Quantum State, page 15
I nestle under the covers, waiting for 7:30 p.m. Glancing at my wristwatch, time oddly moves very slowly, waiting for me when I want to break the law. I manage to get all the way into chapter ten in my book before I hear a tap tap tap on my window glass. Esfir raps his knuckles over the glass and after I jump up from bed, I lock my door and head over to greet him.
His warm smile meets me on the other side of the glass. I push the latch open to unlock the window and then lift upward as a gush of fresh air rushes over us. My lashes blink faster at the wind, and then I crawl over the sill, and into Esfir's arms.
My sandals thud onto the dirt below us before Esfir braces me on each shoulder with his hands. “You really ready for this?”
“Yes.” I pat the string around my neck and hold the paper in my hands. “I am.”
Esfir has his backpack on and I see the tip of the surge baton poking out of the top of the bag. I'm not sure what to expect anymore, about Cherni, about Kazimir, and least of all, me. But what I do know is that I can do anything with Esfir beside me.
I grip his hand into mine and squeeze before we head off in the direction of Town hall.
State of Chaos
Approaching town hall, I thought I'd be a ball of nerves, maybe break down, turn around, and forget it all. But I'm not, and I don't. I'm not even sure I feel nervous. There are not too many things I've wanted for in this life. A best friend, who I found in Esfir, books to keep me entertained, a roof over my head, food in my belly, and this. This outweighs all the others.
I'll never know how this turns out unless I do it. So, I walk in haste, skipping around the steps and to the side of the building with Esfir still next to me like that loyal dog named Lassie from television. The thought cracks a smile on my face. If dogs even existed, if I'd ever even seen one—that would be something. Really something.
Jiggling the knob, Esfir looks back to me unsure, and I nod. We have to do this, and I trust Kazimir. Strange, but I do. The door is ajar just like Kazimir said it would be, and we don't hesitate. We don't have the time. Every minute has been calculated like clockwork. It's a good thing we have a Keeper on our team.
Slipping between the door and the wall, we squeeze inside the back entrance of town hall, and Esfir quickly locks the door from the inside because when the guards inspect this hallway, they mustn't find a door unlocked.
We slide our way across the tiled floor where the cameras have been inactive for a full minute heading towards the first bathroom, which is just a few yards from the back door. I feel my chest tighten as my hand unconsciously presses my heart, and we inch our way down the rest of the hall to the bathroom door. I don't feel relief until we are safely tucked inside the bathroom.
Esfir rummages through the trashcan parked in the corner as I bolt the door from the inside, unable to rely simply on the lock. As my ear presses against the door I hear boots pound pound pound in a march across the hall and back again. As I listen intently, fear rustling inside of me, Esfir finally returns with a paper bag full of Keeper uniforms.
We pull on our gray uniforms with no hesitation, patting the pockets down with a fluff of our hands, and then fix the gray caps over our heads.
“Your hair,” Esfir reminds me, and I make sure to tuck my long locks underneath the cotton cap fabric. We both hide our maps into the pockets of our uniforms, and then Esfir secures his surge baton on the latch at the side of his cargo pants.
I glance at my watch when Esfir says, “Two minutes.” I can hardly believe we are about to advance to the second bathroom. When 8:15 p.m. hits, the hallway is quiet as Esfir and I glance at each other unsurely. Then, Esfir pulls the bathroom door open slowly, before we both enter the long, vacant hall.
Rushing down the corridor in a fake march like we've seen Keepers do on the streets, we turn left at the corner and slow down, always keeping our heads low, because we don't want to appear suspicious on camera. When we reach the second bathroom, I feel my heart race and my breaths quicken, and we both enter hastily before I bolt the second door from the inside. I can't take any chances.
My back slides down the door after I've bolted it, and I'm not sure if I'm hyperventilating or what, but when Esfir touches my hand and I look into his eyes—a gaze that tells me everything will be okay—I feel good again, and slowly rise to my feet. The second batch of guards are heard soon afterward storming the hallway where we had just left from, and I have a good three minutes to breathe before 8:20 p.m. when I hear the incessant march of Keepers for four minutes.
