Minutes turned to hours.
Hours to days.
Days to weeks.
Time crawled on blindly, all the while the war above raged on. We remained in the dark for the most part, aside from occasional news updates from the TV’s installed in the mess hall. Talk of stalemates, treaties and an armistice circled the news stations, all varying in both story and reliability. Germany retreated, Russia’s attacking, America’s winning, we’re all losing. Different story, different station.
The only truth given to us were body counts; if even that.
Every new week was another flag hung on the wall. Red, white and blue. Thirty stars. One flag turned to two. Two turned into fifty rather quickly. From there, there’d become too many to count. They covered one of the walls in the mess hall, and the amount continued to grow with every passing day. Beneath each flag was a name. I didn’t have to ask. No one did. “A memorial,” is what Ryan had called them.
An omen, was what I thought. A promise of what the future had become. And with every new flag hung on the wall, the less we all looked at them. They faded into the background until they became just as mundane as everything else. Forgotten, just like everyone else.
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“-was that? Two or three?”
There was a quiet thump as I folded up the deck of cards in my hand, jolting as a voice broke the silence. I looked up, finally focusing back on Sage, who was on her knees at the foot of her cot. A sharpie was balanced dangerously between her fingers, looking only seconds away from falling to the white sheets beneath her. “Ro?”
“Uh…” I blinked, eyes flitting to what she’d been scribbling on the wall beside her bed. It was another recipe she’d apparently been writing down, scrawled at an angle amongst the eight others she’d written over the past week. Or longer. I didn’t know anymore. I cleared my throat before pushing myself back against the wall behind me. “Two cups?”
It was a half assed guess, but Sage didn’t seem to mind. Her brows had furrowed again as her attention returned to the recipe, and my attention was dropped back to the deck of cards in my hands. It wasn’t much, but it kept idle hands busy. Didn’t do much for idle minds, though. But I supposed it was better than lying around in my own room, soaking up the silence like water until I’d gone mad. Where maybe I hadn’t changed the activity so much, I’d at least changed the scenery.
Even if only a little.
I glanced up over the top of my cards as I shuffled them, absentmindedly. The black cap of the Sharpie was pinned between her teeth as she took to writing down the two cups that I’d suggested, though clearly only after much deliberation. Beside it, both one and three had been scribbled out.
“On second thought-” I looked back to the cards, riffling the two halves back together. “-might have only been one cup.”
I felt the corners of my lips twitch up a tad as she shot me a perplexed look over her shoulder before reaching out to give my knee a shove. “You’re the worst,” she griped and I chuckled quietly. When she once again crossed out the two cups, I snorted. “I’m trying to commit these to memory, you know. Sue me for wanting to make my girlfriend a nice meal once we go home.”
Home.
The amusement faltered as she spoke, and I thumbed over the edge of the cards. “Right.” My gaze dropped to my hands. I’d wanted to say more, but it suddenly felt like too much effort to bother. And the general lack of tension in the air had been nice. While it lasted, at least. So I kept my mouth shut and let the quiet scraping of the marker against the wall fill the silence.
After a few more minutes, it seemed she’d finally finished her recipe. I glanced back up, watching as she capped the Sharpie before easing herself down onto the mattress with her legs tucked up under her.
“....I talked to Mira yesterday.” I could hear the cautious hope in her voice. A scoff blew past my lips before I even realized it, though she continued on as if she hadn’t noticed. “Said there’s been talk between Ryan and Lydia and well…the other soldiers.” She shifted again as the cards leafed together perfectly. “We’re at a stalemate with Russia. The news wasn’t lying about that.”
“And Germany?” Germany’s never giving up their land, and we’ll never stop trying to take it.
I bit my tongue though as Sage sighed. She moved closer, resting a hand on my knee. I could feel the warmth through my jeans, and the vague promise of reassurance. But then she offered a gentle squeeze and finally, I lifted my gaze. There was a genuine grin on her lips, eyes sparkling in the bright lights. “Given up.”
That wasn’t the response I’d been expecting.
I sat up a bit straighter against the wall, watching her carefully. “Like…?”
