Lea hoped Max was adjusting well. She knew it would be slow. It had taken them a couple days to get used to... well, living in a bunker. She had showed him around. She had answered his many, many questions. She had asked HIM questions--mostly about his accent, which he couldn't answer very well because he didn't remember anything.

Over the span of just one day... they had become friends. Sort of.

As the sun set on the day Max first arrived, they sat in the sands just outside. Lea had warned him that Summer would probably come to get them at any minute. But Max seemed to hate being locked inside and spent just about all his time doing something out.

Everyone else was already inside. It was calm.

But then Max asked her a strange question.

"Have you guys ever talked about leaving?"

Lea blinked. "Of course! We leave all the time--"

"No," Max interrupted, "I mean ACTUALLY leaving. Leaving and not coming back. Leaving the desert. It can't go on forever, can it?"

Lea understood now.

"Well, the lady told us not to."

"You've said that before. Do you know this lady? Do you remember her? Maybe there's something out there she just doesn't WANT us to see, and so she tells us that it's not safe."

Lea didn't know her. Lea didn't remember her. But Lea knew that the bunker was safe, and she didn't know if the outside world was.

"But what if she wasn't lying?"

"But what if she was? We can never know u--"

The door to the bunker suddenly opened, cutting Max off. Finny stood by the door, the harsh white light from inside lighting up his exasperated expression.

"Summer says you need to come inside," Finny said plainly, twisting one of the many bracelets on his wrist.

"Why didn't she come get us?"

"She's busy getting dinner ready. She wouldn't leave me alone until I came and got you two," Finny glanced inside.

"Come on, Lea, let's go inside," Max got to his feet and started jogging inside, leaving Lea catch up.

"What were you going to say?" Lea asked as the two of them took a seat in the main room.

"What? Oh," Max realized what she meant, "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

Lea was not convinced. She was the youngest, but everyone always underestimated her. She wasn't stupid. Age has nothing to do with how smart or how useful you are.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Just forget it."

Lea didn't want to push him any farther. He was probably her only real friend. Well, no one was exactly MEAN to her, but Max was different. He understood she wasn't a delicate flower that had to be protected all the time. And the last thing Lea wanted was to lose that.

They sat in a painfully awkward silence for a few moments before Summer appeared, carrying two granola bars in one hand and a can of peaches with a pop-top in the other.

"Hey, you two!" she chirped, handing the peaches to Lea and the granola bars to Max.

Max simply waved nonchalantly at her, tearing the wrapper off his first granola bar.

"Hi, Summer!" Lea responded, grabbing at the can lid with her stubby child fingers. As Summer walked away, Lea struggled with the can. Desperately grabbing at it, she just couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong.

Max paused, staring over at her.

"Do... do you need some help with that?"

"No, I got it," Lea said, then scowled with impatience.

"Stop acting the maggot and hand it over," Max said, and to Lea it sounded like his accent got a whole lot heavier.

"Stop what?" Lea asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Acting the maggot. You know! Messing around," Max seemed a bit frustrated and a bit flustered, "Just hand me the peaches."

Lea shrugged and handed over the peaches. The tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, Max opened the lid and handed it back to her.

Lea wondered if there was any forks or spoons. Not really caring that much, she dug her fingers in and started to eat.

After everyone had finished eating, Max started to look around more deeply. Lea began to guess that Max didn't really mean it when he said that he didn't care about leaving.

She walked up behind him as he crouched on the floor, "You're not supposed to lie...!"

Max jumped, twisting around. "What? I'm not lying. I never lied."

"You said you changed your mind..."

"I did."

"Then why are you looking around? I could help you."

"Is it so wrong--" Max paused, sighed, then said, "Alright. Help me look for something that might tell us anything about anything.

Their search did not go on for very long. After Lea agreed to help, Max approached the screen that Lea had told him the lady had appeared on. 

Max slowly held out his hand towards the screen. The moment his fingers touched, the screen shot back into life, blaring some sort of company slogan music.

