Quoteables and Literature 2/4

Here is a story sent in by Cinnamon.

Chapter one: Coco
 
 

Coco grunted, and checked her watch once again. She sighed, and ran a pale hand through glossy dark hair. Something went terribly wrong. They should be here by now, or, at least one should have come.

 The watch on Coco’s wrist glowed a dull, murky green as she spun the dial to receive the time. Three o’clock sharp in the morning.  Goosebumps had firmly planted themselves on her bare, pale arms, and had started to erupt on her fish net clad legs.  Coco wished badly she’d brought a jacket. The biting month of October was even worse underground. And that happened to be where Coco was living. It was cold, damp and dark; Coco hadn’t seen a ray of sunlight for weeks now. But it was safe from them; no Uppers could reach them here. 

Coco fingered the dog tag that was shaped like a heart around her neck. It was cold and smooth; the sensor was, only barely reading the heat of Coco. Coco waited for another hour, and another, and two more… Soon, the room became chilly, and not absolutely freezing. Then, the dog tag exploded in heat.  Coco yelped, clutching the red hot dog tag to protect her skin. Yes, they were here all right. Coco went to the door, and unlocked the metal bolt. 

The room flooded with light. Five figures filed in, each holding a flashlight. Oh no. Coco thought. There were supposed to be six.  Who and where was the missing person? The light danced about the room, casting disembodied circles on the walls and ceiling.  Mark and Tim were whispering to each other, while Susan approached Coco.

“They cut the power in here, did they?” Tim asked, as he eyed the lifeless bulbs wired to the ceiling.  Tim was blond, with shaggy hair and a skate boarder’s look. He wore skinny black jeans, skater shoes, and a hoodie.

  
“Yeah, they did. To conserve the energy for better causes. “Coco scowled.
“That’s rather harsh, considering there’s no light down here any way.” Carly sighed. 
“Hmmm.”  Coco fingered one of the many necklaces she wore. The metal was warm, the little symbols painted, and old.  Coco always loved to wear mismatched things. A stud earring and a dangling one; a black knee sock and a white one. She was always attracted to opposites.  It made her feel unique, a thing that she was not.

Coco sighed.

Coco hated it when people tried to procrastinate telling her bad news; it made her even more concerned. The longer someone waited, the worse the problem got. Mark and Tim started to hang the flashlight on hooks nailed to the walls. The circles of light swung back and forth as the two boys wrestled with them. Coco could see them clearly now.
The three girls were all taller than Coco, Carly with long red hair and her left ear triple pierced, bright green eyes and a upturned nose, Susan with black, choppy hair and a tattoo of a fish wrapped around her arm, heavy eyeliner emphasizing her electric blue eyes, and Adrianna with her mouse brown hair, chocolate colored eyes and frail body.
Coco’s black hair was long, and wavy, her skin paler than anyone she knew, and her thin arms and legs muscular. Coco had never set foot into a school, because her father had home schooled her since she was five years old. She was genius when it came to math. Math was like a puzzle that was made particularly for her. It always made since, it was always fun, it was just simple, easy.

Silence engulfed all of them, and Coco knew incisively they had lost a Under. Caleb.
“What happened, and where’s Caleb?” Coco whispered. She took a seat on the metal table. Carly shuffled closer, and carelessly flipped her long red hair over her shoulder. As Coco looked more closely into the face of her friend, she realized that her eyes were red and cheeks splotchy.

“Caleb—he—Caleb got spiked.” Mark said. The panic that Coco felt before crept back to her now. Caleb spiked. The only thing Coco could do was to sit there, shocked, so stunned and grieved that she could not think. There was no news worse than this. Her chest became very cold, as if someone suddenly injected her heart with ice water, or poison. The coolness was spiraling down, touching her lungs, making the air hard to breathe. Did she even remember how to breathe? Air was supposed to easily enters ones body, not have to be forced in.

Her heart was pulsing in her ears, making every other sound insignificant. .  The fact that Caleb, funny, smart, amazing Caleb was going to die in the hands of Uppers was too much. She wished she could get him back, but she was under house arrest. Coco bit her lip and closed her eyes hot with tears. The rest of the Unders felt the loss of Caleb, too. Tim held Adrianna while she wept, and Mark dug his nails deep into the palms of his hands until they drew blood. The crimson droplets streaming onto his forearms followed the thick tendons of his wrist.

She could hear Susan’s voice, but she paid no attention. She slid onto the cold floor, and hot tears ran down her face, like boiling water they burned her eyes, and shuddering gasped escaped her mouth.

“They took him, and we couldn’t get him back. They injected him right in front of us… He reacted really badly, so they put him in one of their testing rooms, where we couldn’t reach him. It was so weird; he started the shake, like he was having a seizure or something. It wasn’t the normal collapse and fall. We nearly got killed, but we did shut down that faculty.” Susan said. 

They had shut down a facility.

Coco would have normally been thrilled; she would have had the person who knew her best to celebrate with. But right now she didn’t care. She didn’t care if the entire world exploded right now. Maybe death would be easier than this.

