It is strange how no matter how opulent a place is, no matter how much people send on decor and furniture, there are always places that are dark, cement covered, unfinished. The 'Employee Only' zone of The Monarch was one of these places. Charlie thought in passing how people were the same. No matter how important, rich, influential, or beautiful, there are always dark secrets hidden from the public eye.
Luckily one of the things that was consistent in the back rooms were evacuation plans conveniently posted frequently throughout and the beautiful glow of the exit signs. Charlie quickly exited the building and turned in the direction of the nearest subway station.
Durning the two weeks of planning, Charlie and her friend Katie, who helped her with the online payments for translating jobs, had collected most of Charlie's stashes and moved them to one of the lockers in the station closest to the hotel. Katie had also bought some clothing and other supplies and for her and included them in the duffle bag.
Charlie walked to the station with here shoulders back and her head up. She did her best to ignore the itching between her shoulder blades and not to twitch at every unexpected sound. She tried to keep a normal pace, steady and strong but not rushed. She wanted to give the impression that she had somewhere to be and had no doubt in her right to go there. But with each step, she wanted to run. She wanted to get as far away as she could as quickly as she could. She felt like she was being hunted, chased? Had Don been delayed by the elevator or not? Had he gotten someone to check on her in the bathroom yet? Was he waiting around the corner to catch her and drag her back?
No matter how much planning she had done she couldn't plan for the panicked emotions that were poisoning her thoughts.
Charlie almost sobbed in relief as the sky disappeared and was replaced by the grungy ceiling of the subway station. The florescent lighting felt like a halo of salvation. No longer being in the open alleviated a great deal of her anxiety.
She quickly went to the long term lockers and punched in the code. The duffle was right where it was supposed to be. She grabbed it and in less than five minutes, she was wearing casual clothes and exiting the bathrooms.
She hopped the northbound train with the duffle bag and breathed.
As she sat in the train, she felt time stretch. She should be feeling better, safer but instead she found the tension coiling tighter and tighter in her shoulders as each moment passed. She dreaded the opening of the doors at each successive stop. Her imagination built wild, fear induced possibilities of hordes of her family's minions pouring in the doors to grab her and drag her back to the hotel and whatever room Mr. Silva waited in.
Charlie tried to control her nerves but she was convinced that she resembled a drug addict, twitching and shaking, in need of another hit. She had to let the tension out somehow and her knee bounced up and down faster and faster.
Finally, finally she reached the stop that would allow her to transfer over to the long distance line. She pulled the cap down further over her eyes before she exited.
"Do you think that they could access the CCTVs?" Katie had asked her when they were planning. "Would they go that far?"
Charlie had thought she was being paranoid at first but then she remembered that she was, in fact, a minor. Tiffany and Father could report her missing and the cops would do the work for them. They wouldn't even have to make up something. According to the law she belonged to them. So she had the hat, her hair was tucked up under it. She had different one in duffle and her jacket was reversible. The duffle could convert into a backpack. She would change her look before boarding the long distance train.
She and Katie hadn't been able to come up with a complete plan after getting on the train. Sadly, without identity documents and being a minor and all, things were difficult. Katie knew someone who was able to get her a fake ID, but it was low quality and didn't come with a Social Security number so housing, a job, bank accounts, even school wasn't likely.
Charlie exited the train and walked up the escalator. It felt good to be moving once again. The energy that she had been desperately containing on the train finally had someplace to go. It felt incredibly good to charge up the stairs. It felt so good that Charlie wanted to keep going, to run. But she didn't. She simply and quickly approached the pedestrian bridge. Then changed some details about her appearance, hopefully to make it more difficult to track her movements. She entered the station for the long distance train.
Perhaps it was just her nerves but as she waited with her ticket, she felt that there was too much security around her. She couldn't really compare things though because she had never taken the long distance train before.
It's okay, she thought to herself, it makes perfect sense that such a train station has security like an airport does.
She watched men and women in uniform wandering around. Four near the front were watching the entrences and checking tickets.
Things were calm and progressing smoothly, until suddenly they weren't. It felt as though Charlie blinked and then there were a dozen more security people and police officers around the platform. They were going around and talking to everyone but especially to adolescents and young adults who appeared to be alone. She knew, she just knew that they were looking for her.
It didn't make sense, they shouldn't have been able to track her. She took all the necessary precautions didn't she? It didn't make sense. She carefully wandered away from the train, not daring to approach now that they were looking so deliberately.
How did they find her? She couldn't help but wonder. She felt tears of frustrated desperation gather in her eyes. She didn't head toward the exit, there were flashes of blue uniforms in that direction as well. She instead carefully slipped behind the heavy plastic delineating a construction zone.
What if they didn't follow me? She suddenly asked herself and then cursed in every language she knew inside her head. It was the long distance terminal. Of course they would search it. Where else would a run away go if they were trying to get out of town fast?
For all their planning and their paranoia, Charlie and Katie hadn't considered this one very obvious fact.
Charlie felt a wave of panic that she hastily pushed down. Okay, so she can't leave town yet. Still, she hadn't been caught and she still had cash. She would have to eat the cost of the long distance ticket for now. She would have to hide out until things cooled off. There were plenty of places to disappear in a city as big as, Overton. They might be dangerous but not more dangerous than Charlie's family had proved to be. She could manage hiding out for a while. She had to prioritize, first she had to move. They would probably search the construction area eventually.
When she thought about it, she figured that just because the area was closed for construction it wouldn't mean that the cameras were down too. In fact they might have additional cameras set up in order to monitor safety conditions or something similar. She had to continue to get away from the station.
There probably wasn't an exit here in the area that was under construction though and, if there was, they would definitely be monitoring it. Could she hide long enough to avoid the search? She wasn't confident and in any case siting and waiting didn't feel right.
She looked at the rails. Okay, the rails were probably not live right? In any case, she thought that the major danger would be touching both at the same time. Isn't that what she had heard or read or whatever? She wished she had a smartphone so she could check. She would have to be very careful. She didn't want to get electrocuted, or hit by a train. She carefully lowered herself down backwards, hoping this wasn't the dumbest thing she had ever done.