I woke up the next morning, feeling better, adjusting to the new normal we were living in. I got up and went down downstairs to find breakfast considering I hadn’t eaten much in the past two days, I was hungry. I pulled a box of cereal down from the cupboard and the milk out of the fridge.
Ezra came down the stairs and into the kitchen, there was something off about him. He looked
serious or unsure. He made himself an instant coffee and sat at the table with me.
“How do you feel about going to find Maya?” he starts.
I was shocked back into the guilt and lost my appetite for the bowl of cereal in front of me.
“What do you mean?” I asked staring into the bowl stirring my spoon round and round.
“You clearly miss her. You’re not eating, you spend most of the time in the bedroom, I haven’t seen
you play the piano once, I don’t know what’s going on with you and her, but you care about her
obviously,” he replied. “We have an idea of where she might be but if we don’t move quickly she
may not be there.”
He made it sound like I was having a secret love affair with her behind Porter’s back. She was just a
friend that I felt guilty about getting tangled up in all of this. She had kissed me before she took off
and she said she used to have a crush on me back in middle school. Maybe her kiss was a way of
showing her gratitude for freeing her from Julian and being her true friend. But she didn’t kiss Porter and he had as much involvement in that as I did.
Did I want to try and save her? Of course. But how? These people who were after me were obviously, dangerous, there was no doubt about that, so how were we supposed to get past them to her?
“How do you know where she is?” I question.
“Those scientists, the ones Ryū used to work with, operate out of a military base in Lincoln now,
she’s most likely being held there, and she will be until they check out all the other reports of the
other six experiment children in the area. Then, they will move her to a new military base close to the next one. Tom and Ryū are doing the same with us, or they wanted to. When they come back, they’ll find this place empty if we go,” he explains.
“It’s not safe, what if one of us gets shot?” I question.
“I didn’t go to military school for three and a half years for nothing, I know their movements, tactics, medical training. You have to trust me, Ryker. If you want to get your friend out we have to go now,”
he states.
I’m still unsure. If we go, all the safety Maya, Ryū, and Tom fought for will have been pointless
because we’re walking right back into enemy territory.
“They’re questioning Porter’s parents, too. About where you went. Who knows what they’ll do to
them if they think they’re lying,” he continues.
I knew what it felt like to lose a parent, I didn’t want Porter to experience that, ever.
I sat there for a few minutes considering it all, the pros and cons, stirring my spoon round and round.
I heard Porter on the stairs eventually, he entered the kitchen and I think he could sense the
conversation hanging in the air. He looked a little annoyed, like he knew Ezra was going to ask me
about this but he expected to be here for it. I got up, dumped my cereal in the trash, put the bowl in
the sink, and walked past them without so much as a word. I could feel their eyes on my back,
drilling down.
I went into the piano room and shut the door, I sat on the bench and put my hands onto the keys.
Playing the ones that reminded me of Maya’s life song. It was hard to recreate on a piano when it
sounded like a guitar being strummed at a quite fast pace in a specific pattern that couldn’t be
replicated on piano keys.
I was trying to make a decision and figure out what I wanted. I slammed my fingers down on the keys in a way no music teacher would appreciate for the sake of the piano. I heard the door squeak open and silence slip in so I knew it was Porter. I didn’t move.
“He told you he was going to ask, right?” I ask keeping my eyes on the keys.
“Yes, yesterday,” he answered timidly as if unsure if I was mad or not.
I wasn’t mad, not at him at least anyway. I heard the floorboards creek as he stepped closer.
“Do you want to go save her?” he posed cautiously.
“They have your parents, too. It’s not just about her,” I replied.
Porter was in the corner of my vision now, I watched him try and mask the pain in his expression.
“We’ll be walking directly into the line of fire,” he states.
“What do you think we should do?” I pose.
“I don’t know, I don’t recommend walking into the line of fire but I don’t like sitting around doing
nothing either,” he answers.
“It felt like he wanted to go, but I don’t understand why, it’s our friend and your parents who are
being held hostage, I feel like he should be discouraging us if anything,” I state.
“Do you want to ask him why?” Porter asks.
“If he wanted to tell us, he would have,” I reply.
