Chapter 7: Myra
Myra and Zahir must escape the headquarters and complete their mission without being caught.
Previously on PHOENIX… “The voices grew louder as someone opened the door to the office they were in. With a flash of light, a woman and a man entered and pulled the closet door right open.”
For a second, Myra was sure they were about to die. Both the man and the woman had a black handkerchief covering their entire faces. They stared down at Zahir and Myra, their guns pointed at their faces, and everyone froze for a moment. The man and the woman looked at each other, and then at Zahir and Myra, where their guns were pointing. Myra didn’t know whether to say“Don’t shoot me!” but before she could, Zahir was the first to speak.
“Khaled, Yara, I have never been so glad to see you.” He shot to his feet and embraced the man.
Myra vaguely recognized the name. He was friends with Zahir, or at least acquaintances. Zahir had many of those, an expanding crowd that Myra had never really joined. Her crowd consisted almost exclusively of Zahir. His friends never talked to her when he wasn’t around, and they certainly weren’t bursting with friendliness now.
“What are you doing here, Zahir? I thought you were supposed to be out of here already?”
Zahir smiled, “Isn’t this a nice surprise?”
The girl, Yara, crossed her arms. “I think you’re taking this too lightly. I knew Ahmed shouldn’t have given you the job yet.” She also looked familiar, closer to Myra’s age. They’d probably attended school together, not that Myra had paid much attention to anything around her.
“Hey, we were just making sure we didn’t get arrested. We heard commotion, so we went into the closet,” Zahir replied.
Yara nodded, still unconvinced, before turning her gaze to Myra.
“And who are you?” she said, making Myra wish she could duck back into the closet.
Zahir answered for her, and Myra held back from kicking him in the leg. “This is Myra Laghani. She was the distraction for us to get back here.” Myra knew she wasn’t exactly popular, especially when people knew where she’d applied to work, but it didn’t hurt any less to see the pair of them try to hide the displeasure at the sound of her name. It didn’t fill her with much confidence that alleged members of Ahmed’s team didn’t know parts of the plan. She knew that was on purpose, to spread out the information so that one arrest wouldn’t jeopardize the whole mission. Still, it felt unorganized.
“Well, do you have the information?” Khaled asked.
Zahir held up the flash drive.
“Then you need to get out, fast, before the guards wake up and realize what happened.”
“You knocked them out?” Zahir asked.
“Yeah, and the sedative won’t last forever, so you need to get a move on.”
“Your dad will kill us if we don’t get you out of here alive,” Yara added.
Khaled chuckled wryly. “And I think your friend would rather not find herself in guard custody.”
Myra didn’t say anything. Didn’t all of them want to make it out alive? Just because she might have a job in the Settlement, she didn’t think these snide comments were warranted. Then again, Zahir had certainly said worse.
They closed the office door behind them after checking that the hallway was clear. Just as they reached the end of the hallway, Myra whipped her head around to see three guards entering the opposite end of the hallway.
“Are they with us?” she whispered.
“I don’t know.”
They slammed the door to the stairwell, scaling the stairs as fast as they could, only two floors from the entrance. “Faster, faster,” Yara called
Myra could hear her heart pounding as their feet slammed against the steps, echoing in the empty stairwell. And then, several more footsteps joined the clamor.
“They’re coming from below!” Zahir said.
Khaled, who was the furthest down the steps, quickly reversed course, turning around to the door to the second floor. He pushed Myra, Zahir, and Yara behind him before shoving the door closed and locking it. Another identical hallway of offices, some of which had the doors flung open, had already been searched—by whom, Myra wasn’t sure.
The guards were kicking at the metal door, the clang sounding down the hallway. They didn’t have much more time.
Yara entered one of the offices. “Follow me,” she said. When they were all in the office, she locked the door with shaking hands.
At the window, Khaled was smashing it with a metal tool he took from his many pockets. It took several attempts before the glass was webbed with cracks, and one more before they could feel the air. He pulled another tool from his pockets, a rope with an attachment that he secured to the bottom of the windowsill.
“It will break your fall, there’s no time for being scared of heights.” He held out the rope to Myra first, and before Myra could question why she was first, or pause to consider the height she was about to jump, she heard more footsteps in the hallway.
With a gulping breath, she jumped.
She was falling until the rope caught around her waist, and she lowered to the ground, mercifully at the back of the building, where there was no one in sight. The rope slithered up, and Zahir was the next to descend, his mouth set in a hard line as he fell next to Myra.
At the window, Khaled and Yara peered out of the window.
“Don’t wait for us,” Yara said, “Run!”
Zahir took Myra’s hand, and they did, right out of the headquarters, along the back alleys behind the other governmental buildings that were similarly deserted during the daytime.
There were no guards in these streets; it seemed as if all of them had been dispatched to the headquarters. The weapons in there were certainly a priority to protect. If the Ahmed’s men were to leave with parts of the arsenal, the Banks’ guards would find themselves in a bit of trouble with the Settlement. One man without a gun was nothing in the face of an angry crowd.
Still, it was disarmingly quiet. Myra tried to hide her face, but it was impossible to predict where all the cameras were hidden. With the border wall so close to them, there was certainly someone watching. As soon as they reached the edge of the residential section, they both stopped, panting and huffing as they tried to catch a breath.
Myra almost wanted to laugh. It was barely even midday, and yet she felt like she was in a different life. The sight of the market streets made her remember her life.
Her mom. Myra’s mom could not find out about this.
“What do we do now?” Myra asked Zahir, who, after catching his breath, seemed to remember his anger and stepped away from her.
“You will go home.”
“And do what? Sit there?”
“Yes.” Zahir seemed unfazed by her rapidly increasing temper.
“They could be after me, don’t you think those cameras were capturing our faces?”
“My dad told me not to worry about that.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t seem like you know much!”
Now, Myra was a bit incensed, as the reality of what they’d just done started to sink in. “Why did you even rope me into this scheme if you weren’t going to tell me anything?”
“I wish I hadn’t asked you. I told my dad to come up with something else, but he’d insisted.” He couldn’t meet her eyes again.
“Don’t ask me for anything again if you won’t even tell me what’s going on.”
“Fine,” he said, “I was planning on it.”
“Good.”
Myra stared at his cold, hard eyes, fixed on something far away from her. She couldn’t see anything behind them. Not fear, not guilt, nothing, and it scared her. Where was her best friend?
“Goodbye, Zahir.” Myra turned away before she could do something stupid like cry. He didn’t follow her, even though they both knew that their houses were in the same direction.
She tried to force her mind to follow her and not dwell on where she had left him standing there in the alleyway. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.
And she was so stupid to answer his plea for help in the first place. Why even seek her out if he never wanted to talk to her again?
She wouldn’t fall for it a second time.
For the length of her walk, she tried to ignore the feeling of a hand on her shoulder, a following gaze. She pictured the guards arresting her right in the middle of the street, taking her away without anyone the wiser.
But no one stopped her. She waved at the midday shopkeepers and raced up the stairs into the apartment, hurrying so fast that she almost stepped on the letter someone had pushed under the door.
She knew what it was immediately. No one in the Banks had access to paper like this. With shaking hands, she tore open the seal, revealing an equally sumptuous page with neat black penmanship.
Myra,
We are pleased to welcome you to Phoenix. Please join us for work tomorrow morning.
To the stars, for humanity.
At the bottom, the signature of none other than Rosalind Richards. Myra traced the letters carefully with her fingers. This was her salvation. No longer was she to waste away where she wasn’t even wanted. At Phoenix, all her dreams were going to come true.
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