LOGAN:

My muscles felt as if they were on fire by the time Erica let me go down to the mess hall, falling onto the bench as if it was the one thing left in my life that mattered. I hadn’t even gone to get any food for myself yet as I rested my head in my folded arms on the table, groaning in harmony with the growling of my stomach.

Someone dumped their tray down beside me and I looked up to see Cody, a small smile on his face. “Did she beat you up that badly?”

“Between the both of you, I’m surprised I’m still alive. My brain is mush and my body isn’t far from it.” I groaned, stretching my arms up over my head. My back cracked in three different places and Cody winced at each sound, flinching away from me.

“I thought our English teacher was going to murder you earlier.”

“But I deserved it, right?” I smiled wryly as Cody coloured, looking down at the table. He couldn’t deny it, although I didn’t exactly agree with it.

“You’re going to be in so much pain tomorrow.”

My smile dropped. “I have to do this again?”

“Five days a week, amigo.” Cody grinned, taking a large swig of his water.

Erica plopped down in front of us and both Cody and I winced. I never thought one person could fill me with such an equal amount of fear and disdain. She looked me up and down, snorting as I was barely able to hold myself up at the table.

“There’s beer up there. Watch you’re not caught taking it, though. You look like you need it.”

Cody kicked Erica under the table. “What are you saying that for? You know he’ll do it.”

I didn’t catch the tail end of their conversation as I bounded from my seat, suddenly filled with energy from the news my now new favourite person had bestowed upon me. I tucked a beer up under my shirt, keeping it hidden behind my tray as I loaded my plate up with food to the ceiling.

Erica snickered as I sat back down, uncapping the beer and gulping half of it down. The bubbles tickled the back of my throat and my eyes stung, but it had to be the most refreshing thing I had ever drank.

“Try to be more subtle before you get the lot of us in trouble.” Cody hissed, whipping his head around to see if anyone was watching me gulp down my beer as if it were the only thing keeping me alive. To be honest, I felt as if it was.

“He’s not legal, is he?”

Cody’s eyes widened as he stared at someone standing behind me but I failed to turn around, instead taking the next few precious seconds to down the rest of my drink. Pasting a lazy grin onto my face, I swiveled on the bench to see who it was that was going to be punishing me this evening.

She was much shorter than I expected, only her head and shoulders being taller than me whilst I was sitting down. Her hair was bubble gum pinked and cut choppily in a bob that ended around her chin, strands from her face pulled back with various colorful hair clips. Piercings circled both of her ears from hoops to spikes, a choker also encircling her neck. Wearing a smirk on her lips, she stared down at me, clutching a tray in front of her bright yellow pinafore.

'Looks like someone never learned how to dress themselves properly.'

Cody choked on his Pepsi, kicking me again under the table. I ignored him, grinning up at the girl as if I hadn’t just been caught downing a beer in less than five minutes.

“Who gives a-”

Clamping a hand over my mouth, Cody practically pleaded with the girl with his eyes not to say anything, as she sat down on the opposite bench beside Erica.

“She’s not a snitch, relax.” Erica rolled her eyes, although it was hard to pick up exactly what she was saying through a mouthful of food. “This is Clary, she’s messing with you.”

I wrenched Cody’s hand from my mouth and turned back around. “You’re not gonna blab on me?”

Clary took her own beer out from the front pocket of her pinafore, splitting it into two plastic cups and handing one to Erica. She tucked the bottle down at her feet, holding a finger up to her lips as she winked at me. “You’re not very good at hiding it, you’re lucky that I’m the one who caught you.”

Cody put his head in his hands, groaning. “Am I the only one here with an ounce of sense? What’s wrong with you people?”

“Besides the usual; having no memories and beaten to a pulp?”

“I’d say that Logan has some anger issues and a problem with authority.”

“Also his hair…”

“Hey!” I cursed out the women in front of me who merely laughed, clinking their cups together before taking large gulps of their drinks. Erica slung an arm around Clary's shoulder and pulled her in closer to her side, sitting in comfortable silence with their beer.

Suddenly I wished that I hadn’t finished mine quite so fast.

“What are you guys doing after dinner?” Clary asked, refilling her cup.

“Planning to take Logan up top to explore for a bit, maybe see the damage that he did to our cover and grovel at our feet in apology.” Erica looked off into the distance wistfully, as if she was imagining the very event itself. I merely rolled my eyes with a scoff; as if that was going to happen.

“You’re taking me out of here?”

“For an hour or so, do I have to cuff you to me just so you won’t run away?”

I glared down at the table upon Erica’s question. There was no correct answer to that, was there?

'I’d rather drink rat poison if I was being completely honest.'

I saw Cody smile out of the corner of me eye, but he tried to hide it with covering his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

'Can I have a little privacy here? How is my escape plan supposed to work if you know every detail of it?'

“You could just…not escape?” He suggested but I shrugged my shoulders.

'Effective suggestion, why did I never think of that?'

“Do they do this all the time?” Clary whispered to Erica, her hand covering her mouth, but we were able to hear her loud and clear.

“No, this is new.” Erica did the same, but I could practically here her grin from behind her hand.

Erica…smiled different when Clary was around. Rather, she actually smiled. I supposed it would have been a nice change from all the glaring and the scathing remarks if it weren’t for the fact that, frankly, I didn’t care.

