Almost immediately the guards began climbing the platform to get to the host club. In the blink of an eye, they had been surrounded from all sides. The two other host club members circled Selene protectively, using their outsider tools to fend the guards off. Pushing, slapping, throwing everything they had under the robes of their inner layers.

  But Selene didn't seem phased, addressing the crowd over the noise of clashing items.

  “The truth has been hidden from you too long,” They began, throwing their hands up wide. Dragging a lazy finger across the air, pointing at every single person in the crowd. Every time it passed someone they stilled slightly, like they were put under a trance.

  I wanted to reach it, and embrace it. But I couldn't risk it with this much surveillance around, so I had to wait for an opening.

  “For you see you didn't come from the ruins of failed, conflict ridden societies but from the process of nurturing evoluti-“ Selene stopped momentarily, barely avoiding a guard’s tackle, Selene tried to start again but a sharp sound rumbled across the whole evacuation room.

  “All students follow the organiser to the other education room. Don't panic, our faculty will deal with the threat.” The familiar robotic tone of an administrator echoed, and the temporary trance the other equalist students seemed to be put under had disappeared.

  In a crowded line the others rushed after the organiser standing by the entrance. Gesturing for them to get out quickly through the entrance. This time I successfully avoided getting pushed back, trying to make my way towards the host club but only to see that they were gone.

  Escaping out of the same hole they caused, the guards following closely after them. Thinking quickly I pushed myself into the crowd, letting the organiser scan my arm tag before I leapt out. Separating from the crowd and sprinting to the safety of a stairwell, thankfully no one noticed my absence.

  I turned and scanned all the different paths I could take to catch up to the host club. My mind was paralysed, the variables stacking up inside my head held the same probability of working I couldn't in good faith decide without making it a total guess.

  Then I saw it. In the corner of my eye in the far distance of the hallway in front of me laid a person covered in a strange blackish smoke. They had no bodysuit like an equalist student, nor a mask, like an administrator, so my mind came to one possibility. Perhaps tinged with naive hope and want.

  My feet began to move before I came to a firm decision of how I would approach this, the sound startled the person to my person as they turned around. Suddenly as paralysed as I had been before.

  “Are you affiliated with the host club?” I asked.

  The person coughed, letting out a black cloud of smoke before they answered, slowly taking a rectangle shaped block from their inner layers. “If you plan on capturing me you got another thing coming, one more step and I’ll blow your head off.” Ah, so that’s what the block was.

  Immediately I stopped walking, hands laid flat against my thighs.

  “Relax, I'm not a guard, I'm also against the equalists,” I explained, keeping my tone logical, “-and I think we can make a trade.. if you're up for it.”

  The person did not lower their rectangle block.

  They puckered their lips, “And I'm an administrator in a dress.”

  Ohh is that what those inner layers are called? I thought dress was a simple verb not a noun, stop it I couldn't get distracted now!

  “Hear me out, I could get you out of here before the guards arrive and you could recruit me to the club.”

  “And why would I trust you?”

  I tried to find the words to explain myself, nobody had ever asked me that question before. It had always seemed obvious to me, lies were the result of subjective thinking. If I devoted my mind to the pursuit of objectivity no matter what cost then I was always in the right.

  But I couldn't say that- they wouldn't believe it, so I tried a different, much harder pursuit. And I thought I could avoid formulating more complex analytical sentences today…

  “The same way anyone would trust a bomb, you decide when to detonate it.”

  The person exhaled a shallow breath, “Some bombs have timers I can't see.”

  I pointed to myself, “But this bomb has a pin you can pull.”

  Suddenly a rush of hard footsteps slammed the metallic floor, we both turned around to be met with three guards. Their guns pointed straight at us.

  We both meet each other's gaze at the same time again, “FINE! Just hurry up-” Without another word I took a hold of the person’s hand and sprinted, dragging them across the hallway.

  I pushed against every wall, turning on every corner only to be met with another onset of guards. Every corridor I saw with at least three guards I crossed out in my head as unusable, which after just a moment of running narrowed it down to half the available paths left.

  Another tightness in my chest began forming, already?! The person beside me didn't seem to be doing better, they were relatively easy to drag but were breathing even heavier than me.

  “I know every corridor of the equalist facilities-” I began, already having to stop to inhale a sharp breath, “I just can't get us past the border to the outside world, and going outside will take a while if we wait for a blind spot-”

  “Go to the circle, there’s an opening from the previous explosion in room 129.” The person instructed, and I couldn't believe I didn't think of that as a possibility.

  “But how do we get inside it?” I asked, already analysing our current location to determine how we could get to the circle and avoid the paths already marked unusable. The tightness had already spread to my arm.

