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NIKO
Niko dragged his feet as he walked to the side of the road, he had already committed to running away from home. The humid Maryland air clogged his lungs. He stuck his thumb in the air to seal his fate of fleeing his father.
His thoughts wandered to how desperately he had tried to prove himself to his father. After his mother had passed his father had changed. Niko would never have been enough, he was top of his class and volunteered at the animal shelter on the weekends but he would never be the son his father wanted. Niko had finally caved, there was forever the threat of being unwound so he decided to run.
Niko’s mind continued to grieve the loss of his old life as a humble minivan slowed to approach him. A middle aged woman with sharp features and brown hair rolled down the window with a smile to greet him. He wondered what this nice woman thought of a 17 year old boy with buzzed hair and brown eyes, he was wearing his usual khakis and a button down shirt which was hopefully appropriate for the occasion.
“How can I help you, sweetie?” The woman asked.
“Could I hitch a ride with you? I’m trying to get to Washington D.C.”
“Of course, you’ll have to share the back seat with my dog Brodie,” a golden retriever's head peaked out from the back seat. Niko got in next to Brodie. The woman continued her audiobook as Niko entertained his new furry friend.
The ride to D.C. was less than an hour, Niko spent the whole ride thinking about his dysfunctional family. He thought of his mother and the last few months they had together. His father did not want a kid but somehow he was here. His mother was the only reason his so-called family lasted so long.
Niko’s thoughts were disrupted as the woman driving exited the interstate. He observed as the minivan passed homeless people and small ethnic enclaves, wondering where he would end up.
“Could you drop me off at the nearest gas station?” Niko asked.
“Of course baby. Be safe.” The woman reminded Niko of his mom. They turned into the nearest gas station and Niko exited the car and said his goodbyes to Brodie and the woman.
TURTLE
Turtle bashed his head against the bus window. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't, not in this bus full of unwinds. Unwinds like him. His mind raced a million miles per hour, trying to process what had happened, but he still couldn't get his head around it. Why, why, why? he asked himself, staring through the glass at the buildings outside. He already knew why though. He knew what got him here. It was his own stupidity, his own sloppiness that outed him to his parents.
And now he was here.
On this bloody bus.
And he was gonna die.
God, he needed to get off this bus.
But how? His eyes landed on the rear emergency exit. The jump out would be a bit rough, especially moving, but he could probably do it. He waited until they were at a stoplight and then began to formulate a plan to push through the back emergency door.
“What on Earth are you doing?” his seatmate asked, noticing him looking back.
Turtle turned back and held his finger to his lips, answering, “Escaping. Keep it down.”
“Seriously? Are you that stupid?”
“Not stupid,” he answered, “Creative. Besides, the worst thing that happens is they catch me and I’m back here anyways,” he replied, getting ready to spring up, watching the stoplight through the windshield and waiting for it to turn green. As soon as it did, he dashed past a few rows of seats, pushed the door open, and leapt out. For a second, the wind rushed through his hair. He felt like a bird finally allowed to fly out of its cage into the wild world, free to do as it pleased, untethered by--
Then he hit the concrete.
ROAN
Roan ran lightly along the edge of a building. He looked down, watching traffic and people rush by below, wondering where he’d go for his next meal. His leg twinged and he winced, hopping off the low wall to sit and massage it. The concrete under him was warm.
After a while, he got up again and swung down a fire escape, habitually glancing down to check the dark corners between the brick buildings and the crumbled asphalt below. No crackheads with knives, or any of the street kids, and it was fairly clean for a city alley. He started on a back route over to the library where he knew that at least a few of the kids would be; for most of them it was their only safe haven, and a lot of them loved to read.
The past few years had really sucked. It’s really hard to stay up and running sometimes. Even a couple years after a panicked plan to avoid unwinding, and an eighteenth birthday spent at the hospital, he still felt like all his anger about unwind practices he’d kept festering hadn’t gone anywhere. Kids kept getting taken off the street and shipped off to be unwound, runaway unwinds kept making it onto the news for getting caught again, and Keris was still stuck in that house, at risk of being signed off.