'Are they going to get a room, or should I build one?'

Cody laughed and I found myself smiling despite how hard I tried to keep my expression unreadable. “Don’t even ask.”

***

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

I clung to the side of the elevator, pushing my back as from up against it as I could possibly get as we were thrown up to the surface. One would think that it would be pretty difficult to miss the talk on ‘Oh yeah, we need to take an elevator up to the surface. Just hold on though, it gets a bit ropey’ but apparently I must have.

My stomach turned over and over as I held my vomit down. The elevator rose quickly as if it were getting ready to punt us up into the sky.

“Don’t be such a baby.” Erica scoffed, however, she also held the support bar in a death grip, grinning through her fear. Any other time I would have pointed this out but I was too consumed with the fear that the speed of the elevator was going to turn my body inside out.

Cody was sitting in the corner of the elevator with his legs crossed, blankets folded over his lap along with a cooler box. He looked right as rain as he sat with his eyes closed, his head pressed back into the wall. It was as if he was trying to ignore all that was happening around him, or as if he were trying to meditate through the pain.

I stumbled forward, nearly falling on top of Cody as the elevator came to a sudden stop. The floor shook for the moment before rising by one more foot. Erica reached out for the handle and pushed the door to the side, stepping out into the cool air.

I hadn’t noticed how warm my skin had grown in the time we had been in that death trap, but the cold wind on my face felt as if I were being doused in cold water. I unrolled my hoodie sleeves from my arms and pulled my cuffs down over my hands.

The clearing we stepped out into felt familiar to me but was remarkably changed. The trees encircling the camper van were charred, the bark crackling and falling away to the ground. The grass itself was burnt an orange-brown colour, the grass that was left if truth be told. The ground looked as if it were suffering from male pattern baldness, with patches of destroyed grass popping up here and there amid the soil.

“How did it not spread?”

Erica shrugged. “Beats me. When you were knocked out all of the flames went out immediately as if I had hosed them down. It was like a switch had been flicked.”

“That’s…” Cody stared around at the clearing, but no centimeter had been untouched by my tirade. “That’s unnatural.”

Erica rolled her eyes, “I can still put the cuffs on him.”

I glared at Erica, however, she refused to shrink from my gaze, instead squaring her shoulders and staring right back at me. The pair of us kept up the contest as Cody came between the two of us, grabbing our arms and pulling us along behind them.

“You two getting along will make this whole thing a lot easier, and we wouldn’t need the handcuffs.” Cody huffed, out of breath from having to drag the two of us along behind him. “Can you relax now?”

I clenched my jaw, not moving my eyes until Erica finally gave up, moving into the clearing.

Cody spread the blankets across the charred ground and settled down with his back against a tree. Out of the cool box, he took out a couple of cans of cider along with, strangely, two lanterns, one of which he passed to Erica.

“I didn’t think you drank.”

“I usually don’t, but after classes with you today, I think I deserve it.” Cody opened his first can and gulped down half of it, wiping his hand with the back of his hand. The lantern lit up one side of his face, the other half concealed in darkness as he stared at me. His eyes were like two dark disks, reflecting in the dim light.

I hurried to sit down, taking my own can and averting my eyes anywhere else possible.

“I’m surprised you don’t need something stronger.” Erica snorted, cradling several cans of her own.

“Was I really that bad?”

“I think this will be the first year that someone will have to repeat their classes in the history of the facility.”

I shrugged my shoulders. It was my only first day, they were the only two people I knew there, I could hardly help it if I sucked at everything right off the bat. I chugged down the rest of my can, ignoring the sting in my throat as I reached for another, wanting to feel weightless as I tried to forget about the events of the last forty-eight hours.

“Should I light a fire?”

Erica shook her head. “The smoke will be like a beacon for anyone searching for the facility. Needs to stay hidden.”

“But what if there are kids like me, wandering about with no memories? Wouldn’t it help them?”

“You…you were the first new kid we’ve had in months. We send patrols on the train every day, searching up and down for anyone new. Trust me, there’s no one else out there.” Cody assured but I still felt confused.

“Is the train the only way they get here?”

“It’s where everyone wakes up and it’s the first thing we all experience outside our memory loss. I think we’re brought there from the lab, planted on their by one of Castaneda’s guards, and then we’re found and brought here. There isn’t a single kid who’s been from there who hasn’t been brought to the facility since it’s beginning.”

“And before that?”

Erica and Cody fell silent, sipping at their beer in the cold of the night. I pushed the sleeve away from my hand and held it up before me, lighting a little flame on the end of each finger like a candle.

Erica’s eyes tracked every movement I made, her body tense as if she were getting ready to dive on top of me at a moment’s notice. She had no need to worry. In the silence, sitting there with the two of them, I no longer felt as alone. I had plenty of time to escape, but it wasn’t the right time.

Yet.

My hands slammed down into the earth as the ground beneath us shook. Cans of cider were knocked over and one of our lanterns fell onto its side and broke, distinguished in a moment. Cody clung onto the tree roots beneath him as we waited for the shaking to subside, no knowledge of what was happening with us below.

Erica darted to the outhouse, not waiting for us to follow behind her as she called up the elevator, pressing the button over and over as if it were to make it go any faster.

With a second tremor, I barely caught the back of Cody’s shirt as he went to fall to the ground, pulling him back up to lean against the outhouse.

“What the hell?”