?” I asked while looking at her the water that came from her eye.  I felt kind of stupid asking the question, but I still had a lot to learn in this world.  I hadn’t ever seen her do that before.

            In a lighter voice, she giggled and said, “It’s called a tear.  Your eyes will tear up when you are sad or scared.”

            “Oh,” is all I managed to say.  After a moment, I thought I would try to make her happy.  I slowly and gently grabbed her arm with both my arms.  I said, “You don’t have to be scared.  Whatever happens, we’ve got each other.”  The gentle armlock was oddly natural.  I didn’t think about what I was doing.  I just did it without thinking.  Looking back on it, I’m just glad she didn’t think I was trying to wrestle or grab her to fight her.  I could see her smile, but she didn’t say anything.

            We continued to drive for another 90 minutes or so.  We didn’t do a lot of talking right away.  We were embraced for a while, but it eventually became awkward.  She was sitting so much higher than me because of the booster seat she had made in her car.  Nikki eventually started teaching me new vocabulary words.  This would help us both if we needed to interact with anyone people.

            Finally, we arrived in a new city.  There was a sign outside of the city that said, “добро пожаловать в Дуди́нка.”  I recognized the first three words as saying, “Welcome to,” but I didn’t know the last word.  Nikki said it was just the name of the city and was pronounced, “Dudinka.”

            “What do you know about this city?” I asked her.

            “It has several things that will be valuable to us.  There’s a river to the east of the city, which can be quick escape routes for us if we need to.  It also has about 25,000 people in it, so it will be somewhat difficult for us to be found.”  The city we were born in was called Norilsk and had a significantly higher population than this city.  But we definitely couldn’t return to that city.  There were now going to be a lot of people looking for us.  Nikki continued, “There is a large radio tower.  We might be able to communicate with others like us.  It would be risky to do so, so I’m not sure if I want to or not yet.  I will look into it and figure out a plan.  Lastly, there are ship ports and railroad stations.  That will give us another opportunity to leave if needed.”

            We drove into the city on the east side of the city.  I was busy looking around the buildings surrounding us.  Before we went too far into town, Nikki asked, “If we’re not going to sleep in a house tonight, where would you like to stay?”

            That was a pressing question that I didn’t think of ahead of time.  What are we going to do?  “Umm… I’m not sure.”

            Nikki gave a slight chuckle and said, “I have a couple of ideas.  I’m not sure if you’re going to like them, but it’ll be the price we have to pay while we figure out what we’re going to do.”  She gave a deep breath and continued, “There are two ideas that I can think of based on what I’ve been researching over the past few days.  Every city has what’s called a ‘sewer system.’  It’s where the water goes when you flush the toilet.  As gross as it might be, it’ll provide a small sense of shelter and most importantly we’ll be hidden from other people while we sleep.  The other option is to find a space for me to park that’s hidden away from people, and we just sleep in this car.  We won’t smell as much which will help us fit in when we’re trying to find food either during the day or at night.  However, we’ll be more exposed unless we find an unused garage or some other place that shelters us from sight.  Even if we do find a garage, we still risk someone entering the garage while we are in there.  Either way, there are risks associated with what we will do.  What do you think?”

            That was a lot to soak in.  I thought about it for a second, but I think it would be best to try to fit in.  “I think we should just stay in the car.  If other people don’t smell like sewer, we would stick out.  We will need to try to fit in as best as we can.”

            She didn’t give me a second breath to continue, “Alright, we should find a location early and see if there are many people who pass it.  We’ll need an isolated spot to park.”

            I responded, “Alright, that sounds-” but before I could finish something grabbed my eye.  There were red and blue flashing lights behind us.  What was that??  I remember those flashing lights from somewhere…

            I looked back.  It was a police car!  I recognized it because it looked nearly identical to the car that the other police officers had back at our first hideout house.

            I turned back to Nikki.  “What are we going to do?”  We didn’t get very far before we were found again.

            We both stayed quiet and calm for a few moments.  Nikki pulled over to the side of the road.  It was obvious that two little people should not be driving a car, so the cop knew something was wrong.  He didn’t exit his vehicle or do anything right away but instead stayed in his car for about a minute.  We both looked at each other and quietly waited.

            Nikki finally turned to me and said, “Make sure your seatbelt is on. When I tell you to take it off, you take it off.”

            She was going to make a run for it.  I was guessing this cop was waiting for more cops to arrive on scene.

            I nodded and double checked my seatbelt.  I knew I was good to go, though.  I took another glance at Nikki to see if she was really going to do it.  Without skipping a beat, she answered that question.

            The tires made a screeching sound as they rotated several times before we actually started moving, but once we did, my head jerked back as we started quickly accelerated. I just hope she knew what she was doing and had a plan.  I don’t know if she was expecting to get caught right when we entered the city.