Explain

    “So,” I say as we tiptoe down a deathly still hallway. “Why don’t I know you? If you lived in Shatterproof?” I glance around. It makes sense why Ari was able to escape from here–there’s not exactly anyone stopping us from leaving the hospital room. Besides, if I could break out of the Shatterproof mines, I certainly can break out of a hospital.

    For a minute, he says nothing, and all I can hear is our nervous breaths as we slip around corners and peek in other rooms. “My father was very strict. Like I said, he was a main official in our Shatterproof. Whenever I asked too many questions, he’d lock me in my room. I didn’t get out much.”

    I hold up a hand. “Why do you keep saying my Shatterproof? There’s only one.”

   His face falls, like a deflated balloon a child still insists on dragging around, day after day. The fatigue pulls at his eyes and opens them wider in a melancholy epiphany. “That’s what Leader Pierre wanted you to think. In the past week, I’ve cornered every nurse I could until I got an explanation.

    “Apparently, due to the millennial generation’s vanity and thin skin, they contracted a disease in their DNA that caused them to have glass skin. The government feared them gaining power and put them in Shatterproofs. People who understand the danger of their obsession with perfection shatter. When they do, they’re given the disease cure and brought to Purity Hospital until their tattoos fade. There’s over a hundred in the world. Two generations of people with glass skin have lived and died in them. Our generation is the first to really start to get it. To be cured.”

    I lift an eyebrow and the anxiousness coils in my stomach again. His voice had taken on that mechanical quality my nurse’s had when I begged her for an explanation.

   But maybe he’s just been here too long–maybe they’ve started to indoctrinate him. Maybe I can still bring him back to reality. “How long have you been here?” I ask tentatively.

   He tilts his head. “Two weeks?”

   Nope. No way I can trust him.

   Each hallway seems to follow a pattern; the ones with patient rooms run parallel, and supply and common rooms run perpendicular, connecting them. There is an elevator in each common room, but no obvious stairwell.

    If I were Ari, how would I get out of here? I wonder, chewing my lip.

    Jackson is babbling about what the hospital has been like in the past fourteen days, occasionally breaking out into half-hearted laughter, but I’m not really listening. If I were Ari, I wouldn’t sneak out. I’d figure out the most logical path, and I’d take it.

    My mouth goes dry at that thought. Because I don’t think Ari–I never have. My fatal flaw, if anything, is thinking too much. His was always not thinking enough.

    I never thought I’d miss that about him.

    Shaking the thought from my head, I follow Jackson into a supply room and look around with unseeing eyes while he investigates. I’d take the elevator down, and then I’d go out the nearest exit. I’d fight my way out if I needed to. Because any fight they can put up, I can put up a better one. Because I’m Ari Braeden, and I’m unbreakable.

    Or at least, he thought he was. Until it was too late.

    Jackson grabs my arm and shakes me, causing my heart to constrict with temporary fear in my chest. “Bryony, aren’t you listening to me? I think I know a way out!”

    He excitedly shows me a wheelchair and blankets he found in the supply room, chirping like a baby bird. “My tattoos are due to expire tomorrow! I can cover you with a blanket and pretend we’re both checking out of the hospital! I’ll sneak you out with me!”

    I roll my eyes. “That’s not going to work. They’ll check me.”

    “I’ll make sure they don’t.”

     I say nothing. The ink on his skin says he’s rebellious, but I don’t want to rebel. I just want to escape. His mouth says he’s untrustworthy, and that brand might be the only thing I can rely on.

    So I let him explain his plan, but I don’t listen.

    I’ll break out on my own.