“Are you okay?” Esfir asks, his voice cracking slightly. Not enough for most people to notice, but enough for me. This is big for him, too. This is all or nothing.
I nod, trying to convince him as much as convince myself. “Yes, yes. I'm fine.” But we both know the both of us are starting to feel the pressure, the risk of what we're doing.
“Are you sure? We can turn back still. No one knows we're here.”
I shake my head vigorously as I try to keep down a cough. “No, Kazimir risked everything for us to be here. This is our only chance. We're going through with this. We have to.”
When 8:24 p.m. flashes on my wristwatch, I hear the last boot pounding in the hall just outside the second bathroom before the boot march fades altogether. “Time to go,” Esfir urges as he pulls the second bathroom door open again.
We walk side by side as proudly as we can for fake Keepers, approaching the end of the corridor where we'll stay in the last bathroom before facing KLI. We wait there as instructed until 8:29, a minute before cameras go offline for four and half minutes.
After we exit the last bathroom, Esfir peeks around the bend and signals to me to move with him at a wave of his hand. Rushing down the corridor together, I feel my blood pulse fast, my heart beat even faster, as we sneak up behind who must be KLI, walking away from us. The bot is taller than the rest, and maybe even wider. Other than that, the same hard wire and cold metal exterior. Our wristwatches signal it is 8:30. KLI's back is so close, his spine so vulnerable just underneath a mere gray uniform.
Esfir yanks out his surge baton, and just as he is about to hit KLI on the spine, the bot turns. His red beady eyes fixate on us and I swear I see confusion—if just for a moment. Suddenly, everything is up in the air. KLI's arms, Esfir's hands, the surge baton…and then the baton falls to the floor and rolls toward the end wall away from us all.
“Esfir!” I shout, alerting him to KLI's fist about to hit his face, but Esfir stays focused on the attack, as if he's been in many fights, and I know he has. Fighting kids who've picked on him at Pod has trained him well. Esfir ducks just in time as KLI's fist misses his cheek and hits the wall behind him, leaving a dent. I jump toward the baton, my stomach sliding over the floor. Then my hands grasp the handle and I leap back to my feet.
Before KLI turns his attention on me, Esfir calls to the machine, “KLI! KLI!” and grabs his attention. KLI's beady eyes fix on Esfir. So, I take my moment, my coveted moment, and swing the surge baton at its spine, hitting it directly. KLI falls to the floor in a convulsion.
“It's out!” Esfir shouts to me as I stand over the limp machine. Esfir glances at his watch. “We have to go!” But I can't move. I just stand there, watching, captivated by this sparking mechanical structure convulsing over the floor, unsure of why I'm so curious to know more about its design, its programming. “Now!” Esfir grabs my hand and pulls me toward him and to the back door, to the left of the far wall where the baton had fallen prior. I see the key, my hands shaking, my mind still revving in circles about the machine on the floor, our mission…until the key slides into the keyhole and I turn it counterclockwise.
When the back door cracks open, Esfir and I push the heavy door with all our weight until there is enough room for us to pass through. The door is oddly heavy, like it was only meant to be opened by bots. Esfir follows close behind me, his hand on the back of my waist. The space is dark, and except for a metallic hissing sound, I don't hear much else.
I look around, my chaotic eyes searching for any spark of light, any sound that will tell us where we are headed, but I don't find any. We step through, from town hall and onto a creaking stairwell, much like the one under the Cylindrical. Racing downward, at times skipping steps, the spiral staircase takes us all the way to the bottom.
We don't run for more than a couple of minutes, but at the ground floor, I finally feel the weight of everything pressing on me as goosebumps spray over my arms. And when the metallic hissing grows louder, the dark grandeur of the underground comes more into view and the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
“I can't see anything, it's too dark.” I tilt my head to Esfir, who's at my back, and I feel his palm on my shoulder.
