Quantum State, page 12
I stare at him, this man—my papa—who seems so devoted to MAQS, to this system…now telling me a secret, a secret we are not supposed to have, and he becomes in that moment more than my papa, but a husband who must have loved his wife dearly. Enough so to keep her secret.
“What things?”
His head shakes as he reaches for his spoon. “She'd never tell me.” He takes a bite and then finishes, “Besides, all her sneaking around didn't lead her anywhere, just in jail. You can't follow her footsteps. She wouldn't want that for you. Marry Kazimir, be happy here in Cherni.”
State of Escape
The next day, I tuck myself deep under the covers, and when my stepmum shakes me to wake up, I cough and roll over onto my back with an exaggerated groan. I tried to stay awake at least half the night so that bags would form under my eyes, and I look at 'Mama' in a mock daze, blinking too frequently.
“What's wrong with you?” she asks accusatorially.
I groan in mumbled words, “My stomach hurts.” I grab my abdomen. “I don't feel well.” I roll over again, this time on my side, facing the far wall, and groan again.
“Maybe something you ate?” she replies, sounding confused. “But your papa's not sick. Couldn't have been the chili.”
“Maybe something from Pod. I shared food with Anna and Darya.” I try to make the lie more believable, my forehead wrinkling in thought only adding to my fake sickness and confusion.
“Okay, well, best if you stay home today. I'll call the doctorbot later if you're still not feeling better this evening.”
I nod, coughing. “Okay.” Then, I roll back onto my stomach in a heavy groan to finalize the deal.
After my stepmum closes my door, I jump up and dress in a fresh tunic for the day, and when my parents leave with Julian, I am finally free to meet up with Esfir. The sleepless night gave me a lot of time to think, to think of all the ways we could get caught by MAQS breaking into town hall and stealing the key from KLI. Of all the time I'd have to spend in jail—a jail cell much like the one my Mama had to live in for years.
When I see Esfir by his Pod, he waves to me to walk with him. In a rush, we race up behind the Pod building where no one will see us. The Pod horn has blown and everyone should be inside now. The streets are oddly empty, except for a few bot patrols and those performing gardening and harvesting duties.
“Are you ready to break in?” His expression is so excited, I hate to have to tell him.
I shake my head. “I don't think this is a good idea.”
“What are you saying? We've come so far!” Esfir's bottom lip twists.
“I can't do it.”
“Why not?!” His front foot stomps.
I look in the direction of town hall, my head tilting over my neck to a building much smaller in size from where we stand. “If we get caught, I'll be thrown into a cell and I'll end up like my mama. I…I just don't think I could stand it. I think I'd…”
Esfir nods. “End your life too, like your Mama did?”
I can't say the words aloud, but he knows me too well. “Yeah.”
He is silent for a few seconds, like my Papa grew silent at the dining table when I asked him about Mama's friend. “Okay, then we don't go.”
“You're sure?”
“We still have a path out of here. We'll follow the map I have here—” He pulls out a paper from his back pocket and unfolds it as he finishes. Pencil drawings mark directions, and diagrams illustrate the intricate district of Cherni. “—all the way to the west gate where we'll sneak out.”
I grab his cheeks with both hands, and squeeze as my lips press over his. He blushes when I release him, and then I grab his hand. “Let's get going. I only have five days left.”
“Are you sure?” He stares into my eyes like he never has before, like he might lose everything. “There is no turning back once we leave. You might never see your family again.”
Thoughts linger on Julian for a few moments as I brush a single tear, and then I think of Papa and even my stepmum, who did her best given the crazy circumstances, but I know I have to do this for myself, for Mama. I just have to know the truth.
“Yes.”
We run hand in hand through the park and past the Cylindrical, and through the zone that hid us once, and then we push onward into the next zone, and then past a Pod we've never attended or ever even seen. When we exit the last zone, we are on a long stretch of brown-red dirt with sporadic patches of dead yellow grass with no end in sight.
