imperfect (4 page)

Caught off guard, Kristi almost stumbled
into the puddle. She caught her balance against a solar lamp and
looked around. A spotted tail slid behind a bush. Warily, she
shuffled towards the barberry shrub, keeping an eye out for any
movements.

A pair of gold eyes peeked out from behind
the bushes. A few seconds later, the tops of two tawny fur-covered
ears emerged from the upper portion of the plant.

“
Where is your owner?”
Kristi asked the creature. “Are you a lost droid-pet?”

The upper half of the animal emerged from
behind the bush. The droid was a leopard bearing a magnificent,
glossy pelt. Exotic droid-pets cost a hefty amount of points, and
the owner was probably worried about the leopard.

Kristi lowered her voice to a soothing tone.
“Come here, let me take you to the lost and found center.”

The leopard inched towards her, but paused
halfway. Its ears twitched back and forth, listening to sounds too
subtle for the human ear to catch. Then it turned its back on her
and bounded away, melting into shadows as fast as a
sonic-plane.

The droid-leopard encounter took up more
time than Kristi liked. She had a bit over half an hour to find the
room, explore it and return home. Curfew wouldn’t be enforced for
another couple of hours, but none of her family members knew where
she was going and Kristi didn’t want them to worry about her if she
didn’t make it back before dinner.

She broke into a faster pace and located the
alleyway where she had almost gotten robbed. Kristi checked her
surroundings; she was alone.

“
I didn’t notice the
indent in the wall before,” Kristi murmured.

One of the terracotta bricks looked like a
giant had come along and decided to prod that one brick inwards.
Kristi touched the palm of her right hand against the sunken brick,
not sure what she expected to happen next. As before, bricks
pivoted away like dominos knocking into each other in order to form
an entrance about three feet in diameter.

Making sure her electro-slate was set to
flashlight mode, Kristi stepped into the room. The bricks
immediately spun back into their original position, sealing off the
chamber from the outside world.

The TV, Kristi noticed with interest, was
actually plugged into an outlet. Curious to see if it worked, she
tentatively pressed the power button. The screen glowed to life.
The words “insert disc” flashed on the display. No film of dust
coated the TV, suggesting it had recently been used.

Odd,
Kristi thought.
Whoever was using
this TV was watching a DVD. I can’t think of anyone who would go
through the hassle of attaining a DVD when you can get all the
channels on an electro-slate.

Thinking there was nothing of interest left
in the room, Kristi prepared to leave. She didn’t know what she had
anticipated to find in this secret room, but she felt let down.

“
You’re so childish,
Kristi,” she chided herself. Her voice rang out abnormally loud in
the empty space. “What did you expect? A secret vault of
treasures?” She laughed at her own whimsical fantasies, but stopped
shortly.

The light cast by her electro-slate
reflected off the shiny padlock hanging off a solid, wooden door.
The door embedded itself so deeply into the wall at the back of the
room Kristi would’ve never noticed it had the padlock not given
away its presence.

She fiddled with the lock for a few seconds;
although Kristi wouldn’t call herself an expert, she did have some
experience with picking locks. She set down the padlock almost as
soon as she picked it up, though; she could tell there was no way
to crack the lock without the key. The intricate gears nestled
within it were so small and complex it would take her a good hour
or two to pick, and she didn’t have the time.

Kristi swung her
electro-slate-doubling-as-a-flashlight around the room one last
time, making sure she didn’t miss anything else noteworthy.

“
Didn’t see this either.”
Kristi knelt and peeked beneath the TV.

A plastic case of some sort was stuck
beneath the TV, as if someone had hid it in a hurry. She tugged the
container out from where it was wedged. It was a DVD case. Nowhere
on the cover did Kristi spot the government-approved stamp on it.
In other words, this was an illegal DVD.

The words,
Phantom of the Opera,
were boldly printed on the covering. Beneath the title was a
picture of some sort of a mask and rose. Kristi tested the title:
“Phantom of the Opera.”

