by Eliza Green
‘What if she doesn’t make it?’ said Anya.
‘She will,’ said Jerome. ‘I have a good feeling about it.’
3
Warren
The separation from his only ally in Arcis unnerved Warren. It was like his parents’ abandoning him all over again. Anya had been sent to the third floor while Warren, Yasmin, June, Jerome and Frank had been sent to the second. He didn’t even know where Anya had gone until he’d seen her follow the first-floor supervisor across the third floor walkway.
But then the supervisor returned, decided he’d made a mistake with Frank, and bumped him up to the third.
What kind of mistake? How could Warren get in on that? He remembered the rules at the beginning: the participants would experience each of the floors. If he’d known it was possible to skip floors, he’d have asked about it at the last rotation.
With Anya gone, Warren felt his mind slipping, retreating to that place where nobody could reach him. But he had to resist the temptation to block everyone out. He needed allies in Arcis, and with Anya moving on faster than he was, it was time to take stock, regroup. His game plan needed to change.
Tahlia was dead; the supervisor had announced it just before rotation. The news had hit him like a slow moving train. At some point news of her death would sink in. But maybe it hadn’t been for nothing. They got a rotation out of it.
Cheap shot, Warren. Real cheap.
Warren stood in the second-floor changing room surrounded by hooks on the wall that held white overalls. The female supervisor for this floor instructed them to change. He pulled on a boiler suit that smelled like stale sweat. Dressed in a suit similar to the men who’d rescued Warren from Oakenfield, he entered the next room and selected a green box with a white cross on it from a pile in one corner. The supervisor stood by an old TV. She instructed them to familiarise themselves with the contents, after which she pressed play on a box. An instructional video on how to administer first aid started.
Armed with bulky manuals covering the same topics as the five-minute video, Warren followed the others to the dorm and tossed his heavy folder on one of the beds. He sat down and looked around. He couldn’t gauge the mood in the room. It was a mix of tension, relief—expectation? Nobody had expected Tahlia to die, least of all Warren. Frank had mentioned the advanced medical tech in Praesidium only the day before; tech that could heal any injury fast. So why couldn’t Arcis save Tahlia? Surely they had access to the same tech?
Yasmin studied her manual, but Warren saw she fought back tears, struggled with the decision they’d made to target Tahlia. He would talk to her later. Maybe he could offload some of his guilt.
Warren looked around at the others. June was checking out her surroundings as usual, while Jerome was in his own little world. He did that often, slip into a trance of sorts, except when Frank was around; then he was like a whole new person. Warren sized up Yasmin, June and Jerome, wondering who out of the three would help him achieve his goals.
The supervisor had told them to wait for the first call. An hour later, still nothing.
‘I’m hungry,’ said June, standing up. ‘If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be in the dining hall.’
She walked out. Warren watched her go.
‘Me, too,’ said Jerome, and followed her. Warren shrugged and swapped his boring manual and the dorm for social conversation and food. The others followed soon after.
Yasmin’s entire group, six people who’d been through the first floor once and passed over for rotation, had made it to the second floor. Those left behind on the first floor were participants who had rotated from the ground floor at the same time as Warren, Jerome, June, Tahlia, Frank and Anya.
The group hierarchy that had existed on the floor below dissolved when everyone sat together. With the competitive element removed, there appeared to be no need for the separation. Warren conceded to the reality they were now on equal terms.
‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ said one of the girls from Yasmin’s group.
‘You didn’t even know her,’ said Yasmin.
Warren snorted. ‘Neither did you.’
‘I knew her.’
‘Yeah?’ said June. ‘Well, both of you can just shut up about it. Yasmin, I know your group approached Anya to slow Tahlia down. And Warren, I know you were right there, encouraging her.’
‘What the hell do you know about it?’ said Yasmin.
