by P. S. Lurie
“That’s President Callister,” Melissa tells Jack.
“From the announcement last year? It doesn’t feel right,” Jack replies, thinking the same as me. “I don’t like this.”
“Me neither,” I say, as we stop just short of leaving the arena behind.
“We need to go,” Melissa says.
“Wait. There’s no way President Callister would be near the Fence. What if the helicopter doesn’t take off in time? Besides, the Utopia isn’t going to set sail so why would...?” I trail off, with the realisation that I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. I’ve continued to take what the Upperlanders have said at face value all this time, even after I learnt the truth about the receded ocean. We’re nearly above the auditorium where the Upperlanders and promoted Middlelanders would stand during the announcements. I’m figuring out what we should do but the deadline makes it hard to think straight.
I check my watch but Melissa beats me to it. “One minute until detonation. We need to get to the Utopia.” She hasn’t twigged what’s really going on, and starts up again, but I’m now certain that there’s no way the Fence is going to explode. Then again, Ronan was insistent that there would be a detonation. Which means...
“We have to return,” I shout to the others. “We’re running straight towards the bomb.”
As soon as I change direction, Theia screams across the space, verifying what I worked out: “Go back!”
Theia
“What did they do to you?” I ask Ronan as he walks me towards the helicopter. I feel sick that in the time since I last saw him the Upperlanders have turned him into... I don’t know what. A child soldier is the best way to describe it. My brother doesn’t reply but marches ahead in regimented steps. I let him get away and even though he’s back in my grasp it feels like I’ve still lost him. The Upperlanders controlled our every move but they left our minds alone, maybe to rot away with the guilt of what we did during the cull, but what have they done to my brother? What did they do to all the children they took from us that morning?
If Ronan is correct that the Fence will blow up then we have little time before we need to go but neither of the policemen has started the helicopter up to clear the blast. I’m glad the engines are dead; I know what happens to me when the noise of rotating blades passes overhead.
“You remember me, don’t you? I’m your sister. I didn’t want to let you go. Where did they take you? Ronan? You remember me, I know you do.”
“You were a traitor of the Upperlands. You have been approved to live following the second cull.”
The second cull. I don’t know what he’s talking about but I’m too focused on trying to get Ronan to listen to me. “In the Middlelands. It was me and you and Leda. And mum and...”
“You killed her,” he interrupts me, the first time I hear any emotion in his voice, and it’s the one I’ve dreaded: anger.
We’re not near the edge of the Fence but even still I feel like vertigo has taken hold of me, like how my body always reacts before I blank out. Hearing Ronan accuse me that our mother’s death is my fault is worse than anything that has come before. My guilt has weighed me down for a year now but to hear it from my brother reaffirms the truth: it was my fault. No, I shake myself clear of that thought. No more feeling responsible, or just surviving with guilt. I need to remember what I told myself today. The Upperlanders are the people to blame. They’re the ones who should suffer.
There’s no time to say anything else before we reach the helicopter.
President Callister looks older up close than on the screens, as if it was not only the glass panels pretending to reveal the ocean that were digitally altered. She holds Leda, and I can already tell from the way my sister carries her head and breathes that she is cured. At least Doctor Jefferson held true that he would give her the vaccine. Where is he? He must have seen the truth of what was behind the Fence when he stepped off the elevator this morning at the announcement.
“Hello Theia.”
I should be afraid of President Callister, who has ordered me to kill or be killed not just once but twice, and expected prolonged loyalty and gratitude in return. But something prevents me from being cowardly and I realise it’s because right now I’m not in danger as she wants to see this reunion. I reach my hands out. “Give me my sister.”
To my surprise, President Callister obliges and passes her over. Leda smiles at me, and I am relieved that one of my siblings has not been blinded by being in the guardianship of the Upperlanders. “Are you ok baby?” I ask Leda. She nods. She’s heavy, as if the cure has worked a miracle.
“Pleased to meet you finally,” President Callister says. “I must say I didn’t know anything about you before this morning but I’m all caught up. I’m impressed with your performance today. That was quite a speech. I’m sorry about your friends.”
She means Harriet and the others that died today. And anyone else? I look towards my friends, some way across the bridge, en route to the Utopia that takes up most of the view. “You ordered our deaths. You had no idea I’d survive.”
“If I was a betting woman I’d have made a lot of money today on you.”
“The bombs,” I say suddenly. I’m reunited with my siblings so it would be tragic to lose now.
President Callister ignores me, not seeming to be panicked by any sense of a rush. “I wasn’t surprised it would be you. I’ve admired your determination.”
Why is she indifferent to the Fence blowing up? There’s no way she’d be here if she thought she would be in any danger. Just as with the lie about what was behind the Fence, I realise that the explosion is a lie. “There’s no bomb, is there?”
“It’s time,” Ronan says, disproving my theory.
“I’m sorry Theia but you are wrong. I just wasn’t entirely honest about where it was.”
