To Be A Rebel

Chapter 26: Friend Like Me

I sit in the hospital with Phineas. He sips on his water, looking down at his book. I breathe in the sterile smelling air, florescent lighting shining down harshly, muffled voices from the volunteer nurses drifting to me from down the hallway.

Brown eyes dart up at me.

"When can I go back to my dorm again?"

"We just have to wait until your stomach flu is no longer contagious. Should be just a few more days," I say, signing the words as well.

He huffs, shifting and grabbing at the thin sheets of the hospital beds. "I hate hospitals."

"I know."

That is one of the downsides of living in a building with twenty-something other people. If you have anything worse than a cold, you have to stay in the hospital until you're no longer contagious, because if you don't, then whatever you have is going to play musical beds with whoever is sleeping near you, and it only gets worse from there.

So I'm staying in here with Phineas until he's better. He gets lonely in here while Penelope is at school and Milo is in the labs. Plus this gives us some time to talk. Since I was gone for a month, and he's only been in Abel for a very short time before the Minister took over, he still doesn't fully trust me. He trusts that I'm not working for the Minister, but only because Milo and Penelope trust that. He's still wary of me to some extent, but that's because he barely knows me, so I don't think I can really blame him.

"But you'll be out of here soon," I say. "Then you can go back to school and you can go back to helping Penelope in the greenhouses."

He nods. "How much longer do you think we'll be here?"

By the way he's asking, he's not talking about the hospital. He only said it that way because the door to the room is open, and since he can't hear how loud he's being, he doesn't want to risk anyone else hearing his question if he were to ask it in more detail. He's smart for a kid his age. I guess you have to be, and his mother might have taught him to watch what he says. I'm still almost certain she was a Netrophil agent. It would make sense, since that group has been going up against the Minister since before the apocalypse.

"Soon," I reply, glancing down at my hands. 'Just a few more days, I think. It's been over a week since I got that key card. There aren't as many people down there now. All we're doing now is waiting to come up with a plan.'

We have been trying, truly, but every plan we come up with and run by Janine is wrong. She points out how I'll get caught here, or the cameras will catch me there, and even if I wear my encrypted uniform, there are controls that can make the tags unrecognizable, and therefore, the guns will still fire at me. It's been stressful, not going to lie, but the plan has to be perfect if I want to get myself and my kids out of here alive.

But perfect plans take time, and we're running out of it. Janine says we only have a few weeks, a month at most, until the Minister and her people find a way to get those inner doors open and then find Section Z-92. I want to get out of here within the next five days if I can. I've already talked to Penelope and Milo and Phineas. They've been causing small distractions, just to keep Ian from noticing me and Steve hanging out so much, and they plan on doing something bigger when I tell them to.

Plus Penelope and Phineas are still taking supplies and giving them out to the Girl Guides. I almost wish Penelope would leave to go with them. While they do stay out in camps, she actually would be safer with them, since they don't have to worry about Ian on their heels all day.

But she's not going to. She'd never leave us. Loyalty. It's one of the things that can destroy you if you're not careful.

I shake my head to dispel the thought. "So, have you made any more origami uh, things?"