We must have run for miles, because when I slow to glance at my wristwatch, it reads noon. My friends at Pod will be having lunch now and soon I'll be leaving Cherni, if everything goes according to plan. Esfir taps the back of my shoulder.
“We have to keep moving. We're almost there.”
I look at him, tired.
“It's coming,” he says confidently. “I've been there before. Remember, I made the map.”
I look ahead, at an end that is nowhere in sight, and take a deep breath before grabbing Esfir's hand again. Moving is not a problem for me. My legs are strong and I'm pretty fit, at least more so than many of my friends. But perhaps it's all the sneaking around with Esfir, or the anticipation of getting outside of Cherni, because this run has exhausted me.
Our feet slosh into wet mounds of dirt that cake our sandals before we finally see the gate, and it's nothing like I thought it would be. I'd imagined some kind of electrical circuitry, or a glowing fence, but instead the wall is rock and is as high as the largest birch trees in the park— maybe seventy feet.
“How are we going to get past that?”
Esfir replies with a step ahead of me, “I told you. There's a hole in the gate.” He heads left before straightening out, and then squats near the rock wall.
“A hole?”
His forefinger points, and as I lean over him, I see the hole too.
It's not anything spectacular, just a hole that must have been dug, probably by human hands, from one side of the wall, the Cherni side, to the other—the outside? I hesitate as his hands dig into the hole, fingernails mixing with soil, and his body climbs in carefully. Then, a large, calloused hand grips my shoulder from behind and yanks me backward.
When I hit the ground on my back, I see a tall, skinny man with disheveled hair and an unkempt beard, dark eyes, and burnt skin underneath a dark, dirty tunic. He grips Esfir's shoulder and pulls him out of the hole too, with obviously practiced muscles as Esfir fights with a few hard kicks. Dirt flies over the man, but the stranger doesn't give up.
The man shouts after a dry cough, “Stop! You don't want to do this!” Esfir turns, his eyes finally making contract with him and the man yells again. “You'll die out there!”
Those words make Esfir freeze, and soon after the man easily helps Esfir to his feet, Esfir asks, “What do you mean?!” Esfir grits his teeth, eager to finish what he started and escape Cherni with me.
“I can't explain everything to you—” He looks up to the sky, his unfocused attention more worrisome than his tattered appearance. “She could be listening.”
“She? You mean MAQS?!” Esfir huffs.
The man doesn't answer and instead grabs my shoulder.
“What are you doing?” I squeal as he yanks me away from the hole, from the wall that is preventing my freedom. “Stop it!” Esfir claws at his arms as he pulls me further until I hit his toe with my heel.
He doesn't respond to the pain and instead tightens his hold on me. “I'm not letting you kill yourself. Masha wouldn't want that.”
“Masha?” My neck twists back so my eyes can see him—his coal-colored eyes don't let go of me. “You knew my mama?”
“Knew her? I was one of her good friends.”
My resistance eases and I gulp. I jerk around, breaking his hold and stare at him face to face. “You! You're the stranger Mama knew. The one who doesn't live in Cherni.”
He holds my eyes like he has a thousand stories to share, but doesn't, and then just tells me one. “Yes, I don't live here.” His head circles around, his eyes facing the sky, and then he returns to me. “How do you know that?”
“I…” I look to Esfir. “We examined blood we found inside the Cylindrical. Part of the DNA is not listed in the Cherni archives.” I shrug. “I guessed.”
Esfir steps closer, almost between me and this odd man—who I'm thinking is as odd as the name Shakespeare. “So, then…who are you?!”
“Masha never mentioned me to you?” he asks, surprised, as he takes his eyes off Esfir and returns them to me.
“Not to me,” I say.
His head drops disappointedly. “Ah,” he replies in a grumble. “I suppose that's just as well. She never wanted you to have to suffer like she did.”
“You were with her when she was caught?” I lean into him, needing his breath close to me, his words to tell me everything.
“Not when they took her from her home. But yeah, I was there with her in the Cylindrical before…before it all happened.”
“What happened, exactly?” I say each word slowly.
