The Eve Illusion

by Giovanna Fletcher

  The next cell.

  NAME: HARTMAN

  CRIME: TREASON. CONSPIRATOR. ASSISTED KIDNAPPING

  SENTENCE: PENDING

  ‘This is our man,’ I say to Reynolds.

  We look inside and see his chest rise and fall as he lies on his bed while I log into the cell by placing my hand on the glass. The door reveals itself and Reynolds and I step inside.

  ‘Christ, it’s hot!’ Reynolds whispers, as the thick, stuffy air hits the back of his throat.

  ‘Who are you?’ Hartman groans, waking up suddenly.

  ‘We are officers of the Final Guard. Your presence is required,’ I inform him.

  ‘Required? By whom?’ Hartman asks, pushing his scruffy hair off his face. Reynolds and I hold out a set of handcuffs. He looks at them for a moment, then reluctantly slips his wrists inside and they click shut.

  We hoist him up by his arms and carry him out of his cell. As we pass, Mother Kadi notices us and stands, her face emanating a kind, warm sense of safety.

  Ernie Warren pays us no attention, focusing on massaging his wound, but I feel Hartman’s gaze intensify as he stares at the man who disappeared.

  ‘He’s still alive!’ Hartman whispers.

  ‘He’ll be okay,’ I say under my breath.

  Hartman snaps his head round to look at me, eyeing me suspiciously.

  ‘For Eve?’ he mouths, so only I see.

  My heart races. I’ve never muttered those words, but after what Ketch said about loyalty, I’m starting to think differently of them. It’s more than the motto of a rebellion. It’s a promise to our future.

  ‘There is fine.’ Miss Silva’s voice snaps me back to the moment.

  We drop Hartman on the floor outside the cell holding his fellow pilots from Squad H.

  ‘Locke! Jackson! What the hell are you doing in here?’ Hartman says, with a note of panic in his voice.

  The squad speak and point to their ears. They can’t hear us and we can’t hear them.

  ‘What the hell are they doing in there? They’re innocent. They had nothing to do with any of this,’ he says firmly. Honestly.

  ‘I believe you.’ Miss Silva smiles. It’s strained, as though her face hasn’t used those muscles in some time.

  ‘Then why have you arrested them?’

  ‘Because not only were you a vital role in the kidnapping of Eve, Dr Wells informs me that you are also the person Bram trusted more than anyone else. I want information on these “Freevers” and if there’s one person who can give it to me it will be you. And your team … Well, let’s say their presence is going to help you do that,’ Miss Silva says calmly.

  Hartman stays silent.

  I glance around at the Final Guard, who remain standing to attention beside the far wall. Their faces are blank, unreadable, but their minds must be working overtime, as is mine, splitting her words apart to read between the lines.

  It’s not good.

  ‘Miss Silva, I can’t tell you what I don’t know,’ Hartman says, his voice already trembling.

  Miss Silva nods and her two armoured goons step forward. They remove the cuffs we placed on Hartman and replace them with a thick black cuff on each of his wrists and ankles, the same thick cuffs they used on Guard Ryan. They click into place and the guard pulls the small black sphere from his belt and swipes his thumb over it.

  There’s a light buzz as the cuffs send a current through Hartman’s body, electrifying his muscles to gain control of them. With another swipe he’s practically lifted off his feet by these restraints, hoisted up in front of the cell.

  ‘I … can’t … give you any information!’ Hartman spits, through the obvious pain he’s experiencing.

  ‘That’s disappointing but I think perhaps your ex-teammates might be able to help me change your mind,’ Miss Silva says, hardly even looking at Hartman, as though she’s monotonously reciting a script she’s performed a hundred times.

  The second guard unclips another device from his belt. He attaches it to the back of Hartman’s head: his neck is suddenly rigid and his eyelids are pulled wide by an invisible force.

  He screams in pain.

  I step forward.

  Shit. Why did I do that?

  Her guards turn to me, alert.

  ‘Stand down. Guard Turner was just eager for his next task. Isn’t that right, Turner?’ Miss Silva says. I know she’s manipulating me but it’s getting me off the hook so it’s best not to argue.