The way the name rolled
off her tongue brought Kristi a sense of satisfaction, unlike the
titles of the government issued TV programs:
Explanation of the Elements of the Periodic Table for Level
Five Students, The Complete History of the North Region of the Past
Twenty Years,
and
The Channel of Weather Forecasts.

Feeling a bit rebellious, Kristi removed the
DVD disk and inserted it into the designated slot behind the
monitor. Then she clicked “play” on the remote and the screen
flickered with words rolling across a black background.

Kristi didn’t notice her
mouth
hanging open when the movie ended
until she realized she was drooling.
She
snapped her jaw shut, wondering,
Did I
really just watch a
fictional
movie
?

Bleep!
Her electro-slate vibrated, bringing Kristi back to her
senses.
Crud. I completely lost track of
time
. She flicked on her slate and picked
up the instafication.

“
Kristi, where are you?”
Maria’s concerned voice pricked at Kristi’s guilty
conscience.

She checked the time—it was already
seven-thirty; curfew was eight. Kristi quickly replied Maria,
“Sorry—I lost track of time; I’ll be home in fifteen minutes or
so.”

“
Next time, leave an
electro-note for me if you’re going to be staying out later than
six.”

“
I didn’t mean to stay out
past dinner. I’m sorry—bye.”

Kristi muted the electro-slate and returned
the DVD into its case. After doing one last check to confirm she
didn’t leave anything behind, she stepped back out into the
alleyway and right into a pair of waiting arms.

chapter four

[ Kristi ]

“
Ahh—” Kristi let loose a
yell that was instantly cut off by a hand
clamped over her nose and mouth, stifling her breath. The
next thing she knew, a brawny arm wrapped around her waist and she
was being slung over a shoulder with ease.

Kristi’s heart pounded against her chest as
she tried to escape the steel-like grip, but whoever was carrying
her seemed completely unfazed by her thrashing and kicking. Her
screams were muffled by the clammy hand still glued over her
mouth.

Kristi’s arms and legs eventually grew weary
and heavy with her fruitless struggles with escape. She willed her
entire body to go limp and tried not to vomit up the food she had
consumed earlier.

The abductor began running at a fast and
steady pace through the empty streets; any normal person would have
to either be insane or suicidal to roam the backstreets so close to
curfew time. No Perfect would risk being caught by the curfew
patrols.

The pavement bounced up and down from
Kristi’s point of view, making her feel dizzy. The hand suffocating
her breaths didn’t help with the situation.

“
Cah ye mo ye
han?”
Kristi tried her best to mumble her
words coherently. “Can’t breh.”

Her kidnapper didn’t remove the hand,
however the hold over her mouth loosened a bit, enough for her to
breathe more comfortably, but not enough for her to scream for
help. Something cold and sharp pressed against the side of her
cheeks. Kristi leaned her head away from the object; it was a gold
stud earring.

Several minutes passed, the person carrying
Kristi decelerated to a slow jog, then to a walk and placed her on
the ground after ripping the drawstring bag off her shoulders.

Kristi braced her arms against a damp and
moldy wall to steady her shaky legs and rebelling stomach. Her
captor remained at a distance far enough to avoid being splattered
by puke in case Kristi’s stomach decided to empty itself, but still
within grabbing distance. Kristi finally assessed her surroundings
once the world stopped spinning enough for her to find her
balance.

Four bare walls of an
abandoned building closed around her; the ceiling sagged
dangerously low.
If I was to jump
up,
Kristi contemplated,
I bet I could touch it. Not that that would do me
much good.

A man stood guard by the entrance; aside
from the tattoo of a flock of raven trailing up the side of his
neck, the man looked inconspicuous. He didn’t have a memorable face
nor wore clothing that beckoned attention.