“Just stay close. We don't know what's going to be down here.” Esfir grips tighter on his surge baton as we position ourselves back to back before moving onward.
“I feel like—” My head whips back and forth, my pupils needing light, any glimmer of light to see better. “I feel like—”
Esfir finishes, “We're being watched?”
“You are in violation of Code 32.3,” an eerie mechanical tone says from somewhere ahead of us. Then, a spark of light shines from each side wall, so that the central area where we walk through is lit up, and I can now see. We are surrounded by bots.
Their metal bodies are more raw than the bots in Cherni, as if rusted and in need of a rub, and wires stick out of their necks as if only half-finished. This makes them all the more creepy. Their eyes glow a crimson color—deeper than the ones in Cherni—and they don't take their eyes off of us, making me feel like a rabbit in front of a hungry pride of lions.
“What do we do?” I shake, my voice quivering. “What do we do?” I turn to Esfir, but his expression is more fearful than mine. I've never seen an expression like that one on him.
All I hear is the churning of electricity and I can only feel Esfir breathing, words he desperately wants to say hanging on his lips as he is unable to move out of fear. I know he wants to tell me everything will be fine, that we just have to stick together. So, I try to think of that, of his hope, though he says nothing at all. I can't be sure if he's just stunned, or if he doesn't know what to do…but suddenly I do.
This is my chance, and I have to take it. Even if that means spending the rest of my Cherni life behind bars. So, I leave Esfir's side, and I run. I run and run—my arms swinging, my legs moving, everything like slow motion—until I'm closer to the other side of the room, until maybe, just maybe, I'll get a glimmer of her.
Just as another light comes into view, a bluer light with a mix of purple from a far back wall, I feel several bots land on top of me and I collapse onto the floor.
State of Uncertainty
When I finally awaken, I'm on top of a cot inside the cell I recognize as the one where Mama once was held—the cell where I spent a few nights after my arrest at the Cylindrical. The cell where I found out who I'd been assigned to marry. My body jerks up and my legs propel me to the cell door. Not again! My hands instinctively clasp around the bars as tears stream down my face and I scream, “No!” I shake the bars vigorously, my body slipping downward in defeat until my bottom hits the cold concrete floor.
Then, I hear my name whispered behind me. I glance feverishly around to find Esfir curled up on a separate cot in the adjacent cell. His eyes blink slowly and the bags under his wrinkly lids are a tired black-gray hue. He looks like I feel.
I yell to him, “Esfir! Esfir!” He looks at me as my fingers tighten around the cell bars dividing us. “Esfir!”
When he finally jumps to his feet, I know he's okay. “Masha!”
“What happened?”
“The bots jumped you. You were knocked unconscious. They took us to these cells.”
I shake my head, my hand reaching to my forehead in a rub. “But how long have I been out? How long have we been in here?”
“A few hours, maybe?”
I look to my wrist, but my wristwatch is gone. “I…I don't have the time.”
“Yeah, they took both our wristwatches. MAQS thinks not knowing the time will make you weaker for compliance.” He wraps his warmer fingers over mine through the cell bars. “Don't worry, though, it can't be past midnight.”
Our fingers interlace, freckles on his middle finger more visible now, and the dimple in his cheek almost invisible under all this shadow. My pinky finds his cheek, his chin, and I let my pinky linger on him as I try to take it all in.
This led me to a cell, a cell that will surely become my permanent home.
“I'm so sorry,” I say, “I shouldn't have pushed you. I…”
“It's not your fault.” His forefinger presses under my chin. “Besides, you didn't push me into anything. I chose this, just as much as you did.”
Shards of moonlight somehow trickle through the small window in each of our cells, and sprinkle over us as if it was a light rain, and my head drops, ashamed at what I've brought to both of our lives. I let my fingers grip his, and let his hands keep mine warm, but I feel selfish in all of this, beaten.