Since the lack of a flood has stopped the city from being in imminent danger, it also means the Utopia was never finished with the purpose to set sail. The people onboard are not going anywhere. I slowly put together what she means. Even for the Upperlanders, mass genocide is far-fetched. “They’re your people,” I say to her in disbelief.
“Ready,” President Callister says into her watch, a more advanced version of the walkie-talkie my mother and Doctor Jefferson used to communicate with one another. I don’t know how far this range reaches but considering their advancements in technology, the person she’s speaking to could be anywhere. Except, I guess, on the Utopia. Then she directs her next order to me. “Brace yourself.”
I don’t pay attention to her and instead turn to my friends, who are unwittingly hurrying to their deaths but seem to have stopped some way across the bridge. Have they realised? Whether it’s too late or not, I yell at the top of my voice.
“Go back!”
Selene
We don’t backtrack towards the arena because that would only lead us along the Fence and we need to move inland. I have to hope that Theia and the others are on the Utopia, safe from the detonations, even if migrating everyone onto the ship has been a ruse. What would its purpose be, I keep asking myself. The only thing I can think is that it has been a distraction, a focus away from something else, but what that is I have no idea.
“Imagine by the end of today we’re back home, crawling into bed like any other day.” In the time between deciding I had to die and me trying to kill us, Nathaniel’s decided maybe he could live with me again. It’s not going to happen, whatever the outcome is.
“Let it go,” I say, fed up with his delusion that I could ever return to our lives. Whether or not the Utopia sets sail, today has not been like any other day. The person who tortured me into loving him killed my mother and then wanted us to die together. When my memories started to return at the announcement this morning, I knew that Nathaniel had to die and it’s not my original plan but a new thought takes hold: one of us will be dead before this day is over.
I left the gun back at the Fence because I was out of ammo. Nathaniel s
till has his. He can kill me or do whatever he wants but I would end my own life before he drugs me again. We’re not returning to the life we shared this past year.
But, like it or not, Nathaniel’s correct that if there is no flood and the Utopia isn’t going anywhere then effectively we could return to the apartment.
“Any minute now,” he says, checking the time, having set his watch against the bombs along the Fence. “If they weren’t lying about the bombs then we should be fine here, in the shadow of the Utopia.”
I look up at the scale of the ship that I’d absent-mindedly not seen us approach. I have watched numerous television programs on the design and layout of the Utopia, tours of the amenities and apartments, and promises of our comfort on the liner, but nothing on our tiny television screen could do it justice in the flesh.
I can’t see from one end to the other from where we stand, or to the top, but I can imagine everyone on board, behind the steel and other materials that will keep it afloat, oblivious to the revelation about the lack of a tide. I wonder how far away from here the sea has receded. Back to where it sloshed around for thousands of years, or still partway over the Middlelands?
A terrifying thought takes hold: maybe the glass panels were faked because it was too expensive to knock through the Fence but what if the water actually is towering above us? If that’s true then Nathaniel and I are dead even this far back from the Fence. If I had to guess, there is no sea, and there are no bombs, but I don’t know President Callister’s real agenda. Why all this deception? Was continued loyalty and gratitude to her through fear her endgame? What happens after today?
I go to tell Nathaniel my thoughts but I see him inspecting something on the ground next to us. Blood.
My mother’s blood, from where he caught up to us and shot her.
“You bastard.” Of all the places to wait out the detonation, Nathaniel brought me here.
“Like for like,” he says, inspecting the watch around my wrist. “What did you do to my father anyway? The whole hand?”
“Just his thumb. You didn’t see him?”
“I was in a rush. Good call on the motorbike by the way. By the time I made it to the prison there was a man with a spear in his shoulder. Friend of mine from the Great Cull. He told me everything.”
“He was still alive?”
“He was.” Nathaniel places the emphasis on the second word. “Selene, can I tell you something?”
“I can’t stop you.”
“Why do you have to make everything so difficult? There’s one thing you need to know. The truth is...”
Before he can finish what he was going to say, telling me something else I surely don’t want to hear, I’m proven wrong with my theory that there will be no bombs, as a series of blasts blind me, bringing with it a noise that signals the end of the world, and a force that sends us flying until blackness reigns over me.
Ruskin
We’re thrown forward by the power of the blasts. I’m the closest to the Fence and land on its hard surface. I try to pick myself up but I’m winded by the impact. I need to get up. Did the others make it or were they thrown to their deaths?
“Help,” Melissa screams through the confusion. A dusty haze obscures my vision but the Fence is too far from the Utopia for parts of it to have reached this distance. I stagger ahead, careful not to fall off the edge and see that she is hanging off the top of the Fence, scrabbling to just keep hold, with no energy to pull herself up. I reach my hands out through the dust cloud and, with renewed strength, grab her arms and pull her to safety.
“Thanks,” she pants, spread out on her back. “What happened?”
“The Utopia.” But that’s as much as I say, as I divert my energy to searching for Jack. I can’t see him. “Jack!”
“Ruskin!” the answer comes immediately. “Over here. I’m fine.”
I see him, to the other side of where the bridge connected to the Fence.
