by P. S. Lurie
Melissa lags behind us, not wanting to partake in any conversations, ashamed to be around Jack.
“Jack,” I say to him privately. “Remember what you told me about Theia and my brother.”
He looks at Melissa. “I know, I’m a hypocrite. It’s not her fault.” He takes a deep breath and then falls back to join Melissa. I can’t hear them but they talk, hopefully coming to peace with what just happened, and I am bowled over once more by the person I have fallen in love with.
“What do you think?” I ask Theia. The construction is sturdy, the structure so thick that we couldn’t burrow our way in, and even the closest parts containing all the engines tower above our heads.
“They’ve sealed all the entrances. We have no choice but the arena.”
“You think they lied to us and we’re walking into one more open fight?” Selma asks, gripping the gun.
“No,” Theia is adamant. “There’s a way on. What did the announcement say?”
“Ten will be able to board the Utopia,” Melissa answers, after her and Ruskin catch up to us and she has a renewed drive to carry on.
“I know. It’s the...” Theia says, but is cut off, as someone else works it out at the same time.
“The boardwalk from the Fence to the Utopia,” Selma says.
“You’re right,” her daughter responds.
I can’t picture it vividly but I seem to remember a raised bridge that stretched over the arena this morning, which I guess carried on quite a distance to some height up the Utopia.
“We can ride the outdoor elevator that Doctor Jefferson took,” Theia says. “The bridge across will be the entrance and then the Fence will be bombed. That must be how they’ll control how many of us can enter.”
“We’re going to climb the Fence?” I ask. I’m not sure I’m ready to see where our world used to exist, or where my parents’ lives were ended.
“It’s not much farther. We just have to get to the tunnel and across the concourse.”
Our renewed hope is cut short as a blast deafens the vicinity. Maddie is the first to react. “Get to cover,” she screams, but a second gunshot ricochets overhead and we don’t know in which direction we should be attempting to run and hide.
“Mum,” Selene shouts. I follow her terror and see Selma’s arm dripping with blood as her daughter props her up.
Theia bears Selma’s slack from the other side as Selene takes the gun from her mother and waves the gun directionless, before working out who shot at us, settling her sight on the man in the full police uniform, helmet and all, who casually walks towards us. I don’t need more than one guess to work out that this is the man that killed my brother. I feel Jack’s hand slip into mine; whether out of fear or to hold me back from doing anything rash, I welcome it because I can feel the anger rise as the possibility for revenge draws near.
Selene
“Leave us alone,” I shout at the man, who is obviously Nathaniel, despite wearing a helmet.
Then I fire the gun at him because I know Jason and other officers died from gunshot wounds during the cull but, despite a perfect shot to his chest, the bullet doesn’t break through and instead bounces off. No, I think, this shouldn’t happen. I picture the bullet hole in my uniform and the pain I inflicted on the guard in the market.
“New and improved,” Nathaniel says through a mouthpiece, clear enough for me to hear. “Sorry about your mum.... I just wanted to get your attention. By the way, hi Selma.” He pauses, then continues with a quizzical and disappointed tone. “Selene, you shot me?”
“We could take him,” Maddie says to me, but too loud to make it subtle.
“No.” Nathaniel approaches. “This doesn’t involve you. I’m only interested in her so one step and I’ll kill you.”
Melissa is tending to my mother’s arm. “She’ll be ok,” the nurse says.
“I recognise you, little lady,” Nathaniel says to Theia. “From the arena this morning but also from last year. Long time. Let’s see. It’s Theia, right? How’s your boyfriend?”
Theia doesn’t respond. I have no idea what I told him before I lost my mind and feel awful for Nathaniel knowing about our lives. I can only imagine what I said about Theia and what happened to Henry but it’s still a blur. Instead, other memories return: the sound of Nathaniel’s father’s voice drifting in and out with instructions on when to administer the pills, the warm freshwater in baths that Nathaniel ran for me, hating myself for enjoying the feeling of cleanliness, watching television and first despising and later on admiring President Callister’s declarations of a shared gratitude and loyalty, and feeling lucky that Nathaniel protected me when I had no other family. But whether or not I chose to forget, I still don’t know.
“Selene. I’ll leave the others alone if you come with me. I promise. I only want you. It’s not too late princess to save them and be with me.”
After how hard I have fought today to be reunited with my mother I know what I have to do. It’s the last thing I want but Nathaniel is invincible and I know he’ll kill them all so there’s only one way to protect my mother and the others. There’s no other choice. I have to give myself up for them to have a chance at surviving. I have to relinquish my freedom for theirs.
“I’m sorry mum. He won’t leave me alone. You’ll be safe if I go.”
“No way,” she says to me, through the pain, desperate but knowing it’s futile to argue.
“I love you and I forgive you.” In truth, how she raised me demands a lot more attention and miserable conversation laden with tears and grief and genuine forgiveness, but it’s all I can offer for now. In a way, it’s all I need to say because our lives have been dominated by so much worse that I can’t let myself think too much about the past for missing the bigger picture of what’s in play right now.
