The truck shuddered over potholes like a heartbeat out of rhythm. Every jolt rattled the metal walls, every turn forced Jayden's shoulder into a box that smelled of bleach and cardboard. He didn't complain. After years of cement floors and locked doors, pain felt like confirmation: he was still moving.
Malik lay opposite him, eyes half-closed, whispering a prayer that sounded more like an apology. Ortiz sat with his back to the roll-up door, one hand on a wrench he'd kept from the workshop, as if a single tool could hold back the world. Outside, rain hammered the roof so loud it drowned thought.
Freedom didn't sound like silence. It sounded like thunder.
---
The Breath After the Cage
For a long stretch, no one spoke. The motion itself was language enough. The truck slowed, turned, then sped up again. Jayden counted the changes in pitch; each gear shift mapped another block in his mind. They weren't far from the highway yet. He knew because he could still smell the salt-wet rot of the river that ran behind the facility.
Ortiz broke first. "You think we made it?"
Jayden didn't answer immediately. He pressed a palm against the metal wall, feeling vibration instead of certainty. "We're not caught," he said finally. "That's not the same thing."
Malik gave a small laugh that didn't survive the next breath. "Feels different enough to me."
It did feel different. The air itself was rougher, wilder—no longer filtered through vents. Jayden could taste dust and exhaust, could feel cold wind sneaking through cracks. Every sense screamed unfamiliar, dangerous, alive.
---
The Driver
At 03:27 the truck slowed again. A gate creaked, and the driver shouted to someone outside. Voices muffled by rain answered in a language Jayden didn't know. He held his breath.
When the truck lurched forward once more, Ortiz exhaled shakily. "Delivery stop."
"Last one before the city," Jayden said. He didn't ask how Malik knew that; he had studied maps through rumor and instinct for weeks.
They waited until the truck leveled onto smooth pavement and the sound of rain became a steady drum. Then Jayden crawled to the rear door, careful not to let the latch sing.
He peered through a hairline crack. Beyond it was a blur of industrial lots, billboards half-lit by orange streetlamps, and the black ribbon of highway stretching north. Freedom was less romantic than he'd imagined. It was ugly and wet and full of nowhere to go.
---
The Choice
"Next stop, we jump," Jayden whispered.
Malik blinked. "In the rain?"
"You see sunshine anywhere?"
Ortiz checked his wrist—no watch, just habit. "Can't land on pavement. Need grass, ditch, anything soft."
Jayden nodded. He counted breaths until the truck hit another stretch of gravel. The rumble deepened. Open fields, maybe. He met Malik's eyes. "Now or never."
They yanked the latch together. The door snapped up like a shout. Wind and rain crashed in, cold and alive. The world outside was a torrent of motion and blurred lights.
Jayden didn't hesitate. He jumped.
The air punched him in the chest; the ground hit back. He rolled through mud, rocks biting his arms. When he stopped, his lungs were on fire and his ears were full of rain.
Malik landed hard, swearing. Ortiz followed, groaning as he hit a drain culvert. The truck kept rolling into the dark like it had never carried them at all.
---
The World Without Walls
For a long time they just lay there, faces to the sky, the storm washing the prison smell off their skin. Jayden laughed once—sharp, almost a sob.
"This is it," he said to no one and everyone. "No sirens, no bars. Just water and dirt."
Ortiz sat up, mud slick on his face. "Now what, genius?"
Jayden looked toward the city lights flickering far off, their edges blurred by rain. He didn't have an answer that would satisfy anyone. He had only a direction.
"North," he said. "St. Briar's that way."
Malik blinked water from his eyes. "That's where you're headed? You got someone there?"
Jayden nodded once. "My sister."
Ortiz let out a low whistle. "Hell of a reunion you're planning."
Jayden smiled through blood on his lip. "Hell of a lifetime I'm making up for."
---
The Sketch
They took shelter under an abandoned overpass, breathing steam into the cold. Jayden pulled out his sketchbook—soaked, pages curling like old skin. Still, the pencil moved.
He drew three figures under a bridge, flames cupped in their hands against the storm. The city loomed in the distance, a monster made of light.
Underneath, he wrote: Freedom isn't clean. It's mud and blood and rain, and it costs everything you can't get back.
When he looked up, the sky was beginning to grey with morning. He tore the page out and folded it into his shirt pocket, where Layla's letter already lived.
Two fires beating against the storm. Two directions aimed at the same horizon.
He was coming for her now.