Enmity

by E. J. Andrews

  ‘Two on each end,’ my keeper points to where Nate is already situated and then points down to me at my end. ‘Three on the sides. You start here,’ he points to the opening to my left. ‘You need to get to the core, disable its power supply and then get to the exit on the other side.’

  My keeper throws something into the midst of the maze and they scatter like the roll of dice.

  We all crane our heads towards the inside of the maze with keen interest, Winter is the first to delve her hand in and grab one. The rest of us follow soon after. Once I get a look at it, this thing I hold between my hands feels so much worse than I expected to feel about an inanimate object. I am holding what to some might look like a white chess piece, but with much more detail in the facial features. It is almost creepy, the way that they have made this small piece of—I hope it’s not ivory, and it feels too heavy to be plastic—into the face of a queen, stoic and strong.

  ‘Navigate the maze, make sure to disable the core and take its power source, and then make your way to the exit. Those that achieve the goal will win a reward.’

  My keeper steps back and goes to his post over by the wall, and it feels as though we are alone now, facing the unknown. Whatever this reward may be, I don’t know if it will actually classify as a prize.

  There are multiple entrances into the maze, with long, almost alley-type passageways. I place my piece down at the start of the nearest entrance and wait until further instruction. The others seem to just be following; nice one, sheep.

  I go to pull my hand away but my keeper is right next to me and I gasp; he holds my hand to the chess piece, his grasp tight.

  ‘Just a warning, don’t let go.’ He says and then walks back to where he was the last time I checked.

  I look over at the others and they have all seen and understood, they all hold their pieces fiercely in their hands. Looking over I see that John is the one standing next to me, his eyes flicker to mine and then away, and then he speaks—

  ‘Let’s start then.’

  There is a deep silence after those words. None of us want to see what this maze holds, and we all know it is more than just a simple walk through a simple maze. I mean, we can see the layout of the whole thing; it’s not even a maze at all.

  I want to drop this thing. I don’t want to be attached to this piece of whatever it is. But instead I move it forward, slowly sliding the piece to the end of the alleyway.

  I look up and see that everyone is watching me with a terrified interest. If I continue on and help them like this, they better stop gawking at me.

  I have two possible directions, left or right. My first instinct tells me to go right, so I head left, pushing the queen with a steady hand.

  I continue on to my left, keeping close to the outer wall as much as I can. Until there is a small piece that juts out and forces me away from the wall slightly.

  I am brought to a halt by a sound, it is the sound of metal slicing through air and then it connects. My head rises to see the moment that Lola realises she has a piece of metal—it’s not even in the shape of a knife, it’s more like the shape of a ruler, blunt—lodged into the top of her hand. I can see her brain moving faster than I’ve ever seen it move on any of her work. Her eyes roll back in her head a moment later, and she falls backwards—unconscious—to the floor.

  Lola’s chess piece sits lifeless and turned over on its side, immobile without her guiding hand.

  Georgie begins to whimper as she looks down at Lola to her right; her hand moves but before she can let her piece go, Nate steps in and holds her hand, to not allow her to release it.

  ‘Let’s finish this so we can make sure she’s okay,’ Nate says to the rest of us, releasing his gaze from Georgie. He looks back to her and then gives her hand back to her.

  ‘We need to head around this left side of the centre, through the river,’ Marina says. What’d I tell you, doesn’t know the difference.

  ‘Why through? The bridge is right there?’ Isaac asks Marina.

  Everyone turns towards their conversation as it bounces back and forth.

  ‘Because if there was anyone at this vantage point—’ Marina uses her free hand to point to a tall building that sits behind the centre and its core. ‘We should be dead within around twelve seconds, give or take.’

  Her voice is so callous and harsh and bitchy, I think I could tolerate this girl.

  Isaac sits back and seems to be put in his place.

  ‘Talk us through it then, Princess,’ John says condescendingly and starts moving his piece forward again.

  Marina looks like she has hate radiating from her irises but she speaks with a steady tone.

  ‘We all come to the centre through each of our separate leads, head over to the left-hand side and use the bridge itself as cover.’

  I gaze around and find that there are a few inklings of defiance within these people, particularly from Winter.

  ‘Screw this,’ Winter erupts, and then moves her piece quickly through the maze.

  Everyone starts screaming. Georgie starts wailing, crying. Marina throws insults at John for his use of the word ‘Princess’. Nate starts screaming, telling everyone to calm down and all the while, Winter is getting closer and closer to the centre.

  I begin to move my piece as well, trying to keep Winter’s pace. Moving two rights after my two lefts to counter, which I fear will just end up sending me in circles. I move to the left and I am almost at the epicentre of the maze, I am so close I can see that small circle of colours. I move my piece forward out into an open area and then feel my skin start to burn. I move my queen back to her previous position within the alleyway.

  I wince and then look up to see that everyone is staring at me, quiet. They’ve finally shut up.

  I look back down to my hand and see that large red bubbles and welts have begun to appear on them. But I am still holding on to my chess piece. Even though my hand is so painful I know I will be granted the miraculous disadvantage of losing all feeling in it.

