by Eliza Green
‘Praesidium is run as efficiently as it can be with humans living there. The Collective who runs Praesidium has learned to expect less from humans, so it is never disappointed. Arcis is designed to be efficient. We are trying to push you out of your comfort zone so you will find your path, your true purpose in life.’
The Collective? Dom returned to his bed. With the supervisor following him, he didn’t have much choice.
‘Teenagers are known to mess up,’ said Dom. ‘Has your precious Collective taken that into account?’
‘Of course. Nothing happens here that participants won’t be able to handle.’
Dom’s heart thumped harder. ‘But it wasn’t always teenagers. I mean, I heard there used to be adults in here.’
The supervisor appeared to think about it. ‘Once upon a time. The towns are no longer viable places to live because of the rebel activity. Arcis has adapted to fit the needs of the people. And those of you transitioning to adulthood are the most vulnerable in society. You are who Arcis wishes to keep safe, to protect from outside influences.’
The supervisor gestured towards the bed. ‘Back in bed, Mr Pavesi. While it has been interesting chatting with you, I must get on with other things. Lights out in five minutes.’
The supervisor left and Dom pulled the curtain closed around his bed. He sat on the edge of his cot. The supervisor had mentioned the Collective. Was that a council of some sort that controlled Praesidium? In his mind, he searched for a connection between the Collective and Arcis. Finding none, he slipped back under the covers just as the lights went out.
His mother had been trapped in this place. Was she ever on this floor? Did she lie in this exact same bed?
Dom shuddered when Carlo appeared in his mind’s eye. He was a nightmare that refused to go away. Why should it when Dom deserved to be reminded of his actions every day? He’d committed an act out of love. A year ago, he’d killed Carlo to protect his mother.
It had been easy luring him out to the woods. He only had to tell Carlo about a store of drink buried in some shallow grave. His piece-of-shit father had come stumbling through the forest, but Dom hadn’t prepared for his mother to be with him, or for Carlo to be stone-cold sober.
Carlo had his hand curled into Mariella’s hair. His other fist was bloody. His mother whimpered. The asshole had broken her nose.
‘A little collateral, son.’ Whenever he said ‘son’, the word always dripped with contempt and loathing. ‘You’re getting a little too old for my hand, these days. But she...’ He walked Mariella closer. ‘She is easier to control, especially when I threaten you.’
‘Let her go!’ said Dom.
‘Dom...’ said Mariella, breathless. ‘Don’t listen to him.’
‘Shut up!’ Carlo pinched her broken nose and she squealed so loud Dom was sure the town’s residents would hear it. But Dom had purposely picked a place far from the town, in the middle of nowhere, to confront his father and convince him to leave. Now he wished for a more public place.
‘It was all too convenient that you’d find the exact thing I would kill for, out here, in a remote place where nobody was around.’ Carlo smiled. ‘Don’t think I didn’t know what you had planned.’
‘Let her go,’ repeated Dom. He had been working out, bulking up. Not only to distance himself from his ugly scars, but to prepare for the day he would take on his father.
Carlo pushed Mariella to the ground. She gave a little groan. ‘I’m okay,’ she added. And Dom was glad she did. He’d been about to go to her.
‘You know,’ said Carlo, ‘Praesidium was prepared to give me anything I wanted for you. They liked how the surgeries went, said you had “responsive tissue regeneration”. Whatever the hell that means. Because I remember breaking all your fingers one time and they didn’t heal that fast.’ He laughed. ‘When it came to it, I struggled to give you up because you were blood, and this one...’ He spat at Mariella. ‘This one said I should give you a chance to change. But I don’t feel like giving you more than you gave me over the years, which is a big fat nothing.’
Mariella looked up at Dom with soft, pained eyes. She shook her head.
Dom’s fast breaths pained his chest. He curled his hands into fists. Over the years, he’d listened to his mother make too many excuses for his father’s behaviour. But no more. As a kid, he’d blamed himself for the beatings, some of which he took for his mother. Now, he realised his father was just one of those rare humans incapable of seeing past his own shit. And for that, the man who pretended to raise him needed to be gone.
