Preview: Rave: Chronicles of the Below

Chapter 1 - No Place That’s Home

At seventeen years old, Tameryn Marks had never had a real home. Not that she could remember, anyway. An orphanage certainly didn’t count. Some might consider that incredibly sad, even heartbreaking, but at this point, she’d grown indifferent. No, any kind of self-pity-based thinking wasn’t survival positive.

Instead, she focused on things like maintaining average grades, having a hobby that acted as a good excuse whenever someone started asking too many questions, and not attracting the attention of authorities by committing petty crimes.

Like right now, she was halfway listening to the nun who served as their history teacher, “-torn apart communities over sixty years ago, but that was the flash point and not when it started-” while working on a black and white pencil rendition of the classroom and its thirty-five occupants, excluding herself. She'd had enough of teacher-inflicted self-portraits depicting limp burgundy hair, a cold-toned square jawline, and permanently tired light blue eyes. Her always plain and simple clothes weren’t any fun to draw either.

Maybe it was beyond her skill level right now, but it was better to practice perspective on school desks and fading motivational posters, and absolutely not waste time thinking about two certain someones who weren’t in class after the latest incident of theirs.

Restless energy filtered through the other students as Friday freedom approached. Tameryn scribbled out some shading on a student’s backpack. The teacher tried to desperately wrangle another half-hour’s worth of attention from her students, going on about the back-to-back civil wars America had faced. Stuff that was totally relevant to a bunch of teenagers and not at all the same thing they’d been hearing since middle school.

It was a losing battle.

Sister Sutter’s patience reached an end as a spit-wad flew from one corner of the room to the other.

She slapped her hand to her desk and yelled out, “Friday cannot be an excuse to suddenly forget your studies! While you are in school, you need to devote your time and attention to your instructors, your work! Is that understood? There needs to be respect, not only for me, but this institution, and God!”

The crack caused a pause among the students, but once the mini lecture was done, they simply chanted, “Yes, Sister Sutter. We’re sorry, Sister Sutter,” before going right back to what they had been previously doing.

Sister Sutter sighed, defeated, and shook her head as she tapped the wooden desk with one hand and used the other to drag her flask out of a drawer. Her nun’s habit hid nothing. She was probably better suited to proper covenant work, but there was a shortage of professional, well, anything. So, religious organizations of all kinds offered their most learned members as a means to fill the gaps.

Adding a drinking nun would be a good detail to give the drawing but would mean too much erasing at this point.

Sunlight filtered through the window and smog-filled air settled inside the classroom from seams around the window that no longer sealed, and desks creaked. Knowing the teacher had given up lecturing at this point, Tameryn tuned out the rest of the students as they dialed up the volume. Figuring out how to properly shade the rippling linoleum floor had her full attention. Resulting in her missing the bell ringing, everyone including Sister Sutter leaving, and the ever-present layer of dust settling back down without her notice.

A hand slapping her desk forced her back to reality. “Yo, weirdo. Bell rang.”

Showing no outward reaction, since her drawing hadn’t been tarnished by a sudden forced mistake, she raised her head and stared at her usual irritant. “I am now aware, Joey. You can leave.”

“Maybe I wanna talk to you, dork,” he said.

She found him genuinely wanting to talk to her hard to believe. “Why can’t you just call me Tameryn?” she asked flatly. The less she gave him to work with, the shorter this interaction would be. That’s how it usually went.

Joey crossed his arms and gave her a smirk. “Because I live to torment you.” That smirk was the only thing that made him stand out; otherwise, she’d call him generic. No truly defining features to him, personality or otherwise. He was awful to draw.

“Points for being honest, I guess?” she supposed with a raised eyebrow. Talking to him was a chore; heck, she’d rather actually be doing chores. That was productive.

“Well, it’s not like you’re special. I live to torment everyone,” he said with a shrug.

“I don’t warrant special treatment, huh? Then what do you call this?” Tameryn asked, burgundy eyebrow remaining arched.

Joey leaned forward and placed his hands on her desk as he got closer. “There’s this rumor going ‘round. Says you’ve been ‘requested’ to speak to some of the guys who take the Infected to the Below. Care to confirm or deny?”

Again, no reaction. Tameryn was good at those. She just gave him a blank stare, judging by the way Joey was fidgeting, was doing its job to unnerve him.

“And if I have no response?” she asked. She rubbed some of the charcoal off of her hands onto the cover of her art book.

Joey was typical of most people she interacted with, taking their living situation for granted and too little thought on anything of substance, so she didn’t hold much stock in what he was asking. He was probably just fishing for a reaction. Even if there was a rumor about her being one of the Infected, with the special abilities so many feared, Joey wouldn’t be the one asking her. He’d be pointing and laughing with his wall of friends. If she remembered right, he’d done similar to a different social outcast a couple months back. He’d been wrong. Must be bored and craving the next source of drama.

Joey’s eyes held a feverish excitement. “What can you do that makes the government think you belong down with the freaks? Besides everything about you.”