A few back garden walls and a cross walk later, he pushed the library doors open, heading past the hold shelves to the couches in back. As he noticed a couple kids that he knew, he changed course around a few tables. His leg twinged again, worse, and as he stumbled and limped over to an empty spot, Feather noticed him.
“Ayup,” they said. “You good?” They gestured at his knee.
“Did I never tell you the story?” he asked. They leaned forward and shook their head. He nodded to a couple of the other kids, who put down their books, clearly interested.
“I was 17, and really paranoid about being unwound.” They all shivered. “This was back when I’d only done parkour for a couple years, so nearing my eighteenth birthday I decided that I’d figure out some way to injure myself so that I’d be damaged and couldn’t be unwound. I ‘tripped’ off one of the shorter storefronts, near the edge of town, and ended up shattering part of my knee and shin. I’d twisted it and hit it, and it ended up really bad. Anyway, I was picked up by an ambulance, called by some guy who saw it happen, and I spent five months at a hospital. Surgery, physical therapy, the whole bit. I had a cast for another three months afterward. I found out later that my parents had signed me off to be unwound, as a tithe thing, but with that, there was no way.” He shrugged, sitting back and rubbing the joint. Feather seemed lost in thought, staring darkly at the ground. One of the other kids sniffled and went back to reading.
The pain ebbed and he lay back. Something blocked the light and he focused his vision, and a familiar face swam into view. “Aster!” he said, smiling.
The white-haired kid skipped around the couch and sat next to him. He sat up, and noticing Feather still watching the ground, he leaned across and patted their shoulder. They jerked slightly and looked up, eyes still shadowy.
“Have you met Aster?” Roan asked. They shook their head. “Feather, Aster. Aster, this is Feather.” They smiled at each other. Roan looked over to the other two kids who were there when he walked in, and asked, “Do you two have any semblance of a name that you’d like to be called?”
One glanced up and replied, “I’m Reya.” The other kid didn’t look up but said, “Krie.” Roan grinned at Aster. “Alright, what’re you doing here then?”
Aster snorted. “There’s nowhere else to be.” She pulled her raggedy backpack around and pulled out a pack of MnM’s, offering him one.
“Aw, don’t waste that on me,” Roan said. “That reminds me, I need some kind of dinner. I’ll see you guys around.” He whapped Aster on the side of the head, dodged a retaliatory punch, and strolled out of the library.
Halfway down the block, Roan caught movement out the corner of his eye. One of the gray buses that frequented these streets had just had its back emergency door opened, and a kid made a dive for the sidewalk. Roan recognized the inside of the bus, those kids with a familiar stare. That’s an unwind bus.
Roan made a mad dash for the kid on the side of the road. They had short curly brown hair, a green hoodie, and a pair of blue jeans on. They’d executed a sloppy roll and were clearly woozy. The bus was still heading down the street but people were gonna start noticing, and fast. Roan grabbed the kid’s arm and pulled them up. They were conscious, just barely, enough to stagger into the nearest city alley, around to the back of a parking garage where they went up a couple levels and hid on an inside corner.
“Alright,” Roan said, letting them finally slip to the floor. “The hell was that.”
TURTLE
Turtle couldn’t tell exactly where he was. His head hurt, and the surroundings were suddenly dark. He felt the hand around his wrist slip away, and his vision finally cleared enough to see that he was in a parking garage, a stranger standing over him.
“The hell was that,” the stranger asked. Turtle squinted, trying to sort out what was happening. The stranger had red, messy hair, disheveled clothes, and bruised knees. He looked older, maybe 20?
“I-- um. I needed to get out.”
“Here, come with me. Let’s go somewhere quieter,” the stranger instructed. Turtle nodded. His head was still spinning and he’d appreciate getting away from the busy street. The stranger led him to a boulangerie at the end of a street and walked in.
