Sugar Coated

  “I wish for nothing more than your cooperation in this initiative. I understand that we have some differences of opinion to work out, but that’s not the end of the world is it? Everyone has their differences,” the Angel explained, pulling some sort of remote from the pocket of her long white lab coat.

  Brynn could swear her hair looked more white than blonde against the white backdrop of the room. Perhaps she had always seen it through the fog of whatever drugs the Angel had been feeding her. But at this moment, she looked like a vision in white, the only color standing out being her violet eyes. Even her skin looked more white than normal, though that may have been due to the glare on the glass Brynn was currently being held in.

  “Now, we know about some sort of video transmission and we’re willing to look past that for Progress. But we’ve been informed that the video wasn’t the only act of rebellion you committed,” she said in a voice that suggested a child being scolded by their mother.

  The Angel walked up to the glass tube and bent over, bringing her face so close to Brynn’s that she was almost glad for the barrier between them. Her violet eyes flicked back and forth between different spots on Brynn’s face as if she could read her thoughts merely by looking at her.

  “The secrets those horrible distended lips of yours hold onto so effectively,” she said as she brought the remote up to Brynn’s eye level and pressed the button.

  It took a moment for Brynn to realize exactly what had happened. At first it seemed that her back had suddenly gotten a cold chill, but after a moment she could feel the water filling up the tube from the grate underneath her. She lifted off the cold metal surface slightly as the liquid continued to pour in until the straps tying her to the grate went taut and kept her in place. Her blue eyes grew wide as she stared out the glass toward the Angel who stood calmly watching the scene unfold.

  “Just tell me what you did,” she said gently, the smile never leaving her beautiful face. “And then I’ll let—” The rest of her words were cut off as water filled Brynn’s ears and slowly crept up the sides of her cheeks toward her nose and eyes. The last thing Brynn saw before the water engulfed her completely was the sight of the Angel shrugging her elegant shoulders nonchalantly and turning to walk away.

  Chapter 14: Comforter

  Brynn awoke as she often did; covered in a cold sweat and panting from the mild panic attack she was experiencing. “I don’t care how much I love her voice,” she said in a raspy whisper, “she’s horrible.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead in the darkness of her room.

  Brynn had crashed earlier that night after arriving home from her trip. Her ceiling clock informed her that she was still several hours away from daylight, but try as she might, sleep wouldn’t return to her. Every time she closed her eyes, she’d feel her breath hit against the glass surface of the tube the Angel had placed her in. She’d hear the water beginning to move behind her back and jolt up in her bed once more.

  Knowing there was no chance she’d get any more sleep that night, she climbed out of bed, still wearing the black loose fitting shorts she’d requested on the train. They came several inches above her knees so that she could easily examine the bruises that still shone prominently against her pale skin.

  Brynn checked her arms once more in her grey fitted T-shirt, happy that she only had a few scratches there from the climb up the brick wall. Her face had received similar scratches, but those were rapidly healing and blending in with the natural blush of her cheeks.

  Brynn quickly slipped her feet inside of her teal sandals and retreated outside, needing to get out of the confines of her house, which suddenly felt stuffy and oppressive after her dreams of being locked in the glass tube.

  The night air was much warmer than she had anticipated after having spent a few days in the chilly city of Central Wildwood. A cool breeze blew in from the ocean and she looked around at the blue shadow cast over Seaside at night.

  Though she had planned on examining her own city when she returned from her trip to confirm that a wall actually did exist, she had since abandoned that idea, already knowing the answer. The real question she was now focusing on was her ability to make it through the train tunnel and into the outside world before being crushed by thousands of pounds of steel.

  The thought of exploring the darkened train tunnel by herself sent a shiver down Brynn’s spine, and she instinctively headed next door to Ty’s house, wondering if he’d be up for a midnight adventure. She didn’t bother knocking, knowing he’d be asleep, and instead let herself in. Ty’s house knew her well enough to not sound an alarm if she came through the front door unannounced. In fact, the entire house seemed to be completely silent as she padded down the wood floors of Ty’s hallway toward his room.

  She cracked his door open and peeked her head in, glad that he slept with a glowing blue light that enabled her to see him clearly. He never seemed to wear a shirt to bed, which Brynn regretted at this particular moment, feeling like it made her little impulsive visit seem much more imposing. One arm was draped over his eyes while the other dangled off the side of his bed lazily.

  Creeping on silent feet over to her friend, she sat on the edge of his bed, lifting his arm off of his face and cradling it in her lap. She brought one hand up to his cheek and whispered his name into the darkness, trying to wake him without startling him. He stirred for a moment before settling back into the comfort of his nightmare-free dreams, and Brynn wondered if she should even wake him. Just because she had a hard time sleeping didn’t mean everyone did.

  She glanced over at the door to his bedroom, wondering if she’d be able to retreat without him ever knowing she was there.

  “Brynn?” he whispered, his voice heavy with sleep and confusion.

  She looked back down at him guiltily, wishing she hadn’t been caught.