Tameryn gave him an incredulous look. “If I could, why would I tell you whether I can or can’t do anything?”

“Because you could suddenly actually be a cool person instead of a lame nobody who sits in a corner and draws? Word gets out you’re Infected and suddenly everyone here will be wanting to talk to you. You could even make a friend, get invited to parties. Normal human things.”

Not mentioning the fact that she had two friends and didn’t need hordes of people surrounding her at all times like he did, she turned it around on him. “What is wrong with you that you think being Infected is awesome?”

Joey’s crazy smile turned into a deep frown. “What’s wrong with you that you think it’s not?”

“I dunno, maybe being forced to relocate an entire life because of something out of a person’s control doesn’t sound that appealing. And aside from you, no one likes Infections. People like them are considered dangerous, and then they get sent to the Below,” Tameryn pushed back.

Joey shook his head and stood back up, re-crossing his arms. “You’re absolutely no fun, dude. No wonder no one likes you. I guess you’ll just have to continue to suffer in loner-dom-" he said, dismissing her with a wave as he departed from the classroom. On his way out the windowed door, Tameryn caught his mutter, “I would have thought a freak like that was sure to be Infected.”

Tameryn snorted at Joey’s lackluster detective skills as she cleaned up her art supplies by closing her sketchbook and sweeping her stuff into her backpack. The kid probably wouldn’t notice a murderer who held the weapon in his hand if the person denied it well enough. And who would be stupid enough to think people would flock to be near her if they thought she was Infected?

The ticking of the inaccurate classroom clock kept her company while she packed up her things. She still wasn’t happy with how the picture was turning out, but she’d worry about it later. Other concerns were looming at the moment.

***

As Tameryn walked down the last two blocks to the orphanage, she looked around, thoroughly, like it might be the last. Creeping paranoia told her it could be.

The buildings of the metropolis were run down and dingy, garbage lined the streets, yet, to her, there was a homey feeling to the place. If something went down, no one went and narc’d but if you needed help, someone was almost always willing. Community supporting community. Unless, of course, you did something stupid, like get ‘invited’ to the Below.

Everyone always acted like the ‘Infected’ were repulsive, horrible creatures. You might catch their disease. Tameryn rolled her eyes as she sped up to make the flashing crosswalk sign. The so-called “infection” wasn’t contagious anymore, so to speak. It had been reduced to a recessive hereditary trait. Among the Abovelings, it was about as common as red hair now. All the ones that had any chance of giving anyone the ‘disease’ by touch alone were either dead or rotting in the Below. Hardly anything to be worried about.

Yet the ones who were realistically harmless, who refused to go underground, were still ostracized like a genuine threat. So those who were “invited” either ran and hid or did their best to keep quiet about their invitations. Tameryn had chosen the latter. Such BS, that a government experiment some fifty years prior meant she had to feel like a fugitive, carefully calculating her every move, and always looking over her shoulder.

Except it appeared that there was a leak in information. Even if Joey had been just fishing, he wasn’t bright enough to have come up with that idea on his own. Someone else had known and let something slip.

Tameryn sighed as she crossed a cracked and chunked-up part of the sidewalk next to a boarded-up storefront. She’d been hoping to hide out at the orphanage for another few months, legally turn eighteen and all that, maybe graduate, before leaving and starting over somewhere else. She’d had a few close calls already, even with the current government’s shitty who’s-who inventory system.

Enough people had agreed it had been more important to work on rebuilding the country after three back-to-back civil wars and making sure people could survive, than updating their check and balances systems, making it harder to find any further pockets of Infection. Which had worked in her favor for the past eleven or so years. But loose lips were a problem, and she already knew the two biggest suspects.

Kind Inclinations Orphanage, one of the many that went back into service after the second civil war, came into view. Its now pale-yellow stucco walls gleamed in the late afternoon light of a smog-filled California afternoon. One of the women who helped run Kind Inclinations was waiting for her outside, pacing.

Ever since the request to visit with some of the social workers from ‘Below Relocation Services’ had come, no specifics at that time about who, it felt like Winnie Harris had made it her goal to watch over her, worse than a mother hen. Even if Winnie didn’t know exactly what had been discussed, since she wasn’t head of the orphanage. A letter had shown up a week after that meeting drove that worrying up to eleven.

Since there were only two real options for what the letter could have been: demand for blood testing to test for Infection or immediate relocation, there was a fair cause for worry. Winnie didn’t ask what was in the letter; she was too polite for that, and Tameryn had made it clear she was never going to offer the information freely. Which led Winnie to worry even more.

Tameryn raised a hand in acknowledgment to the older woman.

Winnie was matronly in personality, but she was a survivor of the Gene Wars and looked the part. She had scars and burn marks in places seen and not, a particularly bad burn mark marring the left half of her face, making her stand out in a crowd when her otherwise plain, square middle-aged features would have made her almost invisible. Today she had on a black tank top and cargo pants tucked into worn work boots. Must have been an outdoor activity day for the younger kids. The ones still with a chance for adoption and not just waiting to age out.