The cashier at the front of the store looked up, seeming to recognize Turtle’s companion. He didn’t say anything, but slipped into the back. The stranger walked confidently up to where the counter met the wall and leaned on the counter. “I’m Roan.”
“I’m Turtle,” he answered. The cashier came back out carrying two sandwiches. He handed one to each of them. Turtle looked down at it and back up to the cashier. “Thank you,” he said.
“Yeah, no problem,” the cashier responded, smiling a little before returning to work.
He followed Roan who sat down at one of the booths. The seats were pleasantly soft, especially compared to the uncomfortable bus seats he’d been sitting on for the last day or so. He unwrapped his sandwich and began to eat it. It was the first food he’d had since the juvie cops showed up.
“Why’d they give us food?” Turtle asked as he swallowed a bite.
“They give out food to homeless kids. A lot of the teens that work here know what it’s like.”
“Oh, cool,” he answered. The dizziness was fading with the food.
“So, where are you from?” Roan asked.
“Pierre Part, Louisiana. That’s where I get my accent. It’s a small town a little bit north of Lake Verret. I lived there my whole life. Well, my whole life up until my parents signed the unwind order.”
“What were you doing on that bus, then? They send you off to specifically be unwound up here in DC?”
“I guess. Not sure if you can even request a specific camp, maybe the ones around our house were full.” Turtle was more focused on the sandwich than the conversation. They finished their meals in silence.
Roan packed up their food about halfway through and stuffed it in their pocket. “If you don’t have a plan, I can show you around this side of town and some places you can get stuff, like this. I’d be really careful as an unwind, though. I’ll also grab you some stuff for that.” He pointed at the shredded shoulder of Turtle’s hoodie and the scraped skin beneath. Turtle wondered how he’d ended up here, in the care of a stranger, after such a rushed plan to escape the bus. Who was this guy?
--------------
Roan took him to a few places as the sun went down. He seemed to know the town really well, taking shortcuts through alleys and around the backs of restaurants. He showed him the library, a safe place to hang out, but a common place for cops to come looking. He pointed out a couple good hiding places, and routes to lose pursuers on foot and in a car.
It was almost surreal; only hours after being practically shoved out of the house and stuck mindlessly on a bus, to a frantic jump from a moving vehicle, and suddenly this complete stranger was showing him around an unfamiliar city like they’d been friends for weeks. The buildings were towering like mountains. He’d never seen so many people in one place before.
Turtle followed Roan to a nearby convenience store. The cashier looked up briefly and stared at Turtle’s injuries, but went back to looking at their phone. Roan pulled a roll of gauze off the shelf and a bottle of painkillers, and paid with some cash. Before they left, Turtle also bought a bottle of antiseptics with the money he had left in his pockets.
Turtle’s head jerked at the sound of the bell on the door as another teen came in. He looked to Roan, whose expression was unreadable. Did he know this kid? Was something wrong? Roan didn’t move to leave, but stood still, watching.
NIKO
Niko got an anxious feeling as he walked towards the gas station, it was finally setting in that he was not home, that he didn’t have a home. He made sure the minivan had left and began walking down the road the other direction.
Niko grounded himself as he walked. His next step was to get some provisions and find a place to sleep. He found a harmless convenience store and walked in, glancing at a couple of kids loitering near the entrance. He looked away and slipped between the shelves and a few seconds later heard the bell at the door. The two kids must have left.
The bell crashed against the door and Niko jumped, looking up and seeing the two kids dash through the shop. Outside, police lights started. What the heck? They jumped the counter and were nearly out the back before the door closed again. A second later a police officer barged through and the bell jangled again. Niko cowered back against a shelf of candy and chips. The police officer ran and vaulted the counter too, and not a second later the store was quiet again except for the sirens outside. Niko was frozen for another half second, then ran out the front door.
ROAN
He didn’t recognize the kid, but it was none of his business. He left, Turtle following after. “Alright. Next step, we get you a place to--” He froze. Turtle bumped into his shoulder but he didn’t budge. “Turtle?”
“Yeah?”
“We need to run.”
“Shoot!” he shouted as he followed close behind Roan.
