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Escape
by Maia McNeill
Dedicated to Hiro Mashima
Maple Leaf Book Writing Project
Brattleboro, Vermont
Copyright 2013
Hope
Chapter one
I wonder why no one noticed that the vault wasn’t going to last forever? Did they not want to accept it or did they simply choose to avoid the fact because they were scared? Yes, that’s it, they were scared, scared of the fact that they might die soon and too cowardly to do anything.
“When I grow up I’m going to be the first person to explore the outside and prove that it’s not as bad as they say it is!” exclaimed Yui excitedly, her red eyes almost glowing with glee. The class snickered at how stupid the idea was, that is, everyone except for Yui’s best friend Zara.
Mrs. Smith said somewhat sternly, “Now Yui don’t get ahead of yourself, You know that no one is allowed outside of the vault.”
“Yeah, Yui, don’t get ahead of yourself,” remarked Katie. Yui frowned at this statement
“Oh but Mrs. Smith, when I go outside I’ll get evidence to prove my theory. Of course after I go outside it won’t be a theory any more. Then I’m goanna prove to everyone that it’s nice, or at least pleasant out there, so I won’t get in trouble for going outside when I come back and I’ll be the hero of everyone in this vault.”
“Yui,” Mrs. Smith said, very sternly this time
“I’ll sit down now” said Yui quickly, then sat down.
At the end of the day Yui hurried home to make dinner for her sisters. (Yes that’s right, sisters. Not one but several. Five to be exact. Right after Yui’s youngest sister Lilly was born, her mother passed away and her dad always had to work overtime, that left Yui the only one old enough to take care of the house and her sisters.)
As Yui ran through the winding streets she noticed several broken down street robots, their rusted oil tanks leaking oil onto the streets. She heard an old lady sigh when the store didn’t have anything she wanted. She saw a boy picking at the peeling paint on the side of their house. Then she heard the mother complain that she couldn’t find paint in any of the stores she went to. Yui stopped, sighed and swung her head back. “Things are really falling apart aren’t they?” thought Yui, then continued to run wistfully through the winding streets of the vault.
The red door of her house opened without warning. “Big sister I’m hungry.” A snotty nosed four year old’s face full of endless disapproval stared up at Yui. “Make us dinner.” Yui walked inside, well she tried to walk inside but Risa refused to be ignored. She latched onto Yui like a leech in attempt to trip her. Yui took a few steps as if nothing was wrong, but Risa held on. Their cat Mr. Fluffs just happened to cross Yui’s path when she was taking a step, tripping her. Yui fell to the floor. ‘Hooray for me’ Risa yelled in excitement as she leaped from the floor to her room to avoid an unwanted scolding. Yui groaned in annoyance as she walked into the kitchen.
Once Yui was in the kitchen she remembered that her dad was going to get home late so she had to make dinner. Yui lugged out an assortment of pots and pans.( Her sisters may be small but they had the appetite of lions.) Yui liked making dinner. It gave her an excuse to be alone.
When dinner was finally ready and the table was piled high with meat and vegetables Yui called her five hungry sisters down to the table. Just as her sisters ran to the table, there was a knock on the door and their dad walked in carrying a lumpy plastic bag. “Daddy!” Risa exclaimed then ran into her dad’s arms along with Mugi, Natsumi , Momoko and Suzuki.
“Whoa you almost knocked me over!” her dad chuckled, sat down, put his stuff under his chair, then put on a stern face. “Everyone please sit down, I need tell you gals something very serious.” Everyone shuffled in their seats, that is everyone except Risa who rocked back and forth in her seat then THUMP! Risa fell backwards and landed on her back.
“Are you okay?” Yui leaped from her seat and kneeled over Risa.
Risa sniffled then said in a very loud voice, “ Of course I’m okay, it’s not like when I get hurt I start to cry.” Unfortunately for Yui when she said this she swung her arms in annoyance and hit Yui directly in the nose.
“RISA!” Yui screamed.