Her smile only grew wider. “We can leave.” The promise came as a whisper in the quiet room, and it reverberated through my mind. “We can go home.”
“Home,” I breathed, shaking my head. What was home? My gaze flitted to the recipes on the wall. Thoughts of seeing my mom and my sister flashed through my mind. Of sitting in the passenger seat of my step dad’s car on the way to get ice cream. Seeing the two of them sitting front row at every single football game. Could we go home again?
I rolled my lips in, finally looking back to Sage. She’d shifted up onto her knees, leaning forward against mine with eyes alight with all the excitement and hope in the world. “Isn’t it great? Home. Bright blue sky, the green grass, that warm sun. Oh, I’ve missed it!” Sage collapsed back onto the cot with a dreamy sigh, her eyes clearly seeing that blue sky in front of her; just as she’d done so many times the past several weeks.
“Been too long of a winter,” I eventually forced myself to agree, knocking my foot against her leg. Brown eyes landed on mine and her lips pulled back into another smile, though this one was far softer than before. And yet, that blazing inferno was still there. It had been every day since the moment we’d wound up in that bunker. That hadn’t changed. Sighing, I slouched a bit against the wall. “Look, Simone…”
I could see the falter in her eyes, the slow downturn to her lips and that crushing weight in my chest only grew worse. My gaze flitted back down to the deck of cards, now held idly in my hands. I turned it over, picking at a tear in the plastic. Maybe I could just leave it. The glimmer in those beautiful eyes hadn’t diminished, despite the unspoken words that lingered in the silence between us. Should just leave it. I bent the stack in half, flinching as a handful exploded out from the deck and fell to the bed.
The sight of that smoldering City was still there. My throat tightened every time I tried to picture what home even looked like, now. Home. A term used so loosely, now. Although, the look in my girlfriend’s eyes made it seem so certain. It almost was enough to make it seem like everything truly was perfect. That we could leave again and go back to the City. Pick up where we left off. But we couldn’t. Eventually, a sigh blew past my lips and my gaze flitted back up to her. Once again, her attention had wandered off, returned to the wall of recipes she’d been so proud of.
“Leaving sounds…it sounds nice and all but-” I cleared my throat, shifting as those brown eyes landed back on me. Suddenly, the white numbers on the wall behind her had become far easier to look at. “-but it’s not…not the same. There’s no way that everything’s still standing. We-” I’d cut myself off, thumbing over the cards again.
We’re all that’s left.
The words hung in the air though, whether or not I’d managed to get them past my lips. When I finally dared another look in Sage’s direction, she was watching me carefully. Her brows were pinched together and it was all I could do to not look away.
“Do you…do you really think I don’t know that?” The words came out more as a quiet sigh than anything else, but there was a prickling to my cheeks nonetheless. “My family is gone, Rowan. All of Brooklyn. My family, my home…” Sage shook her head, lips still parted in a sentence that she couldn’t finish.
And maybe she would have, but that didn’t matter. The loud crackling of a speaker had cut her off, loud and jarring from somewhere beyond her battered curtain. She snapped her mouth shut and I followed her gaze to the hallway. For a few moments, there was only silence. “What was that?” She asked, her voice low.
I pushed myself up off the mattress and crossed the room to the curtain, tugging it back. The silence was being filled now; heavy boot steps echoed along the halls and shadows moved in uniform across the long corridors. Settled amongst the tiles of the ceiling was the culprit; the intercom speaker.
I inched my way further out, with Sage easing herself up right behind me. I felt her fingers curling gently around my arm as another crackle sounded over the speakers.
“Attention all residents,” a woman’s garbled voice finally came over the intercom. “The bunker is being placed on lockdown until further notice. Please return to your designated rooms and await further instructions. Any residents caught outside of their designated rooms will be detained for questioning. I repeat, the bunker is now on lockdown.”
The message repeated itself again, and Sage’s grip tightened around my sleeve. “Rowan?”
Lockdown? My gaze shot up to the speaker settled on the tiled ceiling as though that would make the voice speak again.
