Loop

by Ben Oliver

  Kina nods and hands it, carefully, back to me.

  ‘That what I think it is?’ Woods asks.

  ‘We have to let the others out,’ I say, ignoring Woods’ question.

  ‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ Woods says, folding his arms across his chest again. ‘There’s some pretty bad people in here and I already told you I ain’t sticking around.’

  ‘Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he replies without hesitation. ‘There’s somewhere I got to be. If there really is a war, I know what side I’m on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kina asks.

  He looks at her for a long time, as though he’s considering telling her something, but in the end he just says, ‘It don’t concern you.’

  I consider trying one more time to persuade him to stay with us, but he’s already done me two favours in not killing Wren, and helping me with the drone. ‘Listen; remember what I told you about the tunnels,’ I say.

  ‘Right. Rats.’

  ‘There’s a USW in the staffroom,’ I tell him, ‘in the emergency equipment room, some riot gear too – it might be enough to get you out. And they’re afraid of light, so if you can figure something out . . .

  He nods, and for a moment he looks again as though he’s going to say something. Instead, he turns and walks away.

  Kina and I stand in the silent corridor and listen to his footsteps fade away.

  ‘Well,’ she says. ‘And then there were two.’

  I nod in agreement. ‘Better get the rest of the team,’ I say.

  ‘Team?’ Kina asks, following me as I move to a closed cell.

  ‘Just some friends of mine,’ I say as I try switching on the screen beside the cell. I’m surprised to see that the power is still running to the cameras. Inside, I see Akimi pacing back and forth. I unlock her door.

  Her initial reaction is to shrink back against the far wall of her cell in terror, but when she recognizes me she runs forward, throwing both arms around my neck and crying in relief.

  ‘I was so scared,’ she says though tearful gasps, her accent coming out stronger than usual.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell her, ‘you’re safe.’

  She steps back and looks at the bloodstains on my prison clothes. ‘What happened? Did she get you?’

  ‘This wasn’t Wren,’ I say, leading her out of the cell and into the corridor. ‘I’ll explain once everyone else is out of their cells.’

  I introduce Akimi to Kina. ‘Nice dress,’ Kina says, and I register for the first time that Akimi has changed into the red summer dress Wren brought to 2 a.m. club for her a couple of weeks back.

  ‘Thanks,’ Akimi replies, smoothing down the fabric. ‘I figured, you know, if I was going to die . . . might as well look good.’

  I move to the next cell. I don’t recognize the boy lying on his bed, so we pass by, but next there are two open cells. I face forward, unwilling to look at whoever is inside, but Akimi stops. ‘She got Emery,’ she whispers. ‘She killed Emery.’

  I close my eyes and try to push aside the sorrow.

  I make it to the next closed door and check the screen. Pod and Igby sit on the bed, talking to each other. I’m so relieved to see that they’re alive that I throw open the door and step inside the cell.

  Pod is on his feet in a flash, and before I can protest, his massive frame has pivoted and he has hit me so hard, right on the point of the chin, that I black out for a second and wake up on the floor of the cell.

  At first the world seems like a dream, all muted colours and faraway sounds.

  ‘Pod, it’s Luka, it’s fucking Luka,’ I hear Igby yelling. I look up from the floor to see little Igby tugging at his giant friend’s arm.

  I shake my head and get to my feet. ‘Damn, Pod, that’s some aim for a blind guy.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Luka, you just stormed in here. After everything that’s happened I couldn’t just assume you weren’t hostile.’

  ‘My fault,’ I tell him, opening and closing my mouth to check if my jaw is broken.

  ‘Holy hell, Pod,’ Igby lauds, ‘what a hook!’

  ‘Thank you,’ Pod says, perfectly calm and composed.

  ‘Do you need help?’ I ask him as he makes his way into the corridor.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he replies, smiling as he walks by me. ‘I grew up in the homeless villages and the landfill barges, this is nothing.’

  ‘You were one of the Junk Children?’ I ask.

  Pod nods and smiles. ‘We prefer Refuse Adolescents,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t—’

  ‘Joking,’ he replies, his smile growing wider.