This dirty man glances skyward, the heating sun glimmering over his high facial bones. “Masha had the key; we were about to go into town hall and shut down MAQS once and for all, or at least demand answers.” He says this quietly, his whisper just barely making it into my ear.
I gulp.
“Then, part of the building blew up.” He holds his head in memory as if this is more painful than when I hit his toe. “People on the streets began shouting as smoke and debris flew everywhere. The chaos gave me and Masha a chance to run away and head for the Cylindrical. We could always hide there, safe, away from the Echoes, but not before the explosion ripped a hole into my arm—” He lifts his left bicep and points to a scar running from the shoulder to the elbow. “Masha was hit in the back.” His gaze drops and he wipes several tears. “After we left the Cylindrical that night, she made me promise to look after you if anything ever happened to her.” He drops his gaze. “I never saw her again.”
“She was taken to jail that night,” I respond, finally understanding more.
Esfir scratches his tomato-red hair. “That still doesn't answer my question.” He glares at this man who feels more like an intrusion to him—an intrusion to his plans for escape, my plans. “Who are you?”
The man's chest rises as he takes in a long breath, his eyes flitting from the sky and back to us. “You're right. I'm not from Cherni. I'm from a district miles from here, called Chekhov.”
“Then there is something outside of Cherni,” I say excitedly.
Esfir shakes his head, his frustration growing. “Then, how—why are you here?!”
The man sighs. “Because, like you, I wanted to escape my district. And one day, I finally did.”
My eyes went wide. “You've been outside?! What's it like? How did you get here?” My mind spins with more questions.
“Slow down, Masha,” the man replies, and it's the first time I hear him say my name. “I escaped Chekhov with enough food and water to last me only a few days. By the middle of my journey, I just about died of dehydration.”
Esfir interrupts, “Then how'd you survive?”
He hesitates to answer and then whispers lower, as if he could get into trouble, “The bots. They came for me and carried me into Cherni. I guess it was the closest district to where I was. They fed me, gave me water, and a place to rest. A home.”
“You have a home here?” My brows rise.
“Not really a home like yours. Just a cot inside of a tent. I can eat and drink inside of Cherni, and am given enough to sustain myself, but that's all. MAQS says I'll be too much of a problem to return to my old district now. Too many questions from my family and old friends. She wants to keep me hidden—see? So, I don't have a duty here and I'm not allowed to interact with citizens either.” He sighs and then lifts his head high. “But I've kept my eyes on you, Masha. To make sure you were always safe.”
I rest in that disclosure for a few moments. “You, you are the reason I always felt eyes on me, someone following me my whole life.”
“If you did, then you have good instincts.” He responds.
I scratch my head, wondering about the logistics of him meeting my mat. “But how'd you find Mama if you were restricted in Cherni?” I press my fingers into my hand, the skin folding, as I glance at the white ribbon around my wrist.
“At night, I wander, when the district is asleep and fewer bots and Keepers are patrolling the area. I met her one night near the Cylindrical.” He shakes his head in a laugh. “She was folding pamphlets.”
“When I approached her, at first she was startled and backed away from me. She thought I was a Keeper. But under the light of the moon she saw me, my”—he wraps his thumb and forefinger around his arm—“emaciated figure. She knew then I couldn't be a Keeper.”
“So, she befriended you.”
“I learned she was putting together more brochures to pass around to citizens about our oppression under MAQS.”
I glance to the man on the word our.
“Yes, MAQS controls Chekov too.” He responds, then continues. “Brochures about how we all need to fight to be free. I learned then that your mat led a rebel group called Freedom, and I vowed that day to do everything I could to help her. We all needed more answers, and after everything I saw outside, I needed answers too.”
“What did you see?” My voice grows low, hollow even. Nothing seems to matter more to me now than that one single answer.
He shakes his head, his eyes flitting skyward again. “I can't tell you that. MAQS agreed to take care of me here, to give me my freedom even though I escaped. She only did that because I do not pose a threat to her existence, to her rule. But I was warned that if I ever told anyone what I saw outside that I would be jailed like the rebels of Cherni.”
