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Kellan

I shivered, unable to get warm in the cold night. It had been a long time since I was outside the warren of buildings where we were held by the humans in the white coats with their instruments of torture and devices of bondage.

“A long time” was the closest I could come to expressing the length of my imprisonment. Years for sure. Just not a clue how many. And every day of that time, I’d sought a way out. Watched for any opportunity to free myself from torment.

I didn’t know why I was here, what the white coats were trying to do or if they thought I had done something wrong that led me to this place.

As I scooted under a section of steel fencing that didn’t quite meet the ground, I wondered if I’d been set up. Why would I suddenly have been left unattended, unbound, and with the door to the hallway ajar?

But no matter why, I had to get out of there as soon as possible. If they came after me, I’d deal with that when the time came. My back burned where the wires had dug in, but that would heal with a shift. As I belly crawled over the parking lot and onto the highway verge, there was still no one on my trail. At least, I saw no signs of it. In the past, when an omega made a break for it, there were sirens that I could even hear in my small cell as well as sweeping lights that made my tiny, high window glow. They did not take an omega’s escape lightly. I didn’t know for sure, but I overheard the security team talking about catching one and the punishment he would endure as a result.

They probably caught them all.

Until tonight, I’d never been able to figure out how anyone was able to get outside the labs or their cell, much less the building. But, as I hid in brush beside the highway, I wondered if they had all done it the same way I did—and if there had been more to it than a simple mistake.

Sitting in my cell, boredom was almost worse than the alternative here. Or so I told myself when several days passed without any activity at all. Food trays were shoved through the slot in the door, my water needs met by the sink, and the auto shower that turned on once a day for—if my one-Mississippi-style counting was correct, exactly two minutes. I’d learned to strip and rush over to stand under it the moment it began because if I didn’t, I’d miss the part of the tepid flow that had liquid soap or something like it sending lather over my body. That took thirty seconds. Then one-and-a-half minutes of rinse. Any mistake in this process, or glitch on the part of the system would leave me dirty or, worse, sticky with unrinsed soap in my hair and on my skin. It also burned as it dried, especially in the wounds that littered my body and never seemed to heal.

It wasn’t a great system, but it did make it possible for me to be reasonably clean most of the time.

On the day I escaped, there had been a shower glitch, as in it never came on, and one of my two meals didn’t show up. Not the first time either of these things happened, but I wondered if they were connected to the other elements that contributed to my current position. The parking lot was not empty, but there weren’t many cars there. I didn’t have any way to know if that was normal or not, just more data to absorb in case I did make it away from here. Or even if I didn’t. I was hungry for information, and since the “scientists” didn’t talk to me beyond instructions they might have given a dog and spoke to one another only rarely in my presence, I didn’t get much.

As I sat on the floor, wearing only the boxer shorts they provided me with, hungry and dirty, the door clanged open and the intercom in the wall barked at me to get to the lab in the next hallway over immediately.

It never ceased to anger me that those orders came as if they’d been waiting for me to do something and I was late. Once, I’d ignored them, but the scar still ridging my buttocks taught me not to do that again.

I pushed off the floor and trudged down the cold tiles of the hallway to my destination. They hadn’t had anyone escort me after the first couple of days. It wasn’t as if I could just continue on out and leave or anything. Every door was sealed, barring the ones they intended me to use. I’d been shown that by my guards and confirmed in those first few weeks that it never changed. In fact, they were electrified. Painfully so.

Probably I’d never know what made me try the one on the left, opposite the lab entrance on this day, but I did, and instead of sending me to the floor twitching from the electrical shock, the door opened. And I went through the doorway and on down a hall I had never visited before. After a few twists and turns, I came to another door, this one with a green lighted sign over it.

“Exit?” I mumbled. It had to be a trick. Those who had charge of me enjoyed playing them from time to time. I should go back. In fact, I did, but the door I’d left open behind me was closed. And when I reached for it, in the silence of this enclosed space, I could hear the electrical hum.

So, rather than courage, what sent me out the exit was lack of options. That exit door led to the parking lot.

But now that I’d found myself here, what should I do? I climbed up into a squat and ran along the road, flattening myself when any cars passed. I could have tried to hitchhike, but even I knew a guy in his underwear would be a suspicious sight to the average driver. Plus, I saw no other building in any direction. Meaning, the vehicle that stopped might well be one of my tormentors.

I hadn’t shifted in a very long time, and only then because it had been induced by some sort of injection in the port they’d implanted in my shoulder. But if I ever could, now was the time.