Chapter Eight: Alone

Ynkeri struggles to survive without Lukas, Heli, and Pik.

Ynkeri breathed a sigh of relief when she made it back to the basement door. Each step made her head throb and she began to feet ill the last half of the walk back. No light under the door, she decided to knock, her knuckles hitting the metal lightly. After no answer she leaned forward until her ear almost touched the door, but she could hear no sounds, not even the scratching nails of scurrying mice.

            Panicked, Ynkeri pounded on the door with the butt of her hand. No answer.

“Where are you?” She whispered into the empty air. After several seconds of standing stunned, she had an idea.

It took her a long time to get to Heli’s door. She feared falling again and so had to make a slow way through the streets, her eyes sharp and her ears open for sounds of the scanner’s distinct hum.

Like the basement, Ynkeri saw no light through the door’s cracks. She tapped on the metal, but knew it was a waste of time. They’re gone, she thought as snow began to fall. If she thought it would make a difference, she would have sat down and cried, but Ynkeri knew all it would really do was freeze her face and soak her clothes.

Despite the greyed out sky, she guessed it to be after noon. It was getting colder, too. Setting her teeth, she decided finding some place warm to sleep was most important since she’d eaten only a few hours earlier. She tried not to think about the gnawing in her belly that would come later, making her weak and tired.

She walked away from Heli’s door and decided she would take the infamous stairs Lukas teased her about each time they passed them. On the roof, the snow was a pure white, unmarked by footprints. No one had been up here for at least a few hours, but that didn’t really tell her much.

She wandered for a little while in the white desert until she saw a black spot in the distance on a lower building. A place that was more water than snow meant warmth and she would need that kind of heat to get through her first night. As she got closer, she saw that it was the bakery from her first day as a runner with Lukas. It wasn’t an ideal spot- it had almost no cover- no way to stay dry. All that aside, she breathed a sigh of relief as she leaned against the chimney, the constant fire below heating the stone and melting everything within a ten foot radius. As she stood there, wondering what to do next, it hit her suddenly that the bakery was not far from the small space they’d used to hide from the scanner.

She would need to take her time and so she did. Laying at the roof’s edge, she figured she had a minute or so before the wet began to seep into her bottom layer of clothes. She made the most of it by looking down the length of the street which was completely empty.

She was reluctant to try getting down from the roof. Having fallen once, she was terrified of falling again, but she knew that time was short and so she steeled herself and inched her way down the uneven stone wall, one foothold at a time. All the climbing she’d done with Lukas had given her a wiry strength in her arms and she’d come to enjoy they burning sensation as her muscles worked.

When she reached the bottom, she looked around again. The alley where Lukas had scrawled the series of hash marks was unchanged, but for the wall itself, whose previous message was long ago washed away by weeks of rain and now snow. Pushing the trash to the side, Ynkeri found the square door and the lock which barred her from shelter. She took it in her hands, examining it closely. It was rusty, but strong. Lukas had picked it with thin, metal rods, but she didn’t have anything like that. She wouldn’t know what do with them even if she did.

The thin piece of metal that actually slid across the door was screwed down in only two places. Just like the lock, it was rusty, but also brittle. Pulling out the spoon she’d used to mark her height, she wedged it in between the door and the metal latch. The spoon was heavy- not like the one’s Lukas had- and it didn’t bend even though she put all her weight into pulling it down. The latch bent some and Ynkeri smiled. All she would have to do now is continue to weaken the metal until it broke.

In the end the screws ended up coming out of the mortar first, but Ynkeri decided that would be to her advantage. She used the round end of the spoon to push the latch back in its place. When she left the hidey-hole, she’d just put the screws back in the mortar and it would look like it was locked.

Crawling into the dark space, she was greeted by warmer air than outside. Closing the small door, Ynkeri felt around in the dark, looking for the walls. The room felt larger without Lukas with her, but it couldn’t have been more than five steps front to back and around eight, side-to-side. The ceiling was tallest in the middle and as she got closer to the walls, they gradually became lower, like a dome. Occasionally, she could hear footsteps above her like there were a set of stairs right on top of her head. The sounds made her jump a little at first, but the space was dryer than outside and she didn’t feel any other doors in her blind search that would allow her to be discovered by accident. Maybe tomorrow, she could start scavenging things to make it better. For now, it was better to stay put until after dark, when she could move around without drawing unwanted attention.

Her stomach grumbled, but Ynkeri ignored it though it took considerably more effort than she remembered. The sense of uncertainty which loomed for the last few hours finally sank in as she sat huddled in the black. Back to where she started, she took stock of what she had. Two layers of clothes put her in a far better position than when she first arrived on Eris. How long ago had that been? Six months? Maybe more. She’d turned twelve a little while ago, but she couldn’t remember what month it was anymore. Without the routine of school, knowing the day and month lost her interest.

Heli had given her warm boots and the jacket she wore was thick. There was plenty of water, too, though in the form of snow. Food would be hard to find, but the bakery was only a block away. Perhaps there would be leftovers or burnt pieces the owner would have to throw out.

She didn’t have her metal rod anymore- she’d left that with Lukas when she went to spy on her old house, but she did have the spoon she stole that morning and it was already proving to be useful.

            As she lay down on the cold cement of her new home, she decided she would spend as much time as she could each day looking for Lukas. The marks on alley walls would be a good way to locate him. I’ll break Heli’s code, she decided as she drifted into a nervous sleep.

Author's Note

Please review on all levels: diaglogue, story line, character development. Please read this chapter in its entirety before reviewing as a courtesy. While this is a middle chapter, there is no need to start at the beginning unless you prefer.