The First Escape by Julie Steimle (book series for 10 year olds .TXT) 📖

from the groupies in the undercity. Another lunged at his chest, but Jafarr dived to the floor and rolled over, scrambling up again. He had a few yards to go then he would be out. His father’s anxious face stared out at him, arms reaching to pull him into the gap out of trouble, but Jafarr never reached those arms. A sudden force knocked him down to the floor. 

That person blew whatever breath he had out of him, forcing him into a sprawl on the ground in pain. But the person that had tackled him did not stop. His captor grabbed his arm and jerked it backwards, clamping down hard with a leaned on a pressure point on his back that made his legs go numb except for the shooting pain running in them. He could not move at all. Jafarr tried to look up at his father, but he could not crane his neck that far. He could only hear the words echo in the hall. “Jafarr! Jafarr!”

But then his father’s voice vanished into the machine works, frantically calling for his son as he was hauled away by his friends. Jafarr lay there on the floor, alone, abandoned, and four hours into his fifteenth Parthan year.

       “Well done, Aver!” the voice of the Kevin suddenly pronounced five feet over Jafarr’s head. His shoes clicked on the floor towards him, feeling heavy on the steel. It was as if his gaze pounded down on Jafarr’s back, but Jafarr refused to close his eyes.

The weight on his back climbed off, stepping lightly to the Kevin’s side. Jafarr could see the pair of small-heeled boots. He almost looked up, but just then two Aleas then heaved Jafarr off the floor, raising him as if to face his captor like a prize. But what he saw was not the muscular giant he had thought the soldier would be, but a surprisingly petite blond girl Aver. In fact, when Jafarr stood up he saw that the girl was not even five feet tall. She was tiny and frail looking.

Impossible. He trembled, just staring at her strangely familiar green eyes as she blinked back at him. How did she knock him down?

The two Aleas dragged him over to Alea Arden. Jafarr hardly met the man’s eyes, averting them to crack in the wall where the soldiers were now climbing in to chase after the rebels. Alea Arden exhaled, drawing Jafarr’s eyes up for a peek. The man frowned, avoiding a look into Jafarr’s face also, pretending not to know him.

“Another one for ISIC,” the Alea at his right said.

Jafarr closed his eyes. It was over. Once a person is sent to ISIC that’s it.

“Unfortunately,” he heard Alea Arden say.

Alea Arden walked from Jafarr to the blond girl, patting her on the shoulder, then rubbing her head. “You did very well, Zormna.”

She batted his hand off with a blushing smirk.

“Did well?” an Alea clenching his bloody nose cried. “She took down mighty Mak here. That guy broke my nose!”

The girl grinned more smugly, lifting her chin as her dimples dug deep into her cheeks, just making her look cute.

Jafarr turned his head away. It was bad enough being caught, but by this girl? How embarrassing.

“Yes, Aver Zormna did very well, better than you Aleas even. I dare say she should be an Anzer. Don’t you agree Alea Arden?” the Kevin said.

Blinking at the floor, his ears felt hot. Jafarr just could not believe it. They were discussing the little twit’s rank and holding him there to watch. What worse mortification were they planning for his fifteenth birthday?

The Kevin said to Alea Arden, “Have this boy taken by to ISIC directly. He’ll have enough there to teach him not to sneak in here again.”

Alea Arden solemnly nodded obediently, sighing once more. He looked down sadly at Jafarr as he said to the Aleas on both sides of him, “You heard the Kevin. Go.”

They dragged Jafarr straight into the corridor. No ado, no scolding. The P.M.s would have given him an earful about how inferior he was, but these men were silent as they hauled him to yet another docking bay where they pulled him through several flight scooters and some early rising cadets. There they had one cadet fetch a transport platform for them to carry Jafarr. In five minutes, the Aleas latched him to the platform, and then climbed onto their scooters. After another minute they were flying through the Surface Patrol tunnels towards the Surface Gate.

Jafarr brooded on the back of the platform as they traveled, his mind going over what would happen to him in ISIC. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, his fingers sliding over his data cards and magni-eraser. A ripple of energy fluttered through him as he blinked to himself. Pulling them out, he quietly slipped them both into his hand, keeping one eye on the road as they flew closer to the Surface Gate. None of them had scanned his I.D. Perhaps none of them except for Alea Arden knew who he was. Escape was the best and only alternative. It would be murder to end up at ISIC again and after this. Jafarr thrust the data-card between the electrical stream that connected the cuffs together.

The electrical binding surged briefly, just enough for him to break free from the bar on the transport platform. Jafarr grabbed a hold of the platform edge, fixing his eyes on the Surface Gate entrance that was speedily coming up.

