Free Rise by J. A. Souders

CHAPTER ONE
    My mom always told me the world was a dark and scary place. I believed her. Even before I’d been privy to every whispered thought. Every secret plan. Every hidden meeting. No one knew better than I that every decision my family makes, that I make, brings us one step closer to either our freedom or our death.
    What I didn’t know was that I’d court that darkness.
    It’s where I sit now, in the dark, waiting behind a staircase in a long-forgotten part of Sector Two. Hidden and tucked behind a wall that can only be accessed through the service hallways, and then through a broken service door, and finally, through a crawl space that leads to the space under the stairwell. An empty bit of space just big enough for two people to fit comfortably.
    I wait, letting my mind wander and listening to the quiet hum of the machines hidden in the wall next to me. The distant buzz of voices coming from the Square. The occasional clang of metal against concrete and the muffled curse of the service crews behind the wall.
    I’d long stopped listening for her. No matter how hard I listened, she never made a sound.
    Not a scraping of her shoes against the bits of dirt on the ground, or the whisper of clothes against her skin. She always moves as silently as a shadow, and just as gracefully. It’s unnerving, but her uncanny silence is nothing compared to what my family and I have been doing. Or what she could really do.
    Sensing something in the darkness, the hair on my arm raises and I instinctively hold my breath. Even my heart senses the danger and seems to stop its steady thump-thump rhythm.
    Even though every part of me is still, my mind is racing. Thoughts—imagined and real—of what happens to Citizens caught where they don’t belong swirl like a whirlpool.
    Will they just kill me here and now? Will my parents ever know what happened to me, or will I be like so many others—stolen and erased from the records as if I never existed in the first place, leaving my family with nothing but failed hopes? Or, even worse, will they make an example of me? Will they drag me out into the Square in front of all the Citizens, my parents, her, and kill me?
    A cool hand— her hand—runs down my arm from my shoulder to my wrist. Electricity practically pulses from her fingertips straight to my heart, and, as if she’s my real life defibrillator, my heart leaps, then stumbles, before resuming its normal rhythm.
    I let out my held breath in one long shaky exhale as she sits next to me. Her shoulder touches my bicep, her hip presses against mine. She squirms around for a second, more than likely adjusting her skirts, before finally settling down.
    We sit in silence for a long time, letting the quiet wash over us. We could talk in whispers. No one would hear us. Not even the sharp-eared Enforcers. But neither of us wants to break the quiet. There’s no need. We sit, enjoying the warmth of each other’s bodies and the comforting knowledge that, for today at least, we’re together. We’re happy.
    I slide my hand until my fingertips barely brush her wrist. For an instant she trembles, her breath catching in a sharp, shaky inhale, before she turns her hand over, allowing me to lay mine over it, palm to palm. To entwine our fingers together. After another slight hesitation, she lays her head on my shoulder, resting it in the crook of my neck.
    I love the feeling of us sitting here like this. The fondness of her delicate fingers in mine. The sensuality of the soft, silkiness of her hair as it skims across my neck. It had taken me a long time to get her to agree to these secret meet-ups and even longer to convince her to let me touch her in even the most benign way, like just our fingertips. Or sweeping her hair behind her ear. And the first time she’d let me kiss her? I was fairly certain I’d imagined or dreamed it.
    Every time she “forgets” about us, it breaks my heart. It’s like starting all over again.
    I don’t know how