I shushed her, but it didn’t matter. The message ended and the click sounded over the speakers, ending the announcement. I glanced down the hall towards the direction of the moving shadows, which were only coming more in number. The other residents? It was too hard to tell who else was roaming the halls, but the footsteps sounded too heavy either way. I sucked in a slow breath, trying to calm the thundering in my chest.
“It’s nothing,” I’d finally managed to get out. “Right? Just a drill.” Just a drill. It sounded foolish as my words met my own ears, and far less reassuring than I’d hoped. But when I’d turned around to face the girl behind me, that breathlessness ebbed a little. “Just like high school, right? Bomb drills. Fire drills.” Just a drill.
Her fingers released my sleeve, gliding down over my arm before curling around my own. All I could do was give her hand a gentle squeeze in return, and I knew the smile I’d been offering her was just another empty promise. But there wasn’t time for anything else, and any other reassurance died on my tongue as another set of footsteps sounded. This time, there were only two of them. My grip tightened on Sage’s hand, tugging her back a step and she inched herself behind me.
Shadows moved along the wall at the end of the corridor before rounding the corner. The breath left my lungs in a shaking sigh the moment the soldier walked into view.
“Lydia?” Sage spoke up first, pushing herself out in front of me as though Lydia wouldn’t have noticed her otherwise.
The woman faltered for a moment, eyes widening the second her attention landed on the two of us. “Rowan? Simone?” She drew closer, the briskness in her gait never ceasing even as she drew closer. For a moment, I didn’t even think she was going to stop. I was almost surprised when she did actually come to a halt before the two of us, though there was a tenseness to her stance.
“You need to get to your rooms. Right now.” The way her jaw had tightened and eyes had narrowed sent a chill crawling under the surface of my skin.
“But-”
“Would ya look at that.” I jumped when the voice cut me off, reminding me that there had been a second set of footsteps. “Week number three and already causing problems.” It was only then that I spottedthe other figure standing a ways behind Lydia, arms folded tightly over her chest. Shada’s eyes flitted between Sage and myself, a subtle smirk twisting at her lips as she shifted her stance. “Imagine that.”
“Now is not the time, Shada,” Lydia hissed as the girl sauntered closer.
“What’s going on?” The soldier’s attention snapped back to me when I spoke again, her unruly shadow seemingly forgotten about.
“Lockdown.” Her answer was just as cold and robotic as I’d expected it to be. Scripted. Forced. She’d barreled on though before I got the chance to ask anything else. “You and miss Simone need to return to your rooms now. All questions will be answered once we’re at liberty to reveal further details.”
With one final look between us, Lydia began to make her way down the hall again, hesitating only briefly when she seemed to realize that Shada had yet to actually follow her.
Amber eyes were still locked on us, that same smirk on her lips. “I’d stay outta everyone’s way if I were you and start actually listening.”
“Shada.”
Shada snorted as Lydia called her name. “Just a word of advice.” And with that, she backed away and retreated back to the soldier and together, the two disappeared around the corner.
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We’d done as told; returning to Sage’s room and pulling the curtain shut. As if a curtain would do much if Russians had decided to raid the place. It seemed like Sage had the same train of thought. She sat next to me on the cot, backed tightly into the corner with her knees tugged to her chest and eyes locked on the doorway.
Every sound that rang out in the halls was enough for me to flinch; enough for my heart rate to spike and enough to dredge up the sight of that smoldering city. But I squeezed my eyes shut regardless and forced my lungs to work properly. For Sage’s sake, I’d remind myself. Just a drill, right?
She didn’t seem to register the weight of my hand as I rested it over her knee.
Has to be.
And so we sat in silence. Waiting for an announcement. Waiting for something. But nothing happened. Just the endless buzzing of generators and fluorescent lights.
I recalled speaking up a few times, ranging anywhere from “it’s okay” to “we’re safe here.” Same only empty promises that fell on the same old deaf ears. Her unwavering gaze told me she believed those words just as much as I did.
I didn’t know how much time had passed before she spoke up, breaking the fragile silence. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” is what she’d whispered. Her voice was hoarse, eyes still watching the curtain before us. “Should be back in your room.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
That wasn’t up for debate, and of course, the girl didn’t argue. She did, however, finally shift her position to curl her fingers around mine over her knee. It was enough of a reaction to further solidify my decision to stay. My grip tightened on her hand as she lowered her head, chin resting over her knees. The buzzing had returned, drowning out the silence with nothing left to say for either of us.
