Chapter 9: Before

I got lost while walking from the nurse's office. It was almost curfew, so eventually, a prison guard saw me and escorted me personally back to my jail cell. Paul opened his mouth in shock as he saw me, Alexei had his usual savage laugh on, however. I waited for the cop to be gone before speaking up.

“Surprise…” I said

“How, I thought you were done for?” Paul said as he looked at me up and down as if checking if I were real or not.

“I thought so too, but trust me, everything is fine, do you have the knife?” I asked.

Alexei slightly showed a silver knife through his shirt. I nodded at him. I facepalmed myself in the realization that we didn’t even need a knife anymore. They had a nurse's office that probably had some surgical equipment. Well, if I didn’t look for the knife and hurt myself, we wouldn’t even know that this prison had a nurse’s office, so it was a paradox. Anyways, I brushed myself off of the scenarios and decided to be glad about what happened.

“Good news, I recruited a nurse, or doctor, or whatever she is, either way, she said she could do surgery, so you don’t have to do it yourself,” I said to Alexei.

“No thanks, I could do it by myself, good job on recruiting though,” He said immediately.

What? He wants to do it himself? Is he out of his mind? Then again, it was Alexei we were talking about here, so there was no doubt that he was indeed, out of his mind. Paul walked up to him with his huge seasoned body.

“What did you say? You want to cut yourself open?” Paul questioned him.

“That’s right, don’t want nobody touching my body.” He said, dignified.

If he was anyhow crazier than this, I wouldn’t even want to know.

“Paul, don’t get angry, it won’t solve anything,” I had to say that because Paul was clenching his fists harder than he should.

I stepped in between them and sat down on the floor next to Alexei’s bed. It was up to me to convince this man now. I could leave him on his own, and he would try to get the TNT out by himself, but he could die, and we needed every soul we could get. Or, Cecilia could operate on him, and his life would no longer be in any danger. I knew I couldn’t force him to do anything, but at least I could try to change his mind.

“You don’t want to have anyone operating on you?” I asked him.

“Nope,” said Alexei stubbornly, turning his head to the other side.

“I have no doubt that you could get the TNT out by yourself, but what about sewing yourself up again? Wouldn’t it be hard?”

“I could do it, I did it before, I could do it again,” that’s some new information.

“Where would you operate yourself at? This dirty cell where you might get sick from a paper cut?” I asked him again, trying to make him see some reason.

“I will manage.” Why is he so stubborn about this?

“You must have your reasons as for why you don’t want it, but you must understand, the resistance, the revolution depends on this, and only you can give it a one hundred percent chance that we can escape, we have come so far already, it all depends on you now.”

He didn’t talk back. It’s working. I just needed a final push, that’s all. I stood up from the ground and started walking around the room. Even Paul seemed surprised that I was making some progress.

“Think about it. You get blood everywhere in this jail cell, the cops would see it, they aren’t blind. Then, they would question it, and they would scan us again, and maybe this time the diamond container would fail you. Or, you could go to the nurse’s office with me tomorrow, and this very nice girl Cecilia would get it out of you for free, they even have drugs in there, so there wouldn’t even be any pain.” I said as I walked around the room, creating some pressure.

He was considering it, I could tell from his silence. Maybe my persuasion didn’t fail me this time, and he would actually accept my suggestions.

“Let me sleep on it!” He said as he rolled over with a blanket over him.

I guessed that was all I could do, I sighed and climbed up on the bed on top of his. I could see Paul clapping his hands silently as if applauding me for being able to persuade him somewhat, at least he was considering it. The speakers started counting down the seconds until lights out, for some reason, I wasn’t scared of the darkness anymore, maybe it was because of freedom being so close. Maybe in two more days, I would be walking away from here to a greater purpose. I thought about what I was going to do. I was definitely going to join the resistance, and fight for the freedom and equality of the Low-Scorers. Perhaps I would be one of the leaders of it, Alexei did say that they needed a Zero as a face of the resistance.

“Oh yeah, that Ethan guy, is he cool or what?” I asked after the lights have been cut.

“Yeah, he’s cool. He got an anger issue, but he is cool,” Paul replied to me in the dark.

“I see, I see,” Anger issue huh? He did seem like a completely different person when he came to save me.

“Why did you guys give him the Anti-Suppression Device?”

“You were taking so long in the kitchen, and Alexei got worried, so he sent Ethan with the device as a test of loyalty, pretty risky if you asked me, but dude got one hell of a Spirit.”

