Of Freedom's Fall (Death Prediction Project #3)
Austin

Everything seemed so normal less than two months ago. I was spending Christmas with my family and best friend and secret crush Lloyd. Lloyd and I had been friends since elementary school. I remember showing up on the first day of second grade to a new school, I felt lost having been homeschooled for the past two years so my parents could bond with me after I was adopted at four and now they wanted to send me out into the world to make friends.

I was nervous and shy about the new environment and experiences. I wasn’t really sure how to approach the other kids at Lexington Elementary but Lloyd knew how to make new friends. I remember pacing the playground. Kids kept darting back and forth across the gravel and play apparatuses. Lloyd being one of them. He was one of the bigger kids, a whole year older than me I soon learned, but even than he was the same height as some of the fifth graders.

He paused mid-dash across the gravel and looked at me. I adjusted my glasses as they slipped down my nose, still big for my thin face. He made his way over to me. I was worried he was going to beat me up or pick on me because of his size. He stopped on the threshold of the park and stuck out his hand.

“I’m Lloyd,” he said politely.

I glanced at his hand before taking it.

“Do you want to play?” he asked pointing back to the park.

“Sure,” I reply timidly.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Austin,” I answered.

Our lives consisted of a lot of sleepovers, movie nights, and video games after that. We were practically inseparable.

When I first got to meet Lloyd’s parents, I was excited and nervous. I really wanted them to like me. It was about a week and a half after we’d met at school. They were picking him up from school. My parents had arrived and found me. His parents approached us.

“Who’s this Lloyd?” his father asked.

“This is Austin, he’s my best friend,” Lloyd replied.

It was probably child’s talk back then but I felt pride that he considered me his best friend after only a week and a half of knowing him. As children we were quite similar, we liked video games, tag, action figures, comics, excelled in school decently, it was when I arrived at the local middle school a year after Lloyd did that I noticed the differences.

He was already on the junior soccer team, excelling in sports and English and History. Well, I excelled in Math, Science, and Chess. Lloyd would watch me play in tournaments, I wasn’t winning any trophies or ribbons but I enjoyed it. I also noticed how the girls flocked to him. He’d kept growing and was gaining muscle well I was still this short, lanky kid with glasses.

He never neglected our friendship though, in truth, the year I was left behind in the elementary school and the middle school, I think he missed me. We never talked about it really, and despite all the girls’ interest, Lloyd never got a girlfriend. I don’t know if he genuinely didn’t like any of them or if it was something else. But when I got to the high school in tenth grade something was different.

I had noticed my attractions to guys in middle school, but I’d swept it under the rug, I definitely hadn’t talked to Lloyd about it, but something was different about him, too. He’d distanced himself from the girls, he was still playing soccer but in the year, I was at the middle school he had taught himself to play chest and was attempting to beat me every chance he got. He never succeeded until Christmas Day a few months ago. He’d come over after having spent the morning with his family. My parents had left after opening our presents for an important business meeting in Chicago. They were due to be back before New Year’s.

He’d showed up and handed me a gift, a glass chess set. I’d like the wooden ones personally, you didn’t have to worry about breaking them. I like the black pieces in this set, though. They were a metallic black and the other team was clear crystal glass. I took the box and set it on the living room table. Lloyd grabbed a root beer from my fridge and an Orange Crush for me.

I sat down on the floor beside the table and opened the box carefully. I slid the glass playing board out and set it in the middle of the table. I pulled the pieces out and set them in their respective places on the board. Lloyd came over to the table and set the drinks down on the side and took a seat on the other side of the table.

He had been away at college after having graduated this summer, with a soccer scholarship. I still saw him every other weekend but his studies and games had taken up a lot of time. But his parents were proud of him for going for a nursing degree. I was happy he’d laid some time aside to visit me during the holidays.

My crush on him had become apparent to me in eleventh grade. I think I was more scared of liking him than I was of liking boys in general because he was my best friend. I didn’t want to scare him off or lose him. So, just like my liking of boys, I kept it under wraps.

We played through the game of chess, moving pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, we checked each other several times over before he trapped me and won. It was a good game, and I wasn’t even upset or mad, I was proud of him for having finally beaten me. It was 7:00 pm by now. I got up, taking the cans to the recycling bin and he followed.

