by Eliza Green
Except for Dom’s; his eyes were deep brown.
Anya assumed the degree of dilation was dependent on the dose of anti-radiation medication in the body.
She inhaled the smell. ‘I miss our food from Brookfield. Everything’s the same in Arcis...’ She trailed off, distracted by a yeasty aroma with a hint of sweetness. Medicated food had a faint smell and a strange sickly flavour that didn’t fit the food. But this all-natural sweetness made her mouth water.
Jason grinned and stirred the bubbling vegetables.
Anya followed the second smell to the white kitchen table where a grey tea towel concealed something large. She lifted the edge and her eyes widened at a golden half-loaf of bread.
‘Where... How?’ Since coming to Essention, she and Jason hadn’t eaten anything that wasn’t out of a tin. Arcis food didn’t fare much better. She stared at the contraband and her grumbling stomach pleaded with her to taste it.
‘Max let me take it. Again, nothing added, so no risk of overdose.’
‘Won’t you get into trouble?’ Food in Essention was strictly controlled to ensure all people received their daily dose of medication, and to control the limited supplies. Max, the assistant manager at the factory, would know this.
‘Max says it’s okay to take anything the machine marks as defect and set for destruction. He says he’d rather feed the defects to stray dogs than throw good food away. The machines don’t tolerate anything less than perfection.’
Anya thought about the wolves, part machine, part organic. Were they really germophobes or just perfectionists? They certainly obsessed over the cleanliness of the floor.
She gave Jason a quick hug, a move prompted by the new food on offer. He was taller than she was, and skinnier; Anya had developed a more muscular frame from her sports training in school. She grinned and ruffled his light-brown hair, which was long enough to fall into his eyes.
He groaned. ‘Get off, sis.’
She’d almost forgotten why they were in Essention. But then the memories came flooding back and her smile vanished.
‘Just because they aren’t here doesn’t mean we should stop living,’ said Jason, eyeing her.
She could see some of the light blue, speckled with darker blue flecks, even with the dilation. The same colour as their father’s. Anya hated her dark blue eyes ringed with lighter blue flecks. Like Grace’s.
She ran her finger along the edge of the counter and avoided his gaze. She missed her father.
‘We’re not the only ones without family here,’ said Jason. ‘What about the others in Arcis?’
Anya shrugged. ‘There’s Dom, I suppose.’
‘Is he a friend? Can you talk to him?’
She paused. She didn’t need anyone in Arcis, least of all Dom, whom she barely knew and who bothered her more than the others.
‘Look, I don’t need you to look out for me. I’m doing fine on my own.’
‘Your nightmares and the screams in the middle of the night say something different.’ He opened the cupboard and retrieved two bowls. ‘Look, you just need some guidance, some way to cope with what happened in Brookfield. Maybe Arcis will help you to control your anxiety.’
Anya turned away sharply and pressed a hand to her chest. Her anger caught her by surprise. She felt it gnawing away at her.
Maybe it was just hunger. She always felt better after she’d eaten. Everything made sense with food in her belly.
She grabbed a bread knife and cut two even wedges from the loaf while Jason poured steaming soup into each bowl. Her lingering anger kept her appetite at bay, but she would force something down. Her stomach would thank her for it later.
He placed the bowls on the table, pushing one towards her.
Anya brought a spoonful to her mouth and gasped when a searing pain hit her tongue.
‘Careful, it’s hot.’ He got up and filled a glass of water from the tap.
‘I’ve got it!’ Anya snatched the glass from him and chugged the water until the pain receded.
She was tired of Jason acting like a parent. Arcis could tell her what to do for a while.
They ate in silence. Silence was deadly. It let in too many thoughts that she kept hidden from everyone.
She was fine. She could cope. Then a painful memory slammed into her mind.
‘They’re here for her. She needs to leave, now,’ said Grace.
Anya bit her lip and stood up.
If they wanted her, they could take her.