‘I can get you drink,’ said Dom. ‘Anything you want. If you leave Foxrush now and never come back.’
Carlo laughed. ‘Now why would I do that, son, when I have everything I want right here.’
‘Because if you don’t go, I’ll kill you.’
Carlo laughed harder. ‘You might be eighteen, Dominic, but you’re no match for me. Those puny muscles of yours are fine if you’re going a few rounds with a girl. By the way, how’s Sheila doing? Quite the looker she’s grown up to be.’ He licked his lips.
Dom growled and tackled Carlo, mid waist. Sheila was off limits. Carlo grunted and hit the ground hard. Dom jumped to his feet, breathing hard, ready for a counterattack, but when one never came he looked around. His father lay still on the ground, blood seeping from a cut on his head. His eyes were cold, glassy.
Mariella crawled forward and pressed two shaky fingers to his neck. She stood up and leaned against a tree for support.
Dom backed off, raked his hands through his hair. ‘No... no! I didn’t mean to...’
Her eyes were on Carlo and the rock that his head had hit.
‘Shh,’ she said, and pulled him into a hug. ‘Now, listen to me very carefully. I need you to go back to Foxrush and get a few things.’ She whispered them in his ear. ‘We’re going to bury this asshole so deep it will take team of archaeologists to find him.’
11
Dom
‘Sheila, I’m so tired.’
‘So am I, Dom, but we don’t have a choice. We have to stay awake.’
It was midnight in Arcis and both the ground- and first-floor activities had shut down for the night. But the higher floors operated at odd hours. He and Sheila had survived the first floor to make it to the second. Rotation came a few days after Dom had recovered enough from his shock. The instant they stepped out of the elevator, a supervisor handed them a first aid book and showed them a three minute video on how to do CPR. Without any formal training, Dom and Sheila were now the official medics on call with several others.
Dom lay on his bed on the second floor, exhausted from the day’s activity. He wore a white boiler suit, which was peeled down to his waist. He’d been awake for close to thirty-six hours with nothing but snatched moments of sleep thrown in. As soon as he closed his eyes an emergency would happen on one of the floors above theirs. Sometimes he had to stay with a patient for hours before a supervisor showed up. The emergencies, small and not life-threatening, never seemed important enough to drag him away from his bed.
The second floor produced a different kind of pressure to the first, with its threats of imminent electrical shocks. The female supervisor’s warnings in the infirmary about tardiness and punishment and how they were linked lingered in his mind. He had shared those warnings with Sheila and carried them to the second floor. What sanctions would Arcis issue if he or Sheila missed an emergency call? The lack of sleep felt like punishment enough.
There were eight others in the communal sleeping area, all in various states of undress. Dom felt so tired he wanted to quit. He wasn’t sure how much more he could stand. With his brain refusing to fire on all cylinders, it was only a matter of time before he made a mistake.
The always-on overhead lights stung his eyes. He draped an arm over them and concentrated on the warm, soft bed that invited sleep. But a buzzing noise that accompanied the lights irritated him enough to make sleep impossible.
Sleep deprivation.
How to cope with it. That must be the lesson on the second floor.
His body sank further into the mattress. He felt his mind switching off, drifting into another consciousness. Then a voice shrilled over the loudspeaker.
‘Dom and Sheila, you’re needed on the fourth floor.’
Sheila sat bolt upright in the bed next to his. ‘Shit!’ Judging by the dazed look on her face, she’d fallen asleep.
Dom sat up straight and fed his arms into the top half of his boiler suit then pulled the zip up halfway. He picked up the green box with the white cross and shuffled to the exit.
Sheila yawned as they rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. There were three medical prefabs in Tower A, in the room beyond the changing room. Neither Dom nor Sheila was privy to the activities of any floor above them. The prefabs were as far as the medics were allowed to go.
