by P. S. Lurie
Ruskin is visibly affected by the suggestion, taking in the fantasy that we began so long ago but haven’t seen come to fruition. “I love you.” He kisses me and in that moment everything is fine.
“What will you do today?” I know he wants to be in the discussions but the four of us agreed he is too explosive and until he calms down I won’t allow it. It infuriates him but there are other things he’s doing, such as helping build a stockpile of weapons, scouting for resources to help build society and other private excursions he doesn’t disclose but I have a pretty good idea of what they are.
He smiles tellingly, and I don’t need to hear that it’s the latter he’s off to do.
“Don’t be long,” I say, reinforcing our plan to reconvene for lunch.
“As if armies could keep me from you.” He kisses my lips again and then leaves me to fight our cause alone.
Theia
“Hello Theia,” President Callister says.
I want my oppressor to know that I’m not afraid but with her having the upper hand by holding the knife my fear kicks in. “What are you doing here?”
“I missed you, Theia. I see so much of myself in you.”
My eyebrows shoot upwards and then I find my courage. “But I disappointed you by not being loyal. So, what, you’ve come to kill me? You disgust me. I’m nothing like you.” I surprise myself by how vehemently I reject her, also feeling some irritation that I’m revealing my true colours rather than bluffing. Something tells me that I’m entering a trap by speaking out but it’s a distant reflection that is as strong as it is fleeting.
She smiles, innocently, but we both know this is a ruse. Since leaving with her in the helicopter she has made it her mission to mess with my mind. The notes from Ronan that appear when I’m asleep. The circadian deprivation from the constant light. Yet, like Ruskin and Jack and all the others in the prison, she is keeping me healthy with the minimal food and what I imagine are minerals in the water. I’m alive for a reason.
“Nothing like me. Is that so?”
I ignore her. “Where are they?”
“Ronan and Leda are doing well albeit growing up without you. They miss you. They long for their determined sister.”
“I know,” I begin to mimic her detached tone. “I’m lucky to be here, I should be grateful to be here.” Emotion pervades. “I’ve heard it all before. Tell me something new. Or,” I glance at the knife, “You’re bored of trying to convince me.”
“Theia. I’m on your side. You have to believe me. This is for you.” President Callister raises the knife and turns her fist so that the handle is nearest me and the blade faces in her direction.
I try to understand and, in doing so, hesitate to take the weapon from her. “Why?”
“A test. You can prove your determination. Others here need convincing of your worth.”
Her explanation isn’t elucidating but I don’t want to miss the chance and advance, cautiously taking the knife, which she gives up without a struggle. I look past towards the open door. There appears to be no one else in sight but I don’t know anything about the layout of the fortress other than it is colossal, having been blindfolded from the moment I stepped out of the helicopter until I was placed in this room so breaking past her isn’t going to get me far outside of pure luck in choosing a direction. Even then, I don’t know what I’d be aiming for: the outside or my siblings?
“Theia, choose carefully,” President Callister says, directing my attention back to the knife. It feels heavy in my hand. “Remember this is for your brother and sister.”
Fighting for them is what I did when I put Ronan next door and Leda in the suitcase, and again when I refused to be promoted and looked after Leda in the barracks before handing her over to Dr Jefferson, only then for him to betray me. I thought these were the things that I had to do to protect them. Hours after losing Leda I was reunited with both her and Ronan and went with them in the helicopter. I told myself I was biding my time by acceding to President Callister’s control.
Allowing this woman to dictate my life isn’t achieving anything. This is my opportunity.
Then again, although I haven’t achieved anything at least I am not dead. If there’s a fighting chance to be reunited properly then I should continue to allow myself to be subservient to whatever the Upperlanders’ leader tells me to do. That’s the sensible decision, the best way to pass her test. I go to surrender the knife.
I can’t. Determination wins out but not in President’ Callister’s favour. I squeeze my grip tight and in a swift movement I plunge the sharp edge into her neck. It slides in, lodging itself deep. I let go and stand back to revel in my decision.
“Bad choice,” President Callister says, breaking my satisfaction and reacting altogether unexpectedly to how I would expect; instead of looking shocked and in pain she simply shakes her head in displeasure at my decision and, despite her being the one who should feel a stabbing pain, it is me that has the sensation of something digging into my skin.
No blood seeps from her neck and I realise I have been tricked by her yet again because I remember: this has happened before. I know what I’m about to see next.
The world falls away, leaving me strapped in a chair in a sterile-looking clinical room with someone injecting my arm with a sedative, and President Callister standing behind a pane of glass in full vision of me next to a man of a similar age to her, who’s always part of this routine of drugging me into a false reality. My eyes are groggy but I see him fidgeting with his hands. On closer inspection he’s missing a thumb.
“Theia,” President Callister says to me, through a microphone that plays out over invisible speakers. “Keep failing like this and I’ll have to give up on you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. So much of my time in the fortress has been masked within illusions that I don’t know what’s real anymore. If my hands were free I’d scratch at myself, in part to try and wake myself back up in the cell away from her but also in frustration that I failed. When I am alone I tell myself to succumb to her wishes, not stab her or kill her in any of the other scenarios that play out in these brainwashing fantasies she manages to create so convincingly in my mind. Yet there’s always the same conclusion: I can’t resist from wanting her dead.
