The Yellow Pill (9 page)

“When
you have been so cut off from something, you start to forget about it. Seeing
people walking around down there, with very human needs and problems.” He
laughed suddenly and Frey twitched, again having to remind
herself
that this was Jon, not Jin. “Although
I
am still working on believing I
have a person from Hole before me and that she seems very human so far.”

“That,”
Frey said. “I will
try
to take as a compliment.”

Maybe
it was because they were sitting so close, or maybe because it was just in his
nature to do so, but Jon reached out and ruffled her hair with that crooked
smile. He blushed and pulled his hand back.

“Sorry.
I don’t know why I did that… haven’t done that since my little sister and I
lived together.”

“It’s
fine. I’m kind of used to it.”

“Why
did you call me Jin before?” He asked suddenly.

Frey
didn’t know what to tell him first. She decided to tell him the truth, if only
a small part of it. “He’s a friend from Slum… from Hole. I was confused. You
remind me a lot of him and to tell you the truth, Jon, I feel like I’m on
somewhat stable ground for the first time since I got here.” She looked
away from him. “Let’s get back down.” Frey had decided what she wanted to do.
Or maybe she had always known…

“I’m
just goanna get it out there,” she said, looking at all of them in turn. “I
want in. I want to fight these bastards. There are many down there that I count
as family and I’m not leaving them to fend for themselves. I’m in, if you’ll
have me.” Frey was glad she was clean and had new clothes. She felt better than
she had in her entire life. She felt powerful, like she finally
knew
what to do.

Lukas
closed his eyes and smiled, Tina winked at her with a big grin. Harry and
Lallie
nodded seriously, relief plain on their faces and
Jon gave her a crooked smile. Somehow that warmed her more than anything else.

“We
can start with showing you the last thing Chris managed to dig up from Dome.
Lallie
and I’ve worked on getting it decoded and the sound
just came in.” Harry leaned forward. “I have to warn you though, Frey. It’s
from an interrogation and it’s not nice.”

Frey
took her seat next to Jon and looked up at the screen.

“I’ve
seen bad before,” she only said.

The
screen flickered to life.

The
room was small and very normal looking by Frey’s standard. There was a black
screen at the end, acting like a window for the people on the other side. The
room was square, with cold green walls, dirt and scratches covering its sides
and a small tag of yellow graffiti in one corner. In the middle was a small
steel table with two chairs. There was one door to the right and a bright white
lamp extended from the roof. Frey knew this was inside Dome, but the room was
clearly built to resemble something that might have been found in Slum City.
The man sitting to the left, however, was clearly not from there…

He was
wearing a black suit and a yellow tie. It was very clean, only a handful of
wrinkles crinkled at the joints. His hair was plastered back with some kind of
hair-gel and his face was clean-shaven. The camera was angled towards the
person in the other chair.

Her
heart had stopped. Tim’s small body was sitting in it. He was clearly not aware
of what was happening around him. Either he had gotten a good hit on the head, or
he was still affected by whatever they had used to keep the orphanage asleep.

“This
recording is from the night before you were brought up,” Tina said.

Frey
looked at Tim. She was glad he wasn’t totally aware, because she knew they
would kill him…

The
sound came out strange, as a soft echo; “Did you work together with anyone
else?” The man asked. His voice sounded bored, hollow. “Where are they hiding?
Do you have a leader?”

Tim’s
eyes didn’t focus on the man in the room. “I’m good. I did nothing wrong. I
went to bed, I was goanna make my bed after lunch…” His voice was a mumble. “I
told Father I would make my bed after lunch…”

“Recording
of parents?” the man asked into the air.

“Parents
deceased, sir.” A voice answered in the speakers.

“Waste
of our time. This one has no information.” The man stood up and walked out of
there. When he passed Tim, he reached into his pocket and placed something
small and round at Tim’s temple. It glowed yellow for some time and then
started blinking faster and faster. Before the man with the suite had reached
the door, Tim’s body suddenly convulsed once and then went slack, blood slowly
trickling from his ears and nose. Tim’s stared at nothing. The screen went
black.