June sat up straighter. ‘If Tahlia was someone you claimed to know, you wouldn’t have put her in that position in the first place. I mean, what were you both thinking, using Anya like that? And Tahlia to improve your chances of rotating?’
‘I didn’t think she would die,’ said Yasmin. ‘I thought it would play out the way it always has. One person takes the hit and the rest of us benefit from the clock time remaining static.’
June stared at Yasmin. ‘So this strategy was about preserving the clock on the terminal?’
‘Yeah. Surely you noticed how the time decreased when we all made it back on time? Arcis was playing with us.’
‘So you decided to turn the tables? By cheating?’
Yasmin banged the table with her fist. ‘It’s not cheating. It’s called strategising. Tahlia was the weakest. In the last rotation, a girl called Brianna was the weakest. The supervisors mentioned it because they wanted us to use our brains.’
June stiffened. ‘Wait. What? This has happened before?’
‘Yeah, last rotation,’ said Yasmin softer than before. ‘Brianna got caught up the same way. Some of us missed rotation because we didn’t work out in time that our job was to make sure Brianna didn’t progress. You know, get in her way, delay her return to the terminal?’
‘And how did you know to “strategise” the last time?’ said June, her voice returning to normal volume.
‘We overheard the supervisors talking about rotating everyone if someone finished last.’
‘So you essentially overheard the same conversation as Warren?’
‘Yeah.’
June shook her head. ‘And it never occurred to you that they were setting us up? Mentioning the same strategy twice in two separate rotations?’
Warren’s fork froze midway to his mouth.
Yasmin leaned forward. ‘Look, we never meant for her to die, but our group’s plan was always to rotate. We couldn’t endure the shocks for another full rotation. You can’t understand if you haven’t been through that, if you haven’t been overlooked for a rotation. It’s torture to know what’s coming for the next few weeks. You all arrived without knowledge of what they’d done to us for a month. We did what we needed to survive.’
June responded with a rude noise and shoved her food around the plate with her fork. Warren resumed eating and watched the interaction play out. They both made good arguments. But who would be a better ally: sensible June or risk-taking Yasmin?
He supposed he could team up with Jerome. But he came off as the more passive of him and Frank. Any alliance would be a temporary one as soon as he reunited with Frank. Maybe Warren could form an alliance with both Frank and Jerome. But not yet. Now he needed someone to strategise with, and it was between June and Yasmin.
Ω
The first call came in an hour later: an emergency involving a knife and a clumsy boy. June and Warren were sent to the fourth floor, to a trio of prefabs located in Tower A. They found the boy waiting alone inside one of the prefabs, screaming and crying from the pain. Warren rushed through the parts of the manual he’d memorised, which wasn’t much. He remembered something and applied pressure to the deep cut on the boy’s hand. June stitched the wound together using a needle and surgical thread. As she closed the gaping wound, Warren looked around for the fancy equipment Frank had mentioned that healed wounds fast. Had Frank been lying about it? If he had, if the equipment didn’t exist, that meant his own parents were liars, too.
June cleaned the blood off the boy, told him to take care of his hand and sent him back to the sixth
floor with a couple of painkillers and a bottle of water.
Warren and June walked back to the elevator. On the way, June kept glancing at him.
‘What?’
‘Why did you tell Yasmin about the supervisors’ conversation?’ said June.
‘I thought it would help.’
‘Help who? You?’
Warren stopped walking. ‘Yeah, me. Who else?’
‘Jesus, Warren. Do you ever think about anyone but yourself?’
His sheltered upbringing had taught him to rely on nobody but himself. Before his parents left, he’d believed everything they’d taught him about life. But their sudden departure destroyed whatever empathy he had and turned his heart cold. He didn’t know if he’d ever feel anything or trust anyone again.
‘This isn’t school, June. This is the real world. We’re in here because our parents are gone. I’m just trying to survive, like everyone else here. Do you think Yasmin was right to think of herself, to secure rotation that way? No. But she saw no other way out and you know that. The fundamentals of what she tried to do hold true.’