I’m desperate to prove my loyalty and gratitude to President Callister, if only to be reunited with my siblings but my determination to enact retribution shines through in these drugged states: my desire for revenge trumps my fortitude for playing the long game.
“Take her back to her room,” President Callister says. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
In these small interactions I have yet to see anything faze President Callister and although she appears calm and collected a siren abruptly sounds out and I see her tense up. I don’t know what they denote but even through their continued ringing, although she manages to put herself back at ease, that momentary glance in which I learn that she’s not infallible pleases me. A miniscule smile passes across my face as something flows into my bloodstream and I pass out.
Zeke
“You’ll be late,” my father says, as I finish brushing my teeth. I stick the toothbrush back in its base and the yellow charging light shines bright. I gurgle with mouthwash, not rushing my morning regime, bend down to spit out the water and then splash my face with my palms full of lukewarm water before wiping it with a flannel.
I throw a death stare at his reflection in the mirror as he watches on disapprovingly.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, flicking my quiff so it sits straight, and then run some wax through it for extra effect. “I’m bored there. We’re nearly out of toothpaste.”
“Make it last...”
“...it last,” I join in with him, correctly predicting his repeated choice phrase. There’s ample supply of everything here but he likes to ration. Cheapskate.
“Two minutes and you’re out the door Zeke. You can’t be late again. I can’t be late again.”
I pick up t
he toothpaste and run my fingers along the plastic that still contains a good fortnight’s worth of product but chuck the tube into the bin. “Make it last,” I mimic. “Along with everything else. Haven’t you worked it out yet? This is Utopia.” But I don’t have an audience.
I find my father collecting some blueprints in our spacious living room. It’s nicer than the apartment we had six months ago. Minus the windows, you’d never know we were somewhere inside a mountain.
“What are you designing this time?”
“You’re still here.”
“Come on, tell me. You know I’m more capable than what they’re teaching at school. It’s not just you they Rehoused.” Although that isn’t categorically true I know I’ll be a good addition to the new world in time.
My father yields, aware that I’d have a far better education on the job than in crummy school lessons. “The heating system. Making sure it’s not going to rust. I’m trying to keep the humidity out of the vents.” I look up at the grate to the side of the room close to the kitchen, one of the thousands of exit points of the ventilation system into our homes that circulates clean air and warmth at the same time. I guess it’s an essential issue or he wouldn’t be working on it; as head engineer he oversees anything of the utmost importance.
Like a detonation system to take out a whole cruise liner.
“No bombs this time?”
My father drops the pencil with which he was marking the scrolled paper. “Zeke, I can’t go over it again.”
“I know dad. The Utopia... in exchange for Utopia.” I throw my hands around to suggest this is blissful living. “A necessary evil.”
“Don’t you dare use that attitude outside of this house,” he says, with a hushed but snarling voice almost at a whisper.
I sneer, watching as his eyes dart around the room, still not used to his paranoia ever since we moved here. “Grateful, loyal and what else was it? Oh yeah, psychopathic. This isn’t Utopia. This is bullshit.”
“Zeke...”
“Water, water everywhere”
“Zeke!”
“Catch you later.” I pick up my bag and leave before my father can continue to berate me for my attitude or warn me about the danger of suggesting we weren’t worthy of saving in the second cull. I walk down the dimly lit corridor and continue along the labyrinthine paths towards the section of the fortress that houses my school. It’s unfair to call this place Utopia; I know President Callister’s ‘new world order’ as she gushingly calls it isn’t supposed to be here. This is some sort of interim period before we can reclaim the world that is in the midst of drying out and being habitable once again. Apparently, the Upperlands were no longer sufficient and just like the first great cull there wasn’t enough space or resources to Rehouse everyone. I guess it’s an upwards trajectory between homicide and genocide.
My father’s engineering skills and my aptitude have kept us alive and I feel bad for tormenting him by giving him a hard time inside our house but I’m not foolish enough to risk speaking out of line anywhere but behind our closed door; a murmur that either of us aren’t living in peaceful bliss would quickly see to it that we were deemed unworthy of being here.
I wonder how many of my classmates feel the same? I wonder how many of them lost friends in the second cull? Considering it’s a crime to not report any such conversations to the soldiers, I guess I’ll have to live in the continued pretence of ignorance.
My watch says I’m a few minutes late which means I’ll have to apologise sincerely for my tardiness and I’m just about to scan myself in and enter through the main school door when a siren flares up in the distance and then grows louder as the speakers kick in, until the one above me joins in, deafeningly. I’ve never heard them before and wonder what they mean; it can’t be good for whoever they’re meant for.
Melissa
I rub the towel through my jet black jaggedly-cropped hair and try to wring the pool-water out of my clothes but they’re damp at best and stick to my body. I have nothing to change into so I’ll have to remain wet until I get back to our house. It’s not far; one of the saving graces for Selene’s rehabilitation being better placed in a swimming pool is the abundance of them in the Middlelands.