“That’s
called a brain
taser
. It sends an electric shock that
overload and kills the brain,” Harry said. “We don’t know if he was indeed
working with someone, or have a name on the boy yet but-“

“Tim,”
Frey said quietly, still looking at the screen. “His name was Tim.” She
chuckled. “You could say he was working with me…” she turned her head slowly
back to the table. “He overheard me talking about the cameras and started
looking for them himself.”

“I’m
sorry… we should have warned you…” Tina said.

“You
did warn me.”

“They
even kill children… This recording, however horrible it is, means another
weapon on our hands,”
Lallie
said.

“Weapons?”
Frey asked her.

“We’ve
been gathering visual proof of what is going on inside Hole and Dome. Without
visual recordings, we have no evidence,” Tina answered.

“There
is another thing you should know.
Alya
isn’t the only
city that have created a thing like Hole and Dome…” Harry said.

“Well,
our country definitely started the bloody idea,”
Lallie
told her brother.

“Since
when was our country ever second in starting anything?” Luke put in with his
deep voice.

“Wait,”
Frey interrupted them. “You're saying there are more… more city’s that does
this?”

“Only
the ones wealthy enough to overpower common sense. The governments saw the
effect on
Alya
and dived into the idea, and only a
few years later, every major city on the planet had their very own Hole…” Jon
explained. “We have contact with two other resistance groups, one in
Kalya
and one in
Fonu
. We haven’t
been able to reach out further than that yet and truth to be told, we can’t
help anyone until we help ourselves.”

“The
other cities… they look like this one?” Frey asked him.

“The
main ones do,” Tina answered.

“And
everyone is ruled by a government?” She asked.

“There’s
scattered encampments in the deserted where the government can’t reach. The
once we have outside
Alya
call themselves desert
dwellers and they certainly don’t live under any government.”

“What
about them?” Frey asked the gathering.

“What
about them?” Tina frowned.

“If
you can get people like that to join, then numbers would grow and fast.”

“There’s
no way to get them into the city, Frey,”
Lallie
pointed out.

“What
about presenting the idea at least?”

“Well,
we’ve got nothing to loose by trying,” Tina answered, scratching her ear.

“Right,”
Harry said and clasped his knees. “Does anyone have something that can’t wait
until the next meeting?”

“I
do,” Frey said. She couldn’t hold it any longer. She had watched that package
for some time now, wondering what the heck it was, but it was getting
inevitable and she suspected that the pills illustrated on the front was
something more than just painkillers…

“What
are those?”

The
room was silent for some time. Tina’s eyebrows were up as he looked at the
table, searching for whatever she could have meant. “What is what Frey?”

Frey
pointed at the package. “That.”

“Cell
gen pills.”

“Cell
gen?” Frey asked.

“It’s
what we call the pills. They specify in cell generating to prolong life, cure
diseases and so on,”
Lallie
said.

Frey
just looked at them, dreading the answer, but asking anyway. “Are you all
taking it?”

“It’s
part of everyday life here, Frey. There’s no one who don’t,” Jon said.

There’s
something not right about this…
“They give you cells…”

“Cell
gen pills, yes.” Harry answered her.

“What’s
in them?”

“The
repairing cells,” Tina said, hands behind her head.

“Actually,
now that you mention it, we don’t have a written formula of what’s inside them.
It would be fun to fins out,”
Lallie
said and nudged
her twin in the ribs.

“We could
always pop one under the radar and check,” he grinned back. He stood up then.
“Any more questions that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“Meeting
ended, then.” Luke turned to Tina. “You take four runners with you and get
things running at that end.” Tina made no objections and got to her feet, Harry
and
Lallie
following to continue their work. “Jon
could give you a visual view of the city. We can manage without you guys for a
while.” Luke gave Frey a heavy pat on the shoulder on his way out.

“I
thought I couldn’t leave the building?” Frey asked Jon as they made their way
to the elevator again.