  This insane thought fills my head and I know I have to try it.

  I move my chess piece forward again and the group erupts again into a flurry of warnings and slander at my actions.

  The mist that must have released whatever burned me comes over my hand again and the welts are redder and deeper than before, but I don’t feel it.

  I move over to the river; whoa, sorry, the creek, seriously it’s a creek. I am cautious about putting my burnt hand into it—what if they have filled its water with poison that will slowly rot my skin from these small weeping gashes?

  While I am considering my limited options when it comes to the stupidity of this game, Winter catches up to me. She moves so quickly across the open area around the centre that the mist doesn’t get her, then she heads straight for the bridge. Winter stops at the south side, which is right in front of her. I am coming in from the east and her from the south, she has the advantage of position.

  Winter lifts her piece and slams it down on the first wooden slat of the bridge and then turns at looks at me, triumphant.

  Then Winter stops, her face changes and she turns towards her hand with enough time to see it flop like a dead fish onto the wooden bridge, letting go of her chess piece and failing.

  I can feel the breath leaving Winter in distressed erratic bursts, she just looks at her lifeless hand without any movement from the rest of her still mobile body.

  Even though I can feel Winter’s fear as strongly as I could feel my own, if I had any to feel, I move my piece closer to the river and then through the water. The current is stronger than I expected, but there is no way I am going to fail this. That isn’t an option.

  Once I am past the river, I take cover in the shadows of the buildings surrounding the square and then quickly move towards the glowing button thing.

  I spin around to my keeper.

  ‘How do I disarm this thing?’

  For a moment he is so clean-faced I don’t think he will help me, then his f
ace changes and he utters—

  ‘Probably use your other hand.’

  I throw my other hand down, stopping it an inch from the centre, then I just grab. Not many other ways to explain it than simply. I grab.

  Nothing happens, nothing? Seriously?

  I move my piece over to the side where my keeper said the exit was. I have to use my full reach to get all the way across the table, but then, when I can see the white queen on the wooden table beneath, I release her.

  I look over to my keeper, and I know I look pathetically in need of reassurance that I’ve done the right thing.

  He looks at me and gives the strangest grin, then he turns to the others.

  ‘Now the rest of you.’

  When it is my turn, my guard leads me to the meadow room and closes the door behind me as they always do, trapping us in. I sigh, an involuntary habit I believe I inherited from my mother. Even at the happiest of times, she would still sigh as if it were the worst day of her life.

  I am last to come here and collect our apparent ‘reward’ of alone time, and the others are to meet in the meadow room after, so I lie down and watch the fake sky above me while I have this tiny amount of solitude to myself. I close my eyes and feel the sunlight cover my face and body. It doesn’t feel the same as the sunlight outside, but at least it’s a lot safer.

  A shadow is cast over me and I open my eyes, feeling as though I was almost falling asleep within the few minutes I have been lying down. John is illuminated by the sunlight shining behind him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

  ‘No one ever came to take me back,’ he answers, mimicking my hostile voice. He sits down next to me and I sit up so that we are both at the same height.

  I watch him for a second, trying to figure out if this is a trap on his part, or Darria’s part for that matter.

  There is no reason this should happen—we shouldn’t be here together, unguarded—but I don’t make my concerns audible, because I don’t want to be alone. How strange, to not want to be alone. I love being alone.

  I wipe my hands on my jeans.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ I ask. I must admit I’m nervous now, without having a clue why.

  ‘I’d say an hour, but five minutes can feel like an hour when you’re alone.’

  I consider his words, and I find he is right.

  ‘Why’d you move out of home?’ I ask him.

  If it were me, I wouldn’t have answered, but I’m glad John isn’t me.

  ‘My father and I don’t really get on,’ he says, and I wait for more. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen him in a long time, but I’d guess we still wouldn’t.’

  There is a tense pause, and I push myself to ask, ‘What about your mother?’

  This makes John laugh for a short, painful second.

  ‘She’s an executive for the president.’

  ‘Wait, so had you met Winter before this?’

  And again, John lets out that same small laugh and then turns to face me for the first time, looking directly into my eyes.

  ‘I never met Winter, and I only met her dad once, when I caught him and my mother together.’

  I feel my mouth drop, and I quickly try to compose myself. How does he speak of this so casually? Collins is the leader of the free world, and John’s talking about him as though he’s a monkey-man in a suit.

  ‘Is that why you left?’

  I watch as John’s eyes flicker away from me.

  ‘I had a younger brother, his name was Sam.’ John’s voice is very different now; it is empty of the resentment I heard when he spoke of his parents. ‘Sam was actually my twin brother—I was born a whole three minutes and twenty-three seconds before him.’

  Now John is looking at me again, and his mouth holds the resonance of a long-lost smile. His dark brown eyes are almost alive with the artificial sun shining on them

  ‘Sam was born with cystic fibrosis. And back then my parents were very focused on their work, didn’t really have that much time for the both of us. So I looked after Sam as well as I could basically my entire life.’ John seems to be caught in the memory, in what it used to be like. ‘I don’t think I did a horrible job looking after him, up until I was thirteen, when Sam died.’

