by P. S. Lurie
“Ronan?” I ask. Neither replies. Maybe they know him better as Henry but they lock me inside before I can test out that name.
I sit up and focus on the spinning room. It’s the same as this morning or... I have no idea how long it has been since I was in here compared with how long I have been hallucinating in the clinical chair, during which I was fed the lie that I was greeted by President Callister. I rub my head, trying to snap out of the grogginess and drag myself to the tap but stop at the desk. The notepad is completely empty.
“Ok,” I say to myself. “Stop trying to kill her.” If I don’t I’ll never see Leda and Ronan again.
My new mantra is a pleasant one: Stop trying to kill her.
It’s as simple as that, convince myself to continue with the loyalty towards President Callister rather than attacking her. Past bogus encounters have taken place in this room but in other scenarios too, the worst being my house in the Middlelands but also the arena in the Upperlands and on top of the Fence as well as a few other public spaces in the fortress but I can’t verify whether these latter locations have any basis of reality.
“Stop trying to kill her,” I repeat.
I turn to the door and shout, hoping that someone will hear me. “You win. I’m on your side. All I want is to be with them. Please.” Each phrase becomes more desperate. Louder too.
I expect nothing but without warning I hear the door unlock. No one enters. I grab the untouched pencil as the only thing in the room that resembles some sort of defence and rub my thumb over the nib; it’s sharp enough to be useful. I creep across the room and pull at the door which opens with ease.
I pause, thinking that if everything is a test then I’m expected to follow a predesigned route. What if I don’t go? I’m too tired to do this again and the grogginess may be a clue as to whether I’m hallucinating or not but the evidence isn’t solid enough; I’m certain they have the ability to make me feel anything under their drugs. I could return to the bed and fall asleep ignoring this turn of events but that achieves nothing and I figure that if this isn’t actually genuine then I have nothing to lose. In all likelihood I’m walking into a trap but unlike what they normally do to my mind by wiping the slate clean I seem to be aware of previous occurrences. That might be my best insight that I’m awake. Whatever awaits me, President Callister and the rest of the Upperlanders will be one step ahead.
Then I remember her flinching at the alarm, imperfect after all. There’s always the chance that this is a mistake.
One way to find out, I tell myself.
I step into the hallway, gripping the improvised, feeble weapon, unaware if what is happening is real or not yet the adrenaline that soars through my body feels as authentic as anything.
Jack
“Let’s break this down,” Travis says, immediately after we reconvene without any grace period. “What do you want?”
I opt for one particularly effective tactic that works at delaying our progress: the problem with taking the lives of children. “I want to see them punished but not a full out war. Keep deaths to a minimum.”
“After what they did to your family? Our community? And you still want to spare some of them?”
“They’re children.” The people we’re likely to come into battle with are our own children, brainwashed by the Upperlanders, just like Ronan. And just like Ronan they range in age between eight and twelve. “Just children.”
“Soldiers,” says Claire, Travis’ designated second in command. She has two of her own children, the three of them escaping on a boat during the great cull. She was only one group ahead of a trawler that was capsized by the guards. We all struggle with the concept of killing youth and none more so than Claire, who needs to distance them in her mind from her own children by clinging despairingly onto semantics. “Maybe if we stopped calling them children...”
“They’re children first and foremost,” I snap back. “Our children. From the Middlelands.”
“They’re trained soldiers. You encountered one of them who sent you towards the Utopia before it exploded,” says Samuel, a young man who sometimes works out with Ruskin but rarely speaks up despite always loitering in the control centre. I like his presence, offering diplomatic titbits that get us nowhere fast.
“They’ll kill us before we even blink,” Claire says.
“Exactly.”
“Fantastic. A child army tugging on our heartstrings,” replies Travis.
It frustrates me no end that pretty much no one here has any links to those in the fortress. Except for a few of us, either whole families died or they all survived. Very few of the children in the Upperlands have a parent here to argue on their behalf. I look around at our gathering: Travis, Claire, the inseparable Samuel and his girlfriend, Tess, and a few others that don’t say much. If we were ruminating over their own bloodlines then maybe the conversation would be different but all that the surviving Middlelanders can perceive is an enemy, no matter the age.
Ruskin, Melissa, Selene and I know differently. Those taken after the great cull were boys and girls aged between six and ten, who had lost everyone and promised a second chance to live at the expense of their families. In a sense, that was seen through to completion but being shaped into an army probably isn’t what their parents had intended at the promise of being Rehoused.
“They might not even be alive,” says Travis. “Considering Callister killed off most of her people they might have outgrown their use. I say we attack.”
“How’s starving them out going?” Tess asks.
“Working on it,” Claire says. She’s been heading a mission to take out their supplies of electricity and water and hoping they surrender before we have to do anything more confrontational. If Claire was successful then it would be preferable to an all out war, especially considering the size and preparation of their side against ours, yet I know the Upperlanders are self-sufficient and have plenty more resources than we do but I allow this to continue all in the name of dragging my heels. Then again, every day we hold off is another day Theia is held prisoner. And another day for the Upperlanders to decide to come back and finish us off.