“Too
risky,” he agreed. “But the view from the rooftop is pretty good when you’re
standing at the edge.”

She and Jin had
five brutes after them. It had been bad luck.
Wrong place at
the wrong time.
Rookies from the west district wanting
to try out their new guns.
They were the dangerous once. They didn’t
mind wasting bullets.

They
escaped without more than a few bruises from escaping down the sewers, close to
east district. Even rookies knew not to follow into other gang territory.

Worming
their way up from the stink of the underground, they exited close to the scrap
yard. A big parking lot lay just a few hundred meters to their left. Frey pried
the doors of
a jute
open. The car was missing its
tires, remaining permanently parked on its spot. The windows were tinted
grey-black, dust and grime coloring the jute inside and out.

As
soon as they slammed the doors shut, their panting seemed like the only sound
in the world. Frey leaned her head back, closing her eyes, forcing deep breaths
through her nose and out her mouth.

Her
tense body started to relax and she felt the sweat run down her face and back.
Sweat were
leaving streaks on Jin’s dirty face too. He
started laughing. It was born from tension, but eased into the pure delighted
of having escaped from deaths clutches. Frey joined him.

After
the laughter died out, they sat silent for a while, their bodies reminding them
of the sleep they both sorely needed. Jin reached for her hand. They fell
asleep, dust and dirt shutting out the digital sky.

Frey woke up with
her hand outstretched, still almost feeling his fingers in hers. The carpet was
also too soft, but the wall at her back at least gave her a sense of security.
Old
habits
die hard
.
She wiped her eyes and got
dressed, pushing the warmth of Jin’s hand form her mind.

There was no one
else at the rooftop, not that she could see anyway. She lay down and could
already feel her mind reeling for stable ground. The questions were piling up
again and these were questions none from the group below could answer.

Her
thoughts went to Father Patrick and the kids, wondering how they were doing.
Then, her thoughts wandered to Jin, wondering what was she going to do? Those
people from Dome were looking for her and she knew it was only a matter of time
before they found some tracks that lead them here. If there was something you
learnt in Slum City, it was that you are never safe. She was on the outside
now, in a totally alien place.

She
needed to help the resistance stop Dome…
If I could
somehow shut off the digital projection of the dome.
She knew the
people from Slum City. If there was just a push in the right direction there
was sure to be a riot. And that could work to their advantage.

Frey
could see the package in her mind’s eye as it came floating down on its small
parachute, humans already fighting each other to death to get to it first.

As the
screeching triumph music faded away, she felt an idea start to take shape.

She
could provoke a riot in Slum City from the outside…

Frey
sat up as it all became
clearer,
the pieces falling in
place fast.  What she had to do was make sure there was something extra
included in the package, something to get people
thinking
.

There
was only one thing in the dropping the majority fought for, and if she wanted
to send a message to them,
then
it had to be through
the Yellow Pill…

She
couldn’t hold back a startled yell when a heavy hand fell on her shoulder.
Before she had the time to get to her feet, Luke calmed her with his deep-set
voice.

“God,
you scared me!” Frey said, glad she hadn’t had the time to react defensibly
against the giant.

Jon
came up behind Luke, hands in his pockets, a half grin on his lips.

“Thought
you might be here,” he said.

“I’ve
something to tell you. It’s an idea I just got.” She got up, heading back
towards the elevators. Frey let the silence grow as the doors closed, sorting
out the best way to start explaining. She took a short breath and rubbed her
forehead. “Okay, so here’s the deal. I think we need to involve the people in
Slum- in Hole. If we can start to wind them up and get them to think…“

“They might
question more…”
 

“If
everyone started to ask at the same time, they wouldn’t be so visible. There
would be security in numbers,” Frey said.

Jon
looked at the ground, his hand rubbing his chin. “But how would we be able to
find something that’s strong enough to make them speak out? And Frey… even if
we
did
find something, how the hell are we going to reach them?”

“That’s
the thing!
We
don’t need to reach them. We only need to reach the drop.
If we could get to them, then we can include a message.”