I didn’t notice how quiet he actually was until after. Watching and standing in the background as I raided the fridge. I thought maybe he finally got a girlfriend and was working up the courage to tell me. He had been off at college and was about time one of us got a significant other and I knew it wasn’t going to be me any time soon.

Finally, I closed the fridge and turned around to face him.

“I thought you would be happier that you beat me finally,” I commented.

He rubbed the back of his neck, nervously.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He sighed taking a seat on the kitchen counter, my mother would have shooed him off had she been here.

“Do you have any crushes, like in school?” he asked.

“Not really,” I answered avoiding the question.

“Come on,” he says. “There has to be somebody.”

Where was this going? Why wouldn’t he just come out and say it? Was he worried about what a girl would do to our friendship?

“What about you?” I counter.

He hesitated, I thought I got him.

“Listen, Austin. I don’t want to hurt or upset you. If I’m wrong and there’s nothing here, I’d like to stay friends,” he started.

He wasn’t looking at me, his eyes were in contact with the floor, as if he were talking to it. I stepped closer, carefully, I rest a hand on his thigh and he turns his head towards me slightly. Was it true? Or had he sensed my feelings that I’d tried so hard to keep under wraps or was playing some prank on me?

I took a deep breath and leaned closer. I planted a light kiss on his lips and he moved off the counter so he was standing and returned the kiss. That night was the best of my life. I was glad my parents were gone. Lloyd ended up staying the night. We cuddled and slept together in my bed and the next morning we went to the mall. I was happy that day but I also sensed something was off.

I spotted two boys sitting at another table, something about them was off-putting. I didn’t learn until later that these two were Ryker and Porter, two subjects of the DPP’s experiments. Lloyd walked me back to my house and kissed me one last time at my door before going home that night. The next day I spent in the house alone, enjoying my Christmas holidays before I had to go back to school in January. On the morning of the 28th, I woke up with the same off-putting feeling. A knock came at 10:00 am, I thought it was Lloyd or my parents getting back early. I answered it and I came face to face with a gun.

I thought they were going to rob me and the house. I put my hands up. He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me outside closing the door behind me. I had no clue what was going on. I noticed the stranger was wearing military fatigues. He escorted me to a car with bars between the front and back seats, like a police car with all the lights, and decals removed. He threw me in the back and locked the back doors so I couldn’t get out.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He didn’t answer me. I and whoever this was ended up on the road for two days. I had heard I’d been reported missing over the radio on the 29th, my parents must have come back and found me gone, then asked Lloyd, I wonder if he had told them about our last conversation. We ended up in Colorado where everything was explained to me.

I was a test subject and they needed help replaceing the other test subjects. In Colorado, I was set to guard the cells though before they moved me from it after the shooting incident. They’d paired me with a guy, Benjamin, he was nice but I was weary. I don’t think he actually knew anything about the DPP. My foot had taken weeks to heal after that and Ben was out of commission after getting shot in the hand by Ezra.

I hadn’t seen him since, they had airlifted me to Staten Island and I had been here ever since. I knew Benjamin was okay, I had checked the records, he’s been discharged from the military after but other than that he was fine.

When I saw the first video, I wanted to support the Freedom Brigade. I would do anything to get out of this base back to Lloyd and my family. I felt bad for disappearing off the face of the Earth with no trace and leaving them in the dark.

The second video had publicly named me as one of the test subjects though, so now Lloyd and my family knew what had happened and what they could do. I just didn’t know if it would help. I still had no idea what the Hybrids’ agendas were either. Had they been taken against their will, too?

At night, I would stare up at the sky, watching the moon and stars. I and Lloyd used to do this a lot. I hoped he was looking up at the sky too somewhere, I hoped he knew I didn’t choose to leave him. I was surprised when I heard the Freedom Brigade had broken into the apartment building where they were holding Maya, and Porter’s parents in California and that Ryker had been injured and captured by the DPP.

I had avoided him at almost all costs since they brought him here and been attempting to show my loyalty by helping with the searches for Soren, the last free test subject.