The first thing Jayden noticed about freedom was how heavy it felt.
The air, the sky, the sound of it all—it pressed down, wide and endless, like the world itself didn't trust him to be loose inside it.
The rain had slowed to a mist. The highway lights behind them glowed dull and orange, swallowing the night they'd escaped from.
Malik and Ortiz were crouched under the overpass, dripping, breathing hard, faces drawn.
Jayden sat apart, legs stretched, hands on his knees, trying to feel the earth beneath him. It was softer than concrete, but it didn't forgive easily.
---
The Silence After Noise
For a while, nobody spoke. The only sounds were tires on wet asphalt and the buzz of power lines above.
Ortiz broke it first. "We need food. And dry clothes. They'll have dogs out by now."
Malik shivered. "They'll have everything out."
Jayden nodded, not arguing. They were right. He could almost hear it—the hum of a machine waking up to hunt.
He looked toward the city skyline miles away, half-hidden behind the fog. Freedom was there, but so was the net.
He didn't say what he was thinking: that they weren't really free yet. They were just between cages.
---
The Plan in Pieces
"We head north," Jayden said finally. "Back roads. Stay out of sight until we can split."
Ortiz frowned. "Split?"
"They'll look for a group. Not for ghosts."
Malik rubbed his face, water streaming off. "Where you going, Carter?"
Jayden hesitated, his throat tight. "St. Briar."
Ortiz blinked. "The girls' home?"
Jayden nodded once.
Malik let out a low whistle. "That's suicide. Whole system's locked down after last night."
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because my sister's there."
That silenced them both.
---
The Fire Between
For the first time since the escape, Jayden let them see the paper tucked in his shirt—the worn photocopy with Layla Carter printed at the top. The edges were smudged, the ink faded from rain and sweat.
He handed it to Malik without a word.
Malik read it, looked up, and shook his head slowly. "You really think she's still in?"
Jayden's voice was steady, but his eyes weren't. "I know she is."
Ortiz folded his arms. "Even if she is, you can't just walk in and grab her. They'll have feds waiting, news vans, checkpoints. They'll be expecting you to run to family."
"I'm not running," Jayden said. "I'm finishing what I started."
---
The World Waking Up
By sunrise, the world had found out.
They saw it on a diner TV through the glass—blurred mugshots on the morning news, their names crawling across the screen.
Jayden Carter. Malik Davis. Hector Ortiz.
Escapees from St. Bridge Correctional Facility. Consider dangerous.
Jayden stared at his own face, younger than he remembered, eyes wild in a way he didn't feel anymore.
The waitress looked at the screen, then out at the parking lot, where three strangers in stolen work jackets stood under the eaves, just far enough to be invisible.
Malik muttered, "We can't stay here."
Ortiz snorted. "We can't go anywhere."
Jayden didn't move. "We can't stop either."
He turned away from the screen. His reflection in the window didn't look like a criminal. It looked like a ghost trying to find the rest of itself.
---
The Edge of the City
They walked for hours, cutting through drainage ditches and abandoned construction yards, hiding when engines passed.
The sun burned through the clouds around noon, and Jayden could feel his clothes stiffen with drying mud.
Every step north made the air sharper. The storm had washed the world clean, but it also stripped away the veil of illusion.
For years, he'd told himself freedom would feel like peace. But standing in the open, with no walls and no roof, he realized peace wasn't part of it.
Freedom was raw. It was too big, too loud. It hurt.
But he preferred pain he chose over comfort he didn't.
---
The Quiet Between
They camped behind a billboard when night fell again. Malik scavenged a lighter from a trash heap, and Ortiz tore strips from a plastic tarp for shelter.
Jayden sat apart, staring at the flame flickering in Malik's hand.
The fire made him think of Layla. He could almost hear her voice from years ago, asking him if fire ever got tired of burning.
"Only when it runs out of air," he'd told her then.
Now he wasn't so sure.
He took out the letter he'd written her, unfolded it carefully, and read it by the light.
> If you're still fighting, don't stop. I'm not done yet.
The words blurred in the dim glow. He folded it again and pressed it to his chest.
Somewhere out there, he hoped she was looking at the same sky. Maybe she was hearing the same thunder. Maybe she knew.
---
The Sketch
He pulled the sketchbook from his pack, the pages swollen with rain. On the newest sheet, he drew three figures walking a cracked road under a blood-orange sunset.
In the distance, a single building stood like a mountain—cold, gray, familiar.
Underneath, he wrote: Some cages are walls. Some are people. All can break.
When he looked up, Malik and Ortiz were asleep. The fire was dying low.
Jayden whispered to it, like he was afraid the night would overhear:
"Hold on, Layla. I'm coming."