Chrizt, if you don't believe that schools are actually prisons, try walking out of one without a permission slip.
Outside in the hallway I'm confronted by another holographic teacher, a plump friendly type with curly hair and plumb-red lipstick. If I didn't know any better, I'd be convinced she was the real thing.
'Young man,' she pipes as she tries to stand in my way, and I walk right though her, headed for nearest exit in my fast loping stride, so that she has to jog to keep up with me. 'You really can't be wandering around without a hall pass. It's against school policy, not to mention a risk to everyone's safety. Please be reasonable young man!'
I walk even faster so that she falls further behind. 'Student Asfinkle, please stop!'
My trainers rap even faster. I'm on the ground floor here, not far from the school's side-entrance. But then, ahead of me, a uniformed school cop steps around the corner, followed by two others close behind him.
'Stop!' yells the school cop with one hand thrust towards me like he's acting in some training video, his other hand gripping his holstered taser as he steps closer. 'Don't you friggin' move!'
Maybe I should have thought this through a little better. The last thing I need is to be arrested here for breaking school policy. They might find out I'm not a real student, and impersonating a student is a serious crime. I know, because I looked it up.
'Stop!' the school cop yells again as I keep striding towards him, and he draws his taser and aims it at my chest - dangerous unruly highschooler that I am. His eyes are bulging from their sockets from the sudden rush of adrenaline going to his head. I can see he's just busting for an excuse to shoot someone.
Behind him, his two uniformed buddies hang back in case I somehow try to bolt around them. They're leaving me no choice here.
It's times like this that I'm glad I took an interest in the Shal martial arts from an early age. Stepping close enough to strike, I lash out faster than the cop can react and grab the hand that's pointing the taser at me, and with the same motion I twist hard enough to snap his wrist with a sickening crack.
His taser drops right into my other hand.
Still walking fast, I aim the weapon at the next cop behind him while the guy is still raising his own in surprise, and fire it right into his neck above his body armour. He jolts and goes down in a spasm of jerking limbs.
I drop the taser and bend to snatch the stunstick from his belt. Straighten up to confront the third cop who's still standing there frozen with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand, gaping at me like I'm death itself approaching in adolescent form. He tugs at his taser but in his panic it sticks in the holster, so I help him along with a good lingering stab of the stunstick to his armpit until he crumples to the floor nicely.
Moments later, I'm at the side entrance to the building and yanking at its plass doors. But of course, they won't open.
Suddenly an alarm starts ringing through the hallways behind me, and a soothing androgynous voice comes over the loudspeakers:
'Please stay where you are. The school building is now in lock down. This is not a drill. Please stay where you are. Members of the local Rapid Response unit are on their way.'
Jezuz, this is getting scary. All I want to do is get out of school early.
But I'm not getting through a locked pair of plass doors in a hurry, even though I can see the playing field and freedom just beyond them.
Retreat. Find another way out.
I pass a startled teacher as I rush along another endless corridor; a real teacher this time, a woman reeking of some flowery chemical perfume. Cameras track me from the high ceilings. The alarm wails in my ears. The gleaming corridor seems to go on forever ahead of me as the seconds tick away. It's all starting to feel like one of those nightmares that you can't wake up from.
My trainers squeak as I round a corner, eyes scanning for the nearest bathroom. I'm figuring my best chance of escape is through a window. But in my haste I've gone in the direction of the school's front entrance, which is maybe not the best of ideas just now - especially since there's a squad of black-masked, black-armoured figures stepping through the distant front doors, aiming their automatic guns left and right.
That was fast.
With a gasp I duck back out of sight. Under my hoody I can feel the sweat beading against my forehead. I'm thinking they must have been on patrol in the local airspace to have gotten here so quickly – just my luck - but there's no time to dwell on it now. I slip off my trainers for quieter running then sprint back the way I came, but when I skid around the corner in my socks I see another squad of figures coming in through the side entrance. I wheel my arms and hurl myself back into cover just as the lead figure turns his masked head my way.
