The Yellow Pill (5 page)

Somehow she knew they would be coming for her next. The only thing she
was sure had saved her last night was the fact that she kept moving around.

Frey jogged through the shadows of day, knowing she
would be in trouble when night arrived. She needed to find Jin, and do it fast.
After failing to spot him on their usual spots she gave up and moved on to the
rougher part, hoping to find him there and yet dreading that she would.

When she finally found him she was relieved it wasn’t
by flipping one of the half-conscious shapes along the sides. He was sitting on
his own against a graffiti and rust covered garage door, looking tired but
otherwise unharmed.

He got up in a rush when he saw her, grabbing her arm
hard. “What the hell are you doing here
?!
” Jin looked
over his shoulder. “Hurry, let’s go before anyone sees us.” He pushed her away
from the main street and kept shoving until they were out of the there
altogether.

He slowed but Frey grabbed his arm when he was about
to confront her. She nodded up the road towards the Volvo, trying not to let
her fear show.

Jin’s lips were cracked and there was dry, yellow
spittle at the edge of his mouth. But his eyes still seemed clear. Sensing her
urgency, he closed his mouth again and fell in behind her.

Frey stayed silent until they had both doors firmly
closed. She was just about to let her tears flow and admit what had happened to
Tim, what she’d done to him. But the words froze in her mouth as she took in
the cars interior.  

This was where she had taken Tim.

Could she guarantee this place was safe? Knowing that
the answer was no, she closed her mouth again. There was no place where she
could be sure no one saw them, no one was listening.

The burning sensation pressed against her eyelids. She
couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t put him in more danger than he already was…

Frey blinked up at him, for a moment worried the tears
would come anyway but the burning subsided until it was only a dull aching at
the back of her throat.

She didn’t have to ask him if he’d started to take the
Yellow Pill.

He sighed and looked away from her eyes. “Frey.
There’s something I should’ve told you a long time ago, but I guess I was
scared how you would react,” he said. He was silent for some time, his thumb
rubbing at a loose part hanging from the steering wheel. “My mum took it while
she was pregnant.” He laughed but it sounded empty, hollow. “I found out after
she died and, well… you know the rest.” This time he was silent for so long
that Frey wasn’t sure he would continue. “Not everyone have to becomes like
that Frey. That’s when they don’t know how to dosage it, how to maintain the-“

“Please stop,” she said, trying to keep the anger from
her voice. “I’m not listening to this.” She massaged her temples hard, an old
habit she would
picked
up from Father Patrick,
refusing to look at him.

“Frey…”

“Are you even listening to yourself? You hearing what
you’re
saying,
Jin?”

“You wouldn’t understand-“ He began, his hand making a
dismissing gesture.

“No, I don’t, and that’s because I chose not to chew
froth.” Frey stopped
herself
before she could say
more, before this developed into another fight. She had just wanted to talk to
him, to see his face, to hear his voice.

Her hands came away from her temples. You are still
living with that girl? The tall one?” She asked.

“Ah… Well… No. Not really,” he said.

Talk then turned to small things, like how was the
food hunt going? Any new friends or newly discovered buildings?
Still no sign of a door in The Wall?
The latter was
a this
they’ had started years ago, when both had remarked
that there were no entry or exit built into The Wall. As the years progressed
with still no sign of an entry or exit, the game turned less fun and more
frightening.

She told him about the building. Jin would be able to
get a good trading for the computers. He was thrilled to hear about it, and
already started to plan when the two of them could ramshackle the place.

Frey kept smiling the whole time. But by the afternoon
her smile faded and she said she had to go.

Words and warnings were stuck in her chest and Frey
had to swallow to keep them there. She couldn’t put him in danger by saying the
wrong thing. Instead she hugged him tight having to force herself to let go.
The sound of his heart stayed with her as she moved away.

You could always find him in his room before dinner, writing his diary.
Why he bothered, she had no idea, but if it gave him some peace of mind, then
by all means. It also kept his limited knowledge of language honed, he always
said.

She stood in front of his window, looking down on the
street.

“What is bothering you?”

Frey wanted to tell him. She longed to do so, but that
could mean the next disappearance would be Father Patrick, the one person all
these kids depended on. No, she could never risk that. “I’m just tired.”

“You know you are always welcome here, Frey. This is
your home too.”

She smiled and went over to embrace her old teacher,
mentor and in many ways, Father. 

“You need this more than us.” He said, slipping
something into her pocket.

“You… you take care, you hear?” She said, eyes
burning, not thinking of anything else than their embrace at the moment.

Father Patrick held her until she stopped crying. Then
she turned and left the room, without looking back.

Darkness covered the sky like a blanket. With her heart racing and her
hood up to cover her face, she made her way from one group of homeless to the
next, staying close to the main road. It didn’t take long before she realized
this night would remain starless as well. The fact made her even more anxious.
She shoved her hands deep in her pockets and turned to join another night fire
two blocks away.

Soon the night limited her vision to grey and black
contours. Lengthening her strides, she walked quickly towards the next bend,
seeing the flickering light. The streets were almost empty, only a few shapes
lying in the gutters, fast asleep.

Frey almost sprinted the last bit, imagining a glimmer
from a lens at every turn. When she finally reached the bend she saw that no
one was standing around the fire…

Shapes lay sleeping in random places as if they had
just
laid
down on the spot and gone to sleep.

