Chapter 5: trust no one

549’s POV

It was time.

For the first time, I wasn’t clad in a white dress.

I wore a black trouser and a black turtleneck top. It felt… thrilling, like my first real act of rebellion.

I was getting out of here with my friends.

We’ll find other humans, find that paradise I’d dreamed of.

We’ll be free.

I sat on my bed, my legs bouncing in anticipation.

I heard footsteps approaching from the left and froze. Twelve was supposed to be here in 10 minutes. Who—

The footstep stopped right outside my door.

My heart beat spiked, dread pooling in my stomach.

If it was Elliot…

I didn’t finish the thought, couldn’t bear to.

Then something white slid beneath the gap of my door.

I stared at it for a long moment, unmoving, my heart in my throat.

My legs had stopped bouncing. The anticipation that had been building in my chest since the night before curdled into something colder.

Slowly, I crossed the room and crouched down.

It was a folded piece of paper, small and harmless. Like it hadn’t just appeared from nowhere in the middle of the night.

I picked it up with trembling fingers and unfolded it.

‘Be careful. Trust no one.’

Four words.

I read them again.

And again.

The anticipation melted into fear, then slowly suspicion grew.

Who knew? Who had found out?

I looked at the door, then back at the note.

It could be a trap, it could be the higher ups playing games, trying to catch us before we even started. It could be someone who wanted to scare us into staying.

The door pushed open before I could decide what to feel, and Twelve slipped in like a shadow, Fifty nine right behind her.

“It’s time,” Twelve whispered, her blade sharp eyes cutting through the darkness.

I glanced down at the note one last time.

Then I folded it, and dropped it in the small waste bin beside my bed.

We hadn’t come this far to turn back now.

We stepped out of the room, our steps soft and stealth in the quiet night.

We weaved through a series of hallways, some of them familiar while some were new to me.

Twelve moved with a certainty I had never seen in her before, like she had walked this route a thousand times in her mind and finally her body was catching up.

The surveillance cameras were dark, their red blinking eyes extinguished.

The doors opened with keys Twelve produced from the waistband of her trousers without a word of explanation.

“How—” I started.

“Later,” she cut me off quietly.

I swallowed and followed.

Each door that opened felt like a small miracle from the goddess, each empty hallway felt like a ticking bomb.

The facility that had always felt impossibly controlled now felt strangely hollow.

I should have recognized that feeling for what it was.

But the excitement was building too fast, too bright, swallowing everything else.

Then Twelve pushed open the final door and the night air hit my face.

I stopped breathing.

It was cold and sharp and it smelled like nothing I had ever experienced inside those walls.

Like earth and something green and something wild. I tilted my face up instinctively, the way I always did in my flower field daydream, and for one suspended moment—

It was real.

A feeling of euphoria rushed over me.

So this was what the outside world smelt like, this was what freedom smelt like.

“Come on,” Fifty nine urged from beside me, the urgency in her voice grounding me back to the presence.

I took a step forward, and another, and another, till I was sprinting across the bare land.

It surrounded the facility, stretching ahead of us, bathed in a pale glow under the moonlight.

Beyond that was the forest, a promise of cover, of shadows deep enough to disappear into.

That was all we needed to reach.

Just that and we’ll be free.

My lungs burned, my legs moved faster than they ever had, and I felt—despite everything—alive.

It was a deep, overwhelming feeling.

We were going to make it.

We were actually going to—

The alarm split through the quiet night.

The sound was loud, swallowing everything, bouncing off the facility walls and tearing across the open land.

My heart lurched violently into my throat.

“Run!” Twelve screamed.

We ran even faster.

The forest was close, closer than before, the trees more visible in the darkness. I pumped my arms, my breath coming out ragged and uneven, my eyes fixed ahead.

But something clawed at the back of my mind.

We were in open land, completely exposed. And yet no guards had appeared. No voices shouting orders, no bodies cutting off our path.

Just the blaring alarm and the three of us running through the dark.

A sinking feeling settled deep in my bones.

Something was wrong.

Why hadn’t they—

The sound of a gunshot cracked through the night, cutting off whatever thoughts I was having.

I heard the crash before I understood what it was.

I stopped dead in my tracks, dust rising around me.

I turned sharply, my heart in my throat.

And everything went still.

Twelve lay on the ground behind me.

Motionless.

A dark stain bled through the back of her shirt, spreading fast.

Too fast.

“No,” the word slipped past my lips instinctively. “No, no, no—”

I was moving before my mind caught up, dropping to my knees beside her, my hands hovering uselessly over her trembling body.

“Twelve,” I choked. “Twelve look at me—”

“Go.” Her voice was barely a breath.

I shook my head, horrified by the suggestion.

“I’m not leaving you—”

“Five.” Her eyes found mine in the dark, and even now, even here, there was that steel in them. That determination that had sprout overnight. “We came too far.”

She was being strong.

A sob tore out of me, piercing through the night in a different way.

My friend. My best friend.

“Go,” she urged, her hand finding mine and squeezing once. “Please.”

She looked pale, her breathing coming out harsh—I couldn’t tell if it was from the exertion or the pain.

Her image became blurry through the tears in my eyes, but I squeezed her hand back, my whole body shaking.

My heart tightened in my chest. We were so close, so damn close.

“Please, five—”

I bit my lip, trying to stop the tremble as I forced myself to stand, fighting back the urge to give up, to turn around and accept defeat.

Despair settled deep in my chest.

I turned to Fifty nine.

And the words died in my throat.

Fifty nine stood three feet away, her chest heaving, her expression unreadable.

With a gun pointed directly at my head.

The night went very quiet.

“Fifty nine,” I whispered.

She didn’t lower the gun.

And in the cold, terrible silence between us, the note I had thrown away rose up in my mind like a ghost.

Trust no one.