Lizzie taps my shoulder, “Hope, I want you to come with us on this run.”

Is she serious? “I’m not sure I am in shape to keep up…”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be moving that fast. I want to show off your powers some to bring more people to our cause.”

Her argument makes sense, but will my powers still work as well after I exhausted them at the prison? My powers are fed by people’s memories. Is it right to even use my powers for minor things if it is fed by memories?

Her lips turn up into a slight smile, “Its ok to use your powers against the government. You’ve been given these powers for a reason, and if you are not using them then you are wasting them.”

I stole her memories, and she is still ok with this? “Are you certain? These are people’s memories I am stealing, like your memories. I feel like my powers were only an accident.”

“As long as you use your powers to make life better for everyone, I do not begrudge you taking my memories, in fact I welcome it. I do not think it is random that you woke up in the body of the woman that used to be our leader. I do not think it is random that you woke up at all. Only an act of God could bring a machine to life, and give it the power that you hold. God wants you to set this world to the way it should be, where everyone cares for each other.” Her smile is radiant now, filling her whole face with this strange joy.

“God?” I ask. This concept is foreign to me, and the memories I have barely mention this concept. They do not explain it.

“God is the creator of this world. Not many believe in him anymore, and I believed he turned his face away from his children, but you are proof that he has not. You are his creation, his catalyst of change.”

I still don’t quite understand this God concept, but she seems to fervently believe this. I accept that I exist, and I believe the memories of others brought me to life, but I will let her believe what she wants to.

“So, will you come with us? I think it will also be a good opportunity for you to see the streets. It’s one thing to see the streets of Richmond in your memories, and another to see them in real life. The amazing thing is that we are considered a small city with half of our grid being built over old buildings that are still around from the time of the first American civil war.”

Again, she was speaking gibberish. I guess it would be worthwhile to see this city. I should get out and exercise my new muscles if nothing else. But we should go out in disguise. Lily’s memories told me that it would be easier to slip by unseen than for me to use my magic to hide us. And I have a feeling my eyes would be quite memorable.

“I will go out with you if you have a disguise for us. I don’t want to be caught and put back in a cell.”

“Of course I have a disguise for you. What type of guerilla fighter do you think I am, or was. The memories you gave me back, I am using those to run this operation. Well, a mixture of that information and the information they stuffed inside my head.”

She holds out a pile of cloth to me. “Put these on and I will go grab some brown contacts for you. That should hide the color of your eyes the best.”

I take the piles of cloth and realize it is clothing. A long sleeve shirt, a long shapeless dress, and a piece of cloth that I am not sure what I am supposed to do with it.

I change into the shirt and dress and hold the cloth in my hand, completely baffled by it. What does she want me to do with this thing?

Lizzie comes back over holding shoes, a comb, and a small container in her hands. She holds out the shoes to me. “Here, put these on, and I will work on your hair”

“What am I supposed to with this cloth?”

“Don’t worry about it. It is called a headscarf and I will do it up for you once I finish combing out your hair. Just put the shoes on let me do your hair.”

I do as she tells me, and she does my hair up in a bun and somehow ties the head scarf around my head.

“Why is this necessary?”

“The best disguise is to go out as a religious person. First off, we all look the same to them. Secondly, people tend to try and look away from Muslims, especially the women because it makes them uncomfortable. Religion in general makes people uncomfortable these days. Imagine trying to fit the life you like to the way a God demands it. Being religious is the best disguise. Now, put these in your eyes.” She passes the small container sitting next to her to me.

Inside are two small pieces of colored plastic. It looks painful to me. “Umm, how do I put these in?”

“Hold your eye open with one hand, and put the contact lens in with the other hand.”

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I do as she tells me, and water fill my eyes as this thing hurts my eye. I blink multiple times, water – tears one of Lily’s memories suddenly tell me the name for this water – fills my eyes. Eventually, tears stop pouring out my eyes, and it doesn’t feel as uncomfortable. It still feels weird, but I can still see at least.

“Now the other one,” Lizzie says with impatience tinging her voice.

I force the other one in my eyes, and go through the same tears and pain. This is a lot to go through just to hide red eyes from the world.

Lizzie nods, “Now you are ready. Go hang out with the rest of the party near the door.”

Jay is standing next to the door in jeans and a black t-shirt Next to him are two people I don’t know. One is slightly shorter than Jay with a tweed cap and a similar outfit to Jays. The other person is probably the tallest of our group. She is wearing the same shapeless dress and headscarf Lizzie and I are in.

“Li – Hope, this is Alice.” He points to the tall girl wearing the headscarf. She smiles and holds out her hand, which I shake.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” she says in a surprisingly deep voice.

I smile politely, “I have changed much since I last lived with this group.”

“And this little rascal is Jack.” Jay point to the boy with the tweed cap.

