There Are Only Four (The Competition Archives Book 1)

by Nicole Scarano

  There Are Only Four

  The Competition Archives Book 1

  Nicole Scarano

  Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Scarano

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Art by Nicole Scarano

  Images Licensed with © Shutterstock

  Edited by Cassandra Chaput

  Created with Vellum

  Mother, if you are reading this, I love you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  Also by Nicole Scarano

  Chapter One

  Today is the day. Today is our turn to run, and if we win, if we finish the maze, we are free. We get out. Today is the day. If I win, I am free.

  I sit on the edge of the lumpy mattress, my bare toes freezing against the concrete. The rooms here are small, just a bed welded to the wall, a sink, and a toilet. It’s exactly how I imagine prison would feel, and yet this is where they house us, the children running the maze. I am one of the older competitors at seventeen, but there are younger, and I don’t understand why they treat us like criminals locked away to sleep in these windowless cells. We are already nervous, and these cold, bleak walls only add to the unease.

  Bending over, I grab a pair of thick gray socks and shove my frozen feet into them before standing up, and my entire body aches with stiffness at the simple movement. The soreness must be from sleeping on the lumpy mattress; otherwise I cannot imagine why else my body feels as if it has been on the losing end of a baseball bat. Stretches help loosen my joints and muscles, so I slowly fall forward, reaching for my toes. The pulling sensation is knives to my hamstrings, but I remain doubled over as I round my back. I breathe through the pain and count down the seconds just to keep my mind from the discomfort, and when I can no longer endure this position, my torso twists into a new one. Stretch after stretch pulls me like taffy, but I only stop when the blood rushing to my brain causes a lightheaded flush.

  Stiffly, I rise back to my full height and shuffle to the cell door. My feet dive into the scuffed combat boots, which forces me to bend over again to knot the laces. The movement is sluggish since I cannot move quickly so early with a stiff body, but there is no rush. The morning alarm wakes this compound each day with incessant clamoring, but the doors do not unlock until fifteen minutes later. Despite lethargic movements, it only takes moments to pull on the standard issue black pants, tank top, boots, and utility jacket. So here I stand, with nothing left to do but wait for release.

  The silence drags on, and then with a blaring alert catapulting through the air, the cell doors click unlocked and slide open. The hallway instantly fills with a horde of teenage girls shuffling toward the main exit ahead. Its wide opening swallows us whole and then spits us out into the sea of herded male bodies, and in a mass of jostled limbs, we make our way to the cafeteria.

  Breakfast is served, and we all file in relative silence into a massive, snaking line by a stack of cracked and worn plastic trays. One by one we drift down to where gray food that matches the gray walls waits unappetizingly for stomachs that have suddenly soured due to its off-putting scent. When I finally arrive to be served, half of it is already gone, and a miserable-looking woman, whose girth is probably equal to at least four children, shovels a lumpy sludge of what I am guessing is porridge onto my tray. I try not to make eye contact with her as I slide over to where a younger woman with pin straight hair and a pinched face hands me a piece of slightly burnt toast. I don’t want to continue down this inedible procession. The bleak meal on my plate has turned my stomach, but the boy behind me shoves my spine with impatience. With little choice, I step forward and settle before a pile of eggs that could pass as vomit. I swallow hard as the server scoops a small spoonful onto my tray. She looks at my disgusted expression and gives me an almost imperceptible look of sympathy, and I’m taken aback by the gentleness in her eyes. She must be new here. No one else has ever looked at me with so much as a single ounce of kindness.

  The boy behind jostles me again, and I leave the woman with the kind eyes and make my way to the last stop where another wretched server hands me a small glass of milk. I don’t want it. I know from experience it’s mixed with tap water to stretch it further, but I have nothing else to drink. Besides, if I refuse, she will strike me for being insolent and ungrateful. They have done it before, slap a child harshly across the face for even the most minor offences, and so I take the cloudy, plastic cup and shuffle away to our table.

  They separate us by gender to sleep, but for everything else we are required to remain with our teams. Upon intake, they divide the entering contestants into groups, and those are who we must run the maze with. My team, my friends. They are all I know in this bleak building, all I am allowed to know. I see other faces, but I couldn’t tell you one other person’s name in this sea of eating children.

  My team is Luka, Jude, Serene, Mimi…. no, not Mimi. Not sure why I thought that name. I don’t know a Mimi. Never have. There are only four to a team. Luka, Jude, Serene, and I.

  I slide in at our table next to Luka. Tall and blond, he is the oldest of our unit at eighteen. He is already hardened to the world despite his young age, the soul that lingers behind his gray eyes mature and bitter. His body is forged steel, strong and angular, and a distinctive scar runs along the back of his head down to his neck. He never divulged how it came to be there, and we never ask.