“You’re ok?” he asks, as I reach him. I nod then check him over and he’s not any more injured than when Marcus attacked him in the prison. We’re all miraculously fine. I breathe a sigh of relief, as does he for me.
“Jack,” Melissa says, reaching us, and helps him to his feet.
Most of the bridge is now a collapsed stream of rubble along the arena, with nothing left connecting the Fence to the ship. I look towards where the Utopia once stood, a million times larger than the rowboats our fishermen used to take out in the Middlelands, now reduced to little more than a wreckage, iron frames still standing but little to identify its former design. Pillars of flames rise up from it in parts and there are no screams from inside. The large number of blasts that detonated at the same time have left no one alive. Tens of thousands of Upperlanders killed in a single moment, caught by surprise, expecting something that would save them rather than kill them.
“Theia?” I shout as I look across to where she and President Callister were.
The helicopter is much farther back from where we had been and none of them is affected by what happened. I see Leda in President Callister’s arms as a guard holds Theia back, restraining her from coming to our aid.
“We have to help her,” Jack says.
“They have guns,” Melissa replies, rubbing an elbow, probably from landing on it awkwardly, which should be a reminder of how lucky she is considering how much worse off she could have been. “We can’t just stand by.”
“We can’t go over there.” Then I shout to Theia. “We’re ok. You?”
She nods, and gives into the guard’s force.
“It’s all destroyed,” Jack says. “There’s no one left. Where do we go from here?”
I look out to the Middlelands and notice something that I hadn’t spotted before. It gives me chills but it also offers me the very thing that returns at my lowest moments: hope. We need to make sense of what happened and come up with a plan. “Anywhere but here.”
“Not without Theia,” Melissa replies, but her advance is short-lived by someone approaching us.
It’s unexpected but Ronan has marched over to us. It’s apparent from his lack of rushing that he’s not coming to check we’re ok. There’s no reason for him to shoot us but then again there’s no reason for him not to considering he sent us towards the Utopia. Jack lovingly steps in front of me, a gesture that means more than its actual effect.
“I’ve been commanded to shoot if you don’t leave immediately.”
“Ronan, you know who I am? I was Henry’s best friend. You remember Henry, don’t you?”
Ronan shunts the gun. “You should leave now. Please. I don’t want to kill you.”
I hear it. The pain in his tone. He’s giving us an escape but I don’t doubt that he will kill us if we disobey.
“Fine. But protect Theia. Don’t give up on her.”
My mention of Theia provokes something in Ronan as a flash of anger sweeps across his face. His expression returns to viciousness and he draws the gun upwards.
“Come on,” Jack says, as he pulls me away. “We’ll figure it out away from here.”
“I can’t leave Theia,” Melissa says. “There are so many people I’ve given up on.”
“We’ll help her. But not this way.” I hate it but I allow myself to walk away as Ronan stands watch. I look out to where the Utopia was and how the bridge has collapsed from end to end so that, had we been a few seconds farther across or already on board, we’d be long dead. Even without what just happened, the chance of us still being alive is minimal and I wonder how few people in the Upperlands there now are.
I don’t know what happens next but against my wishes we walk to the elevator and step in. Like everything at this distance, it’s been spared from the blast, and the mechanics are in good working order. This time we all enter and can operate the elevator without restriction. I despair at the outcome that we are returning to the Upperlands. The door opens up onto the arena, revealing a horrific sight.
“Help me,” the person in fro
nt of us cries, before collapsing to the ground.
Theia
During our pathetic existence in the Middlelands, Leda was a placid baby and hardly cried. It was why I was able to sneak her into the Upperlands. Then she became ill and undernourished but still she was too ill to make much noise, least of all forming much of a vocabulary. Now, as if lamenting the newest cull – the second cull – as President Callister termed it, Leda bawls. I want to sway her but President Callister took her off me, protecting her from the blast whilst I watched on as my friends were thrown onto the Fence. I try to reassure my sister. “I’m here, Leda. Ronan’s here too. It’s all ok.”
I say these words but I don’t believe them because they’re shallow and untrue. I’m not holding her. Ronan is away from us talking to the others, not the same brother I left behind. Nothing is ok. I wish there was someone to tell me it’s all ok but instead I have to face up to the truth.
I watch as my friends are banished back into the Upperlands but at least they haven’t been killed. Has Ronan been trained to end peoples’ lives? Would he have shot them on command?
“Why?” I ask President Callister. It’s a question aimed at so many things.
“The long version would take some time. I want you to understand, Theia Silverdale, but not here.”
“Tell me,” I demand of her.
“The short version then. As soon as we realised the water had started to recede we knew that everything we had worked towards would be reset. The world had all but ended and the Lowerlands were gone. Your homes were slowly being destroyed but our society grew strong. We’d built a city that functioned on a limited amount of resources for a limited number of people. We built harmony.”
“And loyalty and gratitude.”
“Correct. We calculated how many of you we could Rehouse. Not enough to please you.”
“So you decided to take some of us in the cruellest way imaginable.”