Max leaped backwards, staring at his hand. All the other kids had pounced on him like on a lion on its prey.

"What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything! I only touched it!"

"What do you mean--?"

"Shut up, you guys!"

The room fell silent a face appeared on the screen. A man, maybe in his late 40s or so, with dark skin and darker hair stood in a empty, black room. His white lab coat contrasted greatly with the dark background.

"Hello. I suppose this means all of you have arrived."

"Does that mean there will be no other unwanted surprises?" Finny muttered under his breath, but Summer overheard and scolded him for talking over the man.

"This screen was activated by your fingerprint, Maxine Locke."

"My name is Max..." the boy with the heavy Irish accent remarked, but he seemed to realize that the man couldn't hear him.

"All 11 of you have been placed here for your safety. I don't care what else you've been told or what you might be thinking about, but you need to stay put. No. Matter. What. I don't suppose your parents would like it if they knew that they had broken their backs to get you to safety, only for you all to throw it away."

"I should explain it more formally as well, huh? I'll try not to scare you, some of you being so young and all."

"This program was created by us. Who are we? Just consider us... a secret service, sort of. We work for the president and perform experiments in secret. We work on the cure for cancer and for HIV and for autism. We try to discover a way to keep the heart beating... forever. We do lots of things. Just four or five months ago, we realized our world wouldn't be safe for much longer. We told the world the truth, and then went around to the richest families in the world, and asked if they had any children--14 and younger--that they would like to keep safe. There was 11 positive responses."

"Each of you. 11 sets of parents, or grandparents, or aunts and uncles, or any legal guardians could and would pay for their child's guaranteed safety."

"And we've brought you all here. There was a lot of legal paperwork that I know will be useless in just a few days. But it was necessary. We have to preserve humanity. And you are all that's left."'

"Try not to get yourselves killed. All of humanity is resting on your prepubescent shoulders."

Finny snorted with laughter, immediately prompting Sapphire to ask "What does that word mean?" to which Finny did not answer. Sapphire then turned to the second oldest--Sawyer, who did her best to be polite in the way that she said 'no'.

The screen faded to black, leaving no set of 0s and 1s to read this time.

"That settles it," Max said, standing up and facing everyone else. "I think we should leave. Permanently."

Lea felt slightly betrayed if she was being honest with herself, but couldn't bring herself to hold a grudge.

"What? Why?" Summer asked, shock filling her voice.

"We need to find out what happened, don't we? He didn't tell us anything about what happened to our memories, and I think the only place that we'll ever find answers--"

"--is out in the real world."

"I kind of agree," Finny said, surprising everyone that he would EVER agree with someone younger than him--or at all. "I definitely don't want to be locked in this small little bunker until the day I die, never knowing what happened that put me in the bunker in the first place."

"I don't know... the lady--" Summer started nervously, as if she was afraid to disagree with anyone.

"Do you know the lady? How can you trust her? Have you ever seen this lady? You don't know anything about her, do you?" Max said.

Max had used the exact same argument on Lea earlier. But the thing was... he wasn't wrong.

"I think we should go," the voice had come from Sapphire. Several others agreed with her. But some disagreed.

"I don't think we should split up," Summer said, not really joining either side for sure. "We all need to stay together. The world is 'resting on our prepubescent shoulders', whatever that means. Whether that means we stay or we go, we should agree on it."

"We should vote," Sawyer said democratically. "All for staying, raise your hand."

Several hands shot into the air, including Sawyer and Bernie. However, Sawyer could not count how many hands had went into the air... for obvious reasons.

"1, 2, 3, 4... and 5," Regina concluded.

"All for leaving?"

"5 hands."

"Who didn't vote?" Sawyer asked. 

"Summer," Sapphire responded immediately.

"You have to vote, Summer..."

Summer's eyebrows furrowed with regret and worry. 

"I think..."

Everyone stared at her with high expectations.

"I think we should go."

Then the very next morning, they did. They packed up all their things--which was all the food and water they could carry.

And left. For good.