I nodded silently in the dark. That bread was as hard as a piece of metal. That must have been a high-level Spirit, so what did he do to get into this prison? This prison was for people that scored low on the Scale… or extremely dangerous criminals. Well, the dude helped me, so I hoped that he wasn’t the latter. I looked over to my cellmates, Paul had his eyes closed, and Alexei was no doubt sleeping like a log. Why did he not want to go to Cecilia? Why was he so stubborn about it? The anxiety grew in my stomach because it could affect our mission if he kept being so stubborn. I was restless, maybe it was because of the anxiety? Or was it the excitement? I couldn’t tell, there are a great number of emotions going through my body at the moment. After laying on the old bed of the prison cell for an extended period of time, my body decided that it needed some rest. My eyes started becoming droopy, my mind started to become blank as I drifted off into the darkness.

I bolted off my bed as the cops banged their batons on the floor. I was still drowsy from the sudden alarm but was instantly woke up by the thought of the plan. I jumped off my bed immediately and located Alexei, half-asleep on the bed under mine. I looked at him as I thought. What do we do after we got out of here? Surrounding us was basically nothing. I didn’t know where the resistance was, or how to travel to it. The only hope I had was Alexei, for he was with them from the start. He should know where they were, and how to get there. The guard banged on the bars harder than before, and finally, Alexei woke up. He tiredly got up from his bed.

“I will go with your plan,” Alexei said after the guard walked away, admitting that he was a little unreasonable last night.

I celebrated in my own mind. I nodded to Paul as I walked out of my cell, ready to get some breakfast at the cafeteria. Ethan walked up behind me as I was on my way.

“You owe me one,” He said.

“Yeah, I do owe you one,” I said, nodding.

“I see, thank you for having my back,” I leaned in for a whisper. “Instead of going to your jail at curfew tonight, sneak to my cell, I will explain the rest there.”

He widened his eyes and nodded repeatedly. Everything should go to the plan. We have had too many setbacks for my liking. When I arrived at the cafeteria, I was shocked that the kitchen was still running, and they had found a new chef. These so-called chefs are probably not chefs at all, just guards who knew how to put foods on the pan put there to make the prisoners do work. I wasn’t going to go to that kitchen again, so I just stood in line to get some breakfast. Prison food might not be desirable, but it was all I had to replenish my energy. I chose to sit at a table that was not crowded with cops, at least it gave me a false sense of privacy. Following me were Ethan, Paul, and Alexei. Even though we sat together, most of the meal was eaten in silence. In an attempt to break the silence, I started speaking.

“Paul, you told me there were some… interests that might have been of use to us, right? Do they know everything about the plan?”

“No, when I was finding some people, I didn’t tell them about the esc-” He glanced at the cops and cleared his throat, “The plan, I just asked them if they were willing to take some risks.”

I nodded. No one should have known about the escape, and I liked to keep it that way. I wanted people that could help, and now we had five people, that was good enough. A big group would have caused attention, and attention was the last thing I wanted.

My heart jumped when a guard tapped me on the shoulder. I fixed my face, trying to not look calm, normal, and then I turned back at them.

“Arthur Thester?” He asked to verify me. I shouldn’t lie, he probably knew it was me already, and only asked for verification.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to need you to come with me, the Head Warden wants to see you, and I trust you are wise enough to cease any resistance.”

I nodded with an obvious face and stood up from my chair. They handcuffed me and started leading me to the Head Warden's room. They lead me to a hallway that I had never been to before, the hallway where all the administrators were working in. A gigantic double door existed at the end of that hallway, I thought it was pretty obvious who worked in there. I swallowed my saliva, my pride along with it too, as I was already intimidated by the fact that I was going to meet the Head Warden. I had many questions about him, but the most important question was: Is he going to thwart our plans somehow?

The guards opened the door, and air filled with a flowery scent gushed out of the room. It was almost suffocating, even the guards loosened their grips. Inside was a woman in her thirties with her blonde hair highlighted by the sun, her hands on her chin, looking as if she was waiting for me to come until she was bored. She stared at my eyes with her furrowed brows, then looked at the guards. The guards nodded and left the room shortly after I entered. She brought her palm out and point her fingers to the chairs in front of her. I took the hint, and I sat down. We stared at each other, the stress was building up in my mind. Finally, the silence was broken when she started verbal communication.

“A suspicious letter has been sent to you, Zero.”