‘Okay, so Yasmin had an excuse. She’d been through one missed rotation and she was desperate. What’s your excuse?’
What was his excuse?
‘I don’t like being played for a fool.’
June smirked. ‘Was that how Tahlia made you feel? She talked about you, you know. What life was like for her in Oakenfield. You weren’t the nicest person to her. She said it was like you carried a grudge around, and because of it you were a jerk to her.’
‘Jesus! You’re two-faced, you know that?’ Warren pinched his arm, to feel something other than anger. ‘Try seeing things from someone else’s perspective. You got Tahlia’s side of things and that’s all the information you need to draw your conclusions?’
June folded her arms. ‘Well, what else is there?’
‘Nothing I want to tell you.’
‘I’m good a reading people. I know enough about you to work out a few assumptions of my own.’
‘So that’s enough, is it? These assumptions? You don’t even want to hear the other side of the story?’
‘Is there one?’ said June.
Warren pinched his arm hard enough to pull his anger back in. If he wasn’t careful, he might blurt out something he shouldn’t. ‘Yeah, but I don’t want to tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t like you.’
June uncrossed her arms and laughed a long throaty laugh. And gone was the quiet blonde girl who used to hang around with Tahlia. He’d made wrong assumptions about June Shaw. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
‘Well, the feeling’s mutual. So why don’t we stay clear of each other, okay?’
Warren pressed the button to call the elevator. ‘Suits me.’
The doors opened. As Warren climbed on board, he ruled out June as an ally.
Ω
Three hours later, another emergency announcement played over the intercom calling for two people on the fourth floor. Everyone had taken turns dealing with small incidents there, but calls from the first floor about electric shocks had streamed in over the last two hours. With everyone out on calls to different floors, that left only Warren and Yasmin.
Warren shrugged at Yasmin. ‘I guess that mean us.’
They walked to the elevator in silence. Warren prepared for a routine cut, sew and bandage case. Yasmin called the elevator. As soon as they climbed in and the elevator moved, Warren got the urge to ask her about what had happened.
‘Do you regret what we did to Tahlia?’
Yasmin looked at him. ‘No. Do you?’
‘No, but I didn’t want her to die.’
‘Neither did I, but we had no control over what happened at that terminal. Was it our fault that Tahlia couldn’t keep up with everyone else? No.’ They stepped out of the elevator and crossed the fourth-floor changing room. ‘Was it our fault Arcis ran the power for longer than usual? No.’
‘So, you think it would have played out the same way if we’d helped her, or if Anya hadn’t scuppered Tahlia’s chances?’
‘Don’t you?’
They entered the room with the prefabs.
‘I don’t know. What happened with the other girl, Brianna?’
‘She was weak, Warren. She wouldn’t have survived this place. What happened, happened.’
‘And you don’t regret anything, or feel remorse?’ Warren wanted to know if the real Yasmin talked to him, not the one on Compliance.
‘Of course I feel remorse. But regret? No. Would I do the same thing again? Yeah. You know why?’ Warren shook his head. ‘Because it’s what I needed at the time. And I can’t regret something I needed. How it played out was beyond our control.’
She paused outside one of the prefabs, her hand on the doorknob. A girl’s muffled cries filtered through the thick walls.
‘We all make choices in life, Warren. Some are good. Some are bad. We didn’t kill her. Arcis electrocuted her, not me. Not you.’
‘But we had a hand in her death. We set her up to be electrocuted.’
Yasmin sighed. ‘If June’s right and the supervisors set us up, it would have happened with or without us.’
Yasmin jerked the door open and entered the prefab. Warren watched the hot-headed girl who feared nothing, unsure if he wanted an alliance with her. She was cold, hard. The way he felt at times. He needed someone with more empathy than him, someone who wouldn’t abandon him to further her own cause, someone to help him succeed in Arcis, no matter what. Even though Warren didn’t trust Yasmin, she was a more appealing choice than June. But neither of them was the right fit for him.
