"Well, boo hoo," I suddenly snapped. "Poor you. You've been wasting away here for half a decade, Donovan. Why didn't you find your own way out? What do you want from me?"
He stared at me like he was going to lash out, then his face fell and he got to his feet.
"Wait, Donovan," I said to his back as he walked away, but it was no use. The world was falling to pieces, and I was crumbling right along with it.
IT WAS OVER the next few days that I started to understand how people survived knowing they'd never again be free. It was as simple as just switching off, forgetting that you were alive, that you'd ever existed outside of Furnace's red walls. You just made your way from place to place, did what they told you, ate and slept, but you stopped thinking of yourself as human. We were robots, automatons who had every appearance of humanity but who were dead on the inside.
By some twist of fate, it was Zee and Donovan who did their best to keep the idea of freedom alive. Every time I saw them they talked about ideas they'd had-trying to melt the rock with laundry detergent, trying to chip their way down to the river in Room Three, greasing themselves up with canteen fat so they could squeeze through the gap. I just scoffed at their plans the same way they had scoffed at mine, the idea of getting out now laughable to me.
But there must have been a part of my mind that still dreamed of escaping, because the image of the river never truly left me. I'd find myself thinking about it while working, while my conscious mind was engaged with chipping or bleaching the laundry or cleaning the filth off the toilets. I'd suddenly notice that I was trying out different scenarios in my head, testing escape plans without even knowing I was doing it.
I tried to stop the images because they were so painful-like wishing for something you knew you could never have. But they just wouldn't go away. My body and my mind were confined here, but my soul, or my imagination, or whatever, wouldn't rest until I was breathing surface air.
A week passed since Zee and I broke into Room Two, a week where I barely said a word to anybody, barely even made eye contact. Donovan and Zee started spending more time alone without me, giving me cautious glances whenever I approached. I didn't blame them, I was a shadow of my former self and my dark eyes were haunted by something that scared my friends. As if my resignation were a plague that would spread to anyone close by.
Two weeks passed, another visit by the blood watch, five more kids dragged into the vault, their veins pumped full of darkness and death. I didn't watch, just lay awake in bed-half hoping they wouldn't take me, half hoping they would. Anything to break the monotony. None of them returned this time, and there was no further sign of the creature that had once been Monty.
It would have gone on like that forever, an eternity of hopelessness and misery, but for one instant of madness. One beautiful, crazy moment in the canteen's kitchen.
DONOVAN AND I were on trough room duty, both of us working the processor and blending the trash to put in our meals. We hadn't said a single thing to one another for almost two days, and I wasn't planning to do anything to change that. Donovan, though, had other ideas.
"Remember that day?" he asked, his voice so unfamiliar that it startled me. I didn't respond, didn't even look up, but he went on anyway. "Monty's big brunch? Man, I wish he was still here. That was some tasty trough."
I couldn't bear even thinking about it, so while he chattered I crouched down to turn on the stove. I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back up.
"What the hell happened to you, Alex?" Donovan asked, gripping my overalls as if worried I'd make a run for it. "I thought you said you'd never let this place beat you. You were a breath of fresh air in here, man. For a little while back there I actually thought you were gonna do it, gonna get out."
I wrenched myself away so hard that Donovan's rubber glove came loose, sitting limply on my shoulder. Grabbing it, I threw it at him by way of response, getting down on my haunches again to switch on the gas. With a hiss it started feeding through to the burners, and I hurried to get to the lighters, cracking my head on the counter as I stood up.
"You just gave up," Donovan spat. He was furious, I could tell from the specks of spittle crowding in the corners of his mouth. "Like some gutless wonder, some chicken." He reached down onto the counter and picked up a handful of rancid white meat. "Yeah, this is what you are, Sawyer, chicken. Processed, dead."
I ignored him, lifting the chained lighter to the burner and sparking it up. I heard a squelching sound and turned to see Donovan stuffing his glove full of the wet flesh, his face twisted with some strange delirium. I was about to break my silence to ask him what he was doing when he pulled back his hand and launched the disgusting missile in my direction. At that distance he couldn't miss, and the packed glove slapped me right on the cheek, trails of chicken fat dripping against my lips.
I reeled backward, wiping my face in disgust.
"Jesus," was about all I could splutter. The glove had fallen on the burner, and I picked it up to lob it back in Donovan's direction, feeling the meat inside soft and cold against my fingers. But something stopped me, a flash at the back of my mind that was bright enough to blow away the shadows of the last fortnight.
I looked up at Donovan, feeling my skin prickle and tighten, feeling my blood fused once again with adrenaline. He recognized the expression straightaway and grinned.
"What?" he asked. "What brought you back?"
"This," I replied, holding up the dripping glove.
"You planning on battering your way out with a meat-filled rubber glove?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Not quite."
I picked up the lighter again and held it to the burner, watching the air around it explode as it ignited. Then I pictured the crack in the rock that led to the river, saw it packed full of rubber gloves just like this one.
Only filled not with meat, but with gas.
JUMPERS
"OH. MY. GOD," said Donovan when I whispered the idea in his ear. "That's genius. Why the hell didn't I think of that?"
"You did," I answered, rummaging under the counter and picking up a box of rubber gloves. There were a hundred pairs in each carton, more than enough for what we had in mind. "If you hadn't splatted me with that meat missile, I never would have had the idea."
Donovan scratched his head and looked at me apologetically.
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I kinda just lost my head. Speaking of which, you've still got a little…" He pointed at my face, guiding me to a white worm of chicken tendon that had dried to my upper lip. I peeled it off and flicked it at him.
"So how do we do this?" he asked, brushing the flesh from his overalls. "I mean, it's gonna be hard to smuggle the gloves out; we go straight from here to the showers."
"But we're not under guard here," I replied, pulling a glove from the box and blowing into it. It expanded like an udder, then deflated with a farting sound. "I've never once seen the blacksuits watch to make sure we shower after being on trough duty. It's not the same as chipping, no sharp rocks or mining equipment to smuggle out."
"I guess they're not too worried about someone getting stabbed with a carrot," he replied. "Okay, so we smuggle the gas out and hide it in the cell. Then take it with us for chipping."
I nodded.
"The only problem will be getting it into Room Two," I said. "Every time we go in there we're risking our lives. And they only have to catch us once to know what we're doing."
"And there's only so many times I can threaten to bring down the roof before the guards start getting suspicious."
I swept my eyes around the room, checking to make sure nobody was watching, then puffed hard to blow out the burner flame. Wrapping the opening of the glove around the gas vent I watched as it began to expand, the main body bloating first before each of the five fingers stretched out like an unfolding hand. When it looked like it was ready to pop, I plucked it off and tied a knot round the base, then held it up triumphantly.