  “Hi,” she replied, not sure what explanation to offer him.

  “You’re back safe,” he pointed out, a warm smile spreading across his sleepy face. He reached up to her, placing one hand behind her neck and pulled her down into a tight embrace, her head resting against his chest. “I hate when you’re gone,” he said with a yawn.

  Brynn couldn’t tell how much of what he was saying was truth, and how much was due to the fact that she had selfishly woken him up in the middle of the night.

  “It’s good to see you too, Ty,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.

  For a moment he didn’t say anything and she continued to lie on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. After a few minutes, however, his breathing slowed back down and she could tell he had fallen back into his blissful sleep, probably assuming her visit was part of some sort of dream.

  “Ty,” she whispered once more, sitting back up and rocking him gently. His dark brown almond shaped eyes opened again, the confusion back. “Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked, figuring it would be better to explain her ideas to him once he had woken up a bit more.

  “What time is it?” he asked, looking as if his state of tired confusion was dissipating.

  “About one in the morning,” she admitted. “Sorry.”

  “What else would I want to do at one in the morning?” he asked with a grin, sitting up and looking around his room in bewilderment. “I should probably wear clothes for this walk right?” he asked, though Brynn noted with relief that by “clothes,” he meant a shirt. The rest of him was already fully clothed.

  “That’s usually a good thing,” she answered with a laugh. “Here,” she said, handing him a shirt she found on the floor near his bed. It appeared to be the cream colored T-shirt he would normally wear with the dark brown pants of his default outfit, though in the odd blue lighting it was difficult to tell.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked, pulling the shirt over his head and running his fingers through his messy honey colored hair.

  “A few minutes,” she said, not mentioning the fact that he had already fallen back asleep once since her original arrival.

 
“Just long enough to sneak in a nice little nap with me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her and grinning.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she quickly said, looking down at his floor in embarrassment.

  “It’s okay. I only pretended to be half asleep so I could get away with it,” he informed her, looking very proud of himself.

  “Smooth Ty, very smooth,” she joked, trying her best not to smile at her friend’s antics. “I actually came over because I can’t sleep and I thought maybe you’d want to take a walk with me.”

  “Because naturally you assumed I wouldn’t be sleeping. You know…at night,” he said in mock sarcasm.

  “You’re the one who went on and on about liking the way I look in the night. You brought this upon yourself, really.”

  “Fair enough,” he agreed, throwing his comforter off and pulling on a pair of tennis shoes over his brown pajama pants. “A midnight walk it is.”

  * * *

  The cool air felt good on Brynn’s bare skin as she and Ty walked through the blue tinted city. With his arm linked through hers and a light breeze ruffling her long loose hair around her, Brynn didn’t feel like the moment could be any better.

  “How was your trip?” Ty asked, a faint note of worry in his voice. She wasn’t quite sure how he could possibly sound worried over such a simple inquiry, though the answer to that question came when she followed his line of sight down to her bare legs. “Fight off some wild animals while you were there?”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” Brynn said, pulling on her shorts and suddenly wishing they were longer. “I decided to do some climbing while I was there,” she explained, trying to sound as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

  “You’ve got scratches on your cheek, even,” Ty said, his brow furrowed as he brought his strong hand up to her cheek to feel the light scabbing there.

  “I’m not a very good climber,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh.

  “Apparently,” Ty agreed with a faint smile, dropping his hand from her cheek and continuing, unwittingly, toward the train station with Brynn. “I hope you don’t think it’s overbearing that I worry about you all the time,” he said, looking straight ahead rather than at Brynn.

  “I like it,” she assured him. While it was true that she wished Ty would break a few rules and help her find answers to her endless stream of questions, she had to admit that it was nice having someone to keep her grounded and logical. “It’s never a bad thing to feel like someone cares about you,” she said. “You’re like my own personal comforter.”

  “That sounds about right,” he agreed.

  “So, Ty, I noticed something while I was in Central Wildwood that I wanted to ask you about,” Brynn said, trying to broach the subject of their confinement within the city.

  “Was it my rugged good looks or perhaps my brilliance with computer hacking that you couldn’t stop talking about?” he joked.

  “I already knew those things,” she said with a slight laugh, knowing there would be no natural way to bring her question up. “Actually, while I was climbing I noticed something a bit odd about…well…cities in general.”

  “Oh good. For a minute there I thought maybe you were going to talk about something other than your conspiracy theories,” he teased, giving her arm a quick squeeze.

  “I know I never stop talking about it, but this really is important,” she insisted, instantly silencing his joking with a serious look.

  “I’m ready,” he said, still not being serious enough for Brynn, but giving her enough to work with to entice her to go on with her thoughts.

  “Have you ever noticed that there’s a wall surrounding our city?” she asked, feeling a shiver as she gave a voice to her thoughts. Brynn looked over her shoulder for a moment as if expecting someone to be spying on their conversation. They were, however, completely alone.