She had been pacing back and forth but once she saw Tameryn waving, it was clear she had to force herself to not go running up to her to make sure she was okay. Once in close enough range though, Winnie clasped her meaty hands on Tameryn’s shoulders and spun her in each different direction to make sure she was alright before pulling her into a bear hug. Her boots put her an inch over six feet tall, four more than Tameryn. And while Tameryn wasn’t small by any means, the hug made her feel that way.

She hated it. She’d never taken to Winnie. The oozing matronly affection had always felt suffocating and fake. Maybe it was actually real, maybe it wasn’t. She couldn’t afford to find out. Certainly not now.

“Tammy, why are you so late? I’ve been out here worrying for you.” Winnie’s words were muffled in Tameryn’s burgundy strands. She didn’t seem to mind the grease Tameryn could never quite get a handle on with bottom-shelf hygiene products the orphanage provided.

Tameryn grumbled at the nickname. “Winnie, I’ve said please don’t call me Tammy. Asked you that many times before.”

Winnie ignored her and ruffled Tameryn’s hair before throwing an arm around her shoulder and guiding her inside. “I just worry, kiddo. After that letter last week- well, what took you so long anyways?”

If Tameryn wasn’t so used to extreme situations, she’d have felt guilty about her next lie. Mentioning that letter didn’t help. It had probably been what caused the twins to glitch and say stuff they weren’t supposed to. “Sorry. Got caught up talking to some friends.”

At the mention of friends, Winnie looked both worried and pleased as she led Tameryn inside. “I guess you shouldn’t be locked up here all the time. Friends are good for you. Just be careful, alright?”

“Of course.” She was always careful.

Tameryn walked through Kind Inclinations Orphanage’s gated entrance, an arched opening in the circular adobe wall that was normally sealed off by a wrought iron gate, the building made to resemble a Californian mission. One had to walk roughly thirty feet through the perpetually cool tunnel before they entered the heavily gardened courtyard. Kind Inclinations was actually one of the very few places left in town with a flourishing flower garden.

There was various flora, largely roses, hydrangeas, and irises that made little patterns inside the garden, and all were maintained by the orphans and foster kids who stayed there. Tameryn had a particular affinity for the parrot tulips that she was in charge of, sitting in the middle of the garden. But the tulips weren’t something she was interested in at that moment.

Inside the gardens, near one of the three palm trees whose tops gently swayed in the early evening breeze, sat two idiots wrestling in the grass for whatever today’s reason was. At the sight of them, Winnie chuckled and waved her goodbyes to take care of the other kids inside. Tameryn gave a half-wave to the woman, eyes focused on the pair.

Time to get to the root of the problem.

Tameryn didn’t like humoring these two when they got like this, and honestly, those two could go on all day if no one stopped them. Getting a particular brand of help would do the trick. Just to speed things up.

She retrieved some dog treats from their ‘super-secret hiding space’, which was really just inside a high-up crack in the adobe, and threw them at the twin fools who remained oblivious. A shrill whistle from Tameryn almost broke through to them, but they ignored it in favor of one more swing.

The whistle, however, wasn’t for them.

A massive mastiff named Leeroy that the orphanage used to keep watch and children entertained came bounding over at the familiarly patterned whistle. At the smell of treats, he launched himself at the duo. With the full force of nearly two hundred pounds pile-driving into them, the fight quickly ended as they tried to escape the crushing amounts of excited dog, fur, and slobber.

Tameryn crossed her arms. “Done yet?”

Thing One and Two, occasionally earning use of their formal names Madison and Dustin White, looked up at first with anger that their bickering had been interrupted, but upon realizing who it was, adopted the expressions of guilty puppies. Tameryn huffed before offering each of them a hand up.

After she yanked them into standing, she re-adopted her pose of disapproval. Years of practice made looking down on them, even with them being a little taller, easier.

Thing One, or Dustin, was on the left. Wearing an outfit of all neon yellows and oranges, with inky black hair kept short and spiky courtesy of a razor, she started to fiddle with her industrial piercing. Seemed like every time Tameryn looked away, Dustin had new ear piercings. Current count was eleven total. Her black eyebrow ring hid the scar underneath from a fight years before. At this angle, the barest hint of red eyeliner she insisted on peeked out from under her heavily hooded eyes.

Thing Two, or Madison, stood stiffly to his sister’s right, dressed similarly in greens and oranges with almost as many ear piercings, and had some hair slipping out of his ponytail that tried, and largely failed, to keep his pin-straight hair out of his face. His snake bites caught the fading sun as he visibly tried to keep himself from nibbling at his already heavily chapped and torn lips. The redness on his cheek suggested that his sister hadn’t been listening to the ‘no face shots’ rule.

They shared more features than not, being twins. Tameryn just wished they didn’t share a singular brain cell. And could act their age. They'd made it almost to adulthood and still acted like kids.