  The person took out the rectangle from the pocket of their inner layer, shaking it knowingly.

  “Ohhh-”

  Now that we had an actual plan, getting us to the circle fueled my body to push past its limit. If I could talk to my heart I would comfort it and tell it everything would be fine soon, if it behaved to my will.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  The guards proved less of a threat when I realised that they may have aimed their guns at both us and the host club but not once had we seen them actually shot. Which meant that as long as the guards didn't get their hands on us we were safe- this statement proved somewhat of a jinx when you were being chased by a whole group of them.

  Turning a corner I abruptly stopped before I could crash into a guard, still the person didn't realise what was going on and bumped into me. Making us fall anyway.

  When the guard saw us they immediately took a hold of me, restraining me to the ground with no weapons- just pure force. The guard called for backup and the person who was laying there, unrestrained beside me, stared at me with an unreadable expression on their face.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING! GO!” I yelled, before the hole of my gas mask was muffled by the guard, releasing one arm from his hold on me to pull in the person.

  I promptly manoeuvred my mouth inside my body suit, ripping off my gas mask to expose a small hole in my body suit. Where I was able to firmly bite down on the guard’s glove. If they are caught, the Host Club ends here, if I'm caught I could try to escape.

  The guard immediately let go of their grip on the person, and they didn't need another lecture from me to start running.

  I tried to fight the guards grip on my torso, struggling against the force of their body on mine. But it was too late- two other guards came and held my legs and torso down. I thrashed, tried biting their hands again but was stopped when their fist down my throat. Helplessly I stared at the white ceiling above, every sense in my body telling me to look away- To do anything but have to see it again. I tried to move again- I was stopped, again. I couldn’t breath but that had always been the least of my worries.

  Quickly the corridor filled with more guards in the person’s absence, and what happened slowly sinked in.

  I tried fighting against them- if I gave up now I could never live with myself knowing that in the moment of my own failure I resigned.

  I was done for. Truly done for. Biting a guard? Exposing myself under my body suit? Helping the host club?

  This was not punishable by a restriction, this was worthy of total isolation. No more outside for me, no more people for me, no more anything for me than the rooms.

  Rooms that were by the thousands. In facilities that for all I knew could be infinite. Echoing the same shape with microdecimal differences I could never confirm. All details could line up with years of painstaking research but one small deviation could mean that It had happened again. I had transferred over night, and it seemed only I noticed. Or cared, because yes yes why would ANYONE else care? They get fed the same bird food and lake water and don't even notice the ph differences because they thought there was one universal lake and all the others were broken. Even WITH evidence otherwise..

  I was broken out of my train of thought when I heard the faint sound of revving in the distance. It only got louder and louder, like it was getting closer to me.

  The guards grip on me loosened to investigate the noise. Just enough for me to be able to lift my chin, looking for the source of the noise.

  My eyes closed on the blinding, black equalist bike rapidly approaching me. I had never thought I’d ever seen a bike so up close again, my excitement overtook my previous despair. I almost didn't notice that the bike was driven by the person from before?!

  “COVER YOUR EYES!” They yelled, before throwing a grey rectangle, slightly different from the one before in my direction.

  “THERE NEARING TOWARDS US, prepare the ballistic shield-“ The guard didn't get to finish their sentence as a sudden mist of smoke surrounded us. Suddenly I felt something, or upon closer inspection it was the person from before tugging on my shoulder.

  The guards didn't notice them due to the smoke, yet still it would be unwise to stand idle here for too long.

  They stretched out an arm toward me, clearly expecting to pull me onto the bike behind them. Instead, I shoved them backward onto the passenger seat and grabbed the handles.

  “Why are y—” they started, trying to climb back forward. “Hey—! I was driving that!”

  “You’re limping,” I said, already pushing the throttle. “If you lose balance we both fall.”

  The smoke still clouded the corridor, leaving the path ahead barely visible. I accelerated anyway. If guards were charging through it, speed would be the only way past them.

  “Who are you to assume that?” the person snapped behind me. “Biking requires less effort and more core stability than running!”

  I understood the argument, but this wasn’t a theoretical debate. It was observable reality. I had watched them stumble earlier; the probability of them maintaining balance at speed was objectively lower.

  “This isn’t speculation,” I said. “It’s visible evidence.”

  “VISIBLE EVIDENCE—?!” they barked behind me.

  Just then a guard appeared directly ahead through the thinning smoke.

  I leaned forward, tightened my grip on the handlebars, and sped up.