“Now calm down Yui it was an accident, right Risa, and don’t you want to hear what I have to say?” said her dad. Then he smiled and took a big bulky bag out from under his chair and exclaimed, “I brought presents!” Yui’s sisters face lit up. He pulled out five necklaces. Each had a different plastic stone. He gave these to Yui’s sisters and then he pulled out a jewel encrusted notebook. “This was your grandfather’s before you were born. It was found in an antique shop in Area 29 after he disappeared. It’s been sitting in the back of my closet ever since. I figured you would like to have it since you and your grandfather share the same dream and all,” explained her dad. Yui’s face lit up with joy, then she gasped in amazement. Area 29 was all the way on the other side of the vault and took two days to get there. “Thank you thank you thank you!” exclaimed Yui then ran up to her room to study the notebook. “I’m finally closer to my goal,” thought Yui as she ran upstairs. As she opened the notebook, a wave of curiosity swept over her. The first page of the notebook said “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”- T.E lawrence.
Yui turned the next page and found another quote. “Deep in that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”- Edgar Allen Poe.
In frustration Yui flipped through the rest of the notebook, only to find that it was entirely filled with quotes. That is except for the last page that had the words For my dearest granddaughter, Yui.
Yui shut the book, laid it down on her bed, sighed then got up for bed. Hands grabbed her from behind and covered her mouth concealing her scream.
Dreams
chapter 2
Then it all went dark and she was sitting up. “This must be a dream,” thought Yui. Then up in the distance she saw her parents. She tried to call out to them but all she made was silence. Suddenly they started to disappear. Desperate now, she tried to get up to run to them but an unknown force held her down. Then suddenly an image appeared in front of her. She was about five, sitting on her mother’s lap. “Mother, what’s it like outside the vault?” She looked up at her mother with questioning eyes, as if she expected her mom to go into great detail about an evil dragon named Squinty Eyes invading earth.
“Well,” began her mom, stroking Yui’s silky white hair. Yui gently touched her hair. Her mother was the only person who had put aside the fact that she had red eyes and white hair and had fully respected her ever since she was born. “Almost a hundred years ago now an unknown species invaded earth and was determined to be hostile, so everybody had to evacuate earth. The vault was originally made to hold everybody when life on earth was ending from pollution. ”
The image faded and was replaced with taunting voices of her classmates “You’re never going to make a difference in the vault,” said the first voice.
“Stop bragging you know it’s impossible,” said the second voice.
“Your dreams are the dreams of a five year old,” said the last voice . Then she woke up.
Why?
chapter 3
She was sitting in a small closet that obviously hadn’t been used in a while. Heaps of abandoned books were scattered around on the floor. There was a layer of dust covering every inch of the closet. Light streaked across the ceiling. Suddenly she looked up and realized that she wasn’t the only person here. There was a small little girl. She looked like she was about six. She looked up at Yui with desperate eyes and mumbled something, then scrunched into a ball and started cry.
“Please help. They do such horrible things.”
Suddenly Yui’s eyes widened.“Who, tell me?”
“It’s father,” the girl mumbled then shrank further into a ball and cried harder.
“He’s going to kill me cause I found out about the robots. I found out that I’m a robot and I have a virus so now Father has to kill me. Everyone else is a robot to.That is everyone except for you, you’re human.” Yui paused to take in the girls words. “If what she’s saying is true then I’ve lived my whole life being raised by robots and they didn’t even know,” thought Yui. Then the girl sat up and opened a small door on the side of the wall. “Follow me,”. Yui was about to ask why when she realized that they were going to go to see the girl’s father to stand up to him and she couldn’t just let the little girl go all by herself to face a potential murderer, it was just wrong. So she followed .
Then tunnel had a ceiling so low that Yui could barely kneel and it was so dark that they would have had to crawl no matter the height of the ceiling. They had been climbing through the tunnel for what seemed like an hour when finally the girl signaled for Yui to be quiet by making a hushing sound. She opened a small door just like the one in the other room and stepped out. Yui followed after her. They were in a large room. Lots of detailed antique furniture lined the walls. In the back of the room sat an antique wooden desk. A man in a suit stepped into the room and turned to look at them. “There you are. We’ve been a naughty girl haven’t we Lisa,” he said as he stretched his hand out for the little girl.
Lisa ran behind Yui’s back. “Get... away... from me,” she exclaimed, her voice shaking so much Yui could barely tell what she said. The man sneered. Without warning a long rod that resembled a metal spider leg unfolded from the man’s legs followed by seven others.
“Let’s start with introductions, shall we?” He glanced at Yui. “My dear dear Yui, as you may have noticed some of the robots with viruses like to call me a monster, but I prefer to be called the genius or even better a god, although you sadly know me as the president of this enclosed space.” He chuckled at his statement, but it wasn’t a full hearted chuckle that you might hear from your father, sadly it was the laugh of a monster. Suddenly Lisa screamed “PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING TO MOTHER!”