“Sorry Melissa. Want to wear mine?” Selene points to the pile of her clothes before lifting herself out of the pool from the side rather than using the steps, proving her strength through defiance of making things easier for herself even though she’ll feel exhausted later.
“Nah, they won’t fit.” She’s much taller than I am and she’s in a bikini so without her clothes she’ll either have to walk through the streets of the Middlelands shivering in the swimming costume, wrap a towel around her or go naked. It’s a nice but empty gesture, borne out of guilt that it’s been less than a fortnight since the last time I had to get in the pool and we thought we’d progressed. It goes unspoken that she’s taken a nosedive in her recuperation. Her body might be improving but her mind is being left behind despite me trying to make her open up about Nathaniel or her mother.
Selene shrugs and pulls off her swimsuit. She’s naked in front of me; maybe unabashed or not, her injury causes her too much pain to bother with the hassle of dressing under the towel when it’s just me around.
Rehabilitation. It’s what I’ve been doing with Selene for months and I don’t think she notices as I stare at the scar that runs down her left hip where a sheet of metal impaled her and nearly ended her life. If it wasn’t for Ruskin, Jack and me getting her to the hospital immediately and then the hack-job I did stitching her up she wouldn’t have made it. And if it wasn’t for the Upperlanders having such a well-oiled hospital she would have developed septicaemia and died over an endured length of suffering. I shake my head, correcting myself. I have nothing to thank the Upperlanders for. None of this would have happened had it not been for their cruelty. Not my family’s deaths or the two culls or losing all three of my roommates or Selene’s injury.
As if reading my mind, she slips a top over her head and asks me a question. “You think I’m a lost cause?”
She does a few lunges stretching out her pelvis on the side of the swimming pool, one of the few plentiful resources the Middlelands has; teaching people to swim due to the rising flood was a precaution that meant we had plenty of pools even if not a lot else. Turns out, I consider sardonically, that drowning was the least of our problems after all.
Selene takes a few wide strides with a trivial limp, which is impressive considering that I thought amputation due to some sort of gangrene or other fatal infection would be necessary not that long ago. “Maybe don’t answer that then,” she says, puffing out her top lip after waiting for a response that doesn’t come.
“No, sorry, I was daydreaming. It’s good Selene. I wouldn’t spend this long on your exercises if I didn’t think we were achieving something.”
There are plenty of other Middlelanders who need medical attention and there are few trained people able to tend to them all but I give Selene an unprecedented share of my time. The truth is, whether or not she is improving, I owe it to her to help. Selma was one of the only sources of comfort to me in the barracks and I hate that I didn’t go with Selene to protect her when she died. Also, Selene thinks it’s a secret but I know that she’s conflicted about me saving her life. I would have felt the same if the opportunity came but she is alive and it’s my duty to give her the best chance at surviving. Jack’s holding off so Selene can improve enough to return to the Upperlands. She’s determined but not ready. I hear her cry at night when she thinks I’m asleep upstairs. It’s too easy to feel alone in this world and she needs to know that she isn’t.
Selene grimaces as she lifts a foot to put on a sock and then a shoe and whimpers when repeating for the other one. I hold her arm and help her balance. Her instant reaction is to reject my help but she carries on dressing. “Thanks,” she says, slightly out of breath. “I appreciate it.”
“What happened today?” I ask, as we ma
ke our way out of the pool and into a street in the Middlelands not too far from where I grew up but haven’t been to since returning here. It’s cold here especially in the damp clothes but even though we’re lower down than the Upperlands it was definitely warmer there. It still blows my mind every day that I’m back living in the Middlelands.
Maybe not living. Existing. That word will do.
Selene looks shaken. Her wet hair sticks to her cheeks which have filled out a little since leaving the Upperlands. Going cold turkey on the pills Nathaniel was feeding her was hard at first but she looks healthier than when I first met her. That and she’s not in a torn-up wedding dress covered in scrapes. The mental scars though, they’re still under the surface.
“I heard him.”
We stop, and I turn to face her. “Nathaniel’s dead. He was buried under the rubble.”
“I got out.”
“You said it yourself. He took the brunt of the impact. Imagine what that did to his body.”
“Melissa.” She grinds her teeth, holding back her anger that I know is directed towards the man who did such terrible things to her that even a lifetime of therapy couldn’t resolve it. “I need to know for certain.”
With that I’m stumped. I’m a nurse, not a psychologist. But it doesn’t take a trained professional to know that it’s about wanting to make sure that he’s dead, that he can’t harm her now. She wanted to watch him die and she missed her chance. Now, she wants to return to the Upperlands saying she wants to be part of the team to take down President Callister but it doesn’t take the shrewdest of people to work out her ulterior motive.
There’s nothing I can do about it,” says Selene, batting away the conversation.
I always say the wrong thing but I try anyway. “His voice will go. It just takes time.”
“You’re right,” she replies, unconvinced.
I know my suggestion isn’t entirely true. She hasn’t stopped hearing him. And there is something she can do: revisit the site of the Utopia. Isn’t that what I’d do? Yet I find myself deterring her.