  It draws my gaze, though, as I settle to a seat on the metal bench beside him. His issued jacket hangs next to him to allow his muscular frame to be on full display, showing the crowd of fully dressed children he is not a contestant to be trifled with. The long, jagged scar adds to his formidability and could only have come from something traumatic, and he wears it with pride like war paint.

  My arm brushes against his bare bicep as I set my tray down, and a jolt of heat runs up my skin to settle in my cheeks. Luka turns his head slightly to catch my eyes and gives me a nod. The movement is small, and to all watching, it is a barely adequate greeting, but the twinkle in his eyes is only for me. They light up at my gaze, and it seems the tension in his body lessens at my arrival. I can’t explain it. I scarcely know this boy, but my heart longs for him. The thought that I have known him for years lodges within my chest, and his presence is the only thing that makes me feel safe. Somehow, he is my closest friend and ally, and while others might say it’s merely my seventeen-year-old heart’s infatuation with a handsome boy, it is not. Something about our connection is deeper than our limited encounters could form in the short time since we met. I know him. I am not sure how, but we are more than strangers.

  Luka turns back to his tray and shovels a monumental bite into his mouth, and the sight makes me want to gag. How he eats this gruel with such enthusiasm I will never understand. A boy of his size needs a large intake of food to sustain his mass, but he devours breakfast as if these gray and greasy eggs are a delicacy.


  “You can’t show fear,” he whispers, nudging my arm with his elbow. I look at him with surprise. It’s as if he heard my thoughts, and that sense of closeness strikes again. He always seems to read my mind. This boy I met only days ago understands me better than I do myself.

  “Winning isn’t just about how well we run the maze,” Luka whispers again, moving his lips closer to my ear. “Winning starts here. We can’t exhibit fear… not now… not in the maze. Trust me, people are watching us already. Eat,” he commands, swallowing another big bite, his spine straight and proud. “Everyone hates this food. Everyone is cowering. Eat it all without complaint. It will show them nothing deters us.” At his urging, I grab my fork and plunge it into the porridge, taking a deep breath and straightening my back before I shove it in my mouth. I almost gag at the semi cold slime, but I force my throat to obey my dignity, and I am thankful porridge need not be chewed. I swallow it whole and push a second bite past my tongue before I lose my nerve.

  “You too,” Luka orders, nodding across the table where Jude and Serene sit. Jude has dark brown hair and is small for his age. His wiry frame and lanky limbs hang shriveled against his body. He seems to collapse in on himself before our eyes, a stark contrast to Luka, who consumes every inch of his surrounding space. Jude is terrified, but so are we all, kept here in this base without our families before the race through the maze, only able to leave if we complete the task at hand. This competition is televised for the world to watch. Which of our nation’s youth are smart and fast enough to make it to the end first? He is scared. We are all scared, but he is worse than most.

  And then there is Serene. She is almost my height, with dark skin and short curly hair, and she doesn’t smile. Sometimes I see the ghosts that haunt her hovering behind her eyes. They must be the reason her lips are always drawn in such harsh lines, but she never acknowledges them. She keeps her mind closed, private to only herself. She isn’t much older than I am - I don’t think - but she acts like our mother. Here in this place, I am thankful for it, though. Serene may not smile, but she is kind, and her comforting touches, while fleeting, and protective coddling both comforts me in the absence of my mother and makes me miss her more.

  I am the last and the youngest of our team at seventeen, but not by much. One look at me, and one would see I wasn’t young. My curves are too mature as is the harshness of my mind, and with my olive skin, long, dark hair, and light eyes, I am a combination of my teammates. The common denominator.

  The four of us are all we know. Looking out over the crowd of teams mass exiting the dining hall after our depressingly lackluster meal, I am surprised at how there could be so many of us, yet I have never seen that towering redhead, or that extremely young boy, or even those triplets. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. I need my team to win, and getting to know the other competitors won’t help our success.

  Group by sullen group, we exit the cafeteria and filter down the hallways until they dump us into a massive concrete hangar. The vaulted ceiling creates a cavernous room, barren save for the rows upon rows of old and rusted folding chairs. They are lined up with uniform precision, filling every inch of this uninviting space.

  Most of the teams vie for seats at the rear, and our first instinct is to claim those coveted spots before the rest do, but before we can move to them, Luka places a broad palm on the small of my back and nudges me forward. Serene seizes Jude by his jacket as we separate from our group, halting him in his tracks with a gag as his collar constricts his throat, and she follows our lead, dragging a poor confused Jude through the jostling crowd behind us. As we make our way toward the front, Luka’s hand burns a hole in my skin, but I ignore the warmth his fingers spread through me, or at least attempt to. Instead, I concentrate on emulating his demeanor, on being unwaverable in this quivering sea. He pushes us forward in a power play, a way to declare to all that we are the team to beat, just as his actions at breakfast demonstrated. By his fearless attitude, one would assume he has run the maze before. Those are the rules, you are only released once you win, but I know Luka hasn’t competed before. It’s his first time; it’s my whole team’s first time, but I find myself wondering who in this room has the upper hand? Who has already run this and knows what to expect?