  I laugh. I try to imagine him as a child, rummaging through mountains of discarded rubbish, trying to find anything worth selling or repairing, avoiding the long-range rounds from the snipers’ USW rifles as they scour the gigantic off-shore landfills.

  I tell Pod and Igby that I’ll explain what happened once we get the rest of the 2 a.m. club out of their cells.

  We free Pander next. I can’t help but smile with enormous relief when I see her walk out of her cell.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ she demands, pushing her thick glasses up her nose, looking towards the platform.

  ‘Pander, we can’t just run into the city – it’s under attack.’

  ‘If the city is under attack then our families and friends are under attack while we wait around like cowards!’

  It’s then we hear a burst of high-pitched USW rounds coming from far away.

  ‘What’s that?’ Akimi asks.

  ‘I guess the rats found Woods,’ I say, looking towards the tunnels.

  Pander swallows and joins us as we scour the remaining cells for people we know.

  We come to Juno’s cell. By now I’ve started to feel more comfortable and confident; surrounded by my friends, I feel safe. But as soon as I open the hatch, Juno forces both her slender, Ebb-addict arms through the gap and grabs for me. For a moment I feel certain that her small, powerful hands are going to grip me and drag me through the tiny gap and into her cell, but I lean back and away from her before slamming the hatch into her hands over and over until her arms disappear inside and it snaps shut.

  ‘Holy shit, she’s one of them,’ I breathe.

  ‘One of them?’ Pander repeats. ‘One of who?’

  ‘You were in the yard when the Group As tried to climb the fucking walls, weren’t you?’ Igby asks.

  Pander nods.

  ‘It’s not just the Group As,’ I say. ‘The same thing has happened to Wren and others from outside the Loop. They’ve gone crazy.’

  ‘Well, that’s not great news,’ Pod mutters.

  ‘No,’ I agree, in a daze. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Got to keep going,’ Pander says.

  I nod and tell my shaking feet to move on.

  I’m beginning to lose hope that we’ll find any of the others alive, but I get to the next cell and raise a shaking hand to the screen. This is Malachai’s cell. I’m not sure if he made it to his own cell or not but I picture him dead on the floor, skin grey like that of Fulton and Alistair. I switch the screen on and see the Natural nonchalantly relaxing on his bed, legs crossed over one another, reading a comic.

  I unlock his door.

  ‘I was hoping someone would make it out alive,’ he says, throwing the comic to the floor. ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Sorry for keeping you waiting,’ I say, taken aback by his demeanour. I had been expecting a broken man, mourning Wren’s sudden decline into insanity, but instead he seems almost tranquil.

  ‘No worries,’ he says, stretching and getting to his feet.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I ask, searching his face for some sign of pain or loss.

  ‘So, do we think it’s a war?’ he asks, ignoring my question and glancing at the bloodstains on my jumpsuit.

  I nod. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well,’ Malachai says, contemplatively, ‘I guess that’s
sort of good news for us; I’d rather die out there than in here.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ I say.

  He steps out into the corridor and looks around. ‘Fulton?’ he asks.

  ‘Dead,’ I reply.

  ‘Alistair? Emery?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Woods?’

  ‘Woods ran,’ Kina tells him.

  ‘Juno?’

  ‘Juno is—’ I start.

  ‘Psycho killer,’ Pander finishes my sentence for me.

  ‘Interesting,’ Malachai muses, and then turns to Kina. ‘And who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m Kina, who the hell are you?’

  Malachai ignores her and turns back to me. ‘Adam?’

  ‘Dead,’ I tell him.

  Malachai sighs. ‘Was it Wren who—’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘And she’s . . .?’

  ‘Psycho killer,’ Pander says.

  ‘Alive,’ I tell Malachai. ‘Badly wounded, but alive.’

  ‘OK,’ he says, and looks once again at the assembled group. ‘So, I guess this our little crew for surviving the war. Let’s have a look at you.’

  His eyes scan the crowd of six Regulars, and he can’t stop himself from laughing.

  ‘You’re not exactly anyone’s first choice either, Bannister,’ Pander says, glaring at him, her eyes magnified by her strong lenses.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Malachai says through gasps. ‘It’s just; we’re definitely going to die out there.’