“Let’s focus on that then,” I say.
To his chagrin, Travis is outnumbered as everyone agrees.
I don’t show it but I’m relieved at the support for the less reactive strategy although this is surely temporary. As Ruskin pointed out to me one night, the Middlelanders to survive were the ones huddled into boats until the coast was, metaphorically and literally, clear rather attacking the solitary soldiers during the cull so it’s a relief that they’re not completely dismissive of going into combat. I figure that the threat of the Upperlanders retaliating keeps their drive alive. Besides, despite not focusing their hatred on the idea of stolen children the Middlelanders haven’t forgotten the wickedness that was inflicted upon them.
Revenge is a powerful motivator.
As it stands I have my way, holding off on hostilities by concentrating our efforts into sourcing their pipelines. Until we do decide to advance, Ruskin and Selene have been forbidden by Melissa and me to partake in the conversations. They’re not even allowed to step foot inside this room although Ruskin hovers nearby when he’s not looking for his brother. Melissa has the upper hand by knowing the Upperlands layout better than anyone and refuses to disclose any of her knowledge until Selene and Ruskin are ready for warfare. What Claire, Travis and everyone else in this strategy room don’t realise is how little of the Upperlands the rest of us know. I went through a secret tunnel straight into an apartment block on that first night and soon after to the prison for a year and then past the Utopia to the Fence. Ruskin had the same route except for a detour when he was helicoptered to the fortress and then paced through the city before the final announcement. And Selene was hoarded up in Nathaniel’s apartment for the entire year so isn’t much more help than that. Ruskin and I did see a little more of the Upperlands for the few days after the explosion whilst Selene was being treated
in the hospital but that still doesn’t add to our confidence of the set up. Then there is Melissa who knows the most having lived in the barracks and worked in the hospital.
“If we do eventually capture anyone?” Travis asks.
“Negotiations. Hold the leaders accountable. Release everyone else.”
“There’s only Callister and her army after she detonated the Utopia with everyone else onboard.”
I shake my head. “There must be more. She wouldn’t kill all of her people. Just the ones she deemed expendable.” I can’t prove it but I’m convinced there’s a functioning society in the fortress, even if a fraction of the size, consisting of people President Callister deemed worthy of being invited forward.
“It’s too risky,” a reserved stocky man says, from the far corner to where I am. “We kill them all.”
“No, there’s...” I start, but Travis interrupts me.
“Theia Silverdale. How can one girl be this important to you? She’s as expendable as anyone else.”
“I disagree,” says someone else, new to the conversation.
I don’t recognise the voice and turn in the direction of the entranceway to see Selene, Melissa and Ruskin, uninvited, but they wouldn’t be here without a valid reason. Then I notice the speaker is a fourth person standing alongside them, marginally shorter but more assured in his stature than anyone should be at that age. Ronan Silverdale.
Which changes everything.
10 A.M. – 11 A.M.
Theia
Every door that I try to escape through as I make my way along the corridor looks identical to the first but not a single other one opens when I push my weight against it, uncertain whether I should move with stealth or just make a break for it. A long-lost memory of Henry comes back, something that hasn’t come to mind since long before the great cull, even though plenty of situations have applied. My life consists of moments where I’ve had to make a decision: fight or flight.
In one of his many pursuits, Henry stumbled upon a book that sought to explain innate animal behaviour, boring me at the time with the implications for human nature borne from one of our most primitive of emotions: fear. In some situations, he explained, the adrenaline and our courageous brains tell us we have a fighting chance whilst, at other times, running away is the sensible decision. It explains why I froze in the arena when Leda was revealed but conversely grew impassioned in the prison when I realised that idly standing by was no longer an option. Right now, all I know is that my body is tense but as I’m heading towards an unknown danger or using this anomaly to my advantage, I don’t know what my body’s preparing itself for. I’m clueless as to what I should do. Push on or hide?
I hear Henry’s voice.
“I had a plan for us.”
I wish I’d listened to him more carefully instead of rolling my eyes.
Wait. Memories of Henry.
Could the Upperlanders know these? Is this further proof that I’m not imagining all of this? It’s enough for now so I keep trying each door, not knowing what lies behind them. I’m almost one hundred per cent convinced I’m in the fortress. It’s warm in the corridor, which makes me believe two things: one, this place has been meticulously planned for a long time and, two, that gives me no indication of how far into the mountain this building leads and whether I’m close to any exit.
An inconspicuous metal door at the end gives out and I bat away the idea that this isn’t chance or coincidence, not wanting to accept that the Upperlanders have designed a route for me; that my choice to leave the bedroom-turned-prison cell might be a false dichotomy doesn’t bear considering.
