Stitch (15 page)

Tugging at his rifle strap with only mild interest in the disturbance at the other end of the hall, the guard approached Alessa’s cell and gave her a quick once-over before reaching for the scanner pad.  The locks banged, and the bars slowly slid up.  Alessa rose from her cot and strode tentatively towards the cell door, in the same manner she had every day for the past four weeks.  The guard didn’t suspect a thing.

The moment she was through the threshold, Alessa loosed a vicious, spine-tingling cry, alerting Isaac that it was time to make their move – “Now!”

Simultaneously, Alessa and Isaac each took out their guards with a couple quick diverting jabs and one powerful blow to the head.  The guards hit the floor with a simultaneous thump, to raucous applause from their fellow inmates.

Heaving the unconscious guard over her shoulders, Alessa dragged the bulky man towards the security station in the center of the hall.  For the first time in weeks she locked eyes with Isaac; he mimicked her movements from the opposite side of the hall and worked his way towards their meeting point.  Seeing Alessa, Isaac’s face lit up, a smile Alessa knew he reserved only for her, and Alessa’s heartbeat skipped in response.  The uprising was almost complete, and soon they would be together once more.

In just a few more steps, Alessa and Isaac would meet at the security station and swipe both guards’ fingerprints, releasing the master lock on all of the cells in their wing and unleashing hundreds of riotous inmates on the prison.  In the chaos, Alessa and Isaac would be able to slip through to freedom.

Grunting, Alessa slogged up the hallway, lugging the weight of the guard as best she could.  Isaac was already at the security station, waiting for her.  Alessa puffed with each stride, reaching out toward Isaac’s gleaming blue eyes.  Just… one… more… step…

Alessa slumped the guard against the wall and brought his fingertip to rest upon the scanner pad.  Almost instantly, the hall reverberated with a hundred clanks as the locks on the cells unlatched and the cell doors began to slide open.  Alessa flashed an ecstatic grin in Isaac’s direction.

Still holding the guards in place to complete the release of the doors, Isaac reached towards Alessa, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her close to his side.  He beamed down at her, his sapphire eyes filled with pride.  Her eyelids fluttering shut, Alessa reached her lips towards his, craving his touch after so many weeks apart.

But as Alessa closed the space between them, her lips met nothing but air.  Opening her eyes with alarm, she found Isaac crumpled on the floor, a massive snarling guard looming over her holding a heavy baton.

“Isaac!”

Alessa dove to the floor on top of Isaac, shielding him from the guard’s oncoming blows.

“…Alessa?”  Isaac croaked.  His whisper was almost inaudible over the din of the cell locks slamming back into place.  Alessa could see that Isaac was dazed, just coming to after being knocked unconscious by the guard’s powerful strike, but before she could react, she found herself soaring.

Another guard wheeled her through the air, carrying her effortlessly away from the racket of the uprising.  Before she could get her bearings and resist, she hit the floor with a thud and heard the slam of a heavy door.  All she could sense was blackness and silence and cold.

Scrambling to her feet, Alessa felt for the metal of the door and pounded furiously against it.  Bang, bang, bang, bang.  No reply.  Realizing her frantic knocking was futile, Alessa lashed out in frustration. 

“Isaac!  Isaac!  ISAAC!”  She screamed until her throat was raw, but a heavy, pervasive silence was the only response.

Sinking back to the floor, Alessa cringed as a wretched sob rang throughout her lonely cell, almost inhuman moans of fury and desolation.  She realized with a start that they were her own.

Following the uprising, Alessa had suspected that she would never see Isaac, or Janie, again and she couldn’t have imagined anything worse.  That’s when she’d started overhearing the torture.

For months, the muffled wails of her fellow inmates were the only sounds to penetrate Alessa’s thick-walled cell.  She’d known it was only a matter of time until they came for her.

But when they finally did, it’d been nothing like she had expected.  She’d been prepared to be battered and abused, but a guard had simply immobilized her as a lab coat clad doctor injected something into her arm.  At first she thought it might be some sort of tranquilizer, but then she noticed an odd tingling in the back of her head, almost a knitting sensation, gently at first but growing more intense.  And then the pain had kicked in, sharp twinges coursing through her brain as she screamed and writhed and begged for it to end.