I'm trapped, and by a bunch of Rapid Response guys trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
In the tracing business, cool nerves are something of a prerequisite. Panic is strictly for amateurs. Yet even the best tracer hits moments like these when their back is to the wall - and there's literally nothing left to do about it but panic. At least for a few seconds anyway, just to see what your frightened instincts might open up for you by way of options. In my fright, I start trying the classroom doors along the hallway, hoping beyond reason that one of them will open. Kids stare out at me with their faces pressed against narrow strips of plass. Some are yelling their encouragement. Nothing will open though. Not a single damned one.
The alarm stops ringing. In my mind I visualise the pair of Tactical Teams working along the corridors towards the one I'm in, counting down the seconds when they'll be peeking around the corners with the barrels of their guns.
My racing heart is trying to climb out of my throat as I grab at another door handle - just as I hear the squeak of boots approaching round the nearest corner. But this time the door tugs open, and I almost cry out as I dive inside and close it behind me as quietly as I can.
It's pitch black in here, wherever I am. All I can hear is the ragged heaving of my own breaths, loud enough to be heard from the other end of the school. I try to control them with a Shal breathing exercise until my pulse starts to slow down and my head clears. Panic can only get you so far before it kills you.
While I'm at it, I take out my miniSlate and use it to illuminate the space around me, eagerly looking for a way out.
Wonderful. I'm in a janitor's cupboard, not a single window in sight. It's deep and narrow with shelves along one side full of toxic cleaning products in dayglo bottles. I spot an airvent on the ceiling above my head, which I know I'll never be able to squeeze through even if I shed forty pounds in the next few seconds. Two cleaning bots occupy most of the floor like giant plastic beetles, one sitting behind the other.
There isn't a nook or a cranny where I can hide.
Outside in the hallway, a jingle of equipment alerts me to the approach of the Tactical Teams.
Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe they'll walk right past this cupboard.
Don't be stupid, I growl in my head. The school's cameras will have seen me go in here. These guys know exactly where I am. The only thing in my favour is that they know I'm dangerous, so they'll be approaching my position with caution. I still have a few seconds left.
Another quick glance around the cramped space offers nothing new by way of inspiration. The two cleaning bots on the floor are plugged into wall sockets and recharging. My eyes linger on them, seeing their little holoprojection lenses catching the light of my miniSlate, used for projecting caution signs while the bots are working.
Holoprojectors.
In the way of all inspired ideas, it comes to me in a flash like a gift from the cosmos. I don't even think the plan through. There's no time.
First I stand on the nearest cleaning bot's creaking back, and push at the airvent on the ceiling until it pops open. Hopping down again, I use my miniSlate to take a quick but steady high-res photo of the back of the cupboard, where the second bot is sitting. Then I shuffle down next to it, right at the very back, and pop open the bot's control panel to fire it into low-power mode. Five seconds later and I've establish a Fang connection between the bot and my miniSlate, and I'm squirting the photo image into its holoprojection memory.
I freeze as I hear the muted crackle of a comm signal and someone muttering in reply.
They're right outside the door.
I'm out of time. I need to buy myself a few more seconds.
'Don't shoot!' I wail through the door in my best imitation of a terrified youth, which isn't difficult. 'I surrender!'
'Then come outta there with your hands up!'
'Just don't shoot me!'
While I'm yelling my head off, I'm also busy setting the bot's little holoprojector to project the photo I've just taken of the back of the cupboard. Suddenly the mirrored imaged of the photo appears a few feet in front of my face, flat and hanging there in the gloom. I've just enough time to increase it to a proper life-like size and then the door flies open, blinding me with daylight just as I switch off the light on my miniSlate and hunker down behind the projection of the empty cupboard.
Boots squeak. Men pant quietly. I smell sweat on the inrush of air.
I wish I'd had time to check what the holo-picture looks like from the other side. Please don't flicker. Please don't look like a piece of crap.