Another guy, who Kristi automatically
assumed to be her abductor, was going through the contents of her
drawstring bag. He wore a black shirt and ratty jeans; several gold
hoops looped through his earlobes. Kristi counted nine cuffs in
total and wondered whether the man’s ears got tired from bearing
the weight of the jewelry.

The man looked up from her bag. “Nice
electro-slate you have; latest model with all the newest
updates.”

She recognized the raspy voice as the same
one she heard while eavesdropping from behind the brick wall. They
were the electro-slate bandits.

The man wearing the black shirt spoke again,
“Thought you could make a fool out of me, didn’t you? Boss demoted
me to rank two after today’s incident.”

The guy with the raven tattoo ground his
teeth and spat on the ground. “Rank two,” he said to himself.
“That’s a rank for newbies, not someone like me.”

The kidnapper continued on, as if he hadn’t
heard a word the other man had said. “Boss doesn’t believe me when
I told her there was a secret room in the brick wall. But I saw you
escaping into a hole in the wall with my own eyes. Now she thinks
we’re going mad. Right, Steph?”

Steph nodded his head in agreement. The way
Steph looked at black-shirt-guy with reverence and followed his
every move reminded Kristi of Glenn’s followers. Naturally, this
observation promptly made her dislike these two men even more.

Kristi removed her hands from the wall.
Testing to see if she could walk on her own, she took a small step.
Her head felt a bit woozy, but other than that, she felt fine.

“
Take my electro-slate and
my backpack if you want. Can I leave now?” Kristi took another step
towards the exit.

Steph perked up and cracked his knuckles
loudly, daring her to make a dash for freedom.

“
No.” Black-shirt-guy
threw down the drawstring bag with disgust; apart from the
electro-slate, nothing else in the bag was worth any value on the
black market.

“
Can I see the slate,
Wilson?” Steph asked.

“
No.”

Black-shirt-guy now had a name: Wilson. This
insignificant piece of information lent Kristi a small scrap of
knowledge.

Wilson stalked over to Steph, clutching the
stolen electro-slate in one hand. “Grab me some ropes. And be quick
about it.”

Steph beat a hasty retreat, muttering under
his breath, “Don’t want to make Wilson mad—he blinded his last
offender.”

So,
Kristi thought,
Wilson’s temper is
something to be reckoned with, a trait that probably often gets him
what he wants
. She was not at all
comfortable with this arrangement; being alone in an unfamiliar
room with a cruel man made her squirm anxiously.

Wilson slammed the door shut then booted a
rickety folding chair into the middle of the room. Rust covered its
metal edges.

“
You,” Wilson brusquely
pushed Kristi into the chair, towering over her. “Tell me how you
escaped us today.”

“
There was a hidden room
behind the wall.” Kristi couldn’t think straight enough to even
consider lying.

“
I already know that. Tell
me something I don’t know. Tell me how you got into the
room.”

“
I’m not sure how I got
into the room. I just kind of slid my hand over a section of the
brick wall and a gap opened—”

“
Don’t lie to me,” Wilson
said. The edges of his lips pulled backwards tightly, permitting
his two silver tipped canines to show. Kristi involuntarily
shuddered; his teeth reminded her of vampires. Wilson leered. “Tell
me now or—”

“
I got you the ropes,”
Steph cut in.

Kristi let out a sigh; she was certain
whatever Wilson’s threat was, she didn’t want to hear.

Wilson snatched the ropes from Steph and
tied Kristi’s hands behind her back.

“
Don’t try to lie to me,”
Wilson growled into her right ear. “Steph would be more than happy
to knock you around a bit. So here’s the deal. I ask you the
questions and you answer truthfully. If I like your answer, you’re
safe from Steph. If I don’t like the answer you give me, you’ll be
hurting for a few days. Do you understand?”

“
Yes,” Kristi
whispered.

“
Good,” he grunted. “Did
you use a special key to get into the hidden room?”

“
No.”

“
Then how did you pass
through the wall?”

“
I touched the
wall.”