Running With the Wave

Chapter 26

Era:

When I left Hunter and took his gun, I wasn't thinking.

Actually, it's because I needed to start thinking that I left in the first place at all.

I walk across the field, my hair swinging over my face so that if anyone besides Hunter or another woman sees me I'll have at least a small chance of surviving. I just need to get my thoughts straight. I have to, because I'm making major mistakes here. Hunter... Do I love him or not?

"Yes." I whisper to myself.

Before last night I had never felt so alive, never felt so complete. It had just been so right, kissing Hunter and feeling his skin against my hands. I do love him, but it's not necessarily a good thing. Loving the boy who can understand what women are going through comes with many new complications. Groaning, I lie down on the grass and squint up at the sun. I had never felt the sun nor seen it except through a window before I had escaped. In my heart, I still know that escaping is a bad idea. I got lucky because I know the exits and can get around through the air vents, never mind that I took the guards by surprise and they had bad aim. Since I left, they will have doubled the guard on all exits, making it impossible for another break out.

No. I was going to have to do it the way it happens in all those stories my mother told me: I'm going to have to defeat the enemy and free the prisonners. It goes without saying that doing that is a million times harder than it sounds, but I have to do it. I groan, rubbing my head. Why is life so complicated? Hunter will be worried when he wakes up and finds me gone, but I'm not sure that I should go back to him. I may love him, but he's slowing me down and distracting me when I have lives to save.

"Love or my friends?"

The question seems so simple when I speak it aloud, but when I try to come up with the answer its infinitely hard. Hunter and I will probably never be together, the chances are much lower if I choose my friends because I'll probably die trying. I need him in my life, he's who I want to spend my life with. Who I want to 'marry' as they called it before the Fall. Yet I can't leave my friends and all those other women, both the ones who are forced to breed and the ones who are barren like me. I can't leave Keara alone when she is going through child birth, especially since she won't be going through it in the ward. The twelve year olds give birth in the cells with no medication or anything. The cell is carefully monitered so that, if the baby is a boy, they can come in, take it, and put it up for adoption straight away, and if it's a girl they either leave it with the mom where most of the babies die or, if the cells are too crowded, take them away and shoot them so as not to waste space. Only the twelve year olds do it in the cells because they are the 'strongest and most likely to survive without medication.' In reality, they just can't afford to waste medecine and the wards are so crowded as it is that they don't really care wether the twelve year olds live or die anyways because they have the baby. If they survive, its a 'sign' that they're worthy enough to give birth to their child in the ward. Another sick thing that the men thought of. I can't leave the women to suffer for what is probably going to be forever, and I don't want to die. Maybe the last part is selfish, but it's part of what makes me human. I escaped the prison because I was desperate not to die, but let's face it: I only bought myself a bit more time by escaping. When I ran out of those prison doors, I knew that it is only a matter of time before they find and shoot me. I'm going to be hunted my entire life unless they catch me or I free the women. It's a race between me and the Keepers: I have to free the women before they catch me and they have to catch me before I free the women. Just another wave chasing me and to be honest, I'm getting tired of running. I may be able to face my fears, but I'm not strong. I've lost too much, felt too much pain to be strong. I pretend to be, because pretending to be strong is so much easier than actually being strong but there are cracks in the stone of my pretending, and I'm finding it harder than ever to fill them in. I begin to cry. I need someone to comfort me, tell me it's all going to be alright even though I know it isn't.

"Why?" I scream to the sky, "WHY?"

I know that chances are someone probably heard me but for the first time I don't care. I wish I could just get caught and my life would be over with. All these choices to be made, gone from my non-existent mind. Except I can't let that happen and it hurts me all the more. I have to choose between Hunter and my friends and it's a choice no one should have to make. I brush my hair out of my face and close my eyes. I need both, I need to have both Hunter, Keara, Moa, Amiya, Tamio and my freedom but it seems like I don't have that option. If Hunter and I go to the cells together, most likely at least one of us will die if not both since we're the City's most wanted. If I leave him I know in my heart that even if we see each other again things will never be the same between us. I will have created a betrayal that we will never be able to get past beccause I will have abandoned him to free the women. Not only leaving him bur going against his wishes too. It's one or the other and my heart is being ripped in half.

For a while I just lie there, sobbing and no longer thinking. Finally, when the sun has started going on it's way down I pick myself up and drag myself back to Hunter. I need to see him one more time before I leave him and free the women, or die trying.