I turn to Theia and give her the gun. “It’s a little late but thought I’d return what I borrowed a year ago. Make sure she gets onboard. Make sure you get there too. I’m sorry about last year. I was too proud to help you.”
Theia shakes her head, I guess agreeing with me that none of the past matters, but she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve now apologised for not saving her, Ronan and Leda. And I’ve protected my mother as best I could. I don’t have the chance to talk about her siblings, or Henry, but that’s no longer my concern.
I walk towards Nathaniel.
I hear my mother shout for me to come back but I don’t turn around because I can’t bear seeing her for the last time. It would be like watching her sleeping through the front window of our house: innocent and loving, as if all she wants is for me to return and I’m letting her down by keeping my distance.
I reach Nathaniel. “Good girl,” he says. “I would have killed them.”
“I know.”
“You realise you have made this so hard for us.”
“That’s the girl you fell for.”
Nathaniel chuckles. “Let’s go.”
I don’t struggle. I don’t even plot an escape from him. Instead, we placidly walk side by side, away from my mother and my friends, back into the unknown. More memories unfurl in my head: the feel of his fist on my face when I say that I don’t love him, the burning sensation of the pills down my throat, the numb that takes hold of hours, days and weeks of my life, and baths that send my head back to floating in the sea. But what I don’t remember is whether I struggled against him or against my stubborn memories that clung on. I still don’t know whether I wanted to forget.
All I do know about Nathaniel, whether we board or not, is that this won’t be a pleasant ending for me. What that looks like I have no idea.
When we’re out of sight, some distance from the Utopia, he removes the helmet.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere we can be together. Despite you being difficult, I still love you Selene.”
“We’re not going to board are we?”
“No,” he says bluntly. “We’re going to watch the end of the wo
rld together.”
I surprise myself that I’m not more horrified by Nathaniel for signing my death warrant. Instead, I’m strangely comforted that I now have my answer: there is no way someone who actually loved me wouldn’t want me to live and, finally, I’m certain that he lied about my compliance and that instead he forced this all on me. I was never his willing subject.
At least I can die with the satisfaction that I didn’t betray myself.
4 P.M. – 5 P.M.
Theia
Melissa has to hold Selma back from trailing after Selene.
“My daughter,” she wails, focusing her anguish on losing Selene once more rather than the pain in her arm. “Give me the gun,” she says to me, but I keep my distance. I know there’s no way to overpower the policeman but I’m a hypocrite because I know what I’d do if it was Ronan or Leda instead of Selene.
“You saw that the bullets did nothing to him,” Maddie says impatiently. “There’s no way it’s a fair fight. We have to go.”
“He’s a policeman, Selma,” Jack says, taking an alternative tact. “He’ll find another way onto the Utopia. It’s going to be ok but we have to go now if you want to see her again.”
“Alright.” Selma cradles her arm in the other hand, unconvinced. “Let’s go to the arena.”
“Thanks,” Ruskin mouths to Jack, but Jack doesn’t acknowledge him. I guess he’s still bruising about Ruskin’s mistake with his mother. Jack will realise his innocence soon, that much I’m sure of. We’ve all been tricked by the Upperlanders, not least with the greatest con of all that is how much space they had and how easy their lives were and continue to be compared to ours.
I should be appreciative for making it this far but we lost Selene as suddenly as we found her, and all I can think about is what if I don’t even have a chance to find Leda because one or neither of us are able to board the Utopia? I know Maddie is right that we couldn’t have helped Selene but I wouldn’t have been able to let Leda or Ronan go in a similar situation. But isn’t that what I did a year ago when the Upperlanders took Ronan and the other children? Isn’t that what I did when I stood by and watched as Doctor Jefferson took Leda to the top of the Fence this morning? All these situations are designed to make us feel weak and helpless, but we still haven’t given up. None of us has given up. I’ll rest when this is all over.
We pick up our pace and carry on, until we branch away from the Utopia and I spot the walkway overhead, disappearing above the arena’s tiered auditorium. I’m reassured that I have the gun but there’s no one around to worry about for now, so it’s just a case of whether or not we are the first ones here, or fewer than six people have beaten us. Are we the only ones to leave the prison? Did everyone else die? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Jack’s logic that there’s another way for the police onto the Utopia makes sense considering the lag between now and the time the Fence will be blown, and I hope that Selene has been taken to a secret entrance. I hope that we’ll all be safely onboard way before the walls are detonated. The idea of telling the others to turn and find higher ground plays on my mind but for now we’re running straight towards where President Callister wants us to go. I don’t know if that’s foolish or not, although I’m aware that anything less than cynicism would make me as naive as when I thought Rehousing simply meant being saved.
Thoughts of exits and entrances play on my mind, as if there’s something I’m missing. As if there’s one obvious path I’ve missed. It dawns on me. “Ruskin. How did you get into the Upperlands?”
Ruskin and Jack turn around but Melissa beats them to it. “You’re a genius. They didn’t open the Fence for you, did they? They couldn’t have let you past all the homeless without a fight from them.”
“There was a secret entrance underground,” Ruskin says, creasing his eyebrows at the dusty memory.