  A few rows from the front, Luka gestures to the chairs, and Serene corrals Jude into the row. Once they sit, he guides me to a seat, and as he settles beside me, I become acutely aware of the sudden absence of his warm palm on my back. My skin is only vacant his touch for a moment before Serene grasps Jude’s hand and then reaches over to seize mine. She clutches me, her grip strong, and I am not sure if it is for her own comfort or mine. I’m thankful for the contact regardless of her intentions though, and my fingers slide through hers like a key in its lock.

  It takes long and silent minutes for all the teams to find seats, the shuffling of feet and the scrap of metal chair legs against concrete the only sounds. I use the uneasy waiting to observe my surroundings since they have never allowed us in this section of the building before. At the front of the hangar sits a solitary microphone flanked by a row of folding tables and chairs. The space offers no other distractions, so I turn my curious scrutiny to the sullen faces painted across my competitors. At breakfast, everyone was too occupied with the sickening task of eating the food in the allotted time to pay attention to anyone else, but here with nothing to do but sit in uncomfortable patience, I carefully study my opponents as I cling to Serene’s fingers.

  I am once again struck by the realization that not a single one looks familiar. Some children wear features that are plain and forgettable, but some stand out with striking uniqueness. I don’t know how I haven’t seen them before. Like the teenager who is well over six feet tall. Luka is a larger competitor, and yet he is dwarfed by this lanky boy. A girl a few rows down from me has a large birthmark that covers the right side of her neck. All the girls sleep in the same quarters, so how have I never passed her? I would remember such a distinct mark. As I continue to scan, a flicker of recognition sprouts in my brain. A few seats away sits a teen, and while her teammates are strangers to me, her I recognize. I saw her this morning as she exited the cell adjacent to mine. Half of the blonde hair on her skull is shaved, giving her a harshness that matches the determined set of her jaw. The shaved section sports a jagged scar, and I wonder if her shorn locks is to allow her skin to heal uninterrupted or to show she fears nothing, not even that which harms her own flesh.

  “Welcome,” a male voice echoes through the hangar, and I jerk in my seat, my startled head snapping to attention. A thick man in a suit stretched taut over broad shoulders stands before the microphone, hair cropped close to his scalp, body chiseled in a way only steroids can achieve. At his booming word, the folding tables behind him fill with men and women dressed in ill-fitting pantsuits, their arms lugging black briefcases.

  I can’t imagine the sight of this gargantuan man would comfort our parents. He looks like the kind of man mothers steer their young daughters away from, and I am thankful only the race is televised. I don’t want my mother, wherever she is, to see him with his leering stare and penetrating eyes. His gaze drifts over the crowd, lighting briefly on me like a ghost’s cold fingers, and I shudder at the knot it forms in my belly. The shiver causes my shoulder to bump Luka. His head shifts toward me with barely any motion, but I refuse to look at him even though his beautiful eyes burn my skin. I don’t need him to witness the disgust rippling through me. I don’t want anyone to see it.

  “Today is the day!” the man booms into the microphone as the men and women behind him set the cases on the tables. “Today the teams in this room will run the maze, the winners released into the world as heroes, worshipped by all who watch. And mark my words, the nation is watching! Today will prove which of our youths are the most athletic and intelligent. The maze houses many obstacles. Obstacles that will require teamwork and problem solving, great feats of strength and speed, but I have faith in today’s competitors. One team sitting i
n this hangar will come together to beat the odds and claim the coveted title of winner. They will be our nation’s best and brightest; children who will command the attention of the leading schools and businesses in our fine country. Not only is fame waiting across the finish line, but your future, a future filled with promise and success. We look forward to meeting this incredible team… the entire world does!” He pauses with a perverse smile on his lips as if he expects us to cheer, but we all sit frozen in silence, the knowledge that only one group gets to leave gnawing at our guts. It’s impossible to share his enthusiasm when all but four of us will have to return to these gray walls, lumpy beds, and disgusting meals.

  “Now for the rules,” he continues when he realizes we intend no reply. “The maze is circular and three-dimensional, with all paths converging on the end at its center. Each team will be released from gates around its circumference and run a different race with various obstacles to overcome, but each group has the same distance to travel and an equal number of problems to solve. The maze is equipped with three hundred and sixty degree cameras that will track your every move as you navigate the competition. We will edit these live streams as you progress for mainstream consumption, but if someone chooses to observe a specific team, they can log into our online webcams and follow you throughout. There are no blind spots, so remember the world is watching at all times. Give them a show worth tuning in to, a reason to worship you!” He smiles with an enthusiastic gesture meant to garner a battle cry of triumph, but once again his words are met with silence’s lackluster response.