The police officer narrowed his eyes, then widened them, likely recognizing Turtle as the runaway unwind. Roan grabbed Turtle’s wrist and sprinted back into the store, barely registering the kid from before pressed against the back wall. He jumped the counter, Turtle close behind, and burst into the alleyway.
“Ack!” Roan said, feeling his phone ring. Still running full speed he saw Keris’s name on the screen and abruptly changed course. Something was wrong.
NIKO
“You there!” the police officer shouted, pointing at Niko, “Have you seen anybody here? Teenage, about 5’5”?”
“Uh…” in this moment Niko realized he could start new, nothing was binding him to do anything, no one to prove. They were obviously two other struggling teenagers. In his logical mind he decided to stop their struggling. “Yes. I saw them when I walked in. They ran out of here when they saw the police lights.”
“Anything else notable?”
“I think one of them was hurt, they were buying medical stuff.”
The policeman said a brief thanks and was onto the next bystander. Niko pondered what he had done and decided that with his fresh start he was going to help unwinds. He realized that the kids he had turned over to the police were probably unwinds too.
TURTLE
Turtle followed Roan as they zig zagged through allies, he knew he was fast but after Roan had checked their phone the pace had doubled. They ducked through back streets and ran through intersections. Turtle was unsure of where they were going and why but kept up with Roan until they finally ran into the library. A cluster of kids rose as they saw the duo scramble into the room.
“Feather, I need cover now.” Roan’s tone left no room for questioning and the kid ran to gather the rest of the group. “Here’s the plan,” Roan continued, “Turtle, I need you to go with Feather to get to the railroad, I’m going to go take care of my own problem.”
“Wait!” Turtle called after him. Roan was already running out of the library. He looked back at the library and then turned away and chased Roan. He was already turning the corner.
“No, come back!” Turtle shouted. Roan still didn’t hear him. He sprinted as hard as he could. Years of running hadn't been for nothing. He could catch Roan if he just tried hard enough.
ROAN
Roan ran. Just ran, as fast as he could, down the sidewalk pushing between pedestrians. He frantically answered Keris’s call, straining to hear them above the roar of the city.
“There’s-- it’s Jordan! He’s-- Mom called the police, Jordan’s trying to hurt me!” Keris sounded like they’d been sobbing.
“I’m coming, I swear. I’ll stay on with you. I’m just a few streets away.”
Keris was still partially inaudible, but Roan hoped he’d be a calming presence. This had never happened before, what happened? What happened with Jordan, and why’d he get violent?
Roan quickly planned out a route into Keris’s room around back. “Keris, are you in your room?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m close to the window.”
“I’m coming.”
Roan skidded around a corner, dodging a stop sign pole, and then went into panic mode seeing police cruisers forming a blockade around the front of the house. He ran back around the corner, then walked out across the crosswalk as casually as he could. If he could get behind-- “No!” He hissed as Turtle dashed across the street. He watched a police officer turn his head to see what the motion was, and the recognition when he put together this teen and the escaped unwind. Roan pushed off again, following Turtle across the street.
“Alright,” Roan yelled, “We’ll just run for it. Great--! Turn there!” Turtle scrambled into the alleyway behind Roan’s old house. Roan vaulted the chain-link fence and helped Turtle over, and zeroed in on Keris’s window.
“I’m here,” Roan said into the phone. He could still hear Keris sniffling over the phone, and a short “Mm-hm” and the line went dead. Roan waved Turtle over while dragging a ladder kept beside the shed up to Keris’s window, and propping it up.
“Hold the ladder,” Roan ordered. Without much of a pause he began climbing, faster than was probably safe, tore off the screen and pulled up the window, which was unlocked. He could now hear shouting from deeper into the house, but just below the window Keris was curled up. They looked scared still, but determined, as Roan helped to haul them up. He climbed back down and waited for Keris to follow before telling Turtle to toss the ladder and run.
“There’s police here,” Keris gasped.
Roan replied, “We noticed. I think they noticed, too.”