The boy smiles up at me, a large gap showing between his two front teeth. “Jack the Giant Slayer!”

Jack the Giant Slayer. I search through my stolen memories, and finally the search catches the phrase in the memories of one of the prisoners, a woman named Melinda who was imprisoned for killing her husband, which she did do, ut with quite reasonable justification. Her memories of him hitting her…. I focus in on the memory of Jack the Giant Slayer. It is a story from her childhood. Jack sells a cow for magic beans, the beans grow into a giant bean stalk that jack climbs and then he kills a giant to get riches. Its all sort of fuzzy in the way old memories are, but it exists. I do not see how this relates to the boy’s name.

“Why do call yourself Jack the Giant Slayer?”

“Because I get into all sorts of trouble, just like Jack!”

And we are taking this boy with us on a mission to get food?

Jay pats the boy’s tweed cap, “Little Jack here can fit into anywhere, and often gets away with grabbing things unseen. He is master thief.

Being a master thief does not match up with the story of Jack the Giant Slayer in my mind, but I let it slide, My own knowledge is second hand after all. What do I know about this story?

Lizzie joins us in her own shapeless brown dress and brown headscarf. Jay swings open the door in a dark hallway.

The group never had light back when Lily ran it. How do they have an room with light in it here?“How do we have power in the room we were just in?”

Jay smiles, “We got a kid who’s an electrical wiz. He just gets that stuff. He ran a bunch of cables and stuff. Said we was borrowing power from our neighbor.”

It didn’t make much sense to me, but I am not an electrical wiz, so I just nod as if I understand. When in doubt, pretend to understand.

Jay pushes a door open and light floods in. It engulfs me and eats my vision, leaving only the sound of multitudes of people talking and the hum of vehicles traveling on the grid.

Lizzie grabs my arm and drags me into the bright world. The outside. I shade my eyes against the pain of the light that I haven’t seen before. Lily saw it, a long time ago, but I have not seen it before.

I can make out outlines, shadows leaning against walls, a child scuffling their feet in the dirt. Shuttles traveling by and shuffling the air the around me. This new world is as bleak as my cell with a strange acrid scent to boost.

Even the sky is gray, the clouds blotting out the full strength of the sun. Lily’s memories show a golden world reflected off the windows of the blocks of buildings. A place with children running and hiding amongst crowded streets filled with the hawking of vendors. Her memories show her running through this life of golden suns.

Not this dim muted world. Lizzie and Alice look down at the ground, their shoulders slumping toward the dirt covered sidewalks. Their plain brown dresses blend into this muted world. Following their example, I stare down at the ground, trailing my feet through the dirt.

A woman leaning against a rusted metal beam pulls down on an ill-fitting pale yellow dress that looks like it has seen better days. A man walks past, the smell of smoke clogging my lungs forcing me to cough.

I realize that the acrid scent I’ve smelled since opening the door is the smell of smoke clinging to the walls of the off-color world. What happened to the bright world in the memories, or do people enhance their own memories to make the world brighter than it is?

The streets slowly crowd with people wearing clothing that looks like it saw better years. Above our heads, the shuttle fly by, delivering people around in the top world, but how different is that world from this one? They are all covered in the same grim gray light and the grime of years of dirt.

This is just a larger version of the cell I lived in. Can I not escape that cell? Should I let the memories burn away, erase them for good and start anew so that I can live with the drudgery of this life?

Lizzie’s voice echoes through my head, “You were given your power to change this world. Use it.”

I had to change this world. They name me Hope. “You are Hope that we can escape this cell.”

This city is the cell, and we will escape it. I will lead us, as I lead Nathan and Lizzie out of that place. I will lead this city to a new world where the city is golden and the people laugh again. I can see you walking next to me, tough your feet glide over the grim without touching it. I can see you looking at them, at the city with that same blank expression. Do you not care about this city? Do you not feel the anger that this place has become the very cell we escaped?

I look closer, and I notice the slightly downward slant to your mouth. Are you upset also? Did this city finally break down your great barrier against showing emotions? Or am I just imagining… No. I imagined you in the first place, so this is all my own imagination. I guess my imagination would make your righteously upset by this place also.

We continue drudging forward, moving like water through the rocks ling in our path.

Lizzie stops, grabbing my arm and whispering in my ear, “We will grab from the supply shuttle. When it passes by, use your power to halt it. We will steal as much food as we can from those upper level bastards.”

Jay grins showing off his teeth, and Alice quietly brushes at her sleeve, as if brushing off dirt. Jack bounces on his toes, a look of delight flashing through his eyes.

Well, it looks like Lizzie wants to force my hand. All the people standing around… She’s right. We can’t steal from these people. It would be horribly wrong to steal from these poor tired souls.

“I’ll do it. Just point me at a shuttle and I will stop it.”