CHAPTER 2

THE TROUBLE WITH BREATHING

Okay.  So, here’s the problem. 

We couldn’t just walk out the front door.  It required planning.  Escape routes.  Perfect timing. 

You see, my front door sat 485 stories above the ground and three blocks from any elevator.  The route between, peppered with digital eyes attached to a surveillance system known as P.A.N.[1]

It had been designed that way. 

It kept me where I belonged and kept anyone who attempted to ‘kidnap’ me from doing so.

Theoretically.

My mother had it completed shortly after my eighteenth birthday.

And I fucked it all up —the plans to escape—the minute I pushed my button.  Because Coen had laid it all out, with the help of someone he refused to identify. 

It was simple, really.  The two of us leaving Sonacrest[2], riding an elevator down to the ground floor, and getting on the train to the Capitol.  Just like any other recognized citizen of Central City. 

But like I said, my button had one function, so I couldn’t turn it back on. 

I had made myself look undesirable, unauthorized, and out of place.  Which was appropriate for outside the city walls.  It was the point, really.  To make me invisible.  Unrecognizable.  But while inside the dome, it was a major problem.

People who looked like me didn’t walk the halls of the tower.  Not freely. 

And they sure as shit didn’t ride the main elevator from the top floor of the most prestigious building that side of the Potomac.

No—they took the stairs like every other defective outworlder dreg.  House staff who were meant to be useful, not seen.

Thing is, Coen didn’t know where those stairs were.  He hadn’t planned for it.

And by his calculation, we had twenty minutes left.

“To do what?” I asked, pacing nervously while I watched him watch the cameras.  We were sticking around too long, and I knew that my mother would come in eventually.

“Catch the train.”

That’s when he noticed the eye didn’t move when I did.  It didn’t track or follow me.  I really had become invisible to P.A.N.

He took a deep breath and then reached into his pocket.  “I have an idea.” 

His face, which had been ruggedly unassuming and strangely, wildly attractive since we left the bathroom, suddenly turned back into the pixie prince face I knew well.  Which kind of pissed me off. 

I wanted the option to turn back too.  Not that I would have.  I just wanted the choice.  Truth be told, I didn’t know what an Imprint was, or that anyone had one until that morning anyway.  I just knew that since I had one, I wanted control of it.

“Why does yours do that and mine doesn’t?”

“I don’t know,” he said, taking a step toward the front door.  That time it did move.  It followed him.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, turning me around so he could reach into my bag.  “Here, put these on.”

“What, here?”  

“Yes, hurry.”

So, I did.  Stripping my Harred whites for the most putrid green, untailored, unfit, uniform of the day.

“I look stupid,” I said, pulling at my shirt. 

“Good,” he said, handing me his bag too. “Now let’s go.”

He pushed through to the outside, walking like he assumed I was right behind him.  But I wasn’t.  I had stopped at the threshold, as if it held me back.  Fighting a gravity I couldn’t quite place.  A tether that started pulling back in.

“I can’t,” I said, my chest caving.  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He turned back with a very recognizable look on his face.  One I forgot I had seen before.

“No, Isa, please don’t do this again.”

“Do what?”

“This,” he said, whispering.  “Doubting yourself.”

But he said again.  And I wanted to know what that meant.

“Every single time we almost made it out—” He paused. “You are the one who stopped me.”

Then he moved closer, reaching for my hands. “What are you so afraid of?”

But I didn’t know. 

Part of me was like, ‘fuck it, let’s go an adventure,’ and the other was trying to figure out the point of it all.  Why I suddenly had the urge to walk away from everything.

“Isa, if we are going to go, we have to go now,” he said, gently pulling me.  “Please.”

“But why you?” I asked, getting really close to his face.  “Huh?”

You could see his shoulders drop as soon as I asked that question.  Like we had done that routine so many times before and he was at his wit’s end.  I could almost see his urge to pick me up and sling me over his shoulder, while his eyes welled up with aggravation and exhaustion.

And for some reason, my question suddenly didn’t matter.

“Please, Isa.  Try and remember.”

But I couldn’t.  I just had to surrender to whatever it was that compelled him and had to stop making it harder.

“Ok.  Let’s go.”

Yes, it was that easy.  Which didn’t bother me as much as you probably think it should have. When it came to him, I seemed to give in more often than not.  Trusting in him before I could explain why.

I didn’t always agree with him or his methods.  And quite frankly, I made it my mission to pester him whenever possible, but he was my best friend.

If anyone had earned an irrational chance from me, it was him.

Besides, that ‘fuck it’ part of me did want to see how far we could make it before the most omnipotent would notice I was gone.

That bit inside of me, that was alive and well and steadily growing after termination of my Imprint, as well as my desire and ability to say words I knew I wasn’t allowed to say.  Like fuck it.  Or “what the fuck,” which I muttered under my breath so many times from the front door to the elevator as people walked by me with their faces pinched and noses turned. 

I had gone from the most recognizable and worshipped daughter to a bug on their shoe they couldn’t seem to wipe off fast enough.

“Ignore them,” Coen said, walking behind me.  “Just act like you belong.”

His confidence in the people around us was a bit disturbing.  I was on a floor a person who looked like me shouldn’t have been, and he was banking on the fact that they wouldn’t report me.

It probably had something to do with who he was.  Being the assigned attendant to the Chairman and her daughter gave him special powers over the citizens.  Like power by proxy, or by proximity.

So, if he was escorting an outworlder dreg, there had to be a reason.

Didn’t mean people didn’t stare.  Assholes of privilege or manufactured safety do love tragedy. 

It also didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try and use my newfound invisibility to P.A.N. and my outworlder status to my advantage.  I liked making people feel uncomfortable.

But when the elevator doors opened, I found myself a little disappointed. 

