NationStates Jolt Archive

If you run they can't get you, if you run they can't get you, run, run, run...

His legs burn, exhausted too soon by a change in the normal rhythm of motion. It is always One-Two-One-Two, with the thumping of every other foot, a drumming so constant it still fills his mind. He tries to imagine the tempo faster - he wills his legs to run, but they complain noisily in his mind, begging him to slow down, to fall into a peaceful marching rhythm.

But he can't do that. The forest is full of Thinkpol's sweeper teams, honing in on him with cruel inevitability. If he slows down, they will catch him, they will kill him. They will not kill his body, but his mind will be destroyed. He will no longer be J-4880, he will be just another faceless, numberless member of the horde of humans left mindless by x-rays.

A glint of metal appears in the distance: Hope! He is approaching the border, the barrier of radio interference towers. Soon, no matter what happens, he will be J-48880 no longer - he will be free, or he will be nothing.

Keep running, keep running, run, run, run, don't slow down, just run...

OOC: tag

J-4880 tumbles down a rocky slope, hearing the hypnotic rhythm of approaching sweepers. The perfection of their tempo is not marred by the struggle against the trees and thorns of the forest, pressed tight together as if in futile protest of their hunt. As rocks batter against his body, J-4880 prays, though without the knowledge of any god save gear and piston, it cannot be truly called prayer. He prays that a rock will not strike him on the head and render him unconscious, for consciousness and his own will to survive are all that he can count on to save him from the will of the Benefactorium that now shadows him.

The ground greets him with a full-body punch, leaving him to writhe as he desperately grabs for breath. His mind trips over itself as he attempts to reorient himself, inhale, stand up, and continue his escape all at once. He stumbles, picks himself up and runs, and stumbles again, a thorn adding another bloody thread to the patchwork of wounds running the length and breadth of his body.

He runs.

He batters his body through the walls of branches and briars, looking ahead to his goal: the Interference Station. Beyond that lonely outpost, that mass of steel sending out waves of static like its brethren ringing the Logical State, an electromagnetic wall keeping the free world from perverting the Logical Numerals of Zamyat. If he can reach it, they will stop.

There is a thump and a crackle in the air; J-4880 awaits the dreaded fall of the net upon him, the feel of his muscles surrendering to the siren song of the current and falling dead. It does not occur. He smells smoke; the net is caught up in those tangled branches behind him, venting its electrical rage against nature.

He runs. The Interference Station is passed. Zamyat and the Benefactorium are a mere thirty feet behind him, powerless to capture him. They will stop now. The sweepers have stopped at the station, their tinted helmets looking dumbly at him, as if some force field prevents them from leaving the State they protect so diligently.

He drops gracelessly to his knees, as if his exhaustion had been trailing him by just a few feet and leapt upon him, leaving him sprawled and gasping for composure. A rough stone catches his eye, it is an eraser of the sort he needs. He erases the number above his eyebrow, the barcode on the back of his neck - scars of the State - leaving raw patches of blood where once his label had been. These patches of abraded skins are scars as well, but scars of a different sort. They are scars of his new name, that forbidden word: Liberty.

He looks back at the sweepers, still standing at the edge of the forbidden free lands. They look as though they still ought to be moving, but some higher agency has frozen them in time for this moment, that it will soon resume, and he knows why. Inside the State he is a threat, outside the State he is still a threat. There is an unspoken creed by which the hunters operate: never forgive, never forget, never stop.