Fifteen minutes.

I grab my knife and strap it to my thigh.

Five minutes.

I open the front door.

There’s no light coming from inside the trailer, other than the tea lights I lit on the kitchen counters. I take a cautious step into the cool night air, clicking the door shut behind me. The sky is shrouded with rainclouds, making it difficult to navigate the trailer park without moonlight. I swallow a nervous lump in my throat before walking. I’m not really looking for Chris. I’m not going to find him. I just feel cooped up…and yeah. I’m worried.

I walk around the outer fence of the park, studying the ghostly appearance of the abandoned houses. Everything from children’s toys to spare tires are scattered around the front lawns. Grass is growing around one tricycle, twisting through the tires. It’s creepy on a number of levels.

“You stay here and wait until I show up. Period,” Chris said.

I wince, feeling guilty for leaving the trailer. I should go back. So I turn on my heel and head back to the trailer, making up my mind to sit and wait this one out. I’ve been through too much to run outside and get into trouble like this. I know better. I’ve seen the dark side of society on more than one occasion.

When I reach our trailer, I open the door and slip inside. Chris hasn’t come back yet. Major bummer. I sink down on the sofa and sigh, trying to relax. Get in a yoga peace moment or something.

Chris will come back. He always comes back.

And bam. Just like that, everything changes. It happens so quickly that I don’t even have time to scream. The picture window at the front of the living room shatters into a million pieces. The glass simply explodes, coinciding with a shrieking, ripping sound right next to my head. I roll to the ground, instinctively covering my head with my hands. I feel shards of glass cutting through my jacket, stinging the skin of my fingers.

What the…?

The explosion — if that’s what it is — stops. I look up, head spinning, pushing off the floor with my hands. I wince as glass digs into my palms, drawing blood. Another ripping sound fills the air and the lamp on the coffee table shatters. I snap my gaze to the kitchen, instantly finding the source of the noise: a gun. And a man holding it. He’s wearing a dark blue uniform. A white O is clearly visible on his shoulder sleeve.

Omega.

I freeze. Terror momentarily roots me to the spot. This is exactly what I’ve been scared of for weeks. Being found. And now I’m staring straight into the face of an Omega soldier, his gun trained right at me. He’s apparently just as stunned as I am to make eye contact — and I’m even more stunned that he shot at me twice and missed.

Strangely enough, my first thought is:

Chris would never miss.

The guy snaps out of it, raising his weapon again. No dice. I turn on my heel and sprint outside, running as fast as I can. I weave between trailers, shaking from head to toe. I could have been shot dead the instant I walked into the living room. God, what if the trooper was already in the house before I left the trailer? I could have been killed sitting at the kitchen table.

Those kinds of thoughts only make me run faster. I skid around a corner and spot another guy in uniform, barely visible in the darkness, his head bobbing in my direction. He yells something along the lines of, “HALT!” but of course I ignore him. I turn around and run the other way, rounding another corner, finding two more guards.

What is this? An ambush? How did they find us?

WHERE IS CHRIS?

I dart frantically across dead lawns, through backyards, underneath picnic tables and through flowerbeds. I can hear footsteps and voices now, sounds that are getting closer as they pursue me. I run to the edge of the trailer park, eyeing one of the breaks in the chain link fence. I need to lose these suckers in the woods, but I can’t bring myself to step away from the trailer park without Chris. He’s tactically brilliant, and I can’t see him stumbling into the lap of some Omega soldier. Maybe that’s why he’s not home yet. Maybe he ran into a patrol, too.

“Chris!” I yell, not caring who hears me. I’m already being chased, so it’s not like I’m giving myself away. “Christopher!”

Yeah, that’s it. Go for the full name.

A stray shot whizzes by my ear, nearly grazing my cheek. I jerk backwards and start heading towards the fence, Omega soldiers flooding out of the trailer park like roaches. I can’t believe how many there are. How could this happen? How long have they been tracking us?

I stop trying to rationalize the situation and slip through the break in the fence, diving into the woods. An eerie sense of Deja vu overwhelms me, taking me back to a couple of months ago when I was running from Omega in the mountains…

In the end, I’d escaped alive. Why not now?

I know without looking over my shoulder that I’m being chased by at least four people. At least. My advantage over them is that I’m small and lightening quick where they’re burdened down with bulletproof vests and heavy weapons. So I press harder, sprinting through the undergrowth, putting more and more distance between the trailer park and me.

Just as I’m looking for place to hide, a jolting, electrifying pain spikes up my right leg. I’m running full speed when it happens, making me go down fast and hard. I tumble head over heels to the bottom of a small embankment covered with gravel. I cry out, looking down at my ankle. I’ve been hit with… something. The dark material is wet with blood, hot and sticky against my skin.

I hobble to my feet and try to stand, only to get another electric jolt up my leg, straight to my chest. I gasp and fall to my knees, pulling the pant leg up. Something’s been shot into my skin. A bullet? No. My leg would be broken. I crawl forward, trying to pull myself to my feet, but every time I put pressure on my leg, excruciating pain sends me straight back to the ground.

Moaning, I realize absently that the Omega soldiers are closing in. I can hear their voices and make out their figures but it’s all background noise. This thing in my leg is killing me. It’s all I can focus on. But when an Omega man closes his hand around my arm, I get some sense of clarity and jam my elbow into his chest. He lets go and I hit the ground with an unattractive thud. Before I can even scramble to my feet I hear one thing and feel another.

I hear: Put her down.

And then I feel a tremendous blow to the side of my head, making all the pain go away. Everything goes black.

Not the highlight of my day.

Growing up, I always had very vivid dreams. I rarely had a dream that revolved around science fiction or fantasy — everything I dreamed about was related to real life. My mom, my dad, my latest explosion in the chemistry lab at school. Whatever was in my head before I fell asleep was the subject of my dreams.

Today is no different, except for the fact that I’m not asleep. I’m unconscious. How I became unconscious I have no idea, but I have a feeling it’s not good. I’m stuck in an in-between world of dreaming and reality, mixing real sights and sounds with my imagination. Bursts of light, deep voices, soreness in my leg…what happened to my leg, anyway? What happened to Chris? Where am I… and why can’t I wake up?

I try to shake myself awake but it’s not working. I’m stuck in darkness. No feeling, no nothing. I can only hope that I’m not dead and that this isn’t some kind of lame version of heaven.

“Wake. Up.”

I feel myself bobbing to the surface of reality as somebody with an accented voice repeats those two words over and over again. The voice gets more and more irritated, which kind of ticks me off.