The Surface Patrol officers turned inside the Surface Gate with hardly a pause. With one leap, Jafarr, jumped from the platform into the morning influx of people that was already coming in from the transit halls. He dropped hard on the cold tiled flooring, rolling at the feet of many startled passersby then ducked under, rushing to a covered edge of the stair they had just passed. He heard the Surface Patrol flight scooters rapidly come to a halt.

“Scrapes!” he heard one curse.

Jafarr scrambled up through the crowd to a far wall where he scanned the wall in front of him, hoping he might be able to find one of those hidden doors they had climbed through earlier. However, they remained more hidden in the light of the day lamps than in the night shadows. In a panic unlike himself, Jafarr glanced over the crowd at the searching flymites who were staring into the people with disgusted frustration but no malice. Their eyes had not spotted him yet in the mix. And for that matter, they did not look long. With huffs, they peered around once more then turned their vehicle back to the Surface Patrol corridor entrance, retracing their steps.

Ducking, he slipped through the crowd of people as they flew by, then he carefully walked out of view into the transit sector where he slipped into the escalator that would take him down to the metros. And though he looked back once, he knew they could not scour the crowd for him long. After all, they were not P.M.s. Alzdar had been right about that. The Patrol didn’t care about undercity politics.

Jafarr rode the metro back to the middlecity where he had school. He walked through the doors into the gray-green hallway directly to his first class, somewhat in a daze and sat down at his desk, keeping the still attached, though broken, cuffs up his arms under his jacket sleeve. And when his friends arrived, perplexed that he did not wait for them at their usual spot in the metro station, he merely gave them a tired nod and closed his eyes, resting his head on his desk. He only hoped his father made it home safely, if safety was what he could find at home.           

 

 

Cuffed

“Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death”—Earl Wilson—

 

 

 

“Scrapes, Jafarr! How do you get these stupid things off,” Alzdar ranted after failing to break open the security cuff on Jafarr’s right wrist after school.

With a tired smile, Jafarr replied, “That’s why I asked you for help. Doesn’t the rebellion have a thing that helps remove cuffs?”

Alzdar nodded. “Yeah, but we don’t keep it around the house.” Then thinking about it he said, “You know, your dad’s shop might have pressure clamps. You could crush part of the cuffs and then break the rest off.”

Dzhon nodded in agreement.

Finding the suggestion useful, Jafarr nodded. “Ok, we’ll go.”

The three-some left the middlecity school hall and walked out into the street. They promptly marched to the metro station, dodging traffic and crowds. As Alzdar spotted the usual groupies in the transit hall waiting for Jafarr, the boys cautiously snuck behind other commuters to avoid them. Before long, they had stepped onto a metro car, ridden one stop over, and stepped off into the middlecity near Jafarr’s father’s shop. Jafarr secretly hoped to see his father there. The dread that his father might not have made it out of the tunnels had haunted him all day. It was likely the Surface Patrol had caught up with him and the others, or more likely the P.M.s had successfully traced his blood and he was now rotting in ISIC—or worse, that he was dead within the undercity tunnels, killed trying to escape.

When they approached the shop, which sat with gaping doors on a respectable middlecity street, all three boys carefully looked in.

“Is my father here?” Jafarr asked.

One man peered out at him then grunted, calling to another man in the back. Jafarr’s heart leapt in his throat, hearing someone answer the man’s calls then walk to the front of the room. But it wasn’t his father, but Tegorii Melzdar in a dirty apron and with greasy hands that came out to meet them. He rubbed his hands on his apron with a frown at Jafarr. “Your dad isn’t here.”

Jafarr’s face fell, his lips going white.

“He didn’t come in at all today—making work double for us,” Tegorii added.

Jafarr nodded with a look out the door, already inching towards the road as if to run.

Alzdar stepped up with an arm on Jafarr to keep him from bolting as he said, “Do you have some pressure clamps we can use?”

The man gave Alzdar, then Jafarr and Dzhon, an inquisitive, curious look. He walked into the shop a few paces and picked up a machine. “What do you want it for?”

“We just need it for a minute,” Alzdar said, ignoring the question.

Tegorii sniffed and looked down at the boys. “I won’t do nothing illegal.”

“You are a Guard Class man aren’t you?” Alzdar asked, taking another step towards to him, pulling Jafarr along.

Jafarr glanced around and down the street and then at Alzdar, resisting the urge to stomp on his foot for overdoing things.

Leaning back, Tegorii peered at Alzdar. “But you aren’t.”

Alzdar shook his head. “Does that really matter?”

Then taking Jafarr by the arm, he tried to pull him forward to show his cuffs.

Jafarr jerked back immediately. “What are you doing?”

“Show him,” Alzdar said.

Making a face, Jafarr complied with a grunt, sticking out his cuffed wrist for the man to see.

Tegorii’s face went white. He stared at Jafarr, his eyes flickering with a million questions.

“A good Guard Class man would help a Zeldar,” Alzdar said, his voice