Escape From Aslyum

Maya cautiously walked through the crowded city of Aslyum with her anxiety screeching as she tried to make her way past the crowd. Pushing and squeezing through the congested city streets she could feel the bones of the malnourished citizens. Narrow alleyways between the steel shacks stacked on top of each other did nothing to block the blinding light cast by the ceiling of the city’s dome.

The city of Aslyum was a symbol of order in the new world. To her, the city represented control, a cage for twelve million people five miles in diameter. The slums of Asylum may have been the easiest place to sneak through but it was not the easiest to stick around in. Not for Maya.

Ten years ago, the world that Maya knew as a child was destroyed by the Great Storm, a large-scale geomagnetic storm that caused a yearlong blackout. The effects of the storm caused both the Greater Asian and North American continents to split, creating further destruction.

After establishing itself as one of the Nine Governments of the new world, the United Front dedicated all of its resources to building Aslyum. A giant dome-covered city that could withstand any electromagnetic discharge. The inside of the dome would serve as a giant camera, the city was always watching.

Maya looks down at the device in her hand, almost like what she called a cell phone as a child. A slim black case with a glass screen. It was just like the one her mother let her use when she wanted to play her puzzle game. She ran her finger up the screen, scrolling past what her partner called dummy channels until she found the communication channel.

She sticks the phone in her pocket and takes a deep breath, the scrolling felt comforting to her for some reason.

“So, you remember the order, right?” She whispered into a small mic sticking out of her earpiece. “You do have a habit of mixing things up”.

A small static buzzed in her ear after sending her message, startling her. She looked around and only a few people noticed her jump; none had the energy to care.

“Yeah, we meet up at checkpoint Nine, then I bust through Five and then freedom” her partner Valsric responded gleefully.

“No” she replied, feeling cut off by the buzz as she paused. “The swaps. Not the kind you do with your friends”.

She could hear Valsric laugh from where she stood, though she couldn’t see him past the crowd she knew he was close.

“Yeah, well you know. Kinda?” Valsric stammered past his shortness of breath, “At least mine, I don’t care how ugly you plan to make yourself look”.

Maya felt pressure in her throat as she asked the next question. “Only one, right?” Several seconds of silence followed the buzz.

She felt tenser as each one passed until finally a reply.

“I promise”

Valsric steps out of the crowd, walking past a red line towards the checkpoint with his hood up. One of the two guards points a rifle at Valsric. “Drop!” the soldier yelled as he stepped closer to Valsric. “I said drop! Or I drop you!” he yelled again gesturing his rifle at Valsric then the ground. Valsric dropped to his knees and slowly raised his hands above his head.

“Take off the hood!” the soldier screamed at the top of his lungs as he signaled for the other guard to move in. “Take off the hood or I take off your head!” Valsric slowly places his hands on the back of his head as the solder moves closer.

Maya watches from the crowd, holding a heart-shaped charm at the end of the thin silver chain around her neck. She opens the charm, on one side of the locket a picture of her; a young woman with hazel skin, light brown hair, and green eyes. A photograph of a white man in his thirties with, rough skin, brown eyes, and mangy black hair was set in the other half, this was her partner Valsric.

“Swapping” she whispers as she closes the locket.

Black boots with heavy rivets enter Valsric’s sight as he lowers his hood. The solder grabs his wrist with a pair of restraints in the other hand. “I’ve got...her?” the soldier said as he lifted Maya by the wrist restraint.

The other soldier walks up with his gun lowered as the first lifted the captive. “I thought I saw a guy, not a girl” he looked at his partner through the corner of his eyes as he began to think about what he had seen himself.

The young woman looked up at the soldiers with joy in her bright green eyes as she teasingly stated “You saw right hot shot” grinning ear to ear. Before the guards could react, the woman grabbed both by their arms and they fall unconscious with smoke escaping from their heavy black armor.

The young woman grabs a rifle from the ground and darts towards the checkpoint. “Maya when I tell you to, swap us back. I’m going towards five.”

Maya stepped out of the crowd and into the next sector, watching as the one guard from the other side of the checkpoint chased after who he assumed to be her. She looked down at the closed locket, thinking about what the soldier chasing Valsric looked like, she had to keep the image fresh.

“Swap!” Maya heard her voice yell on the headset. She opened the locket, now pictures of her and the guard that thought he was chasing her. A young man around her age with dirty blonde hair and freckles across his rosy cheeks.

Valsric turned the corner of a tight alley slinging the rifle into a trash pile on the side of the road. He looks at his hands. He sees his hands and not Maya’s anymore, which means she did the swap.