  ‘Of course, Miss Silva,’ I say.

  ‘Good. Then would you please authorize the cell to cease the oxygen supply to the prisoners.’

  My chest vibrates and an orange glow appears at my feet, drawing a line to the glass wall of the cell.

  My order.

  So this is how information is extracted.

  18

  Michael

  Shit.

  I feel the eyes of everyone on me.

  I want to scream, I HAVE NO CHOICE! as I take the first steps along my illuminated path, but I must keep my face calm while my heart races.

  Is she really asking me to torture her men? Her loyal employees who have helped her get so close to Eve for so many years?

  ‘Whenever you’re ready, Turner,’ she adds, putting her hands behind her back.

  ‘No! Please. They’re innocent!’ Hartman protests, as his eyes water from being held open so that he’s forced to watch his friends suffer.

  I wish time would pause for a moment and let me catch a thought, just figure things out, but it doesn’t. If anything, time seems to be moving faster with everyone staring at me: Miss Silva is watching for me to do her bidding and prove my loyalty to the EPO; my fellow guards are watching for their leader to follow an order we all know is wrong.

  I place my hand on the glass and the system unlocks, ready for my instruction.

  I take a breath.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ the armoured guard snaps.

  ‘There’s no problem, is there, Turner?’ Miss Silva says simply. ‘He’s going to reduce the oxygen supply now, aren’t you?’ She smiles. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

  I nod.

  I turn and face the men within the cell. Though they cannot hear, their faces show that they know the situation isn’t good.

  I try to say Sorry with my eyes.

  I try to express I have no choice with my thoughts.

  I try but it’s all pointless.

  One way or another, I have to do what Miss Silva wants. I select the cell controls on the transparent display. The prisoners on the opposite side of the glass watch my commands in reverse, trying to make sense of the situation.

  I swipe through the options for the internal configuration of the cell – temperature, lighting, humidity, audio, sensory: these prisons were built for every possible scenario and need. The next swipe reveals the oxygen-supply options and my heart stops.

  I stab at the glass with my finger, making clear what I’m about to do for the cell’s occupants. Even seeing this in reverse on the opposite side of the display, there’s no doubt of what’s about to happen.

  Locke realizes first. His eyes widen and flick up to meet mine. His lips move as he passes on the news to the others. Jackson steps up to the glass wall, making his body large and powerful.

  He pounds his fists against the glass, but it doesn’t even make a sound in the corridor.

  His eyes are fixed on Miss Silva as he clenches his jaw.

  Miss Silva sighs impatiently. ‘Proceed, Turner,’ she says, unfazed by the pilots’ awareness of their fate.

  I raise my shaking finger and drag the sliding bar down, reducing the oxygen supply to the cell.

  ‘All the way, if you would,’ she adds.

  I hold my finger down and slide to the bottom. The display flashes red.

  WARNING. CELL OCCUPIED. OXYGEN SUPPLY NOT SUFFICIENT.

  I swipe away the warning.

  ‘Now then, Hartman. When did you and Bram first plot to kidnap Eve?’ Miss Silva begins her inter
rogation. She speaks slowly and purposefully.

  ‘There was never a plan to kidnap Eve,’ Hartman whines, his wide eyes darting around the faces of his friends. ‘I – I was just trying to do the right thing for her. Bram told me nothing more than I needed to know!’

  Miss Silva takes her time absorbing the answers while the panicked Squad H watch through the glass. Jackson paces the room, like a caged animal, while Locke speaks to him, trying to calm him to reserve oxygen.

  ‘Your friends are scared. It’s a funny thing, fear. It rapidly increases the heart rate, meaning the body requires more oxygen to feed the brain and the organs to stay alive. Ironic when the very thing causing the fear is the lack of oxygen,’ Miss Silva says at a painfully slow pace.

  ‘Please! Miss Silva, they’re good men,’ Hartman cries.

  ‘Indeed they are, Hartman, which is why you should end their suffering now. Where have the Freevers taken Eve?’

  Hartman shudders. ‘I – I don’t know!’ He coughs.