The elevator doors opened and the sound of guttural screams stopped Dom cold. He stepped out into the changing room. His foot slipped on something wet. Drops of blood led from the elevator to the next room.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Sheila.
Dom crossed the room and pushed the exit door open. Beyond was a trio of prefabs set next to each other in a large open space. The light shone at half the level of the one in his sleeping quarters. A pool of blood shimmered in a spot close to the open door of one of the prefabs, as if someone had bled out. More screams, deep and tortured, came from inside the prefab. He shook off his remaining sleep as he picked up the pace. The worst emergency between them so far was an electric-shock victim from the first floor.
Breathe, Pavesi.
‘It’s probably just a flesh wound,’ he said. ‘We know how to deal with those.’ Sheila kept pace with him, carrying her own medical box.
She flashed him a sceptical look. ‘You ever scream like that from a flesh wound?’
They climbed up the steps and inside the prefab. Sitting on the bed was a wide-eyed girl, her mouth open and frozen. A panicked boy stood beside her, holding her left arm up above her head. The blood-soaked bandage worried Dom.
‘Thank God you’re here!’ said the boy. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. She’s lost a lot of blood.’
‘What happened?’ said Sheila.
‘There was a door with a saw. It came out of nowhere. She managed to slip her hand out of the handle, but the saw caught her just above the wrist.’
Dom looked at Sheila. ‘What do we do first?’
She shrugged.
The boy looked from Sheila to Dom. ‘You mean you don’t know? Jesus.’ He let the girl’s arm drop. She screamed with pain.
Focus, Pavesi. What do we do first? His brain refused to cooperate. Snippets from the first aid book came back to him.
‘Hold that arm up,’ he snapped. ‘Higher than her heart.’
The boy did as he was told.
Dom and Sheila worked fast to sanitise their hands while the boy struggled to keep the injury elevated. Tears streamed down the girl’s blotchy face.
Dom whispered to Sheila. ‘Can you keep her calm while I think about what to do?’
She dried her hands and whispered back. ‘We have to stop the bleeding first. Then we need to give her a shot of morphine for the pain.’
Of course. He would have figured that out if he weren’t so tired.
‘Look at me,’ said Sheila to the girl. ‘I want you to focus on my face. We’re going to help you. I need you to stay calm. Dom’s going to give you something for the pain, but first we have to stop the bleeding.’
When Dom peeled back the bandage from the girl’s arm, he saw the blood flow had been stemmed. ‘She didn’t nick an artery, so that’s a good start. Lay her back on the bed and keep the arm elevated.’
Sheila eased her back and held her arm up. The girl whimpered. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen.
‘I tried to pull her away, but I wasn’t fast enough,’ said the boy, stepping back from the table. ‘God, look at her...’
‘That’s not helping,’ said Sheila. ‘If you’re just going to stand there and make useless comments, then go.’
The boy backed out of the room. ‘Yeah, I think that’s best. Sorry.’
The door to the prefab rattled when he slammed it.
‘He wasn’t helping much, anyway,’ said Sheila to the terrified girl. Dom handed her a square of gauze.
She pressed the gauze into the gash that went down to the bone. ‘The good news is it’s a clean cut.’
The girl bucked and writhed in pain as Dom prepared the morphine dosage.
‘We need to close the wound, Dom. Fast. It’s going to get infected.’
Dom activated the small help screen on the wall and searched for ways to deal with a deep cut using the equipment in Arcis. He found a picture of a photo medicine machine that would heal the wound through use of light therapy. He looked around and found the machine with one tapered end attached to the prefab’s wall.
Dom pulled it out from the wall and turned it on. He positioned the tapered end over the girl’s wound. Light pulsed over the area and the wound started to knit closed. He applied a spray-on bandage containing an antibiotic ointment.
Finally, he prepared an IV drip with morphine and fed it into a vein on the girl’s other arm. After ten minutes, she was falling asleep.
