Escape Before Control Slips

James 1

James

The low murmur of a passing car rumbles in the distance, a reminder that life continues to go on outside this house.

For a while there’s no sound but the steady hum of electricity, but then the refrigerator gives a sudden, mechanical exhale, and there’s a shudder of movement as Nazeera pulls her coffee cup closer to her, the ceramic scraping against the wood table.

Winston drops his head into his arms with a groan.

A chair creaks as someone adjusts in their seat, and a pager buzzes somewhere in someone’s pocket.

Kenji takes an unsubtle sip of his coffee, then sets the mug down too hard.

Someone’s stomach growls.

I’m staring out the window, watching the light change between leaves shifting in the wind.

A squirrel is standing upright on a branch, staring at me like it wants to fight.

Probably because it knows I’d lose that fight.

I’m not sure I can even lift my arms right now. I can’t even remember what time it is.

Morning.

Definitely morning.

I blink slowly. The texture of the day is gelatinous, viscous but unformed.

I close my hands around my warm coffee mug, but caffeine isn’t strong enough to fight this battle for me; the coffee is more about comfort than a cure.

I rest my elbows on the table but one of them gives out and I nearly punch myself in the face. Nearly knock over my coffee.

This animates the room a little.

“All right,” says Kenji, sighing. He’s staring at the wall. “Who wants to shower first?”

Winston raises his head without lifting his body, like a turtle proving it has a neck.

He’s not wearing his glasses. He’s asked, several times, whether anyone has seen his glasses, and I can’t find the energy to tell him they’re wedged into my seat, digging into my back.

It’s possible I sat on them at some point.

No one answers Kenji’s question.

Our group fell asleep at Kenji and Winston’s place last night, each of us passing out in various tortured positions on floors and couches.

Winston’s face is still marked by the angry, abstract imprint of a textile.

Kenji’s hair is squashed on one side. Who knows what I look like.

I don’t even remember falling asleep. I don’t remember making coffee this morning.

I frown, looking down at my mug.

I didn’t make coffee this morning. Someone else must’ve made the coffee. Now that I think of it, I can’t remember who gave this to me.

I try again to prop my face up in one hand, but my elbow gives out for the second time, this time slamming against the edge of the table. The pain radiates up my arm, and I sit back in my chair, annoyed.

“Ow,” I say, just for the hell of it.

Three pairs of eyes briefly flicker in my direction.

No one’s really slept in days. The city is still caught between recovery and chaos.

We’ve never taken a hit quite like this, not since the fall of The Reestablishment.

To be clear, we’ve had bad days—hell, we’ve had darker days with higher casualty counts—but there’s something about this attack that feels different from the others.

It’s not just about the death toll or the structural damages.

It’s about the betrayals.

Smuggled weaponry. Hacked central comms. Trusted soldiers revealed to be undercover agents.

We thought we were withstanding blows from overt enemies, but our deepest injuries, it turns out, are being delivered from the inside.

Our shields have been badly pierced; our ranks badly infiltrated.

We’re only now realizing the depth of the spy network embedded in our society, and it’s been a painful awakening.

I take a sip of my lukewarm coffee, not tasting it. There’s another dull buzz of a pager before a burst of muted conversation filters in from the street, fading out again as the pedestrians pass.

“Fine,” says Kenji. “I’ll take the first shower.” He pushes away his coffee mug, then drops his head to the table with a thud, his eyes closing.

I sit back in my seat with a sigh.

We were so raw after the revolution. I was still just a kid, barely eleven years old—but I can’t remember a time in my life when I felt truly young.

Even then it was clear to me that we were licking our wounds, trying to get our legs under us as a new nation.

No one had figured out the scope of the Ark back then; it hadn’t occurred to us to worry that our enemy might still be active.

We thought we’d taken out the brain of the regime—or at least cut off its head.

We thought we had time to breathe and rebuild.

We couldn’t have known how prepared they were for the setback, or how deep their poisonous roots ran through the earth.

All we knew for sure was that The Reestablishment was undermining our progress at every turn.

“Has anyone seen my glasses?” Winston asks for maybe the tenth time, his voice muffled by the cradle of his arms. He lifts his head an inch, slitting his eyes open. “Anyone?”

I squint at Winston, trying to calculate how much energy I’d need to summon in order to reach for the glasses wedged into my seat. Add to that the effort required to rise from my chair and hand them over.

Too much.

My pager buzzes suddenly in my pocket, startling me, briefly, out of my daze.

I ignore it.

I’d suspected something truly dark was headed for us a few months ago, after a suspicious gas line explosion at a local elementary school. Over a hundred kids died; it was one of the worst public tragedies in our recent history, and a shocking escalation in covert warfare we’d yet to experience.

It had felt like a warning shot.

I tip back my head and close my eyes. My pager buzzes again. Then twice more.

It was the elementary school massacre that finally broke me.

That’s when I knew I needed to find my way into the Ark.

I needed to do what Warner wouldn’t. I had to look behind the curtain, gather intel, and sight the enemy with my own eyes, and I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me.

The Reestablishment was slaughtering the most vulnerable among us in plain sight with no provocation, and the silent message was terrifying: they were coming for us, all of us, and it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

I made my choice.

I drag both hands down my face, fighting a wave of self-loathing as pain awakens behind my ribs. Thinking about infiltrating the Ark means thinking about Rosabelle, and I can’t be reminded of Rosabelle right now.

Fuck.

I’ve been doing an excellent job living in denial lately, but the effort loses efficacy a little more every day.

The longer I ignore all this volatility inside me, the more out of control I feel.

This shit is starting to manifest physically, giving me a crawling anxiety I can’t seem to shake loose from my body.