This made the man scream with laughter. “Don’t do anything to your mother! Don’t you mean forced caretaker, and you’re just wasting your breath telling me that ‘cause she’s already DEAD!” The man’s laughter grew louder as the girl started to cry. Finally the girl looked up, her eyes filled with hatred. Her hand reached into her pocket and pulled out a dagger and charged at the man. The man looked up and stopped laughing. He pulled out a sword and just as the girl got close enough there was a loud screeching sound as man chopped off her head and sparks flew everywhere . Yui starred in horror at the scene not because the man just chopped off Lisa’s head but because the man just chopped off Lisa’s head and she was still moving.
“Oh you can still move? You’re just as stubborn as your mother.” The man’s pupils shrank. “But I’ll take care of that.” The man’s hand transformed into a long fang-like object and he jabbed the girl in her back. The girl screamed in agony. Of course it wasn’t actual agony it was just her perception of agony since robots don’t have feelings.
“What are you doing?’’ exclaimed Yui in horror as tears flowed down her face.
“Oh I almost forgot about you Yui. Well right now I’m destroying her circuits. Very soon she won’t have any power left and I’ll have gotten rid of all the things that stand in my way,” said the man, then smiled at a new thought that apparently made him very happy. “That is I’ve gotten rid of all the things that stand in my way except for you and it’s all that old mans fault. If my assumptions are correct I’m going to have a very hard time getting rid of you.” The man chuckled at his statement. Yui paused .“Is he talking about my grandfather?” thought Yui. The man looked down at the floor at Lisa, then up at Yui and grinned deviously. “Now that she’s dead I can get rid of you,” retorted the man. Still armed with his long fang like object he started to walk towards Yui. Suddenly it occurred to her that if she didn’t go now this man was probably going to kill her as well, so she ran, back into the tunnel from which she and Lisa first entered the room from. But without Lisa it felt like she was crawling through a maze, destined to stay in the shadows for the rest of her life.
“Where am I?” thought Yui. Yui wandered through the tunnels for almost an hour. Each time she came to a fork in the road she had to stop to ponder on which route to take before heading forward, which slowed her down a lot. Yui heard some rustling in front of her. Yui tensed. Was the man back? No it was just a fat mouse, so fat in fact that it’s roles of fat almost reached the floor. “That’s one very fat mouse” thought Yui. Without warning the mouse started to scurry away.
“Wait!” yelled Yui. Suddenly realizing that if she found where the mouse had gotten the food to make it so fat she would probably find people. Now desperate to find the mouse’s source of food she followed it. The mouse obviously knew where it was going. Each and every turn it had memorized as if it had gone this way over one hundred times.
Finally the mouse slowed down and rounded a corner and dove into a small hole.
“No no no no no! Don’t leave me out here to rot!” screamed Yui. All of a sudden Yui started to cry. Then she swung her head back in frustration and whammed her head on the ceiling, causing a board to fall on her head. Yui cringed, wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up to see what hit her, only to see a ladder leading to what seemed to be sunlight. “Wait if that’s real sunlight I’ll be able to reach the surface,” thought Yui. As Yui was climbing the ladder she heard a small crack that echoed off the walls. This made Yui climb faster, and in turn heard a bigger crack. This process continued until Yui was finally three bars from the top. She heard the biggest crack yet, and the bar she was holding onto broke. The bars started breaking one after another like dominos in a line, but Yui was lucky. Just in time she grabbed onto the edge of the top of the ladder and started to heave herself up, which was not easy work with the sun blaring in her eyes.
An old man appeared in tattered clothing, smiled at her and stuck out his hand. As Yui grabbed his hand she realized it felt strangely familiar.
After she was out of the tunnel she asked, “Where are we? It’s so pretty here! ”
“We’re on a mountain that used to be called Mt. Fuji,” answered the man. “Oh and may I ask what your name is?”
“My name’s Yui.”
“ Really? Did you know I have a granddaughter named Yui? She lives underground and right now I’m going to rescue her.”
Yui smiled. “Well you can stop looking ‘cause she’s right next to you.” The man stared at Yui in disbelief and paused for a few moments. Then his eyes softened as he bent down and hugged her.
“I’m so sorry I left you with that horrible man,” mumbled the man.
“It’s okay, just promise me that you’ll never leave me again.”
“I promise.” And with that they headed off into the world to make a new, more reasonable life.
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