  We both sit and look at each other for a second, and I see John for who he is.

  ‘My parents blamed me, I blamed them, and so I moved out.’

  ‘Why didn’t they get Sam the genotype cure?’ I say, and John shrugs. ‘My parents don’t believe in anything New Age. They believe God has a plan for all of us, and that we shouldn’t try to change that.’ John’s parents sound stupid.

  ‘What about you? Why’d you move out?’ he asks.

  To my own surprise, I answer him, but I think it’s only because he has been so deeply honest with me.

  ‘My mother suffers from clinical depression and psychosis; she developed it after my dad left, which was before I was born, so she’s been like this my whole life.’

  John waits patiently, though I wish I could stop talking. He still waits, so I continue.

  ‘I’d been saving all the money I could since I was six, when I got my first job sorting through old newspapers. I was trying to save up for that genotype cure that Lola’s mother invented and your parents despise. Newspaper wages aren’t exactly generous, though.’ I almost laugh.

  John watches me steadily, and I start to worry he is getting too interested in what I have to say.

  ‘We’re both very messed up, aren’t we?’ he asks after a few more seconds.

  I nod at him. ‘Everyone’s at least a little messed up, though, right?’ John nods back, and then tries to kiss me.

  I sit in shock—horrified, blank, shock—with my face turned away from John’s.

  I need to say something, I need to dispel the tenacious unpleasantness which is this situation.

  The door in front of us, the one that just sits alone in the middle of nothing, opens and I take my one window of advantage to stand and watch as the others file in. I notice that I am rubbing my palms over my thighs even after the sweat is wiped clean from them. I make a mental note not to fuss so much. None of the others will be able to tell—I’m sure they won’t.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask Nate as soon as everyone has gathered by us.

  ‘No idea.’ He shakes his head. I can tell by the look on his face that he hates not knowing.

  Then our keepers join us in the meadow room.

  They all stand in a line by the door that is the only indication that we are not truly outside. Each one holds their usual gun but the strange thing is that they throw pieces of metal in between us.

  A pile of guns, all in pieces, just sit there, six metres away. I instinctively shift towards them but before I can move more than an inch, the keepers raise their weapons, pointing them directly at our heads.

  I can feel each and every one of the nine people beside me begin to panic.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Lola asks, so quiet everyone gets away with pretending they haven’t heard her.

  ‘They’re not going to hurt us, right?’ Winter asks, a little louder, expecting an answer.

  Just then something catches my eye. I know I’ve seen it before. Actually I’ve seen it twice, on two different occasions.

  The first—when I was younger, at the park blowing bubbles, believing back then it was magic that created them, seeing their rainbow colours glitter in the sun’s beams.

  The second—when I saw that same sphere, those same glittering colours, around a police officer, when they brought out their new protection equipment.

  Now the keepers have them, and we have nothing but empty space and disassembled guns.

  ‘What the hell are we supposed to do?’ John says, much louder than the others, directing his words at the keepers. I turn to him, as shocked as I was at his attempt at kissing me, knowing he has done something horrible.

  I turn to him and then see his head is gone, blown into a million tiny pieces
.

  Nate

  All at once they’re firing and I’m trying to get everyone to the cover of the trees that at first are sparse but then grow tightly knit, that’s where we need to get to. But there’s only one problem. Lola is passed out and Hermia is stuck with the shock and distress of it all.

  I yell at Robert and Isaac to get Lola and then I make a beeline straight for Hermia. All I can hear are the bullets flying around me like I’m inside a live beehive.

  I get to Hermia and the first thing I see are the blood spots that blemish her clear ivory skin. She looks off blankly, shaking like a leaf, into the distance. I grab her arm and half-drag, half-carry her to where the others are spread out along the trees. I stand Hermia before me, knowing I am probably vulnerable to being shot, but it doesn’t matter in this moment.

  ‘Mia, look at me,’ I say to her, yet her eyes don’t find my face. ‘Hermia?’

  She starts to shake so strongly that I have to grab her and try to hold her still.

  ‘John,’ she says, as though trying to call to him. I don’t know what to say to her.

  Hermia’s eyes finally find mine. I have never seen eyes quite like hers, with their mixture of green, brown and yellow, and I have never seen eyes so lacking in life.

  ‘Hold onto the tree,’ I instruct her, placing her arms around it myself.

  That’s when I notice the firing has stopped.

  ‘Is everyone okay?’ I whisper down the line. Winter is sheltering behind the tree next to me and she passes the message down, and then returns the news.

  ‘Kane has a bullet in his calf.’

  I curse under my breath. I sneak a look back out to where the keepers were standing and, as I suspected, they are no longer there. I take off, dodging between the trees and trying to miss the random bullets that start to fly again. It doesn’t take me long to make my way down to him.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘Barely,’ he says. He struggles to speak and all the colour has drained from his face. I pat him on the shoulder and then tell him to wait with Lola and Hermia while the rest of us try and go for the weapons.