Still, it doesn’t seem to matter how much worse it gets for me; I’m not ready to think about Rosabelle.

I might feel like tearing the skin off my bones, but I can’t think about where she is; what she’s doing; who she’s with.

I can’t.

The fifth time my pager buzzes, the sound seems to detonate in my chest. I suck in a breath, grateful for the distraction, but the sixth buzz becomes everyone’s problem. Nazeera makes a face, Winston flips me off, and Kenji mutters, “I swear to God, bro,” without clarifying the threat.

I exhale slowly.

It takes nearly all I’ve got just to unearth the brick from my pocket. I feel wired and exhausted at the same time and I nearly fumble the tech in my hands, taking another steadying breath as I finally glance at the notifications.

I’m delivered pure confusion.

I slacken, my body unclenching. I don’t understand what I’m looking at. These are messages from numbers I don’t recognize.

Is this real?

Hello?

OMYGOD HELLO?????????

hi

i’m looking for james?

Is this James?

I frown so hard at my pager I almost fall back asleep.

“Who is it?” Nazeera asks. “Is it Warner?”

I look up to find she’s balancing her chin on the edge of her mug, and my eyes widen in alarm.

I’m about to tell her she’s setting herself up for disaster just as she loses the gamble with gravity: the cup tips, topples over, and splashes lukewarm coffee up her face.

Winston, too tired to laugh in earnest, sputters duck-like in her direction.

Kenji smacks him.

“Ow,” Winston whines.

Nazeera groans as she rights the fallen mug, then lifts her hands to her wet chin with a whimper. She’s staring at the mess like it might be the thing that finally breaks her will to live.

Kenji wordlessly passes her a stack of napkins.

“Thank you,” Nazeera whispers, mortified.

Kenji nods tightly, but I notice he doesn’t look at her. I nearly roll my eyes at both of them.

Instead, I take a last glance at my weird messages before setting the pager on the table. I’m making the executive decision to continue ignoring my problems until my head is fully operational.

I hold my mug a little tighter as Nazeera mops up her mess, then return my gaze to the window.

I’m trying to refocus my thoughts, but that asshole squirrel is still staring at me—still challenging me to a fight it knows I can’t win.

I motivate just enough to flip him off, and the squirrel flinches, then straightens, its tail flicking angrily.

A dim chittering sound is directed at me through the window, and for a moment I swear I see a blue glimmer flash across its beady eyes, but I know my tired mind is just messing with me.

I sink lower in my seat. Winston’s glasses dig deeper into my back.

“Does anyone know what time it is?” Nazeera asks, clutching a wet napkin to her cheek. She sounds a little weepy.

We all look at her.

No one answers her.

Every day we’ve been doing damage control, each of us in a different capacity.

We’ve temporarily shut down airspace and locked down our borders.

We need time to search for stores of illegal weaponry and explosives; we need time to sniff out the rats among our ranks.

We’ve been trying to restore order to affected businesses; we’ve been trying to bury our dead with due respect.

One of our hospitals was targeted in a blast that took out an intensive care unit, and we’re still dealing with the fallout from the fire.

These days have been rough on everyone.

My pager buzzes again, shuddering against the table. Another buzz. Then twice more. All four of us turn to frown at it.

I pick up the pager.

I don’t know if this is real but if it is I just wanted you to know that you walked past me once and I nearly fainted

You’re even more gorgeous in person

I couldn’t believe it my whole family thought I was having a heart attack

I really hope this is real pls answer me

What the fuck?

My frown deepens as I reread the message, but the pager buzzes again in my hand.

New message, different number.

James Alexander Anderson

Buzz.

You’re so much hotter than your older brother

Buzz.

There’s a long list of things I would let you do to me with that mouth, but the things I want to do with your—

I slam the pager to the table face down, where it lands like a small explosion in the silence.

The disruption is so jarring that Nazeera visibly stiffens and Winston whimpers, covering his ears like a child.

Kenji finds the strength to level a glare in my direction, but when he glimpses the look on my face, he nearly sits up.

“What is it?” he says, looking as close to alert as he has all morning. “What just happened?”

I shake my head, still a little stunned, as my pager continues to buzz incessantly against the table.

I have no idea what’s going on.

My line is supposed to be digitally encrypted. Highly secured. I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know how they got access to me. I didn’t even finish reading the last message, but I saw enough of it to know I won’t be repeating that shit out loud.

At least I’m suddenly wide awake.

The problem is, my pager won’t stop buzzing, announcing itself over and over to the room.

It’s making me self-conscious.

“Bro.” Kenji nods at me, straightening. “Seriously. What’s happening? Who’s paging you?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

I pick up the tech like it might be a grenade, giving the screen another quick, cautious glance.

Against the wall.

On a table.

In the shower.

Tied up—

“Jesus,” I mutter, slamming the pager face down again.

“You don’t know?” Kenji says with a frown. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

The front door opens just then with a resounding bang, and I never have a chance to respond.

We all sit up, alert.

I set the pager to silent and stow it away in a zippered pocket of my technical pants like I’m putting it in jail. Giving it a chance to think about what it’s done.

There’s a beat of silence.

“Hello?” Adam’s voice carries from the entrance. “Where are you guys? We brought breakfast.”

Kenji makes an indecent sound.

“Breakfast,” he says, his eyes closing. He sits back in his chair and clasps a hand to his heart.

“Hello?” Adam calls out again, his voice growing louder as he approaches. “Why is it so quiet in here—?”

He comes to a sudden halt when he reaches the dining room, and the four of us turn in slow motion to look at him.

“Whoa,” he says.