  Miss Silva sighs, exhaling slowly and allowing more time to pass.

  ‘Did you know it’s not me denying them oxygen that will kill them? It’s the carbon dioxide they are breathing out that will eventually lead to their demise. They are, in that sense, killing themselves and each other. An average resting person in that cell could last perhaps forty-five minutes before irreversible brain damage occurs, eventually death. Four men of their body mass, under stressful conditions? I’d say they were already cutting it fine.’

  Hartman twitches, trying to fight the restraints, but it’s hopeless. The guard runs his thumb across the sphere and the cuffs pull him tighter.

  ‘Hartman. These men, the pilots, are of very little use to me now. Eve’s view of the world has been changed and when we get her back here, when she returns home, there will be no need for Holly,’ Miss Silva explains. ‘No one is going to question the disappearance of four irrelevant, potentially traitorous men, particularly when Eve is still at large. Their only hope, Hartman, is for you to tell me what you know.’ Her angular features cast razor-sharp shadows on her pale skin in the harsh light.

  Hartman says nothing. Doesn’t he care about his men? Tell her anything! I think – but then I realize that Hartman is one of them, a Freever through and through. Not because he wanted to betray the EPO, or because he wants to see these men suffer, but because he believes in Eve. In the life she deserves and what that represents.

  He’s making it very clear where his loyalty lies while I stand here selfishly keeping my mouth shut.

  I shake away these traitorous thoughts before Miss Silva reads them on my face.

  The EPO is where Eve is safest, where she needs to be, I tell myself.

  ‘If you think I’m bluffing, Hartman, you are sadly mistaken,’ Miss Silva says calmly.

  Suddenly one of the men inside sits on the floor, his back hunched.

  It’s beginning.

  ‘Watts!’ Hartman calls. ‘No!’

  The pilot raises a hand, shooing away his friends, reluctant to admit the first effects of asphyxia have set in.

  ‘The first to fall. The faster one dies the longer the others will live. Every cloud,’ Miss Silva says, with unnerving calm.

  Tears are pouring from Hartman’s unblinking, bloodshot eyes. I yearn to help him but I can’t. I’d be killed just for the thoughts running through my head, let alone if I acted on them.

  Hartman whimpers, and I can see he’s torn in two. Stay silent and watch his friends die. Speak and kill the future.

  The second man slumps to the floor, turning his back on the audience through the glass.

  ‘Jackson. Yes, it takes a lot of oxygen to feed those muscles,’ Miss Silva comments, as the block of a man struggles to remain on his knees.

  How can she do this? How can she watch the men who have obeyed her orders for years suffocate in front of her? It’s unbearable.

  ‘I think it might be time for some audio, don’t you, Turner?’ Miss Silva suggests.

  It’s not a suggestion at all: it’s an order I have no choice but to follow. I secretly take a deep breath, readying myself for the sound we’re about to hear.

  I place my hand on the screen again and unmute the cell.

  Heavy breathing hisses around the corridor, followed by a cough and a splutter from Watts, who is now spread out across the cell floor.

  ‘I can’t tell you! I – I won’t do it!’ Hartman cries, as his friends struggle before him.

  My heart sinks as I grasp what his words mean, what he has unintentionally confessed.

  He won’t. So, he does know.

  I see Miss Silva’s face flash with anger as she registers this.

  Instead of exploding, though, she sighs. ‘How unfortunate for your friends. Guards, you are dismissed.’

  What?

  We glance hesitantly at each other.

  Dismissed? She wants us to leave? Now?

  ‘You heard me, dismissed! Back to your dorms.’ Miss Silva claps her hands as she leads the way to the lift, flanked by her personal guards.

  We fall in line behind them and march away from the cells, leaving Hartman suspended in his cuffs in front of the cell, watching his friends slowly lose consciousness.

  We fall into the lift under the watchful eye of Miss Silva’s security to the soundtrack of Hartman’s cries. The door swishes shut and we ascend rapidly with no more information than we had before, just four fewer souls.