And the next thing she knew, she’d woken up in this very same bed, on her first day of class at ESU.

Alessa had certainly suffered in her life, but her memories of solitary confinement were the most excruciating of anything she’d yet experienced.  All those months alone in the dark, Isaac’s absence had become a constant panging throb that had replaced her heartbeat, leaving a gaping hole in her chest where Isaac should have been.

And suddenly Alessa knew it, viscerally, could feel it deep within her core.  Isaac was hers.  He was as much a part of her as her own blood, as the oxygen that seeped through her lungs.

No wonder the last months had been so agonizing.  The teasing glimpses of him had torn her apart, left her feeling hollow and empty.  They might as well have taken her innards with the void his absence had left inside her. 

If there was one thing Alessa was sure of, it was that she needed Isaac to be whole again.  And she would do
everything
in her power to have him once more.

27. Opportunity

Over the following days, time roiled tumultuously for Alessa, each moment seeming to alternate between dragging on listlessly and whizzing right by.  After regaining so much of her memory, Alessa was eager to tell Janie of everything she’d recalled and she waited anxiously for an opportunity to speak with her shielded from the camera’s ever-watchful eye.  But with the producers monitoring Alessa’s every step, she was frustrated to find that that opportunity had not come, and every minute she was forced to wait seemed to last an eternity.

At the same time, with her memories flooding back, it was almost as if Alessa was living in double time.  Her mind was constantly flitting back and forth between life as a college student at ESU and life as a rebel in Paragon.  She was startled on more than one occasion to look up and find that over an hour had passed while she daydreamed about some past event.  But in the present, Alessa could feel every single second ticking by.

The knowledge that she was under constant surveillance was disconcerting, to say the least.  Suddenly, every decision she made was a matter of life and death – she was constantly coaching herself to look “natural,” to act “normal,” to make sure she stuck to whatever she knew of the producers’ planned storyline.  To do otherwise – as Nikhil had regrettably discovered – would be to put herself, and Janie and Isaac, in mortal danger.

Knowing that cameras were trained on her at all times, even the most routine tasks became stressful.  It took all of Alessa’s strength not to hesitate when getting undressed in her own bedroom; though she yearned to scoot out of the camera’s sight, she forced herself to change in front of the closet as she always had.  Even the notion of falling asleep felt eerie, with thousands of pairs of eyes pricking her back as she lay on her side facing the wall.  Just preventing herself from tossing an errant glance in the direction of any of the numerous cameras on campus was a constant battle.  Alessa had thought she’d been mentally and emotionally exhausted before, after her visits from the “ghost.”  She realized now that she hadn’t even known what exhaustion meant.

Alessa had been cataloguing questions in her head, trying to prioritize what was most crucial to ask Janie the next time she got the chance.  She knew it was likely they would only have a few moments together and there were so many things she wanted to know.  How did Janie manage to resist the stitch?  Of all the shows that were filming, how did she manage to get placed on
this
one, and cast as Alessa’s best friend no less?  And where exactly was Isaac?  Most importantly, how were they all going to get out of this alive?

At the time that Alessa and Isaac had been caught, Janie had been only marginally involved in the rebel resistance.  Worried for her sister’s safety, Alessa had made sure that the extent of Janie’s involvement was limited to eating the right diet to stay away from the drugs and keeping her head down as she went about her business.

At first Alessa hadn’t even
told
Janie about Joe’s clandestine meetings with the rebel units, which Alessa herself had attended only on occasion.  Wanting to believe that Paragon’s leaders had good reasons for the decisions they’d made – that they had everyone’s best interest at heart – Alessa had had reservations about being actively subversive, and for a year she’d watched from the sidelines as Joe took on a bigger and bigger role within the rebel organization.

But Janie had been too sharp for Alessa’s ploy.  She’d noticed Alessa slipping out with Joe for what she assumed were midnight trysts, and she’d grown steadily more upset when her sister neglected to share her secrets.  When she had finally confronted Alessa about her furtive rendezvous, Alessa had chosen to reveal the truth rather than lie to her sister once again.