“You’re sure there’s no chance he wants to turn you in? There’s no ransom reward for turning you in
that he could want?” Porter questions.
“Ezra was never big into money, I highly doubt he’d help Tom and Ryū just to throw us all under the bus once they were gone,” I reply.
“Why would he want to go then? Other than not to watch you dig yourself into a hole over the guilt?” he questioned. “He said that, not me. But it doesn’t make sense if it threatens your life.”
“Maybe he’s digging his own hole of guilt. Maybe they got someone he cares about. He knows I
wouldn’t want him to go alone so he’s invited us. It also wouldn’t be a good idea to go alone, to begin
with,” I answer.
“Do you want to help him then?” Porter asks.
I glance at him as if he really needed to ask that question. Ezra could have been so much worse a
person. He could have blamed me for mom’s death, he could have kept me at arm’s length, rejected me, he could have let the scientists take me, but he warned me. He wasn’t being selfish about it, if
that was the case, either. He was willing to rescue the people that mattered to us, too.
“Yes,” I answer removing my hands from the keys quietly looking down at the floor.
“Then, I’m with you,” he replies.
I look over at him, I knew his parents could be in danger, but he could have also made the choice and do what they would have thought was right in the situation and stayed away, value his own life
before theirs.
“You do realize we’ll have to defend ourselves? Those people will not hesitate, they have choices
but they also have a duty,” Porter continues.
“If they stop, we stop, it’s simple, no more bloodshed than necessary,” I answer.
“I don’t know if I can shoot someone,” he whispers quietly.
I stand up and approach him. I feel his hands come to rest on my waist. I put mine around his neck.
“I wouldn’t want you to,” I murmur quietly kissing his cheek.
“Should we go tell Ezra our decision?” he asks.
“Yeah, if we want any hope of finding them, the sooner we leave the better,” I answer.
“Okay,” he replies.
We exit the piano room and go back downstairs slowly. I can hear Ezra’s song crescendoing in the
kitchen. He sits at the table staring into his coffee. He glances up at us as we enter the room. He kind of looks defeated as if he knew his chances of us going along with him were slim and we’ve already told him no.
“How are we getting there?” I ask.
Tom and Ryū had taken the only car we had access to as far as I knew. It would be slow going if we
didn’t have some type of motorized transport.
He perked up at the question.
“My truck’s in the garage,” he replies. “Pack light, we want to be quick.”
“We’ll be ready by eleven,” I reply.
“I’ll pack my stuff and meet you in the garage then,” he replies.
“Right,” I reply.
He gets up and disappears off into the basement. I look back at Porter, he shrugs and we go back upstairs to lighten the load of our suitcases, and put only the important things into the backpacks we
found in the room closet. I empty my suitcase and lay everything out on the floor to get a good look
at it. I leave the things that are less weather appropriate right now like my shorts, or comfy, like my
tight jeans, in the end, I have four pairs of pants, six shirts, undergarments, and three sweaters. I put the clothes I’m not bringing back into the suitcase in case I come back.
There’s one thing left that I’m unsure about. The bi flag Hilana gave me. A reminder of our old life,
how simple everything used to be. It wouldn’t be useful really. But I didn’t know if I’d just want to
leave it behind.
“Ryker, you ready yet?” Porter called from downstairs.
He was already packed and ready to go, he’d carried his bag down for Ezra to put in the truck. I
stuffed the flag into my backpack and picked it up quickly looking over the room one last time
before stepping out.
“I’m coming,” I replied.
I walked down the hall and hesitated in front of the piano room but didn’t go in. I continue on down
the stairs and turned into the garage where Ezra was sitting in the driver’s seat in a white t-shirt, dog tags were hanging off his neck with his name on them. Had he been discharged from the military or had he gone AWOL?
The back of the truck had a cover over it Porter’s bag was already under it, he took my bag and put it under, too.
“You ready?” Ezra asked looking up at me.
“Yeah,” I reply.
“Let’s get on the road then,” he replies and shuts the driver’s door with him in the seat.
Porter and I climb in the back seat and he starts the truck up. He opens the garage door and backs
out into the winter wonderland outside, shuts the door, and then backs out onto the road and drives off leaving Ryū and Tom’s safe house behind.