“In a house somewhere near the Fence but away from the homeless,” Jack takes over. “It took us right into an apartment block. Marcus, Ruskin and I must have all been housed near one another in a building until we were taken to prison.”
I sigh at the news that it was a tunnel beneath the earth, not that I imagined anything that would benefit us more. “So it would be flooded out now even if we could find it.”
“There it is,” Selma says, changing the subject. We look towards where she’s pointing: the tunnel leading to the arena under the upper tiers. Both above and through it I can see the Fence.
“Awesome,” Jack says, and we retrain our gazes overhead to the boardwalk that unsteadily connects the Fence to the Utopia. It appears to stretch way back to some opening in the side of the Utopia, on a slope down from the summit of the Fence. “That must be the way. You said there was an elevator to the top?”
I nod; he’ll see it as soon as we enter the arena. “We proceed with caution. Anyone could be lurking.”
“No, anyone wanting to be onboard wouldn’t wait to fight,” Selma says.
“Let’s get a move on then.” I check my watch. “We have an hour before this whole place blows up.”
The six of us carry on through the echoing tunnel and into the arena, where we gathered only this morning, where Ruskin first saw the community at large and watched his parents die, and I lost both Ronan and Leda a year apart. Since this morning the world is a changed place. In an hour it will be changed even more.
Ruskin
“This is where I watched my parents die,” I tell Jack as we move through the tunnel, still furious that I had to let the policeman who murdered Jason go free with Selene in captivity.
On this repeat journey there are no cheering crowds overhead or groups of glum Middlelanders congregated in front of me. My watch doesn’t automatically scan in through the barriers at the end of the tunnel. Instead there is nothing but silence and a clear view of the Fence as we move through. To one side there is a glass panel the height of the Fence with the water sloshing so close to the top – I’d forgotten about that, what will Jack make of it? – and at the top of the Fence is a solitary stationary helicopter. Leading away from the Fence, back overhead is the bridge that slopes downwards and could take us onto the Utopia.
“Whoah,” Jack says, answering my unspoken question. “Look at that.” He’s awed by the glass that he’s never seen before.
“There are a few built along the Upperlands after we were Rehoused,” Selma says. “We watched the water level rise all year.”
I hadn’t paid as much attention to it this morning as now because I was preoccupied with my parents’ executions but the water is so high that it is dangerously close to the top. I remember how scientists declared the farthest reach of Total Flood as way below the Lowerlands, in the old world, and how this far exceeds anything they could have predicted. Or maybe they knew it and didn’t want to depress us beyond repair.
“I guess the escape route is out unless anyone can hold their breath for an hour or two,” Maddie says.
“And swim to where?” Melissa asks, being dragged into Maddie’s sarcasm.
“Shit,” Maddie says, as she notices activity up ahead. There are two women and a man in similar clothes to ours next to the elevator where I saw the officers ascend this morning. Prisoners that beat us to it, that must have taken a quicker route here or left the prison before the gunman set up his vantage point.
Theia raises the gun as the six of us run towards them, and I wonder if she would kill them. “Stop,” she shouts as a deterrent, but it’s too late as the doors open and one of the women pushes the others out of the way and steps in. The doors close and the elevator springs her to the top of the Fence. The remaining couple look furious at what she’s done. Why didn’t all three go?
“Don’t shoot. We beat you here,” the man shouts at us. I don’t recognise him from the prison, and I can only begin to imagine his own experiences up to this point.
“It’s only fair to let us go,” the other woman says.
We approach them gingerly; they are unarmed but bloody, having
fought their own battles inside the prison. I look up and see the woman run along the top of the Fence and onto the bridge, sprinting towards the Utopia, but I don’t know whether she is the first or tenth or somewhere in between.
“They’re only letting one person up at a time?” Theia asks.
“The elevator is the finish point. It’s counting down ten people, allowing person by person up at a time. You can’t kill us now. We’re innocent. It’s only fair to go in order.”
The way they’re talking doesn’t sit right because if there were enough spaces then they would tell us that there’s no problem. Theia beats me to it. “How many places are left?”
I look up and the woman has disappeared out of view, behind the stadium and towards the Utopia. The man repeatedly pushes the elevator button, willing it to return.
“How many?” Theia shouts, waving the gun.
“Not enough. Not enough for all of us but...”
With that, Maddie grabs the gun from Theia and shoots both of the people once in the chests.
We watch on in stunned silence, neither trying to help the dying couple nor berating Maddie. Whether or not any of the rest of us would have done the same, none of us can criticise her because of what they said. I’m just relieved it didn’t have to be me to kill them because I’m not sure Jack could have forgiven me for that on top of everything else. But Jack actually looks unfazed and my heart strains at what he said alongside the Utopia. They broke him.
“We should have checked numbers first,” Theia finally says, but it’s obvious she’s not accusing Maddie of something she wouldn’t have done herself if it came to it. That’s what her speech was about in the prison basement after all.
But the man and woman were right: they were innocent despite however many people they have killed in the prison. They had as much right to live as we did.