'Where is the little cocksucker? Goddamned cupboard's empty.'
'The airvent,' spots someone else, and over the top of the hologram, which hangs across the cupboard from wall to shelving, I see the shadow of someone leaning inside and peering up at the dark airvent above. I crouch down even more, hoping he doesn't hear the sound of my pounding heart.
'What is he, twelve or something?'
'Looks a lot older than that on the feeds, Sarge.'
The figure steps back outside again.
'Damn it. Hootch! Tell surveillance to keep looking. Suspect still at large. Crazy kid must have squeezed himself into the airducts.'
And with that, I hear them moving on along the hall.
I release a breath I didn't know I was holding. Count to one hundred to make sure they're well clear.
They've left the door wide open. As soon as I step outside again the cameras will spot me, and they'll know where I am. But at least that's one problem I can solve from here. Using my miniSlate, it takes me a few seconds to hack into the school's network once again, and a few more to switch off the building's cameras and lock them down.
While I'm in the network, I locate the nearest bathroom from my position and send a command to remotely unlock its door.
Time to get out of here.
I head out again in my socks, bag on my back and trainers in hand. There's no one in sight. In a mad dash I sprint along hallways passing trophy cabinets and shining boards of holophotos, skidding to a halt before each corner, taking a good look to check my path before running onwards. Somehow I make it to the bathroom without being spotted and surge through the door, closing it behind me.
There – the high window at the back of the room. I rush for it, but in my desperate scramble I slip on something that sends me sprawling to the floor. Some kid has thrown toilet paper all over the place. I gasp and blink down at the words that are scrawled all along the paper in black marker pen:
FREE FARRIS! FREE FARRIS BULLER!
More gasps and grunts and I'm opening the window and tumbling outside. I land in some shrubbery and hop clear with hissing curses. Kids are running about on the playing field, screaming at each other in the midst of a touchball game.
I take a deep breath of reinvigorating air while I slip on my trainers.
Man it feels good just having the open sky over my head again.
---
When I make it back to my parked Vito, I spot a patrol car slowly taking a cruise around the carpark. I hunker down behind the dash until they drive past.
The little Vito is stolen, of course, since I can't be leaving a trail while I'm on a job. Using my little bluebox I start the car's ignition, and soon I'm driving slowly and carefully from the school grounds, taking a side-exit to avoid all the fuss around the front entrance. As I head onto the freeway I keep expecting a police car to appear in the rearview mirror, but nothing like that happens.
I'm in the clear.
'Hah-hah!' I whoop, drumming my hands on the steering wheel in celebration.
But then I hear that awful crack of the cop's wrist bone again. And remember all those kids still back there, some of them still facing years of their mandatory school sentence.
Thank god my sister and I never had to go to one of these highschools. We would have warred with the entire system until we were free.
Leaf! In all the excitement I'd forgotten I was waiting for my sister's reply. Freeing one hand from the wheel I fumble for my miniSlate and check my inbox for new messages. Even as I do so, her reply arrives with a ping.
We're twins. This kind of coincidence happens to us all the time.
I need you brother. The Shal need you. Someone has stolen the First Fire!
She's sent the same identical message as her first one.
How typical of Leaf, to stubbornly hold her ground without concern for others. Doesn't she realise I need a straight answer here? Doesn't she know I'm about to head off on a much-needed trip into the mountains?
Damn it to hell. She isn't going to give me any more information over the Wire.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Still muttering my curses I toss the miniSlate onto the passenger seat, realising where I have to go.
To be continued ...
(cc) Creative Commons Licence BY-NC-NDThe High Wild is a passion project that I'm releasing on Steemit as I write it. The artwork is my own. With the support of readers, I'd like to release a High Wild novella as a free ebook when it's finished, under the Creative Commons license. Please consider supporting the project by Upvoting, Following and Resteeming, or donate a TIP for the author's efforts! Cheers.