Luke
frowned, his big arms crossed over his chest. “The drop?”

“She
means the packages.” He turned back to Frey. “From what little Chris have found
out about them, they are called maintain packages.”

Frey
felt
herself
go cold. “Maintain?” She actually
laughed, hard low with no humor or warmth. “How could the Yellow Pill be
associated with maintenance?”

“The
Yellow Pill?”

Frey
forced her anger down. These two were
not
responsible for the things
that had happened to her. She breathed out deeply. “It’s a drug that’s included
in the drop,” she said with every ounce of composure she could muster. “The
drug consumes up the user. It wastes them away to nothing over time. It makes
the person violent and very unpredictable. It’s
a drug
, and the majority
of the people of Slum City are addicted to it.” Frey said.

The
silence that followed was intense. You could see every muscle in Luke’s arms
strain and Frey was again glad that the big man wasn’t her enemy.

Jon
was clenching his hands, knuckles white.

Luke
looked off at nothing.
His rumbling voice vibrating slightly
through the ground and into Frey’s chest.
“Jon. Didn’t Stanly tell us
that the pill production going to Dome now make up more than half the total
product export in the whole factory?”

Jon
looked at his big friend. “He did… That mean they use those pills in Hole.”

Frey
was lost. “Stanly’s another Intel I’m guessing?”

“Stanly
work at Base, where pills are manufactured. All pill production is done there.”

Frey
shook her head in disbelief. “So this guy has a physical access to the pills?”

Luke
nodded. “He works on ground level on both floors, meaning he’s physically
walking around among the machinery, making sure they are all in order.”

Frey
wasn’t surprised. “Would he be able to… alter the pills? Change something on
them?” She asked.

“You
mean like the color?” Jon asked her.

“Not
the color, I was thinking something else.”

“He
should be able to adjust the information as he wants. No one’s looking over his
shoulder. The government seems to think the fewer who are involved, the
better,” Luke said. “What was it you were thinking about changing?”

The
memory of little Tim was still all too clear in her mind. His body shaking,
blood running down his nose and ears, splattering on the floor, the man calmly
walking out even though he had just murdered a child…

She
could have been the next one in that chair, having no idea that his blood had
just spilled over the floor, no idea that she was about meet the same fate.

But
that hadn’t happened. She had
escaped,
she had managed
to get out. For the first time things felt possible. Slum City was like one of
the broken buildings, fighting gravity but ready to crack and collapse at any
minute. All they needed was a push…

“I
want him to add a barcode on every pill.”

“Barcode?”
Jon said.

Frey
nodded.

“They
were used on products before,” Luke explained.

“The
people know the Yellow Pill inside out in Hole. Anny changes will be noticed.”
Frey didn’t know how people would react to the Yellow Pill suddenly looking
like a product, but hoped it would rattle the place well enough that the
bottled suppression would finally burst open, collapsing the walls that kept
the people from questioning.

The
elevator doors opened and Frey bent over from the weight of Luke’s hand on her
shoulder.

“It’s
the best idea I have heard in a good while.”

Jon
grinned at her, like Jin used to. “It is,” he agreed.

“By
the time the pills leave the Base they’re packed. And all the work is done by
machinery, so if anyone in Base or Dome would notice, the pills would already
be in Hole and it would be too late for them to stop it,” Jon said.

Frey
felt a small tug at the edge of her lips, recognizing it as a smile. It felt
like an eternity since she had smiled last.

“Leave
it to Luke to get a hold of Stanly.” Jon turned to the big man. “You think we
could get a sample from whatever it is they are sending to Hole? I think it’s
time we found out what’s inside it.”

“Luke,
we have to get a hold of that pill. Can you get a hold of Stanly tonight and
get the branding ready? I’m getting a hold of Joy. She can help us with figuring
out what's inside the drug,” he said while walking backwards towards some
stairs she had not spotted before then.  

Frey
followed as Luke updated the others on what had been said.

We’re
finally moving forward…