“So, you never told Mama?” I reply, disappointed.
“I helped her in every way I could. In every way that would not lead to me being jailed. If she needed extra hands folding pamphlets. If she needed a listening ear. If she needed to hide forbidden literature.” He pauses. “When she found the key and had a plan to get inside to see MAQS, to finally force MAQS to answer our questions or be shut down…I thought, 'This is it. This is what I've been waiting for.' So, I left with Masha to do just that.” He shakes his head. “But after the explosion, after the rebels were locked away inside of Calypso Tower and Masha was given a life sentence…I gave up on that dream.” He looks at me again. “There is no way to beat MAQS. She knows too much, she knows us better than we even know ourselves.”
“So, you just gave up and hid out here in Cherni,” I retort angrily.
“I didn't have anywhere else to go.” He points to the wall, to where the hole had been made. “I tried once to leave. I broke the wall and dug that hole. I even made it halfway out…before the biting sun reminded me of why I almost died the first time.”
Esfir and I just stare at this stranger now—surprised, disappointed, angry.
“Cherni is your home. You should make the most of it,” he ends, and the words are anything but satisfying. “My home is not here, I left my home—my family—for this.” His words are bitter. “For nothing. For no life, I left my wife. My beautiful wife, and my little girl.” He looks deep into me. “You know, she was just five when I left her. She'd be a teenager now.” He looks skyward. “Sometimes, I wonder if she looks like her mat, or me. What her duty will be. What subjects she excels at in Pod. I wonder if she misses me…like I miss her. Like I miss all of them.” His voice is firm. “I have nothing here, and if you don't want to end up like me, you'll be wise and make the most out of your home here too. MAQS wants that, and she always gets what she wants.”
I shake my head vigorously, as my body backs away from him. “No, no! It's not my home, and I'm going to find out what MAQS is hiding!”
I'm about to rush off, to head toward the wall again and free myself once and for all—and then the man grabs my wrist, the one with the ribbon. “Wait.” He points ahead to where we all see a couple of bots patrolling the boundary.
They spot us from fifty yards away where we hear their mechanical tone loud over the desolate land, repeating, “You are guilty of boundary violation. Let us bring you in for questioning.”
“Come with me, let me show you something,” the stranger clears his throat, “I'm Kir by the way.” He shakes his head. “Gosh, I haven't said my name aloud in so long, not since your mat.”
I freeze at the sight of the bots, before turning around to face this man my mama trusted.
“If after showing you this, you still want to leave…then I won't stop you,” he adds.
If Mama trusted him, maybe I can too. Besides, if we stay, we'll likely get caught by bots. “Fine, but you'd better make this fast.”
The three of us race over the ground, kicking up dirt and dust along our way, as we head in the opposite direction of the bots and eventually leave them behind. Bots are slow that way—over dirt.
We run up to the zone on the outskirts of everything, and then head into the next. After we race through the area closest to the Cylindrical, I see the crisp white structure and its majestic heights reaching into the sky and find it funny that somehow everything always leads us back here.
“What are we doing back at the Cylindrical?” I ask as we step over the park, afraid backtracking will only put me more at risk of getting caught—but he knew Mama, and he knows more than he's telling us.
“Your mat and I spent a lot of time here.” We walk up to the door of the Cylindrical, the one that might as well be invisible if you don't know what to look for. He pushes the door button and it slides open. “Enough time to discover all of its secrets.”
“Secrets?” Esfir asks, his quirked brows highlighting his inquisitive face.
“Yes, secrets,” Kir says before he steps into the Cylindrical.
“Okay, Kir, lead the way.” I wave my hand forward.
Esfir and I stay close to each other, and even more so to Kir, because we don't know anything about the Cylindrical, let alone its secrets, and the last thing either of us wants is to get caught. Maybe Esfir would get off with a warning or a few days in jail, but I'm out of warnings. And Kir, he'd likely get sent away somewhere where no one would ever find him.