“Why do I feel like you two have managed to get us into more trouble than usual?” Tameryn grumbled.

“Because you’re a mind wizard?” Dustin tried.

“God gifted you with an amazing ability to recognize patterns in the matrix?” Madison said more confidently.

Both answers only served to start up a tension headache that Tameryn knew would linger. “So, I can safely assume that you two are the reason Joey came up to me today, asking why I’d been told to head down to the Below. You’ve been suspended for the past week, how did you manage this?”

Madison looked shamefully down at his feet, Dustin whistled as she pretended not to understand the question, staring into the sky, and the mastiff wound around their feet vying for more treats.

Tameryn smacked them both on the head. Lightly, but it got her displeasure across. “You know what? I don’t even want to know what lame-brained thing you two were doing, because there is no damn good enough reason to have risked our security. What I want to know is what you two plan on doing to fix it.”

The twins jumped at the chance for redemption. “We’ll start making plans to leave immediately.”

Tameryn grumbled more as she absentmindedly scratched the dog’s head as Leeroy forcefully rubbed against her leg. “It shouldn’t have even come to the point where we would have to leave so early.” More guilt from the twins. “But you’ve made it so we have no choice. We leave tonight,” she said sharply.

Madison startled. “Tonight? Why so soon?”

Dustin nervously tugged on a piercing. “A decent plan is gonna take a few days to hatch, Tammy-" Tameryn ground her teeth. Dustin winced. “Sorry, habit.”

A habit you shouldn’t still have, Tameryn thought. “We leave tonight, because if you think it’s too soon, so will anyone keeping tabs on me. Use those favors I know you’ve been racking up, whatever stuff you can grab without getting caught again, all of it. Don’t plan on us ever coming back here again. No distractions, no excuses. Just get it done.”

Tameryn spun on her heel as they loudly asked where she was going.

She grit out over her shoulder, “I’m gonna go destroy a paper trail."

Chapter 2 Goodbye to Childhood

Late enough that the adults would be busy with running the orphanage, keeping the children alive and trying to find families interested in the youngest ones who still had a chance, but not late enough it was super dark out, Tameryn headed towards the orphanage’s main office.

Had she hoped something like this would never happen, sure, but she hadn’t made it this long banking on hope. She’d had contingency plans on the backburner with ever rotating factors being accounted for. The twins accounted for most of those factors, but they were her burden to bear.

If she’d been in a more meditative mood, like the nuns encouraged, she might have been okay with not having to literally be on the run that moment. But she wasn’t, instead she had to worry about this instead of figuring out where to go after the three of them graduated. They’d been so close!

Tameryn turned a final hall corner and neared the office door. It was all wood, no way to see through, but no one would be there this time of day.

Or shouldn’t be.

She paused, hand on the doorknob. An indistinct voice mumbled something, paused, then spoke again. A phone call, probably. Shoot.

The voice wasn’t loud enough she could tell who was speaking or how long they would be. If she left and came back later, she risked not being able to get back in at all. A locked door she could handle, but at night, door alarms were turned on and she hadn’t managed to learn the code after the latest reset yet.

Running through all of her options and variables, one in particular she hated tried to catch her attention. An illusion, a tiny one, just to distract whoever was inside-

NO. If she could have physically stuffed that voice in a blender she would have. Using her Infection was not an option. That ability was what had made her life terrible in the first place. She refused to use it unless it was severely necessary, and currently, this was a concern at best. Still not worth it. There were other options.

The voice behind the door grew quiet. Was the call done?

Tameryn heard footsteps now, nearing the door. Whoever was on the other side said, “-It’s a coincidence; I refuse to believe otherwise.”

Winnie. Double shoot.

Nowhere to hide, Tameryn took two cautionary steps back, squaring her shoulders, looking like she was here with an innocent purpose.

Winnie opened the door, visibly jumping, her unmarred pale brown eye going wide. “Tammy! Uh, I’ll call you back.” She put the brick-like cellphone in a cargo pant pocket. “What is it? Do you need help?”

Tameryn jammed a thumb over her shoulder, “Couple of the little ones are trying to ride Leeroy like a pony again.”

It was a weak reason to come bother Winnie, and it looked like the both of them knew that. But Winnie was a sucker for trying to keep the peace and nodded. “Thanks for telling me, I’ll go get them to leave the old man alone.”

Tameryn nodded back and turned to leave. She had to play in line with her normal actions. There was the audible click of Winnie locking the door behind her before following behind.

Crap, now she had to get Winnie off her tail. She breathed out through her nose. When they came to a hallway intersection, Tameryn paused, pointing to the left. “They were down there last.”

Winnie breezed past, clapping a hand on Tameryn’s upper arm to give it a squeeze. “Thanks, kiddo,” she said. The skin where Winnie touched pulsed at the contact. Her body hated it as much as she did.