  ‘Hilarious,’ Akimi says, rolling her eyes.

  ‘So, are you going to explain what happened?’ Pod asks, shuffling his feet until he faces me, his unseeing eyes drifting from side to side.

  I tell the story of Wren coming to my cell, of her trying to pair the trigger with my heart detonator. I can’t help but glance at Malachai when I tell the part about her arm being sliced off in the hatch and I’m almost relieved to see a look of concern in his eyes. I tell them how I had to manually attach a tourniquet to stem the bleeding, I tell them how I deactivated the barrier and faced the rats, about the boy and the old lady and the burning city. I explain that Wren has been injected with drone poison in the hope that it will help her live through the next few days.

  ‘Holy hell,’ Igby whispers when I’m done.

  ‘Yeah,’ Akimi agrees, ‘holy shit.’

  ‘We have to go,’ Pander says, once again looking towards the Dark Train platform. ‘We’re wasting time in here.’

  ‘What about the rest of these guys?’ Kina asks, looking down the corridor at the eight or nine cells we can see that remain closed and locked. There will be more further around the Loop.

  ‘There’s no fucking way we’re opening those,’ Igby says.

  ‘We have to,’ Kina replies, turning to face him. ‘They’ll die.’

  ‘Hey, new girl,’ Malachai commands, ‘there’s a reason they weren’t invited to the 2 a.m. club.’

  ‘And what the hell is the 2 a.m. club?’ she asks.

  ‘Well, seeing as you weren’t invited either, it’s none of your business.’

  ‘Wren used to let a bunch of us out every Wednesday night,’ I tell her. ‘We were deemed safe enough – the rest of those guys were not.’

  ‘Turned out she was the dangerous one,’ Akimi mutters.

  ‘She’s sick!’ I yell. ‘It’s not her fault.’

  ‘Dangerous or not,’ Kina says, her voice overriding the growing tension in the group, ‘we can’t let the others starve to death in their cells – that would be barbaric.’

  ‘The alternative is to let them out and play Guess the Serial Killer,’ Malachai says.

  ‘We’re the killers if we let them die,’ Kina hits back.

  ‘Are you forgetting who my neighbour is?’ Malachai says, hammering on the locked cell door beside his. ‘I’ll give you a clue; his favourite phrase is Luka Kane, I’m going to kill you. Ring any bells? I doubt your boyfriend wants Tyco Roth roaming these corridors.’

  I have to shake off the word boyfriend and implore myself to focus on the more important issue; Malachai’s right, I do not want Tyco Roth free from his cell.

  For some reason all eyes turn to me.

  ‘Well?’ Pod asks.

  ‘Well what?’ I reply, taken aback by this sudden committee.

  ‘Do we let the rest out?’ Igby asks.

  ‘I don’t know, why are you asking me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Igby replies.

  ‘Should we vote?’ Pod suggests.

  ‘No,’ Kina says, ‘we’re not voting on whether these people live or die. We’re letting them out.’

  There’s a pause and then Malachai speaks. ‘OK, all those in favour of leaving them in their cells raise your hands.’

  ‘I told you, we’re not voting!’ Kina insists.

  Pod, Igby, Pander and Malachai raise their hands.

  ‘That’s the majority,’ Malachai says. ‘Now, how do we get out of here?’

  ‘Wait,’ Kina says, ‘just wait a second. These people have brothers and sisters out there in the real world, they have mothers and fathers. What if it was your families locked up in here, wouldn’t you hope someone had the courage to set them free?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Malachai shrugs, ‘but that’s the way it goes. Life isn’t fair. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to let them lose,’ Kina says.

  She storms over to the nearest door, spins the lock and pulls it open.

  I feel my muscles tense as I prepare myself for whatever monster is about to be unleashed into our midst.

  But nothing happens, there is no sound. Kina stares into the room and slowly we all gather around to look inside.

  A boy of about ten or eleven is prodding at the screen on his wall, muttering to himself. He doesn’t even seem to notice us.

  He’s so young, I think, and I can’t believe that the machines could possibly have found him morally culpable for whatever crime he committed.