Turtle caught up and asked, “Where are we going now?”
“We gotta hope they haven’t closed around the house, and book it down to the freight rail. I was gonna wait, but they’re picking up unwinds tonight and you need to get on that train.”
“What? No. I’m not leaving,” he responded.
“Why not? That’s your ticket out. If you don’t leave now, the cops will keep chasing you until you turn eighteen,” Roan said, slowing to a jog and moving beside Turtle.
“Because you are the only person who I know. You are the only person in my life right now that I have any connection with. I’m never going to see my friends again. My family hated me enough to kill me. But you don’t! You don’t and that’s all I have right now. The streets of this city are the only place that I can call any sort of home right now, and you’re the closest thing I have to family. I don’t want to lose that. Not again. Don’t make me,” he stated firmly.
Roan stopped and sighed. “I’m glad, kid. I hope that I won’t be the only one you can trust. But right now, it doesn’t matter who wants to kill you or not, you’ve been medically ordered onto the dismemberment table, and if you don’t get out of here, that’s where you’re going to end up.” He smiled, then grinned. “Maybe I’ll see you again. You never know. But you really need to go.”
“Fine, but just promise you’ll still be here when I turn eighteen,” Turtle answered, holding out his hand. Roan smiled slyly and reached around to whack him on the side of the head.
Keris poked Roan. “There’s a cop car. Approaching. Um.”
Roan startled. “Alright, Turtle. I’ll be here. I don’t have much of a better place to be anyways.”
Turtle nodded, “See you then.” But just as he was about to run off, the police got out of their car.
NIKO
After asking for directions Niko had found his way to the public library. He entered the ruckus of a group of teenagers arguing. The kids mistook Niko for one of theirs and he was pulled into the conversation regarding some kids named Turtle and Roan. He soon deduced that Turtle and Roan were the kids from the convenience store. He immediately felt the need to redeem himself, especially after turning them in when they were just like him.
Niko asked where Turtle and Roan were, he discovered they were about five blocks away. He began running which set off a domino effect of the whole group of library kids joining him.
They arrived just in time to distract the cops, they were just getting out of their cars. The mob of fifteen teenagers rampaged around the house, making as much noise as possible and climbing on top of the cop cars.
TURTLE
Turtle began to run to the freight train, as he looked back he saw a herd of teens rushing at the cop cars. A part of him believed that they were there for him, that some sliver of the world was still looking out for him. He was grateful that he was still here, whole in his body with better connections to people than he'd ever had before. He had found the support he craved in his parents but had never found. He had a family.
NIKO
Niko had hope for his future, he finally wanted a future. He had gotten the fresh start he wanted for years. He found people that are there to help him and give second chances. He felt useful to the new community that had adopted him.
After Turtle and Roan had gotten away, Niko returned to the library. He planned how he was going to find a job and a place to live. He figured with his new friends he would do alright despite the struggles and uncertainties.
ROAN
Roan watched Turtle run away for a split second, then grabbed Keris’s hand and ran. They yelled something, maybe about the police, but Roan was too focused. The wind rushed by as they made a mad dash between residential blocks, into the downtown area and up to the library. A group of kids were at the alert station, a bench near the entrance. They spotted Roan and Keris and waved them in.
“Hey!” It was Aster. Roan sat on the bench and gasped for breath, while Keris just collapsed into criss-cross applesauce on the ground, panting. One of the kids ran for water. “Hey, I heard something was happening. You two good?” Roan breathed deep.
“We might have a police tail, but I’m more worried about my family finding us. Keris?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have your phone on you right now?”
“Yeah, it’s still got all the parental controls on it.”
Roan grimaced. “Turn it off. You’ll probably have to get rid of it, since they’ll track you through that. Hopefully they haven’t thought to check that yet.”
Keris immediately shut it off, looking as if the reality of the situation was setting in.
“It’ll be alright,” Roan reassured. “I’ve made it so far, there’s no doubt you’ll make it too. And I’ve got a lot of cool places to show you.”