  “WAIT—WHAT ARE YOU—”

  The bike slammed directly into the guard. The impact threw his balance backward while my shoulder took the worst of it, using my body as a pivot to twist the handlebars sharply. The bike skidded along the wall as I forced the turn, my side scraping against the surface to redirect our momentum.

  We barely stayed upright.

  Behind me the person let out a furious shout.

  “ARE YOU INSANE?!”

  The bike wobbled but corrected as I forced it forward again.

  “That maneuver reduced interception probability,” I said.

  “YOU RAMMED A PERSON!”

  “Yes.”

  “WITH YOUR BODY!”

  “Yes.”

  “And THEN YOU USED THE WALL LIKE A SPIN AXLE!”

  “Yes.”

  They grabbed the back of my suit like they were considering physically removing me from the seat.

  “If we survive this I’m confiscating the bike.”

  “That seems statistically unlikely.”

  Before they could respond, they suddenly shifted their attention back toward the corridor behind us.

  “Eyes forward!” they snapped. “More guards!”

  I sped up again, weaving through the hallway. This time the person behind me reached into their inner layer and pulled out one of the grey rectangles.

  Even through the chaos my attention snagged on it immediately.

  That was the second time I had seen one.

  The object had a rectangular frame with a pull-string embedded along the edge and a smooth matte casing. Compact. Symmetrical. Purpose-built.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  The person blinked.

  “What?”

  “That rectangle.”

  “…You mean the smoke bomb?”

  Smoke bomb.

  So that was its function.

  “You deployed one earlier,” I continued, fascinated. “But that one produced black smoke. This one is grey. Are there multiple variants? What internal mechanism produces the chemical reaction?”

  They stared at the back of my head like I had lost my mind.

  “We are being chased.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re doing a product review?!”

  “I’m gathering information.”

  They made an aggravated noise in their throat before holding the device up slightly.

  “Fine. Since you’re apparently suicidal and curious.” They tugged the small string from the side. “Inside there’s a compressed ignition capsule. Pull the cord, friction sparks the compound, pressure builds and the casing vents smoke.”

  “What compound?”

  “Magnesium mix,” they said quickly. “Host club design. Portable, cheap, easy to assemble.”

  “Efficient.”

  They sounded pleased at that.

  “Obviously,” they said. “These things have saved our skins more times than I can count.”

  Another guard appeared ahead.

  Without hesitation they hurled the bomb forward.

  “COVER YOUR EYES!”

  A burst of thick grey smoke exploded across the corridor.

  I accelerated through it blindly.

  “You are enjoying this far too much,” they muttered behind me.

  “This is the first time I’ve encountered improvised explosives,” I replied honestly.

  “That explains a lot.”

  We didn’t waste time slowing down after that. The guards were momentarily blinded by the smoke, giving us enough distance to reach the circle.

  The person immediately pulled out another rectangle, this one with a longer cord. They attached it to the entrance of the circle with practiced precision.

  “BIKE AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN!”

  I obeyed instantly, speeding down the corridor just as the charge detonated behind us with a concussive crack.

  The doorway collapsed inward.

  We entered the circle soon after, finally stopping long enough to breathe.

  The climb up toward room 129 was exhausting. Me and the person were both holding the bike on either side, pushing it up with all our combined strength.

  “You sure the guards won’t catch up soon?” I asked.

  “After what you just did?” the person said with a heavy exhale. “They’ll be too busy reinforcing their backs with steel to chase us properly.”

  “Us,” I repeated, noting the phrasing. “Does this mean I’m officially accepted now?”

  They raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” they said dryly. “I came back to save you because I wanted to kick you off the building myself.”

  “And here I thought you were beginning to trust me…”

  “I was being sarcastic.” They waved a hand dismissively. “You’re in. Just make sure you know how to get to Sector C.”

  The words sent a quiet rush of satisfaction through me. Despite everything, the plan had succeeded.

  “Sector C? Yes. I’m fairly certain I know how to get there.”

  We continued up the circle.

  Room 129’s door hung broken from the earlier explosion, so we entered without resistance. A large jagged hole opened directly to the outside.

  The person suddenly perked up.

  “Oh right,” they said. “I never gave you my name.”

  “I never asked for it,” I replied while inspecting the hole, trying to figure out just how powerful a supposed bomb had to be to create it. “You may not be relevant to my life two months from now.”

  They stared at me.

  “If you’re joining the host club,” they said slowly, “you’re going to find I’m very relevant.”

  I sighed, rubbing the ridge of my nose.

  “Is knowing names a requirement for membership?”

  “Uhh— yes. Absolutely.”

  “Fine.” I straightened slightly. “I’m Lichen. F-3.”

  “And I’m Genevieve.”