  ‘Hey,’ Kina says in a gentle voice.

  The boy turns his head slowly and stares at the crowd of people gathered in his doorway. ‘Are you here to fix it?’ he asks, pointing at his screen.

  ‘No, we’re here to let you out. There’s a war going on,’ Kina tells him.

  ‘I can’t leave,’ he says. ‘I need to select my breakfast option.’

  Kina turns to look at us all one by one, and then turns back to the boy. ‘What’s your name?’ she asks him.

  ‘Good morning Inmate 9-71-990,’ the boy replies, mimicking the voice of Happy, ‘today is Monday the twentieth of June, day 404 in the Loop. Please select your breakfast option.’

  ‘What do we do?’ I ask, turning to Kina.

  She bites the inside of her cheek, thinking. She shrugs and steps into the boy’s cell before kneeling down beside him.

  ‘Please select your breakfast . . .’ the boy whispers, but trails off as he cowers from Kina.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Kina says, holding both hands up. ‘You’re scared, that’s OK, we’re all scared, but the screen isn’t coming back on and we need to get out of here.’

  ‘Day 404 in the Loop,’ the boy says, his nervous eyes flicking to meet Kina’s and then darting away.

  ‘My name’s Kina Campbell,’ Kina says. ‘You don’t have to stay in this cell any more, OK?’

  He looks at her, his eyes moving quickly over her face. ‘It’s Kilo,’ he whispers, ‘my name is Kilo Blue. My-my friends used to call me Blue.’

  ‘Blue, you can stay here if you want, but no more food is coming, no more water, the screen is not coming back on, and you’ll be alone.’

  Kilo Blue’s eyes fill with tears as he stares up at Kina. ‘I’ve been alone for 404 days.’

  ‘Then come with us.’

  ‘But this my home,’ he whispers.

  ‘Not any more.’

  The boy looks at all four walls, at his bed, the broken screen. Tears spill quietly down his cheeks. H
e nods, stands up straight and grabs Kina’s arm as they walk out of his cell and into the corridor.

  ‘This is Kilo Blue,’ Kina says, introducing the boy to everyone. ‘His friends call him Blue.’

  ‘Hi, Kilo,’ Malachai says, smiling sarcastically.

  I’m ashamed that my first thought is about how this boy is going to slow us down. I should be happy that he’s come to his senses and left the cell.

  ‘Hi Blue,’ I say, trying to put my negative thoughts aside.

  ‘That could have gone another way, you know?’ Malachai whispers to Kina as she passes.

  ‘Do you see now?’ Kina says to the group, ignoring Malachai’s protestation. ‘Is this the kind of person you want to let die?’

  ‘Shit, she’s right,’ Pander says. ‘I vote we open the cells, but I’m going to have to be careful – there are people in here who will want me dead.’ She reaches up and touches the tattoo under her right eye.

  ‘Yeah,’ Pod says, nodding his head, ‘we have to let them out. If we leave them behind we’re no better than the bastards who locked us up in the first place.’

  My heart begins to race at this turning of the tides. All I can think about is the inevitable release of Tyco Roth.

  ‘Alright,’ I say, trying to calm the shaking in my voice, ‘the majority votes we open the cells.’

  ‘You’re all morons,’ Malachai mutters as he crosses his arms over his chest.

  ‘Wait,’ Akimi says, her voice strained, ‘can we please just wait a second?! What if we open one of those cells and let one of the crazy people out? The ones like Wren and Juno and the Group As? And come to think of it: why are some people going crazy and others aren’t?’

  We all look at each other, hoping that someone has a rational explanation.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Pander says. ‘Juno can’t be like the rest of them. She refused the Delay that turned Group As crazy. She was turning eighteen in a few months, said she’d rather be deleted than face the Block. Then again, she was strung out, a clone. Maybe she just lost her mind because she couldn’t get Ebb in this place?’

  ‘That doesn’t explain Wren,’ Akimi says, her voice quieter now. ‘Or the people that Luka saw on the outside. Why have they gone crazy?’

  There’s a long silence. Malachai shrugs. ‘We know as much as you do, Akimi.’