The Brotherhood: Jasmine: Followed

[k_a_webb]

From the time I started walking down the alley I knew I was being followed. Miles didn’t want to lose me. He’d told me that himself at the end of one of my training sessions and that was when I realised I had to leave. Running away from the Brotherhood was never going to be easy, but I planned it all out so that by the time he’d put in an application to train me personally, a thought that made me shiver, I was ready to go. That did mean leaving everything behind, especially the mobile phone I’d be given, because I knew there was a tracker in it.

The phone I pulled out of my pocket was one I’d bought. Using the only cash I’d permitted myself to take out of the account the Brotherhood had set up for me, to hold the money they paid me, and I didn’t want it, even though I needed it in order to survive. Biting hard on my lip I wondered if I was doing the right thing by ringing the number that I’d found on the inside of one of the many bathroom stalls I’d been sleeping in. It had said: ring in case of emergency. As far as I was concerned being followed by someone who wanted to take me back to the Brotherhood was an emergency. Finally I gave in to the fear I was feeling and pressed call, hoping that I was right, hoping that someone from the Unity had left that number there because they wanted to help all escapees.

“Where are you?” a male voice asked after the first ring, making me jump because I hadn’t expected anyone to answer the phone so quickly.

“Walking down an alley between West View and Gordon Street. I’ll be coming out next to the Gordon Street mail box.”

“When you exit the alley turn right and walk up Gordon Street. I have an orange car, you can’t miss it, and I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

An orange car didn’t sound like the best get away vehicle, but at least it meant I’d be able to see it easily. Instead of returning my phone to my pocket, paranoia getting the best of me, I dropped it, hoping that no one else had been able to find me. Having someone follow me was bad enough, but if Miles realised where I was I didn’t doubt he’d come after me himself. Like everyone else I’d heard stories about the Children that he chose to train with him and I didn’t want to be one of them. I hadn’t even wanted to become one of the Brotherhood, but we were dangerous, at least according to the adverts, so Mum had given me no choice. On the day I stepped into the office to sign myself up she walked away.

It seemed to take much less time to reach the end of the alley than I thought it would and turning left down Gordon Street made me feel uneasy, because I knew I wasn’t safe. All I wanted to do was run, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I forced myself to keep walking, as though I didn’t know someone was behind me, as though everything was normal, or as normal as it could be if you were on the run from the Brotherhood. The orange car appeared what felt like hours later and when it stopped beside me I got into the passenger side. When I looked at the clock on the dashboard, the driver pulling away at speed, I found out that the hours had been less than five minutes, and I knew I could easily have gone from the frying pan to the fire.

Strangely, the first thing I noticed was quite how good looking the driver was. Mentally I berated myself. The man could be kidnapping me, because I’d been stupid enough to ring a number I’d found, and yet there I was staring at him in a way I remember once staring at Miles. Back then I hadn’t heard the stories about him, so it had been nice to feel some normality creeping into my life. Glancing at me the driver smiled, our eyes meeting for a moment, before he turned his attention back to the road.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said. “I’ll take you to the closest Unity safe house and there the Brotherhood won’t be able to find you. I know because I was in the same position you were once. I found the number of my driver in the phone box I was searching for coins and it wasn’t until I was being followed that I called it, although by then I’d been on the streets for three months. Apparently that’s an accomplishment. No one else in any of the Unity safe houses has been on the run for that long – the Brotherhood normally find them long before that, but I had an advantage. I can turn myself invisible for short periods of time, so that gave me a chance to disappear every time they found me, until that last time. I hadn’t eaten for over a week and I knew if I burnt my energy to become invisible I probably wouldn’t be able to survive, so I rang the number, hoping that it was someone who was going to help, and it was.”

For a long time I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. Did I congratulate him for being on the run from the Brotherhood for that long? I’d only been running for a week, but then I doubted he’d been one of Miles’ favourites. Did I ask him questions about the safe house? Personally I wouldn’t answer them, just in case, because he had no way of knowing if I was truly seeking sanctuary or if I was just trying to get behind the wards to learn all the secrets of Unity.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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