  I dare to look at Miss Silva, trying to gauge what’s going on behind those piercing eyes. She is deep in thought, her lips silently mouthing words. Her eyes dart from left to right rapidly, as though she’s looking through the window of a moving vehicle, before locking with mine.

  ‘Is there something you wish to say, Turner?’ she asks.

  ‘No, Miss Silva. I’m just sorry it wasn’t the result you were hoping for.’

  A lie.

  Miss Silva’s lips slice into a smile. ‘This was the expected outcome,’ she explains flatly.

  The lift reaches our dorm level and the door opens. The Final Guard are hesitant to move.

  ‘Expected, Miss Silva?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. This was the first stage, merely preparation for the next session. That is when he will talk. You are dismissed.’

  I exit the lift in shock. She sent those men to their deaths. Jackson, Locke, Watts and Kramer were never coming out of that cell alive.

  My mind flashes back to the arrest. The Final Guard sent to do Miss Silva’s dirty work.

  My brother’s voice rings in my head …

  It’s not Vivian you should be concerned about. It’s Wells.

  I wonder how much Wells knows about this. Did he agree to it? Surely not. The pilots were his team. Then where was he? Why didn’t he try to stop it? Was he not present because he couldn’t bear to see his innocent men murdered?

  We walk back to the dorms in silence, all of us with the same thing on our minds: the next session.

  19

  Eve

  We’ve split into smaller groups to scratch our heads and come up with a solid plan. Every room, corner and hallway of the Deep is littered with people whispering and devising.

  In a small, dimly lit meeting room, a floor plan of the Tower has been mapped out on the wooden table in front of Bram, Helena, Saunders, Chubs and myself. Helena has labelled its many floors and detailed what they’re known to be used for – the upper garden zone and my sleeping quarters in the Dome are right at the top. Then, scattered around the page, there’s my classrooms, studios, examining rooms and the laboratories – the thought of what goes on in there sends shivers down my spine. A few floors down is the room in which I met Connor and Diego, the two Potentials – encounters that went horrifically wrong.

  It’s strange seeing how few of the floors I’ve visited and how contained they kept me. I look further down the page to the places that weren’t for me: the pilots’ quarters, security, dining halls, training rooms and Cold Storage – an eerie place that
I’ve learned stores people waiting for the next life. Not living, yet not quite dead. All waiting in limbo to be born again. It’s absurd to think of the lengths people have gone to in the hope of living in happier times, yet this is the level that allowed Bram to break back into the Tower, so I’m thankful for it. I always knew that life was bubbling away beneath me, but I was naïve as to the extent of their operation. My life in the Dome was calm and tranquil. Below, it must’ve been chaotic as they kept Vivian’s vision churning along.

  As I study the floor plans, though, it’s clear there are gaps in the Freevers’ knowledge. Huge areas of the paper, the majority of the floors, in fact, have been left blank. When asked about them, Helena grunts, the sides of her mouth pulling downwards. ‘We’ve yet to find a single informant left inside the Tower who knows,’ she says, her head shaking. ‘No one can get to them. It’s as though they don’t even exist. Lying low so they don’t get caught, no doubt. Doesn’t help us now but, hopefully, their silence will pay off in the long run.’

  Could they be empty voids? Spaces waiting to evolve into whatever false freedom they would’ve been giving me next, had I still been there? I think back to my garden – the little piece of outside they used to take me to whenever I needed to be immersed in the wonder of nature – and then I remember how crushed I felt when I drove straight into their set, crushing their false reality and exposing their lies. It’s highly likely more of those floors had been designed in that manner, or were going to be. Gigantic spaces dressed and used to give me the illusion of going outside, while keeping me caged and controlled. They would never have allowed me the opportunity to breathe real air or touch soil they hadn’t planted. Where else were they planning on taking me and my clipped wings?

  ‘We’ve also failed to find out where they’re keeping your father and the others.’ Helena sighs. ‘We’ve been in situations like this before, where communication has been cut due to a breach in their security, but this is the longest period of radio silence from our team inside. It stands to reason that Vivian would put the place into lockdown mode, but it makes her moves difficult to predict.’