The hand on her shoulder surprised her. She looked up into her father’s warm eyes. She didn’t protest when he steered her towards her bedroom.
‘Anya, remember we used to play hide-and-seek when you were younger? Well, you’re seventeen now, and I’m afraid the time for games is over.’
‘Why won’t you tell me anything, Dad? Who’s coming for me?’
‘No time for questions, pet.’ His hand felt heavy on her shoulder.
‘What about Jason? Why does he get to stay?’
The third knock was heavier, as though it had been made with a fist. Anya’s eyes flicked over to the door, avoiding the hateful look Grace gave her.
‘Get rid of her. Now, Evan.’
Anya looked over at Jason again who bit his thumb. He was never a part of Grace’s drama. Jason had two parents who loved him. Anya’s chest hurt from the jealousy.
‘Yeah, I’m going,’ she shouted at her mother. She couldn’t remember a time when Grace had ever talked to her like a normal human being.
Her father grabbed one of the wooden legs on her bed and pulled.
‘Help me, Anya.’
She tugged on the other leg. Their combined efforts revealed the bottom half of the wall, clad in strips of varnished pine. The top half was painted a warm yellow: the exact colour of her mother’s tulips in the garden. Anya used to admire to her mother once.
‘Who’s at the door, Dad? Who are you and Grace so scared of?’
She knew it irritated her mother when she used her first name.
Her father smiled, but his wide eyes revealed his hidden fear. There were rumours the rebellion was close. By accepting help from Praesidium, the townspeople went against the rebellion’s advice to shun all technology. Some of the townspeople had warned against it, said the rebels would come for those who didn’t obey.
Is that what this was? Punishment?
Anya was ready for this to be over. To hand herself over to the rebels.
He avoided her gaze. ‘Nobody you need to worry about. Come on. We don’t have much time...’
Anya coughed as some of the soup went down the wrong way. The memory retreated as her coughing intensified.
She wished that Grace could have accepted her for who she was instead of creating a rift. But her mother’s views had been frustratingly old-fashioned. Learning to cook and sew or training as a midwife—they were jobs for other girls, not Anya. But her desire to find her own path in life had interfered with Grace’s plans to match her with a boy she might hate. Her father had always supported her independence; why not her mother?
When Anya turned fourteen and boys started to notice her, Grace had begun the process of matching her. But Anya’s lack of interest in the practice had driven a wedge between them.
Across the dinner table, Jason gave her a disappointed look that reminded her of her mother. Before that night, she and Jason had got on well. But after, she’d seen traits of both their parents emerging in him: the strong, kind energy of their father; the nervous, overcritical energy of their mother.
She dipped the wedge of bread into the soup and sucked out the liquid. Jason frowned at her.
When she’d finished, she said, ‘Thanks for the soup and the bread.’
He shrugged and raked his fingers through his hair. ‘It was nothing special.’
The word ‘special’ caught her attention. She wondered why, then cupped her mouth as she realised. ‘It’s your birthday.’
Jason stood up too fast, as if embarrassed. ‘It d
oesn’t matter.’ He picked up the bowls and carried them to the sink.
What sister didn’t remember her brother’s birthday? A selfish one.
She lost count of the number of times Grace had told her to grow up, to stop acting like a kid. To wake up and realise the world wasn’t as perfect as it appeared. Maybe she’d had a point. But Anya would die before she’d ever admit it out loud.
‘Happy birthday,’ she said softly.
‘Birthdays aren’t important any more. We’re safe. That’s all that matters.’
With a heavy step, he left the room. She retrieved her backpack and substituted a wedge of bread for her mostly uneaten lunch sandwich, which she tossed on the table. She wasn’t supposed to take outside food to Arcis, but she had no plans to get caught. The camera’s blind spot would be her new private place.
Tomorrow, she would look for something special in the dining hall. A small gift for Jason to mark the birthday he was keen to forget.