Janie, of course, was enthralled with the whole idea.  Much like Joe, she had a daring streak that drove her to take what Alessa considered unnecessary risks, and on top of that, she had always hated being excluded from anything that Alessa did.  To placate her, Alessa had kept Janie informed about what she learned from Joe, but she had prohibited Janie from becoming directly involved.  Janie was still a teenager at the time and Alessa knew that her judgment was clouded by the romanticism and adventure of it all, that she just wasn’t seeing the danger.  And so Alessa had put her foot down.

Even after Alessa had fully devoted herself to the cause following Joe’s loss, she’d managed to keep Janie out of it for the better part of two years.  But Janie had remained resentful of Alessa’s embargo on her participation, and as Alessa had grown more confident in her own role and abilities, she’d realized that perhaps it was time for Janie to get involved as well.  Alessa had just begun training Janie a few weeks before she and Isaac were apprehended.

From what Janie had said during their meeting, it’d been over a year since her and Isaac’s imprisonment, and in the interim, Janie had obviously developed her talents and become quite influential within the rebel order.  Alessa couldn’t imagine what Janie had gone through to successfully infiltrate the show and make it this far intact, after being tossed in a jail cell and probably tortured and subjected to the excruciating stitch procedure.  Alessa wanted to know how she’d done it.  She wanted to ask Janie how she’d made it through all of that alone.  She wanted to tell her sister that she was proud of her.

But for the time being, Alessa had to keep these sentiments to herself.  As far as the production team knew, Alessa and Janie still were not speaking to each other after their fight almost a week ago, and Alessa had kept her distance in an effort not to arouse any suspicion.  Janie had said she needed time to work with her ally within the producers to sort out the escape plan, and Alessa was going to give it to her.  This scheme had to be flawless; they couldn’t risk being caught again.

Despite Alessa’s patience, however, the schedule was still tight.  Training for her research position was starting the following day and after two weeks, her professor would be going on leave and the producers would expect her to execute her plan to steal the “wormhole manipulator” and travel to Isaac’s “time.”  From what she remembered about the dramas she’d watched, the show always seemed to end when the main characters finally achieved their goal – which in her case was reuniting with Isaac in the “past” to warn him about the fire.  And Janie had said that her intel led her to believe the same, so a little over two weeks was probably all they had before the producers started getting antsy.  And who knew what might happen when they took matters into their own hands.

As Alessa exited the history building after her afternoon class, she was surprised to find the ground blanketed with inches of a wet, heavy snow.  There’d been talk of an impending snowstorm – the first of the season – but with everything that was happening, Alessa hadn’t really paid attention to the forecast.  Despite the early hour, the sky was quickly approaching dusk and the lamps lining the quad already shone brightly, reflecting off the sparkling layer of white that sheathed every tree branch right down to the smallest twig.

Watching each breath rise in a festive puff as she trudged her way home – averting her eyes from any cameras she passed – Alessa felt a small flutter of delight stirring within her.  The snow-encased trees bowed enchantingly, and for a moment at least, the campus felt like a winter wonderland, instead of the dungeon she knew it to be.

By the time Alessa reached Z-E-Pi, her shoes were soaked through and the tip of her nose had turned a startling shade of red.  She was relieved to cross the threshold into the warmth and slip off her wet sneakers in favor of a cozy pair of woolen socks.  This prison certainly had more creature comforts than her cold cell in Paragon’s penitentiary, that much she had to admit.  She realized with a pang of regret that in a couple weeks, whether the plan succeeded or failed, she would no longer have this warm bed to return to each night.

Alessa sat down at her desk.  She intended to check her email, but the moment she opened her laptop, the screen went dim and the lights switched off, plunging her into near-darkness.

Sitting in the twilight, Alessa’s heart began to race.  What was going on?  Was this it?  Were they coming for her?  How had she blown her cover?

She scrambled for a plan and scanned her room for a weapon, settling on the heavy flashlight by her bedside.  Clutching it at her side, she stood rigid, waiting for whatever was coming next.

A bright beam of light shined through her open door.  Alessa pinned herself to the wall beyond the beam’s initial sweep, straining to see past the source of the light.

A tentative whisper pierced the silence.  “Alessa?”

“Janie?”  Alessa flooded with relief.

The light shone in the Alessa’s direction.  “Is that you?”

