Free Minds

Chapter 98.

   Rav, now on his knees, stretched out a hand toward Landon and Camila without even looking back. The pumps of my heart sped up as I glanced at their paper in Landon's hand. The paper that was going to reveal what we'd gone through so much for. What Tali had sacrificed her freedom–and to a large extent, life– for. The one thing that could send all of Mr. Speck's plans crashing down to harmless dust.

   And yet, Landon and Camila didn't appear to share my same hunger though. As time continued to pass with Rav, empty hand in the air, they kept giving each other the strangest looks.

"Landon," My impatience was evident in my whisper. "What are you doing? Hand it over."

   After giving Camila one last glance, he did.

   As Rav placed it next to the other papers, I had to double check to be sure I wasn't drooling from the excitement as I peered down at the inscription on their jet black paper. The floor before us dimmed when we all circled around the pages for a better look.

   My mouth became a desert fast.

   No one said a word and to be honest, that made me feel a bit better because it proved I hadn't suddenly gone insane and that we were all looking at the same blank piece of paper.

   The thoughts of our doom about to flood my mind, however, halted the minute Camila shifted, creating space in our group huddle and causing more rays of the lights in the room to brighten the enclosure we'd formed.

   My hands swooped up the black paper before anyone could blink. I held it up to face some of the bright lights in the room, my suspicion now undisputable certainty when the outlines on the paper became clearer. We should've known by now that Mr. Sacury would write down the solution to our problems in ink that was only visible (barely) when shown the brightest lights.

   The longer I stared at the paper, the more words and phrases I kept considering as a better substitute for 'write down'. Rather than inscribed in a word or words, our solution seemed to stand between an elaborate sketch and a symbol.

   Narrowing my eyes to a squint made it easier to make out what was on the paper. Streaks of lines, ranging from slender and short to long, wavy ones were at its centre. The rough, curved shapes around the lines made the latter appear contained. When I took a step back and held the paper a bit further from my face was the moment I noticed though the curved outer parts barely touched each other, they still had a strangely unique coherence. A coherence that reflected the shape of a lone cloud in the sky on a sun–

   That image in my mind froze when everything suddenly stopped. All that my mind was choosing to see was the drawing on the paper as everything else, including my own hand faded into the blurry background.

   Just as the parts of my brain that pushed through the stillness began questioning what was going on, a buried memory shot through them with a familiarity so impactful that my feet were taken two steps back as the paper escaped from my hand to the floor.

"Beth," I felt Camila's hand rest on me from behind. I realised then that my steps had made me bump into her. "Are you okay?"

   Landon was also at my side, asking something similar.

   But I couldn't pay attention to them even if I wanted to. They were focusing on the wrong person. I wasn't the one who needed to be asked that question.

   The minute my eyes met Dorian's wide, shiny ones, I knew we were thinking about– or rather, remembering–that night. That night where I met Dorian in the basement and he opened up about the sad, dreary parts of his childhood. The night he told me about the institution and about the things they'd done to him. The night he showed me the things they'd done to him.