5
Happy birthday. Most people were thrilled when others wished it to them. But for Jason Macklin, getting older just meant the start of something scary.
He’d just turned twenty, but he still felt like a teenager—way out of his depth and in need of his parents’ guidance. Anya was too young to go it alone, and Grace had been hard on her for good reason. Growing up, his sister had always been softer than him. The world was dangerous, the rebellion even more so, and Grace had been trying to toughen her up.
But, like Anya, he hadn’t understood Grace’s reasons for wanting to match Anya with a boy. When he’d asked his father about the archaic practice, Evan had replied that it was to keep the young safe and off the radar of some very bad people. The rebels, Jason assumed.
He hoped Arcis would help Anya accept her new orphan status: something he wasn’t ready to do for himself. He glanced at the large gate off in the distance—the only way out of Essention.
Months before the radiation attack on their town, Jason had watched Praesidium’s larger machines build Essention beyond the forest, in an area of mostly unoccupied land. The purpose of the urbano was to showcase the city’s new technology to the townspeople. Jason had tried to get in, but only adults could pass Essention’s automatic guns that lined the tops of the high walls.
He adjusted the strap on his backpack, which carried a container of the soup he’d made the night before and a wedge of bread. The smooth concrete inner wall that divided the urbano into quadrants felt cool beneath his fingers. His sensible black shoes padded along the grey-bricked street which led to the Monorail. Teenagers rushed past him, dressed in similar brown tunics and black trousers.
While he walked, he ate the rest of the sandwich that Anya had left on the table. He hated the sweetness of medicated food, but it was heaven compared to the horror and sickness that had swept through their town after a blast of radiation hit them. He thought he’d never get his appetite back. There had been just enough soup and bread left over from last night’s dinner for lunch. Anya had already left for Arcis by the time he got up. He’d left her a note about working late.
His face puckered as he finished the rest of the sandwich that muddled his mind and made his thoughts hazy. Max had been keeping back some non-medicated rations, saying that the drug ruined the taste. He had been dumping the drug down the sink so the ratio of drug to food would add up.
The vegetables for the soup had come from Max’s special ration box. The flavour was bland—no salt or pepper—but it tasted so much better than Anya’s sandwich.
Jason climbed the stairs to the train platform, distracted by Anya’s outburst last night. This was the beginning of their new life and he had no clue how to handle her. At least Arcis had intervened. Maybe Anya would figure out a few things on her own while she was in there.
The Monorail approached and Jason jostled for space. The train was always busy in the mornings. It stopped at Arcis first, before running north over the water purification plants. Workers below carried tools to fix leaks and pump fresh water to the urbano.
The train pitched to the right and headed south. The plastic-covered vertical farms loomed. Behind the farms was the hospital: a glass block building close to Essention’s entrance. Scanners and orbs were most active in this area. Patients with sunken eyes stood with their hands and faces pressed up against the glass. Jason shivered as the train passed overhead. Their dead stares penetrated right through him. He identified the new patients by the severity of their skin lesions and the pleading look in their eyes. He knew exactly how desperate they felt. He’d felt it too once.
Jason got off at Southwest and followed the inner perimeter wall to Essention’s two food factories. The paved road carried on past the buildings to a residential area populated with rows of bungalows. In contrast to the grey blocks where he and Anya lived, the bungalows here had been part of a town once. There were even gardens and footpaths. Essention had been built around whatever town had existed in this region.
He walked through the blue light cast over the street by scanners perched on high wires. The chip in his wrist tingled. It was a different model to Anya’s; Jason’s wouldn’t get him inside Arcis.
He nodded at the other people who lived in Essention. The greetings were always cordial, a little formal. Their eyes were pitch black.
Two factories came into view. The first of the factories produced food for the hospital; the second for Arcis and Essention.
He entered the second factory through a rear door. The small entrance room had a set of blue lockers on one side and a sink on the other, near the door to a toilet. Co-workers pulled on royal-blue overalls and hygiene gloves. Jason stored his backpack in one of the lockers.