It all stretched on for far too long. What felt like several painstaking hours had passed, though surely it had only been a few minutes. Twenty at the most? I hadn’t been bothering to count and soon enough, it didn’t matter anymore. A loud clang echoed through the halls, followed by a series of heavy footsteps. There was a muffled crackling as the group drew closer, their footsteps seeming to disperse throughout the hallway.
“One room’s empty,” I heard one of the voices inform the others. It was thick and deep, though lacked any hostility I’d imagine the Russians would have. I eased myself down against the wall, feeling the cold bite of the concrete through my jacket. “Sixty-two. Be on the lookout.”
A white number flashed across my mind and I felt Sage’s eyes on me. “Rowan,” she hissed under her breath. “What’re you gonna-”
Outwardly, I shushed her once again. Inwardly though, I couldn’t breathe. What was I going to do? My eyes darted around the small concrete coffin of a room, though it offered no escape. My thumb ran itself over her knuckles regardless as I finally met her wide eyes. And after meeting that gaze, I certainly wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I told her. “What’s the worst they could do?”
The soldiers moved slowly out beyond the curtain. Hushed voices floated through the hall as they talked amongst themselves, and I found myself pressing further against the wall despite myself.
“-likely not hostile, but the commander wants us to bring them in anyways.”
Commander? The cold weight in my chest had begun to spread as the soldier spoke. Up until now, hadn’t Lydia been in charge? Part of me entertained that maybe they had been referring to Lydia, but an even larger part of myself was beginning to fear that there was now a bigger threat. One that involved someone higher up than Lydia, and one that maybe she, herself, hadn’t been fully informed of yet.
I’d remembered that look in her eyes; exhausted and alert. Maybe even fearful.
Shadows floated past in front of the curtain, slow and taunting. Sixty-two. My number. It wasn’t worth the fight; that much I knew. I watched as the soldiers passed in front of the room, guns drawn before them, stopping at each room in turn. My grip tightened for a moment on her hand before releasing it.
And eventually, the attention was on Sage’s room.
A gun inched itself between the curtain and the doorway, pushing it back just far enough to reveal the soldier that towered behind. In an instant, the gun was raised and aimed with a deadly precision. I jerked back, knocking into Sage and putting my hands up instinctively. “Wait, I didn’t-”
But then the gun lowered itself and the soldier eased back a bit. Dark eyes flitted between the two of us, narrowed but seeming surprised more than anything. “Alright. Which one of you kids belongs in sixty-two?”
“I-”
Before I could finish my answer, the soldier was backing out a step into the hall and calling over his shoulder; “found her. Just a kid. She’s no threat.” Then his eyes were back on us, an almost expectant look on his face as though we were supposed to have answered over him.
“Me.” I swallowed, lowering my hands an inch, though I didn’t dare take my eyes off the gun. It was aimed at the floor to his side, but his finger hadn’t seemed to move far from the trigger at all. “It’s me. I’m-”
“That her?” Another soldier had come up beside the first, effectively cutting me off once again.
I wanted the weight to ease off my chest; wanted to feel any form of relief whatsoever. The guns were down, why couldn’t I just calm down? But the way they looked at us, looked at me - cold and robotic and almost careless. They talked amongst themselves, as if we weren’t even in the room.
“She’s just a kid. Can’t we just let her off the hook?”
“Commander said to bring her in for questioning. Her orders, not mine.”
I forced in another breath, only vaguely aware of Sage’s fingers grazing against my arm. I pulled out of her grasp, dropping my hands in a futile attempt to mask the way they trembled. Eventually, though not soon enough, the second soldier stepped away. “I’ll inform the commander that you’re on your way, then.” His attention flitted back to me before he made his final exit.
The stiffness in the first soldier’s eyes had eased up a bit. “Alright, kid,” he sighed. “I’ve got orders to take you in. You’re not a threat; I know it, you know it. Commander wants a word with you, so let’s not make this any harder than it has to be.”
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