I stop in my tracks, not having yet seen what exists on the other side. Why am I being hopeful when I need to be on the alert? I’m going about this wrongly: I have to expect the worst is waiting for me because that’s what President Callister will have set up. The chance that I’ll find my siblings and steal away with them undetected is slim to none. I’ve seen neither Ronan – or whoever they made him believe he was – or Leda since the helicopter ride. When we landed seems so long ago but the memory is strong.
“Don’t make this difficult,” President Callister said, when we touched down on the landing pad on higher ground than the Upperlands, the trail of smoke from the newly-detonated ship not yet reaching this altitude. “You can soon be reunited with Leda and Ronan. For your own good, Theia, hand your sister over and you can have her back when she’s healthy.” The two guards that had ridden up with us, including the one operating the helicopter who I now realise isn’t actually a man but is just a tall boy, have their guns drawn at me.
“I’m not going anywhere without her.” I’m as unconvinced by my words as anyone.
“You should have died numerous times today. Others want you dead. Trust me that I’m saving your life.”
“Ronan,” I said, ignoring President Callister’s suggestion that I owed her a favour. I didn’t mention that he had squeezed my hand in the helicopter, secretly revealing remnants of my real brother. “Remember what Dad said in the house that night?”
I wasn’t able to relay any more to him because Ronan also cocked his gun, facing me with a stoic expression. My prerogative was to believe that his act was a ruse to keep us all safe and I had no choice but to play along.
One of the guards advanced and I turned and ran. The air was thinner but still I sprinted with Leda in my arms to the edge of the landing pad hanging over the side of the mountain away from the fortress. I could see the defunct ship that was a decoy for what was to be the Upperlanders’ true Utopia, in which Kate, my now ex-boss, her daughter Cassie and everyone else in their city as well as hundreds if not thousands of Middlelanders were exterminated in the blink of an eye. Past that, beyond the Fence and its fake glass panels with no sign from here of Selene or anyone else, was a vision of land untouched by the sea.
The Upperlands was deserted; from a hive of activity, filled with promises of safety onboard the Utopia that transformed into a massacre of an unknowing community; a second cull, which included the Middlelanders that had survived the first genocide, only to live a year in servitude and then brutally die aboard the ship.
I turned my gaze from the Middlelands, at the world I had once known, not lost to the flood as we had been led to believe. I thought about our houses and the bodies in them. A macabre thought of what state of decomposition my family were in was no less horrific than the idea of the sea devouring them. Abhorrent, but in a different way.
I remember the next part vividly: I looked over the precipice, at the sheer drop that would no doubt kill us.
I had a true choice in that moment of ending my life.
It was the iciness of the tears that streamed down my cheeks that brought my attention to them.
“So many lives lost,” President Callister said, looking out alongside me.
“You sound like you care.”
“I do care. Have you ever heard of the Gaia hypothesis?”
I didn’t let on that those words sounded familiar, that Henry had mentioned this idea even though my exhausted mind couldn’t dredge up anything more than faint recognition.
President Callister continued. “The world has always self-righted any threats. Homeostasis, like the body regulating its temperature to a constant, healthy level. Plenty of evidence exists for this: the salinity in the oceans, the oxygen in the atmosphere. Billions of years of adaptation and equilibrium.
“Climate change was the first indication we had gone too far as humans. Then extinction of thousands of species that your generation could only read about in textbooks. It was too late to change our behaviours by the time the floods came. Forget the evil we had done to one another, ignoring the plight of those losing their houses, the whole world was on the verge of extinction.
“Don’t you see, Theia, the planet was telling us it needed a fresh start. So we did what we could to prevent mass destruction. We created this new world so that we would not drown or starve or freeze to death in the inte
rim. Nature battled us and we won.”
“People didn’t need to die.”
“We really did have a plan to Rehouse you all but the Utopia wasn’t big enough to support a growing population. Imagine the spread of disease if we had tried to squeeze everyone onboard. Then the water began to recede. Imagine our surprise.”
“How did you know and we didn’t?”
“The advantage of higher ground. Your people were too close to the problem. By then, you had resigned yourselves to the same fate as others migrating past your houses to the Fence.”
“We would have worked it out. Your great cull was a lie.”
“We did what we had to do. We acted for the greater good of humankind. The choice to have not just one but two Great Culls wasn’t easy. We held firm and look at what the planet has afforded us: a new chance to build a better world. Because it wasn’t extinction after all. It was more nuanced than that. “I thought Total Flood was deemed to destroy humanity but it was more subtle. Look who is left: the healthiest, brightest and best. The most determined. A natural reset button for a new world order.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make. You ended humanity when you decided to let us die.”
“Think what you will but those who fought to survive did so. There’s a reason you’re here and few else Theia. But it took a lot of persuasion to bring you up here, don’t forget that.”
I couldn’t abide her explanation of selection through the cruellest of methods any longer: a cull of everyone that didn’t conform to a group of malicious, selfish people that thought themselves superior. Leda buried herself into my chest. I thought growing up in a drowning world was bad enough but I couldn’t let my sister come to understand this. I couldn’t risk handing her over and never seeing her again.