But the older woman sped away, focused on the task at hand. Tameryn gave it to the count of ten before jogging back to the office.

A spare key was kept atop the door frame, out of sight for everyone, and out of reach of curious hands. Only staff and those on the lookout for secrets knew about it, though it wasn’t that good of a secret anyway. All the important files were inside further locked drawers.

Supposed to be at least. As Tameryn hurried into the office, closing but not locking the door behind her, she saw all sorts of files spread out on the office desk. Sloppy work.

It wouldn’t have meant anything to Tameryn, except her own name caught her eye. Printed across the sorting index of the manilla folder was her whole government name, last name first. It was where she’d stored that damning letter so no prying eyes could find it, since she didn’t have any personal places to safely store it. The one ‘encouraging’ her to visit a medical center for testing.

Her eighteenth birthday was only a few months away in May, and that Aboveling government testing was trying to sift her out. Everyone got tested in childhood; that was the reason her parents had found out she was Infected in the first place. Then promptly abandoned her with some neighbors. She’d never seen them since then. It was for the best. She didn’t consider herself inherently violent, but if she’d seen them after that, she’d have knocked their teeth out.

But everyone got tested again by twenty-one to make sure no one slipped through the cracks. Latent Infectious Development, they called it. Complete BS as far as she knew, but it didn’t have to be real, it just had to catch people trying to stay under the radar. Sometimes people got tested early, when they were thought to be a threat. Minors were easier to shuffle around than adults.

She opened the folder, she needed it anyway, parsing over what was there. The top papers were the usual, presumed date of birth, general statistics, and the like. Notes about her past, that she’d been found without parents, spent a long time in a hospital as a kid, and had been in foster care while they tried to reunite her with her family. No one had ever come forward to claim her. They’d eventually stopped wasting money on her for that and stuck her here. One of the many, many orphanages that had re-opened after the civil wars.

Riffling through the folder, it was the same old stuff as usual, except at the bottom. There was a sticky note, sloppily scrawled on, with the date the Below Social Services had arrived and bullet points about ‘possible parental leads?’, ‘genetic testing’, and ‘meeting request’.

Shit.

There was no way they weren’t onto her. Onto her being one of the Infected.

She flipped through the paperwork, looking for the sealed letter envelope she’d stuffed in here for safe keeping. Deliberately keeping it sealed had been the right choice, because now she knew without a doubt someone had been looking through her stuff. Recently. She’d bet Winnie, but it didn’t matter.

Tameryn started to grab the envelope out, then paused. If she was leaving, it made more sense to take all of it. She shuffled the other folders to hide its absence before ducking towards the drawer labeled P-Z.

Locked, of course. A couple of paper clips made quick work of the cheap deterrent.

The twins’ folders were near the back, and the only two with a last name starting with W. She grabbed them and slammed the drawer shut after.

Scuttling out of there, all three folders under her arm, she made sure to lock the door behind her. Whoever went in next may or may not notice what was missing, but the trio would be long gone by the time they even had the chance.

Tameryn met back up with Dustin in the girls’ side of dormitories. Each room hosted ten girls: ten beds, ten small trunks that fit under their beds’ raised frames, ten fabric drawers to store clothes, and not much else. All of the dorms with their cement walls and ceilings, housing cheap beds lining the outside facing inwards, were cold and unwelcoming. Why bother decorating a place they weren’t supposed to be in long, she’d always guessed. Which rarely worked out. Too many of the kids brought in here stayed until they aged out.

In all their time here, Dustin and Tameryn had never managed to get roomed together.

Currently, Madison was out doing his half of the plan hatching and also picking up the youngest orphans from their after-school program. Part of his regular chore routine, among the extras he’d had piled on for getting suspended.

Dustin had weaseled out of hers for the moment, leaving her to stockpile stuff for their escape.

Tameryn looked it all over with a critical eye as Dustin rambled.

“I got water bottles, spare blankets, a bottle opener; figured we’d only need the one. Half a box of tampons cause that’s all that was left, oh, and a flashlight plus batteries. Not that we need them with me around, I’ll keep them charged, but-”

Why was learning so hard for her? They were about to be on the run and she still couldn’t stop mentioning their Infections. Tameryn ground her teeth.

The sound drew Dustin’s attention back to Tameryn. “What’s that under your arm?” She pointed at the folders.

As good of a time as any, she supposed. “Paperwork. Here, take yours and your brother’s. It’s got everything the orphanage has on you two. Do whatever you want with it.”

Dustin eyed the folders as she flipped through hers. “What are you going to do with yours?” She asked, uncharacteristically quiet.

“Burn it,” Tameryn said with finality. “But not here.” She wanted another chance to see what info they had on her.

The dark-haired girl gave a thumbs up. Then she tossed the folder onto the item pile. “Kay. We’ll probs do the same. Back to the stuff!”

“What about backpacks?”

“Madison’s getting those from the middle schoolers. Says it’s best if our bags stay here.” Dustin shrugged.