  “A wall?” he asked in an odd tone that Brynn thought was disbelief. “There’s not just a wall, Brynn,” he told her, shaking his head and smiling. “There’s a whole electronic field around that wall.”

  Brynn looked over at her friend in shocked silence, her mouth hanging open slightly.

  “How did you know about that?” she asked him, her eyes wide.

  “How did you not know about that until now?” he countered, still shaking his head at her. “How is it that you keep making these shocking discoveries that are common knowledge?”

  “How is that common knowledge?” she asked, growing slightly aggravated by the fact that everyone seemed to know things about the city that she didn’t.

  What bothered her even more was the fact that these odd and slightly eerie things everyone seemed to know didn’t worry anyone but her. How could people not care that they were trapped inside of their city?

  “What did you do when you were little? Just push buttons on your interactive education screen and hope you got the answers right? That was one of the lessons,” he explained, losing the disbelief in his voice once he saw the annoyed expression on his friend’s face. He was talking to her as if she had asked something as obvious as ‘what happened to all of the different languages people used to speak?’

  “And exactly how did they explain the fact that we’re all trapped inside of the city?” she asked, wondering how anyone could put a good spin on that.

  “Well, Brynn, we’re not exactly trapped,” Ty said reasonably, trying to calm her down.

  “Oh, we aren’t?” she asked, her voice rising. “Have you ever left the city on foot?”

  “Well…I did save your life once down at the beach. You know…a few days ago? But I wouldn’t expect you to remember that with so many new guys lining up to save you from yourself,” he said, becoming irritated.

  She looked over at him for a moment, realizing who he was talking about. How had he heard about their little trip down to the beach?

  “I’m not just good with computers, Brynn. I can be observant too,” he told her, the humor gone from his voice. “You got new clothes at my house after that morning in the ocean. How else would you have gotten salt all over those new clothes unless you had gone back?”

  “That’s beside the point,” she said in frustration, her face growing red though she didn’t understand why. “That doesn’t count as leaving the city. You can’t actually backtrack to the outside world from there; we live on a peninsula,” she practically shouted, hoping her outburst could distract them from the other path their conversation had taken.

  Ty was silent for a long moment as they continued to walk and Brynn held her breath, wondering what he would say to her little outburst.

  “There are wild animals in the outside world, so the wall is to keep them out. Not to keep us in,” he finally said in a calm and even voice, not looking at her as he spoke.

  “I’ve never seen a wild animal anywhere,” she muttered, hating that Ty had an explanation for her breakthrough.

  “Well, I guess the wall is working then,” he answered in an equally unhappy voice.

  They had arrived at the train station platform right outside of the tunnel and stopped their walk abruptly, Ty still unaware that Brynn had been leading him there the entire time.

  “It’s late,” Ty finally said, doing little to hide the annoyance in his voice. “We should probably head back.”

  “Yeah. Sorry I kept you up so late,” Brynn said, trying to focus her attention on the large dark tunnel in front of her rather than her anger with Ty. “You can head home. I’ve just got to check something out here.”

  Ty sighed deeply, looking at the ominous tunnel that stood before them.

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to get yourself killed if I leave you alone here?” he asked, not sounding quite as angry now that he had to worry about her again.

  “Because I’m almost always doing something to get myself killed,” she answered honestly.

  “So what is it this time? Are you going to tie yourself to the train tracks to prove you would be
a good Worker? Or maybe try to stop an oncoming train to show that the train isn’t real? It’s just a figment of our imaginations?” he asked.

  “Don’t make fun of me for having questions, Ty,” she countered shortly, still not quite ready to be teased. “At least someone around here is asking questions.”

  With that, she hopped off the platform onto the train tracks and sprinted full speed into the dark tunnel, hoping her sandals would stay on her feet as they crunched against the rocky ground in the pitch black passageway. She didn’t offer an explanation to Ty but heard him following behind her, trying to keep up with her breakneck pace.

  “Brynn, what are you doing?” he called from somewhere behind her, his voice echoing off of the curved stone walls.

  “Investigating,” she called back, her own voice sounding distorted and off in the strange acoustics of the tunnel.

  After a few more steps she slowed her pace, realizing that in the complete blackness she wouldn’t be able to tell where the passageway ended. She could easily run face first into a wall.

  Ty’s body slammed into hers from behind as he came to a sudden stop, obviously not hearing Brynn’s halted progression.

  “Sorry,” he said in the darkness from somewhere directly behind her.

  “How far does the tunnel go?” she asked, though she didn’t think Ty would actually know the answer to that particular question.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied vaguely.

  “You didn’t learn about that in some sort of lesson when you were little?” she asked with a smile that he couldn’t see.

  “Funny,” he replied dryly. “Now can we get out of here? This place gives me the creeps.”

  “I just want to get to the end of the tunnel,” she said, beginning to walk forward once more with her hands stretched out in front of her.

  “Brynn, normally getting to the end of the tunnel isn’t a good thing. Haven’t I already told you to stop trying to kill yourself?”

  “So full of jokes today,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm in the darkness.