“Yes!” she hissed.  “What’s going on?”

Janie pointed the light upward, illuminating the room.  “We knocked the power out.  A tree went down at the far end of campus, taking a power line with it, and though it actually didn’t affect this building, we tripped a fuse to make it look related.  Once they’ve got the power up, we’ll have to turn it back on, but it should be at least 10 minutes or so.”

“Oh, thank God.”  Alessa dropped her flashlight on the bed and ran to her sister, embracing her.  “Janie, I’ve been dying to talk to you.  I remember everything now.  I’m so sorry I forgot, I don’t know how…”  Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at her sister for forgiveness.

Janie just hugged her tightly.  “It’s not your fault, Alessa.  That’s exactly what the stitch was supposed to do – they injected you with some kind of substance that literally rewires your neural pathways, breaking down your memories and putting new ones in their place.  You couldn’t have known how to resist.”

“But you did, Janie.  How?” she searched her sister’s face.

“We figured it out a few months after you were caught.  Some of the prisoners proved resistant to the stitch, so our allies within the Ruling Class sought them out to ask how, and it turned out to be so much simpler than we ever thought.  They said that after they were injected, instead of thinking about the pain, they concentrated on a single thought – something that was meaningful to them, like a memory of a loved one – and somehow it blocked the wipe from rewiring some of their neurons.  Since they didn’t lose their grip on reality entirely, everything else quickly came back to them.”

“So that’s what you did?”

“Yeah.  Once we figured that out, it was a no brainer.  We knew we needed to get you and Isaac out – with Lizzie getting captured and Regina going underground and then you two being detained, morale within the ranks had taken some big hits, and we really needed a win.

“Our agent on the inside heard about you and Isaac being cast for this show after they couldn’t seem to get either of you out of each other’s heads, and when I approached Regina with the idea of infiltrating the drama, she reluctantly agreed that it was worth the risk.  I deliberately got captured, repelled the stitch while pretending that it worked, and then our inside guy worked his magic to have me cast as your friend, ostensibly for the same reason as you and Isaac – since we were so close, it was easier to work me into this false world than try to get rid of your memories of me altogether.”

Alessa was overcome with gratitude; she couldn’t believe her little sister had risked so much for her.  She wanted to be mad at Janie for putting herself in danger, but she couldn’t seem to muster any anger.  “Janie, it’s brilliant.  I don’t know how you pulled it off…”

Janie shrugged off Alessa’s praise.  “It was nothing, really.  Well, I mean, prison was kind of –” her eyes clouded for a moment “– terrible…  But here, well, besides the cameras, this is the most comfortable place I’ve lived since before Paragon.  It’s almost like a vacation.”

Alessa laughed at the absurdity of Janie’s assertion.  This was certainly unlike any vacation she’d ever heard of.

Janie continued.  “So anyway, I’m so glad to hear you finally got your memories back, and you seem to be doing okay.  I want to update you on where we are with the plan, but before I get to that – when the lights go on, we should assume the cameras are back.  Just pretend like I came in here looking for a flashlight and that we’re finally making up, ok?”

Alessa nodded.  “Got it.”

“Okay, so, the plan.  I think I told you that Isaac is on another set nearby, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, well, he’s basically living in a replica of this house inside a big dome a few miles away.  The campus was already here from before the war, so they just spruced it up a bit and then they built his set separately.  Since they were planning the stunts with the fire, they needed an environment that offered a little more control – no snowstorms or rain unless they allowed for it, that sort of thing.”

Alessa interjected with a question.  “So how have we been seeing each other then?”

“Holograms.  There are projectors hidden all over the house just like the cameras,” she motioned at the ceiling, “so whenever they feel like it, the producers turn on the projection for one of you so that you can see the other person, or they turn it on at both ends if they want you to see each other.  It’s all happening in real time, which is why he keeps disappearing before you can tell him about the fire.  To build the suspense, you know?”

Alessa nodded – she would need some time to digest all that.  “And what about Isaac?  Does he know what’s going on?  Does he know who I really am?”

Janie shook her head.  “As far as I know, he has no idea that any of this is fake and he thinks you’re some kind of apparition.  He doesn’t even know your name, though apparently he’s been saying it in his sleep.”