The Silence of Escape

Read the Opening

“From here on out,” the leader begins, her voice bouncing off the concrete walls, “everything is going to change. You must forget everything about your old lives. It doesn’t matter who you were before, what you did, or who you’ve left behind. That’s all gone. You are here because you chose to leave. You are alive because we chose to help you. Let me be very clear about what that means.”

I glance up as a man in dark patterned clothing hands each of us a thin stack of papers. My fingers shake as I accept them, my sodden clothes straining against my frozen skin as I move. Charlie, my fellow escapee, graciously accepts the sheets with a slight bow of his head.

“We do not bow here,” the leader snaps. “You will do well to remember that.”

“Yes, of course,” Charlie stammers, barely containing another bow of apology.

The other Settler continues handing out papers to the other family I don’t recognise. The mother accepts her papers with one hand while clutching a toddler to her bony hip. The little girl peeks at me, wide-eyed, before hiding her dirt-smeared face in her mother’s sleeve.

I’ve never seen a child so young. Judging by her lack of muscle and weathered clothing, I’d guess this girl never reported for duty. Did the Guard find out she existed and try to arrest them, or did they escape from prison too? Either way, they’re lucky to be alive. Hiding your children from serving the Guard is punishable by death.

What does it matter now? We all came through the same dark passage.

“The person you were,” the leader continues, “is dead. We do not say this to be unkind, but because your survival depends on you believing it completely, at all times, in every interaction you will have for the rest of your life. If you cannot do this,” she pauses, “you will not survive. This new identity is you.”

My name is Anna 218. I have been Anna 218 for twenty years, and it is the only thing about myself that has ever felt entirely mine. I hold onto it for a few more seconds, then look down at the thick stack of papers in my palm, my new name written in bold across the top.

“Once you’ve memorised the contents of your pack, burn it. It may be tempting to keep the papers in case you forget, but that would be a grave mistake. Venators have been found to search houses when the occupants are out. If they’re onto you, do not confirm their suspicions. Venators are very good at what they do. If they find you, you will not speak. You will not cooperate. You will not give us up to save yourself, because we will not be saving ourselves; we will be saving the hundreds who come after you. Do you understand?”

My gaze slides over to Charlie, his tired eyes cast down on the mud from our escape still caked into his boots. How did it all go so wrong so quickly?

No one answers. The silence is its own kind of answer.

I open my folder, to see a name, an address, and a history that is not mine. I read the name Lily Prescott twice, the fabricated story where I lost my mother at fifteen and my new age of eighteen. A story of a girl who left the town of Westbridge with her grieving father to start fresh. A tidy, tragic, perfectly ordinary story.

I have only lied once in my life, and it cost me everything.

“Get rid of everything tying you to Vernin,” the leader continues, drawing my attention back to her. “I don’t care if you’re hanging onto your favourite childhood toy or family photo. It’s not worth your life.”

Charlie catches my eye across the space between us. He looks like a wall, but I know what he’s carrying. It is the same thing I am carrying, just shaped differently.

Lucas.

Neither of us says it. There is nothing to say.

I slip the folder under my arm and stare straight ahead, into the dark of the warehouse, into whatever comes next. I press my thumbnail against the edge of the blade in my pocket, the one thing I brought with me from a life I can’t have anymore.

My name is Anna.

My name is Lily.