“Help!” he yelled at the top of his lungs as he frantically ran through the street. “She wants me dead! Somebody, help me!” He looked behind him to see three guards moving towards them with rifles in hand.

He turned the corner of the next alley and looked up for any type of ladder or damages in the buildings around him. A lot of tin hanging from buildings he could use as cover and time wasn’t on his side. Valsric desperately dived for the closest tin curtain hoping it will hide him for a few seconds.

The guard turns the corner with his gun pointed out, seeing nobody he tries to scan the area. Calls for somebody to lower their weapon echoed through the air and the soldier turns towards the sound.

The Guards that began pursuing earlier shoot as he turns, landing shots in his chest and head from their rifles. As The body fell the guards watched in disbelief, it instantly transformed from a young woman into a young man dressed in the black uniform of United Front soldiers.

“What the hell is going on?” one guard yelled while stomping his foot into the ground. The headsets of the three guards lit up with calls for reinforcements at checkpoint Nine.

From behind a sheet of tin Valsric watched as the soldiers ran towards the calls for help. “They fell for it; I also made the guards at Five think you're on the way up there” he walked towards the dead body and placed his hand on the corpse's left eye. “I’m in their Retcom system, now I have a bird's eye view”.

Maya looked down at her device waiting for an image she wasn’t looking forward to seeing. Her device vibrated. She sees the notification that a was message received. “Did you get it?” Valsric’s voice asked in her ear. Maya looked down at the device, pressing with a shaking finger to open the message.

The same face she had just looked at in her locket, his cheeks no longer rosy but pale, his eyes now a dull grey and his hair drenched black.

“Do the swap now, they’ve almost reached the commander!” Valsric yelled into his headset, he could see her staring at the picture from above. She continued to stare at her device catatonic and still aside from the shaking of her body. The guards were a block away from the fifth checkpoint and Valsric still hadn’t seen Maya open her locket.

“Put his picture in there!”

Maya felt a jolt of shock as Valsric yelled through the headset, she had lost her sense of time starring at the photograph of the dead guard. She pulled the locket up from her chest and opened it, on one side a duplicate of the image on her device. The other side held an elderly man with a bald head and a white mustache that covered both his lips, endless wrinkles covering a leathery face.

As the guards ran up to the checkpoint disbelief and fear stopped them in their tracks. The man standing in front of them was the body of the dead guard.

“What the hell are you staring at?” the commander yelled at the other guards unaware of his current appearance. “Who told me she was on her way up here? Which one of ya’ll dill weeds lost her?” He yelled ferociously at the three dumbfounded men.

“Com... commander?” one of the soldiers stammered at the talking corpse in front of him. “You said she was attacking the outpost?” he continued.

One of the other guards dropped down and began gasping for breath. Broken by the confusion and guilt the world around him felt as if it was spinning out of control.

“Get it together kid” the commander scoffed. In disbelief to the confused soldiers, he was no longer a blood-covered corpse.

One of the guards spoke up with a shaking voice. “We all saw him?” he asked looking at the other two guards from his sector. “We killed her but then it ended up being him. Then the commander was him?” he fell on his knees and placed an arm on the shoulder of his broken comrade.

The commander chewed his lower lip as he contemplated the situation. “we’ve got psions” he said with disdain in his voice. “This is field command Echo; we have psions I repeat psions have breached the city”.

Valsric’s stomach sunk to the ground when he heard the commander’s voice in his head. Maya only had one more swap to do so they could sneak by, but the plan was ruined.

“I’m sorry” Valsric pushed out past the stone in his throat.

Maya knew what he meant. Valsric had promised her only one person would die for the mission, he was taking back his promise.

“Please just give me a minute” she pleaded with a cracking voice.

The sound of several explosions simultaneously filled the alleyway Maya hid in. She looked around the corner to see Valsric had used his hacking ability to overload the Retcoms of the soldiers, turning the computers implanted in their heads into bombs.

Maya’s knees began to shake, she heard Valsric yelling through her headset but couldn’t make out any words. She knew she had to move towards the gate, once Valsric places his hand on the gate he would be able to hack it open. It was hard for her to see the gate past the smoke, dark fumes tainted red by blood filled the streets.

Suddenly the cloud rushed towards Maya, the smells and tastes of burnt metal and blood forced their way into her body. She gagged and fell to her knees as the smoke rushed past her. She was just feet from the open gate as the smoke cleared, a cold breeze ran through her hair, and rays of sunlight cut through the dust placing rays of warmth on her face.

Despite being free, Maya felt as if she had just created a perdition to chain her.