It wasn’t the fact that they slept that made the small
hair on her arms and neck stand at an end, fear rise inside her like a cold
tide… It was the
way
they were sleeping.

They were scattered all over, not to the sides or in
the smaller alleyways where they could keep warm easier. It was as if someone
had clubbed them unconscious.

Suddenly she felt her eyelids starting to droop.

The thought snapped, her mind awake, her consciousness
coming back as if someone had slapped her. She turned and ran.

Her hood flew off and she could hear the sound of
footsteps, a lot of them, following. No grunting or complaining could be heard
from her pursuers, and somehow that was worse than anything so far. The only
sound was her pursuers light steps and softly clicking gear.

Frey just forced her legs to run faster, feeling her
heart move up to her mouth as they closed in.

The black shape of a masked man suddenly stood in
front of her, and she couldn't prevent barging straight into his chest.
Everything he was wearing was as black as the night sky. All this Frey had time
to register before he lifted his gun and drove the end straight into her
forehead.

The pain was immense. She felt like being sick, but her stomach wouldn’t
let her. She was moving and her shoulders hurt. Her head was spinning and her
tongue felt too big for her mouth. It took her four tries before she managed to
keep them open. She blinked at the strangest view she had ever seen…

She saw Slum City, but she saw it from above…

Slum City was somehow beneath her feet and she was
moving away from it. Someone was pulling her up towards the dome.

Just as the thought was passing through her head, a
strange buzzing escalated in her ears to then quickly fade as she passed the
shimmering layer of the digital dome. There was a strange grayish tint to it,
but otherwise it was perfectly see-through. Frey felt
herself
go very still. It seemed impossible, but the sight was there…

Her eyes darted from side to side while her mind tried
to shut down again from the concussion. Underneath her dangling feet she could
see The Wall. That black menacing wall that had loomed over her for her entire
life. On the outside of The Wall and of Slum City were
people
…

Human beings together with computers and mechanics
like she had never seen
before,
lined in perfect rows.
The sight reminded her of a computer ship. Structured chaos.

Electricity seemed to be everywhere. White clad people
walked around down there, smaller than the smallest ant. There were rooms and
glass everywhere that twisted together in a mad vortex of light and advanced
machinery.

Someone grabbed her around the shoulders and she felt
her feet making contact with something stable.

She screamed, and fought the hands trying to hold her
emptying her lungs until something connected to the back of her head. She
didn’t have the time to see what it’d been this time.

This time her stomach did allow her to puke. Stomach fluid dripped from
her mouth, and hands tipped her to the side. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the
burning light.

There were two white clad people helping her to not
suffocate. They were in a hallway, with her on a hospital bed.
A white one.
White walls, white people, white roof…

There was an elevator and a long corridor to the left
and right. There was no sign of the men clad in black.

It took her some time to maker her mind recall what
the thing pressing into her side was, the memory of Father Patrick giving the
weapon back to her forcing its way through the tumult.

Frey breathed out, spitting the last of the foul bile
from her mouth. She then let her mind and instincts take over, feeling the
adrenalin pushing the pain away as blood pumped into her legs, hard and fast.
She curled up with a moan.

As the voices came closer, demanding to know where she
was in pain, she kicked out, pushing one body into the other before ramming the
taser
into the females stomach, the shock going
through them both.

Frey scrambled off the bed, head swimming as she ran
towards the light and the door. She ducked her shoulder in and braced for the
impact of shattering glass. She stumbled
outside,
the
doors sliding open smoothly and silently.

The light inside was nothing compared to this… She was
blind as the force from her run brought her straight into someone. Her body
reacted before her mind could, ramming the
taser
into
the new threat.

She stumbled and fell, scraping her knees on the hard
metal, fumbling at nothing a few times before managing to get up. The burning
started to take shape, the white glare dulling to allow her to see.

Frey looked up towards the brightness of true
daylight.

The sight of the vast city stretched before her in all
directions, bathing in golden light and with a sky so blue and clear it
couldn’t possibly be real. Her mind stood still. She wasn’t even breathing.

It’s another city…

What she was staring at dwarfed Slum City and
everything she had ever experienced. Frey saw colors she didn’t know existed.
Everything was so bright, light seeming to be everywhere.

“Find and kill her!”

The voice snapped Frey back to reality and she pressed
away from the railing, sprinting along the balcony of the strange building,
shouldering open another one. The corridor looked exactly the same as the other
one. Frey pushed past a confused woman holding sheets of glass. They went
flying,
crashing into the floor in a shower of sparkling
parts while Frey barged on.

Trying not to fall and break her neck, she ran down
some stairs for two levels before pushing back out from the stairways. There
was no one in sight and Frey fumbled at a nearby door, slipping inside pressing
her back to it while trying to calm her breathing.

Piles of dirty laundry filled the room, towels, robes,
sheets and more in big piles along the sides. She soaked it a stained towel,
wiping sweat and vomit form her face.

The clean-faced people out there were burnt into her
eyes like the brilliantly white rays of the
sun
.

Frey took deep breaths. Her heart still wouldn’t slow
as she pulled out a stained robe. The white collar was high, almost covering
her dirty bandana.