Tameryn nodded, took a deep breath, and continued on with her mental checklist. “Food rations?”

Dustin snorted. “Food rations. Like we’re gonna be on military duty. But yeah, I picked up some snacks.”

Tameryn turned to Dustin and blew some greasier-than-she-wanted-to-acknowledge bangs out of her face. “What about funds? Did you manage to snag any money?”

Dustin side eyed her like she was dumb. “It’s a freaking orphanage, Tammy. Who the hell has money around here?”

Tameryn turned around, anger at a flash point, to snap at her. “No. Nicknames.”

Dustin quickly held her hands up in front of her face in surrender. “Didn’t mean it, my bad.”

Tameryn glared at her for another moment before going back to chores and dropping the conversation. She assumed that this far into their careers of less than legal activities, even Dustin could continue preparing without being micromanaged.

“Whatever. Finish packing up. I need to grab my own stuff.” Tameryn headed back to her dorm, her portion of the supplies in hand, hoping to leave more than the conversation behind.

But the stupid nickname the twins couldn’t seem to leave alone echoed in her mind. She hated it, because it never sounded right coming out of the mouth of anyone but the one who had given it to her.

A guy named Conner, a neighbor, too young to really be called a guy, but calling him just another kid cheapened how much responsibility he’d taken on, how much he’d helped her. Only four years older, and he’d done more for her than any adult ever had.

After having been separated from him and another neighbor kid who’d run with them, the nickname ‘Tammy’ became a sore spot. Dustin and Madison both knew that. They’d been left behind just like she had.

That’s how they met, their little group of five, comprised of kids the world and their families hadn’t wanted. Now down to three.

Despite a natural penchant for it, ruminating on stuff that caused the unpleasant nauseous feeling in her stomach wasn’t a favored pastime of hers. No, she liked being productive, and in control, and safe. Not having her thoughts and memories turn on her.

Tameryn endlessly rearranged her stolen goods. It wasn’t that important, but it kept her hands busy. Made her feel like she was doing something.

She glanced up at the clock on the wall from her beside her bed-is the time on that thing right anymore?-and wondered if Madison was going to be much longer.

There was a specific toned pounding on the walls to grab attention outside the cracked open door.

“Yo. I’m back.” Madison was slightly out of breath. “I’ve got the bags. Take one of them.”

Tameryn nodded, trying to focus on packing. She took the first bag offered out of Madison’s hand without looking at it. “Make sure you’ve got everything, triple check if you have to. And if anyone asks where I am-”

“You’re in the bathroom passing some serious gas, already got it,” Madison said with finger guns.

Tameryn gave him a weirded-out look. She settled for shooing him away with her hand. He left with a wave of his own.

She wished he’d taken her straying thoughts with him.

Tameryn sat on her assigned bed, looking through her plastic container of meager possessions. A few sets of well-worn clothes that always bordered on being too small, an old thin blanket used for the extremely hot summer nights, and some drawing pads she’d been gifted by the nuns at school. She’d drawn a saint for a project once, and they’d hope their gifts would inspire a ‘closer relationship to God.’ It hadn’t.

She brushed her hand over the cover of a sketchpad. There was no resisting opening the booklet, looking over the inked memories.

Plenty of pages were missing, from cartoon doodles given to the younger kids as payment to stay away from her that resulted in a cycle of them always looking for her for the next one. The art that was there were things like sketches of flowers from the garden to memorialize them before they faded for the season. Various iconography for the twins of lion dogs, stylized tigers and phoenixes, spider lilies, and anything else for the diaspora they felt but didn’t know where to place. A rare few portraits, hidden between forgotten homework assignments to preserve the images.

The semi-positive memories of her time in the orphanage shoved into a couple of notebooks. She wasn’t a clinger. Wouldn’t let herself be. Still, leaving this behind would be... sad. There, she admitted it. But taking it meant there wouldn’t be enough room in her bag for any real supplies.

If she pulled this off, staying out of government hands and being thrown underground, there’d be more chances to draw later. She just had to hold out until then.

Tameryn dug down into the bottom drawer next to her bed where her warmest clothing was and yanked it to the top. Better to be too warm than too cold, for now. Taking the time to fold her extra clothing carefully as if to say goodbye, she ignored her vision fogging up. She lifted her hand up to rub her eye when she couldn’t see anymore. It didn’t help, and her eyes continued to burn. At that point, Tameryn dropped the jacket she had been folding and covered her face.

There should be no tears, not for saying goodbye to a hollow shell of a childhood.

“Fuck,” she whispered. The tears kept flowing and her breath refused to come in anything but choppy gasps. She lay down on her bed, curling in on herself and stared at the wall, full of cracks that if she had the twins’ penchant for dramatics, would claim to relate to.

Footsteps trotted down the hallway. Her eyes jerked to the open doorway of the room, but her breath remained uneven. She swallowed heavily. One of the more recently arrived girls, middle school aged, walked past the doorway. No one stopped to peek in.