The door to the factory floor opened and a man in his forties with a buzz cut entered, followed by a second, older man. This was Max Roberts, assistant manager, and his father, Charlie.
Max paused at Jason’s locker and sniffed the air. ‘I knew those vegetables wouldn’t go to waste.’
Charlie pressed his nose up to Jason’s locker. ‘Is that home-made soup?’
Jason nodded. ‘You want some?’
The factory made a range of products, from potted meat—derived from organic materials that mimicked the composition of real meat—to basic sandwiches. The vertical farms sent meat, bananas, apples, vegetables, cheese and eggs. Sometimes they would send flour and the workers would make bread. But Essention wasn’t about luxuries. It was about rations and refugees, about rebuilding lives and surviving rebel attacks. Jason would be forever grateful for the urbano’s generosity. He had run out of ways to keep him and Anya alive in Brookfield.
Max placed a hand on his heart. ‘I would be eternally in your debt, Mr Macklin. I haven’t even tried to cook at the bungalow. Far too busy.’ Max and Charlie resided in one of the bungalows down the street.
‘If I’d known, I would have made more.’
He slapped Jason on the back. ‘I hear it was your birthday yesterday. Happy birthday.’
Jason flushed with surprise. He hadn’t told anyone. ‘Thanks.’
Max walked away, leaving Jason to exchange his street clothes for a royal-blue jumpsuit and a pair of hygiene gloves.
Ω
The food from the vertical farms arrived in bright, shiny metal boxes packed in a germ-free protective atmosphere. The workers spent the morning unpacking the products that were ready to feed into the machines. Jason shivered as the atmospheric packaging released its cold onto the factory floor.
Charlie and Max spoke in hushed tone as they watched over the four giant machines from a raised platform. Jason found himself drawn to their secrecy. He couldn’t hear much, but on occasion Max would glance up and catch Jason looking at him. Broad-shouldered and slightly taller than Jason at five foot eleven, Max was imposing, even in his factory overalls.
Jason dropped his interest in the pair and concentrated on the meat labelled ‘chicken’. He picked up the slimy block—about a foot long by a foot wide—and released it into the b
ack of one of the machines. This prompted the machine to add the clear liquid medication. Jason added flour substitute and liquid stock to the mix, designed to make the meat go further. He stocked individually sized containers at the other end of the machine and watched as the meat was pulverised and squeezed out into little pots intended for Arcis.
In another section, workers unpacked fresh fruit and hung bananas on overhead hooks. Each piece of fruit had to be manually injected with the anti-radiation drug.
The room was quiet enough that Jason could hear whispering. He looked over at Charlie and Max, who hadn’t moved for an hour and were in deep conversation. Max stood straight with his arms folded and a deep frown on his face. Charlie, with greying hair and bright blue eyes, stood beside him, sporting a similar look of concern.
‘Jason, get back to work,’ Max said sharply, the light banter from the locker room long forgotten. ‘Those pots aren’t going to pack themselves.’
Jason turned away and applied the label ‘chicken’ to the filled and capped pots.
Lunchtime came around and Jason sat in a room on the far side of the factory floor. He waited for Max to drop by and sneak a taste of his soup. But Max sat at a different table, eating the food from the factory he had admitted to despising. When lunch was over, Max walked over to his table and sat down.
A surprised Jason offered him what remained of the soup. Max shook his head and folded his arms on the table.
‘You’re from Brookfield, right?’
Jason nodded.
‘Have you given any thought to your old town?’
‘Every day. But there’s nothing to go home to right now.’
Max leaned forward. ‘What if I told you I’ve seen evidence of crop revival?’
Jason smiled. ‘I’d say you must have been on the outside.’
‘I have friends on the outside who have seen it.’
The rebels came to mind. ‘There’s nobody out there, except—’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ Max looked around him. ‘Stay back after work. Charlie and I have something to propose to you.’