Only one person could help him. And she was on the third floor with Frank.
4
Warren
Warren’s stint as a first-aid medic on the second floor lasted just twenty-four hours. He, June, Jerome, Yasmin and a few others made it to the fourth where they swapped their boiler suits for casual clothes that smelled freshly washed. Maybe this floor would be less physical than the second. Whatever. All that mattered was he’d skipped the third floor. He was one step closer to the ninth and finding what he needed there. He and Jerome followed June and Yasmin through the next room past the now familiar first-aid prefabs. Warren hoped Anya had been rotated. He needed to make progress.
They crossed the walkway to Tower B and entered a space that had separated the sexes. The girls’ dorm on the left was a corridor-style room behind a glass window front. Beds pointed outwards from the wall to the window. A couple of girls sat on their beds, watching. Warren and Jerome headed for the frosted glass partitioned space opposite to the girls’ dorm. Music and laughing assaulted him when he opened the door. He looked around to see a small party in full swing; there was a bar with alcohol in one corner of the dorm. Boys swigged beers and downed shots of liquor. A glassy eyed boy handed Warren and Jerome a beer each. Those who’d missed out on rotation appeared to be drowning their sorrows. Warren shrugged and took a swig. The alcohol took the edge off his exhaustion. An older boy, who someone called Ash, sat on a sofa near the door surrounded by six empty bottles of beer.
Jerome searched the room for Frank but returned to Warren’s side with a shrug. Frank didn’t make it to the fourth floor. Jerome’s mood soured and he downed half his beer.
It didn’t take long for the exhaustion to hit. Warren selected one of the free beds, all with individual privacy screens around them. He was about to turn in a couple of hours later when Dom Pavesi came in. He spoke to no one and crashed on the first bed he found free. Warren wondered what had kept him so late getting in. He thought to ask, but he didn’t know the guy. And he didn’t like him. He was arrogant and secretive, like June.
The next morning turned out to be more entertaining than he expected. Warren woke to find Dom and Ash arguing over something. It didn’t take him long to figure out they both wanted to be in charge. But Ash put Dom in his place fast. And for that, Warre
n liked Ash. He considered a new potential alliance, but he knew nothing about Ash. Since he’d already put time in with Anya, it would be a shame to waste his efforts getting to know someone new.
On the way to the dining hall, Dom caught up to Jerome and whispered something in his ear. It must have been big because Jerome screeched ‘No!’ and backed away from Dom.
‘I’m sorry, Jerome. We did everything we could.’
Jerome turned away and punched one of the frosted glass walls of the boys’ dorm. It rocked but stayed put. He couldn’t catch his breath.
Warren stayed to the rear of the group next to Ash. ‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘Some kid called Frank was killed. It’s where Dom was last night. That’s why he was late in.’
The news hit Warren like a punch to the gut. It couldn’t be true, not so soon after Tahlia.
Jerome clenched his jaw tight as he stormed ahead to the dining hall. Warren didn’t know what to do. He’d never had anyone close to him die before. Apart from Tahlia. But he could barely stand her. He had liked Frank though. Jerome crashed through the door to the dining hall.
Despite Jerome’s anger, the mood in the dining hall was light. The boys were surprisingly alert given their drinking session the night before. Compliance dulled the effects of alcohol. It was the perfect hangover remedy.
Warren forgot about Jerome the second his stomach rumbled. The smell of sugar and grease from the pancakes with maple syrup, and the bacon made his mouth water. The food was divided into portions behind locked glass covers. Warren saw some of the boys use the chips in their wrists to open the food coverings.
The girls entered and Warren breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Anya had made it to the floor.
He walked over to her and she gave him a brief hug. A bandage on her lower arm caught his eye and he frowned.
‘What happened to your arm?’
‘An accident. I cut myself.’