At some point her breath went back to normal, even if the occasional tear still trickled down, and she resumed packing.

***

Forty-five minutes later, Tameryn found Dustin still in her dorm, impatiently tapping her foot and drumming her fingers on the wall. When she noticed it was Tameryn approaching, packed bag in hand, Dustin pushed herself off of the wall she had been leaning against. “Did you actually have gas or something? Because you took forever.”

Tameryn stared at her exasperatedly. “Don’t you have anything else to be doing? Chores, more things to grab, anything?”

Dustin scrunched her nose at effectively being dismissed, but left anyway, bumping into Tameryn’s shoulder with irritation and affection as she left the hall.

Left alone, Tameryn first headed over to the closet and shoved her cartoon-themed backpack behind the cleaning supplies.

Kind of sad looking to see the character staring up at her from the dark.

It would remain there until the trio activated their plan to get out. After that, she moved over to where Dustin had been at the opposite end of the hall. It was a good lookout point. She stood for a moment, before sinking to the ground. It felt kind of gross sitting on it, but she couldn’t make herself get up. She rubbed at her temples, trying to soften the headache she’d been nursing since she got back.

Madison showed up with his patented impeccable timing that only came about when scheming was afoot. He must not have dawdled at all, unlike her.

There was a mischievous grin on his face that dropped when he saw Tameryn on the ground. He stage-whispered, “You okay?”

Tameryn didn’t respond at first, so he took a few steps closer.

She held up a hand to stop him. He paused so sharply he almost tripped.

She mumbled she was fine, just had a headache. His concerned face said he didn’t believe her. Opening and closing his mouth, trying to find words and coming up empty handed, he just made a vague hand-gesture at her. Trying to get some further response.

When she didn’t give him anything else to work with, he soundlessly sighed, swinging open the closet door. He threw his own bag inside, closed the door with as much care as he could, only sparing her one last look before leaving to do whatever he had next for their plan.

Tameryn ran both hands down her once again wet face. She refused to acknowledge the dampness as tears.

It was going to be one hell of a nightmare getting out of Kind Inclinations. What a name, for a place that meant well, but acted as one more hurdle in their life instead.

***

Now around two in the morning; the coast was clear by the girls’ rooms and had been for roughly ten minutes. Everyone else had tucked themselves away for bed and any late night water-grabbers were back too. The adults were all at the opposite end of the orphanage. If any of them were still awake, they wouldn’t inherently notice anything wrong.

Tension had long hit a boiling point in Tameryn, leaving her restlessly clenching her fist as she quietly grumbled to herself, and sort of Dustin. “If he doesn’t hurry up, I’m leaving him behind.”

Dustin snorted, appropriately speaking softly, “Liar. How many times have you threatened that now?”

“Piss off.” Tameryn blew out hot air through her nose.

Dustin chuckled. Tameryn hip-checked her to get her to knock it off. As Dustin went to shove the sturdier girl back, Madison poked his head around the corner. He briefly shined a flashlight at them before it got stuffed in his back pocket. Not the one that Dustin had pilfered. It had had a distinctly cobbled-together look to it. If there was an Infection worth having, it was one to quickly build tech at will out of spare parts, like Madison could. Still risky to be using it, but it was moot at this point.

“Who’s ready for our field trip?” he asked.

Tameryn rolled her eyes as she pushed herself off the wall. She silently led the way past the earlier oiled southern hallway doors and just-enough tampered with light sensors that left them in the dark.

“Are any of the wardens out tonight?” Tameryn asked.

“Nah. The raccoons haven’t been bothering the garbage lately, so the ladies are getting some sleep,” said Madison.

Tameryn nodded. “Good. One less thing to worry about then.”

Near their end, past dorm rooms, the dining hall, and the garden, every scrape of her backpack against her skin or the wall felt like a siren to Tameryn’s ears. But they were almost out of that perpetually cold tunnel and onto their next steps toward freedom.

Boof.

The trio froze in their tracks.

Blocking their way was the final boss of the orphanage: Leeroy.

Paws the size of dinner plates lumbered over to them, chuffing at seeing people so late at night. Madison disarmed the canine with some well-placed scritches. “Man, it’s too bad we can’t take you with us. We’d at least get you some exercise out there.”

Dustin gave the senior dog a firm pat to the back. “Who says we can’t take him with us? Every group needs its mascot.”

Tameryn chose to exhale instead of sigh. “I’m saying no. He’d be a liability.”

Dustin stuck her lower lip out, ready to argue.

“We don’t have dog food. He could get hurt, and we’d have no way to help him. He stays.” Tameryn kept her tone firm, but soft.

The shorter-haired twin kicked at an imaginary rock at that. But no argument came from her.

Madison gave a resigned nod. “You’re right, like usual. I’ll move him and give him a little something to keep quiet.”

When Madison came back after giving Leeroy enough treats to stick him in a food coma, he quietly said, “Having a dog once we’re settled would be cool. Could be our little guard dog.”