In the morning, I'm awoken again by the clunk of a tray into my cell. “You,” I say aloud, without even meaning to be rude.
“You again, too,” the old, nondescript jailer replies. The tray slides next to me with a push from his hands. “I see you're making this a habit…to be caught by the Kuznetsovs.” He smirks as he turns away from me.
“Don't you turn away from me. I'm marrying Kazimir. I'm going to be a Keeper's wife. You can't turn away from me.” I feel the desperation seep into my veins like a bad drug that chokes you. His back is so large, so plain, and yet he doesn't say another word. His silence is more than I can bear. “Turn and face me! Look at me, old man! Look at me!”
He chuckles, his laughter stunning me, as he spins around on the ball of his heel as Keepers do and stares deep into me. “What?”
“I'm not making this a habit. I'm getting out of here, and I'm going to get married.” I have to believe that freedom is possible, that I haven't lost every chance I had at finding the truth, at getting out of Cherni.
He chuckles again, his chipped front teeth annoying me. “You are not going anywhere, my dear, and I wouldn't hold on to the hope that Kazimir will be marrying you. You've broken several laws, and MAQS won't allow you into the family of Keepers now.”
His smirk carries him all the way out of the jailhouse and into a separate hall.
“Masha!” I hear Esfir call to me, and I look to him, as I still stand near my tray of breakfast. “What was that about?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head and lean toward my oatmeal. “Let's just eat.”
Esfir takes his tray to his cot and sits as he spoons himself his oatmeal. At least there are berries and nuts.
“I can't believe we're here. It still feels like a bad dream,” Esfir grumbles.
“Except it's not.”
As we eat and I try to forget what a mess I've made, I hear the thud of sandals approaching before I see Kazimir's worried face. Dark lines like crevices under his eyes overshadow wrinkles breaking in his forehead and the corners of his lips.
He stops at my cell, his fingers wrapped over the bars before I drop my tray to my cot and walk over to him. “I've got to stop meeting you like this,” he jokes, and I want to laugh, I do, but nothing inside of me can smile anymore.
“How bad is it?”
“It's bad.”
My eyes shoot to the floor before looking at him. “What did MAQS say?”
He gulps. “You are being held for breaking curfew, breaking into town hall, disengaging a bot, stealing the KLI key, and for violating the underground.”
“Is that even a thing? Violating the underground?” I retort.
“Apparently, it is, under Code 32.3 of the Keeper handbook.” His left brow rises in an arch. He loves rules.
I sigh, and Kazimir plays with my fingers. “I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I never should have let you…”
I stop him there. “Don't say it. You did nothing, you hear me? You did nothing.” I know MAQS is always listening, and if we stand too close to the Echoes or say too much inside town hall, she will hear everything. I can't have that. That one last thing has to be just mine. My secret. Not for her to take, or own. “Nothing.”
Kazimir nods as his hands fall to his sides. “I'm not sure what else to do.”
“You've done everything you can. More than you should have had to,” I add, and try to force a smile for him. I owe him that much, at least.
Then, the color on his face drains, as if he's seen a ghost. “I…we're not going to be able to marry now.” I just watch him as his mind tries to catch up with reality, as his hopes smash in front of me and as he tries to pick up the pieces. I don't know what to do, to say, and can only listen as tears stream down my face—and I'm not even sure if it's because I'm realizing how serious this really is, or if it's because a bigger part of me that I didn't want to admit to wanted him also.
I reach my hand to his.
“I've already been reassigned,” he admits.
“Reassigned?”
“To someone named Alyona.” His voice cracks at her name.
“Alyona?”
“Strange, huh? That I should marry someone with the same name as my mama.”
Then, all the reasons I feel so close to him rush back into me. His mama is gone too. “I'm sorry.”
“Every time I say my wife's name, I'll be reminded of Mama and how brief her life was.” He shuffles his feet. “I have to go now, but I'll visit again soon, when I can. Stay strong,” Kazimir says, and I just watch in agony as he turns away and leaves.