It was large, made of opaque glass, and empty.

I pressed my face against one of the walls, trying to get a glimpse of whatever camera I was convinced was behind it.  But there was nothing. 

Well, not nothing.  It just happened to be a broadcast wall.  Not a surveillance one.  So, I got hit in the face with the 8 am news. 

The bottom ticker, scrolling away, reminding us of which words were being eliminated from our vocabulary.  The reporters announcing how many people were to be or had been exiled in the last twenty-four hours.  And on the wall across from the door, a welcome announcement for all the new citizens arriving that week. 

The surveillance system I had been looking for consisted of sensors in the floors and digital eyes in the ceiling. 

Ears were a different story, however.  Pod-born citizens had aural feeds implanted in their brains—mine, in my Imprint. And my Imprint had been turned off, so P.A.N. couldn’t hear me.  Normally, P.A.N. heard everything once you left the Harred private quarters. My mother believed surveillance was essential right up until it involved her.

Since I had gone silent to the system, Coen was the one taking a risk every time he opened his mouth.

“Come on, Isa, stop,” Coen pleaded, walking across the lift. 

But that wasn’t in my nature.  Hence the behavioral governor in my head with a one-function remote.  It was more than just a face filter. 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to get caught,” he hissed between gritted teeth.  “Just chill.”

“Fine,” I said, like a twenty-five-year-old toddler.  “But who says chill?  What the fuck does that even mean?”

He turned, his eyes shooting bullets into mine.  “Oh—my—god.”

That nature I was talking about?  It had been repressed.  Tucked behind technology meant to inhibit parts of me that weren’t welcome in my mother’s Federation.  Personality traits that could not have been removed or reprogrammed because I was not pod-born[3].

Which was news to me at the time. 

Shouldn’t have been. 

The elevator stopped and the doors opened.  A handful of green-and-blonde citizens stepped inside.  A few looked at me.  Then looked again.

I didn’t look like them.  I needed technology to act like them.  And as soon as it turned off, I did neither.

Another floor.  More people.

So apparently, while I was inherently a sarcastic asshole, I shouldn’t have been that bad.  It just all came out like an itch I had been desperately trying to scratch.  Which, in hindsight, put a lot of my childhood in perspective. 

Another floor. 

This time no one bothered to look away.

I could have tried to temper it a little.  I didn’t.

So, he kept his perfectly plump lips shut and bit down on the bottom one like his teeth were the lock required to keep him quiet.

By then, he didn’t have to say anything for me to realize the gravity of the situation. 

Floor by floor, the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot elevator began to fill wall to wall with lemmings patiently waiting to get to the bottom.

All staring at me.

Their curiosity muscling me against the back wall.  Their bodies holding me to it.

Suddenly my chest seized.  It wasn’t fun anymore. 

Coen, whose hip had been shoved into my bellybutton, seemed to feel how labored my breathing had become and managed to squirm his way around, until his chest met mine. Placing his hand gently on my collarbone, he began to breathe deeply, so that I could find his rhythm.

No words. 

Thing is, it wasn’t just all those pairs of eyes that were getting to me.  It was the startling memory of the interaction that started the whole thing.  A moment in a tiny and crowded closet that fucked up everything.

I looked up at Coen, who had been carefully keeping one eye on me and the other on the crowd.

“I remember,” I whispered.

He couldn’t really say much.  He was linked back into the system.  But he wasn’t going to leave me hanging.

“Remember what?”

“Jed,” I said. 

And we left it at that.  He couldn’t ask me questions, and I couldn’t say any more.  The crowd may not have been paying attention any longer, but one woman in particular with nothing but time and the Doctrine on her side kept her eyes focused on me. 

So, I had to just stand there in my own panic, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

Floor after floor, just eye contact with someone who would never have dared to look at me just an hour before.

Funny, huh? 

I thought so, despite swallowing my own vomit—twice.

Not funny enough to distract me, however.  Which annoyed me.  Just a few moments before I was bonkers—acting like nothing mattered, and then I was back to feeling feelings I didn’t want to have.

Stupid technology.  Stupid feelings.  Stupid fucking uncertainty.

A whiplash of me—bouncing around in a very overloaded head.  Which didn’t get any better when the elevator made it to the ground floor.

In fact, it became ten times worse. 

I imagine it had something to do with the voice in my head.  The one that started screaming once freedom became more than just an idea.

Loyalty.

Family.

Duty.

All my mother’s favorite words, suddenly lining up to tell me exactly what walking out of that elevator made me.

Disloyal.

Selfish.

Ungrateful.

If I walked out that door, I would be abandoning the family.  Embarrassing my mother.  Walking away from a life people would have killed to have.

Or did. Long story.  I’ll get there.

But what if he was wrong?

Worse.

What if I was? 

So naturally, I froze. 

Again.

Coen, trying to keep his composure, held the doors open while silently begging me to hurry. 

The train was on the platform, a voice announcing final call.

Which I did hear, despite my oxygen-deprived delirium.

So, I moved forward, one wobbly foot in front of the other, hoping that my body would follow.  Not realizing that I moved like a sloth with cement shoes on while stuck in quicksand.  Staring at a train that had decided to leave without us.

“Shit,” he said, tucking me under his arm.  “Now what?”

Shit being the absolutely appropriate word.

We were stuck in the middle of Jarsdell Station, full of willfully blind, pious citizens shuffling around us, and we had no other planned way out.

[1] P.A.N.  – Public Assurance Network

[2] Sonacrest – the name of the Harred Palace

[3] Pod-born – designed human with cloned DNA

© 2026 E. S. Mercer. All rights reserved.
The Wrong Daughter and The Heresy of Isa Harred are works of fiction by E. S. Mercer. No portion of these excerpts may be reproduced or distributed without permission, except as permitted by law.