Tameryn knew the tone in his voice. It didn’t show up often. But what orphan didn’t have thoughts and hopes of the normal life they only got faint glimpses of from the world around them, that for various reasons fate decided they didn’t get to be a part of yet. Like any animal at a pet store, stuck in a holding tank until someone decided to take them home. At least as people they could age up and out, instead of choking on their own crap. Well, if they didn’t have to sneak away in the middle of the night to avoid being sent to the Below.

She had to swallow down her own thoughts of what it was like to have a place that was safe to simply stay and exist in. Wallowing served no purpose.

“Priorities. We need to worry about getting out of here before we start daydreaming about comfy extras,” she said while she picked the lock on the gate that separated them from the freedom of the cityscape. A faint click, and the lock came undone, resting gently against the metal bar underneath.

A pause. “You did remember to disarm the alarm system, right, Dustin?”

“No, ‘cause that was Madison’s job.” She clicked her tongue.

“Why would it have been my job? I’m not the one who can short out the entire system.” Madison asked, bewildered, raising his voice at the end.

“That would just get every alarm going off at once. That’s why I told you to handle it.” Dustin spun around, shoved her brother, who tipped into Tameryn, who bumped the gate, and set off the audible alarm.

High pitched screeching threatened to summon every adult in the building, ruining their chances of freedom.

The trio shoved open the gate and bolted. Away from the alarms, away from any wardens heading their way, and away from forcefully being detained and shoved into the Below.

***

Breath and hands shaky from their adrenaline rush, the trio stopped some few miles down the road to regroup and continue off from where they had suddenly derailed on plan A. The buildings surrounding them were at the edge of the changeover from surviving historical buildings to leftover business districts. It meant fewer people seeing them, if nothing else.

Madison was the first to speak. “The important thing is that we made it off of the orphanage grounds in one piece.”

“Yeah, but now they know that someone came and went,” panted out Dustin.

“They would have known sooner or later that we were missing. We just have to keep going. What was the next part of the plan?” Tameryn said, always goal oriented.

The twins stared blankly at her then back at each other. “We didn’t actually get that far into the planning process.”

Tameryn felt her left eye twitch. “Excuse me?”

“We didn’t exactly have a whole lot of time,” he tried to reason.

“How hard is it to come up with a plan of whether or not we stay in town for another night or find a taxi or something out of here?” Tameryn glared at them from where she was hunched over to catch her breath. The sweat running down made her shirt cling to her in the chilly night air, driving up her irritation. Nothing could ever go smoothly, could it?

“If it isn’t that hard, then why didn’t you come up with the plan, huh? Or just make up one right now,” said Dustin, sharply, as she fanned her face.

Tameryn looked at her friend with a blank expression before frowning. “I was busy stealing our paper trail; you know that.” She wasn’t going to mention the minor mental breakdown she’d been busy having. “But fine, I’ll handle this, just like I always do.” She ran her sweaty hands down her jeans.

The twins nodded, waiting for their de facto leader to handle the problem. Like always. She’d been doing it since they were kids. It had been Conner in charge first, and then her, once he was no longer an option. Every once in a while, she’d try to get them to think on their own, and it always ended like this.

“Okay. Do you think we have enough cash for a taxi?”

“Not enough to get anywhere worth our while,” said Madison with a shrug. “Probably shouldn’t spend whatever pocket cash we got either.”

“Fair. Dustin, do you think you can get us into a car?”

Dustin went quickly through all of her emotions on her face and landed on sheepish. “Not right now. I haven’t been sleeping well. My batteries are all dried up.”

Tameryn inhaled deeply through her nose. “Then we don’t have too many other choices. Without a car, we won’t be able to get far enough away without drawing attention to ourselves to make it a smart idea, and none of the buses are running right now. I’ll… disguise us a bit tomorrow.” She hated that it was coming to that so quickly. Using her Infection at all felt wrong, but this would save them trouble in the long run.

“For now, we find a place to crash for the night so all of us can get a little rest, and then we will see about getting out of town. That work for everyone?” The twins nodded. “Good. Since money for a cab isn’t happening, a motel isn’t either. So that leaves…”

Half an hour later, the trio was bedding down in the least vile-looking alley that still had ample protection from people looking down into its depths. Some freshly thrown away cardboard boxes lined their spots on the ground, hidden by the industrial garbage bin that was partially pushed away from the wall.

“Not like it’s our first time falling asleep in an alleyway,” Dustin said as she hunkered down, using her backpack as a pillow, and Madison’s bag to shield her eyes.

Madison made do with a weathered black sweatshirt for his own pillow. Tameryn sat in between the both of them for warmth.

Tucked up near but not quite touching the wall, she rested her head on her knees and tried to at least keep her mind blank, she wasn’t all that likely to actually sleep. They all said goodnight and hunkered down all the more, like their ingrained memories of when they were back in their old group of Infected run-aways, huddling together and hoping no one would find them before morning.