The way Uppers and Unders fought was through shutting down facilities. The Uppers had small faculties everywhere, hidden, all over the world. When Unders discovered the faculties, and let in outside air, the faculties shut down. That was the odd thing about Uppers. Their testing rooms could only have special air. Any outside air would ruin the experiments, and usually kill the patient, who by that time was totally dependent for survival on the drug, usually known as Carmation.

“So, did Caleb—”Coco murmured.

“Not, he’s not dead, yet.  But we can never get him back,” said Tim. 

His face flashed in her mind’s eye, the warmth of his body when he hugged her. Caleb’s brown hair, bronze from one angle, deep brown in the rain, liquid blue eyes, not icy or gray, but warm, a safe harbor, eyes that could read her thoughts; and his tall form, his full height six foot, that little smile he always wore when he was happy careful not show too much, his soft lips….. Coco stared at her arm, one of many obstacles that stood in the way between her and saving her best friend. The cold metal was harsh on her skin, and charged with electricity if she ever tried to leave. The band coiled up her arm, thick and heavy, resting just below her elbow.   Anger erupted in white hot flames in Coco’s chest. The anger was so intense that she felt like she could kill something right now. She was not the kind of person to just sit, while others did all the work. “Did you get any Carmation?” Coco asked. 

“Yeah, we got a little. We already sent it to the labs, so they’re going to try to analyze it again. But we have news, the first we’ve gotten in a long time. “ 

“What? What is it?” Said Coco desperately. She wanted information so badly, any information that could possibly help Caleb …. 

“Operation Circa.” Mark said dully. Caleb was one of his best friends, and as he sat there, digging his nails deeper into his palm, Caleb was probably getting tortured.

“What’s Operation Circa?”

“It’s a code name for something. Operation Circa, we think is why they are testing Carmation on people. They’re testing to see what it will do to them.” Carly said.

“Oh my god, do you know why?” Coco nearly screamed. This was the best news she had heard in years, and probably the worse as well. With the grief of Caleb, any breakthrough on this war was good news.

“No, we don’t.”

“Wait, how did you—?”

“Caleb.” Came the short reply.

“How the h—?”
“Caleb snuck into the head Uppers office, you know, Dr. Inda. He apparently— killed— a guard.”

“He killed….”

“He snuck into their files; he was reading everything, everything about Operation Circa, about Carmation, what they did, everything! I didn’t thin k it was possible to break into one of buildings. I have no idea how he did it, it as like he was—….Inda caught him, and was drugging him, and we were running to get him, and he kept screaming Operation Circa, C stands for—tell—Carma—and then, he started having his seizure. 

“Oh my god.” Coco felt like she might faint. Caleb was beginning to be spiked, spiked for an experiment called Operation Circa. Why? 

“Now we have a few questions…” Carly mumbled.

“Yeah, as in what do they do to the flower? Why are they testing it? And most importantly, what is it going to do to the people they’re testing on?”

“I can’t believe Caleb; our Caleb knows—knows everything.” Adrianna sniffed.

“Yeah, I know.”  Coco bit her lips again, to keep from screaming. It was tough, being an Under. Coco had been born one, since it had after all, been her family that had retaliated against the Uppers. Carmation had been around forever. It grew in the ocean, and had been used for mermaid rituals. Carmation was a black flower, a black flower that looked withered and dead. It was poisonous to eat it.

Now, with the information of Operation Circa swimming around in her head, the looming question was why. Why were they testing it? What were the Uppers trying to accomplish? For one hundred years, the secret organization Uppers tested the mermaid drug on humans. No one had ever survived the testing. So what had the modified about their experiments? 

Coco tried not to think about all the lives that had been thrown away for this cause. All the people how had been spiked, all the different, modifications that had been to the formula, the constant war. Coco knew that her life was bound to one future, a future that surely needed with a painful death, that death being spiked.

Spiked.

When Coco was younger, she thought getting spiked was the name of the flower that Uppers used.  In reality, it’s when you are repeatedly tested on, until your body cannot hold out any longer, and that’s when you get Dropped, (which Coco had learned with horror meant to be killed and your body hidden.)

“What do we do?” Carly asked Coco.

Coco could hear the dull thud of her heart in her ears, her face hot now, and tears welled once again under her eyes. She didn’t’ ever want to leave to the concrete floor, or maybe she did. Maybe she wanted to forget everything and move to someplace far, far away, where hopefully the memories of Caleb and the sad life she had wouldn’t follow. Coco slumped against the wall, wanting nothing more than to curl up and forget everything, to feel so numb that no amount of sadness could ever touch her again. She wiped away one tear, and looked at the floor, too sad to look any of the friends in front of her. These were the friends that had suffered from the drug as much as she had; they knew what it was like to lose someone to Uppers. But they were not Caleb. She would never see her best friend again, and she would never look into his face and feel that comfort that somebody would always be there for her. She would never again fall sound asleep and not fear Uppers had discovered them again. She would never feel his warm arm wrap around her waist, and scoop her up in his arms. Coco wiped away the last of her tears, feeling shaky, as though her chest had sort of caved in, considering how heavy it felt.

“We need to go up and tell the rest of the Unders. We need to tell them everything, Caleb’s spiked, and Operation Circa.”

Nobody answered, but she knew they were ready.