‘What the hell’s going on in this place?’ said Dom. ‘How are kids winding up with near amputations? She’s lucky she didn’t lose her hand.’
‘It was probably just an accident. One of the other floors. We don’t know what’s going on.’
‘You really believe that?’
Sheila shook her head. ‘But we have no other explanation.’
The door opened and the female supervisor came in. ‘Have you successfully treated the girl’s wound?’
‘Yeah,’ said Dom. ‘What happened to her? She lost a lot of blood.’
The supervisor ignored Dom and leaned over the girl. She checked the wound and tilted the arm in various directions. At least the girl was out for the count.
‘And you used the photo medicine machine and the spray-on bandage?’
‘Yes, like the screen instructed.’
The female supervisor clicked her fingers and the male supervisor from the first floor appeared at the door. He joined her and together they inspected the wound.
‘Good closure. Don’t you agree, One?’
‘Yes, it seems to have left minimal scarring, Two. We need to move her.’
‘Where are you taking her?’ said Sheila.
‘Somewhere she will be more comfortable,’ said the male supervisor. ‘To a private infirmary. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. You can go back to your dorm after you’ve cleaned the room and the blood from the floor outside.’
‘Wait!’ said Dom. ‘What about this machine? I’ve never seen it repair wounds so fast. What is it? Where did it come from?’
‘Praesidium tech. A prototype.’
The male supervisor lifted the girl into his arms while the female detached the machine from the holder on the wall and collected what was left of the spray-on bandage. ‘From now on you will learn how to suture. This machine is no longer available for use.’
The two supervisors exited the room, avoiding the blood. ‘Why?’ Sheila called after them. She turned to Dom. ‘Where are they taking her?’
He leaned against the edge of the table. ‘I don’t know. Close the door.’
He’d already checked the prefabs for cameras and was certain there weren’t any.
‘I can’t do this,’ he said. ‘I want out.’
Sheila stared at him. ‘No. We can’t leave.’
‘Let them send someone else in here to replace us. This is getting dangerous. Kids are almost losing limbs now. When did that happen? I’m so goddamn tired I can barely think straight. I just... I can’t...’
Sheila gripped his hands. ‘Dom, look at me. It’s just the lack of sleep talking. We’re in this until the end. There’s no leaving. You get
that, right? There’s only one way out of this hellhole. Arcis won’t let us walk.’
Dom pushed her away and found a scalpel. ‘Watch me.’ He poised it over the spot on his wrist where his chip was implanted.
Sheila lunged for him and snatched the scalpel out of his hand. ‘Jesus, Dom. You can’t! What can I say to make this okay for you?’
Dom sank back against the bed. ‘There’s nothing you can say to talk me out of it. I’m leaving.’
‘What about Anya?’
Dom perked up. ‘What about her?’
‘You’re going to leave her to tackle this place on her own?’
Shit. He hadn’t thought about that.
‘She’ll be fine.’
‘No, she won’t. She needs you. And I’m starting to realise you need her, too.’ Sheila sighed. ‘I can’t believe I’m about to suggest this, but you’ve been threatening to tell her about us for weeks. I think you should.’
Dom stared at her. ‘Why now?’
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe we need allies in here. June’s on the floor below, but Anya, well, you two seem to motivate each other. So, yeah, tell her. But only her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘If it’ll help to focus your butt, then I’m all for it. I can’t do this alone. I won’t.’
He pulled Sheila into a hug. ‘Thanks.’
She pushed him away gently. ‘Yeah, well, I’m still on the fence about her. So you’d better see something in her I haven’t.’
They turned their attention to the mess in the room. Dom used his new burst of energy to good effect while it lasted. As he cleaned, he thought about ways to tell Anya his secret. What would her reaction be?
Before he did it, he needed to give her one thing. It was tucked away in a secret compartment of his bag.
The antidote to Compliance.
12
Dom
Twenty steps from the bathroom to the suspended walkway.
Fifteen steps across to the other side.
Twenty-five steps through the empty room in Tower A to the changing room.