by Eliza Green
9
The laughter died away, leaving behind a silence that was too much for Anya to bear. The participants who’d been through rotation before, looked away.
Several screams bounced around the atrium as a dark, blurry object fell from high above. The object hit the floor with a sickening thud, narrowly missing the trees.
Anya’s scream came out as a frightened squeak. Her gaze shot to Dom. She caught the quick glance between him and Sheila, right before Sheila buried her face in his chest. Dom put his arm around her and led her to safety. A second body hitting the floor yanked Anya back into reality. This time, her scream was quick and sharp.
Some of the participants ran to cleaning vestibules to get mops. A girl of about eighteen approached a frozen Anya.
‘Here.’ She handed Anya a pan and mop. ‘You’ll need this to clean up.’
Clean up? Anya’s gut stirred. She turned and vomited on the floor.
‘Happens to us all,’ said the girl. ‘You’ll get used to it. Trust me.’
Anya wiped her face with her sleeve and avoided looking at the spot she’d decorated with her lunch. Why would she want to get used to this?
‘Deal with your own mess first, then get to work.’
‘What... what happened?’
‘Accident. They say the upper walkways sway more than the lower ones. It can be disorientating. One wrong move and you’re over the edge.’
The two dead bodies on the atrium floor teased the edge of her vision. Anya swallowed back another round of discomfort, got to her knees and used the pan to pick up her lunch. She deposited it in the garbage chute, delaying her return to the floor in the hope that someone else had started on the bodies.
Other participants swished red-stained mops close to where the bodies had fallen. Her pulse raced in time with her short breaths as her eyes flickered over to where the bodies lay. One was a boy around seventeen; the other a girl whose age she couldn’t pinpoint because of her caved-in face.
She walked back to see one boy had hit her section. The flat, warm air flushed her cheeks. She sank to her knees beside the body, as if her legs no longer worked.
The shutter rolled up and a single wolf emerged. A younger wolf followed, pushing an anti-gravity stretcher with its nose, and aimed it for one of the bodies.
‘Pick up the body and carry it to the stretcher,’ said the first wolf.
Anya got to her feet; two other participants helped her pick up the girl. As she pulled upwards, the girl’s head rolled back.
Anya suppressed a scream and turned her face away while they carried her to the stretcher. Another stretcher waited, close to where the second body had fallen.
Her blood-covered hands reminded Anya of Jason’s when he’d cradled their dead parents in his arms. She worked through blurred vision to clean the floor. When she was done, all traces of blood were gone, except from her hands.
She scrubbed them in the bathroom sink until they were flushed and raw, and rinsed the knees of her uniform underneath the tap. No amount of soap in the world could erase the memory of today.
Ω
No more bodies fell that afternoon, but the blood-tainted air made Anya wish she could escape. She huffed out a breath when the final siren shrilled, and rushed to the changing room. If she’d known about the suicides, would she have taken rotation more seriously? Were the upper floors really that dangerous?
She changed into her brown tunic and black trousers and placed her uniform in her backpack, careful to fold it so no blood-spattered parts touched the inside of her bag.
She logged out and saw Dom ahead, turning towards the Monorail. She was about to catch up to him when Sheila jogged past and joined him.
Seeing Sheila link arms with her only friend added a new brick to Anya’s defensive wall. She was alone again. Dom was just a temporary distraction.
Or maybe Dom had been using her, waiting for someone better to come along.
She climbed the stairs to see Dom and Sheila on the platform. The train pulled up. Anya ignored her aching heart and climbed aboard.
It glided above rooftops, moving outwards from Arcis before it changed direction to run close to the perimeter. When it reached her stop at East Essention, Anya stayed on board.
Only three stops remained in East. At the last, she worked her way to the door, ready to alight. Anya’s heart pounded in her ears when she spotted Sheila, but no Dom. She frowned and stepped further back into the carriage.
The train passed through the southern part of Essention, near the hospital and the vertical food farms. She kept watch for Dom but he didn’t get off.
When the train reached Southwest, she finally saw him, his backpack slung over his shoulder, his dreadlocks hanging loose around his face. Anya waited until he had passed by before leaving the train. She kept her head up, pretending she belonged in this part of the city.
Dom moved fast from the platform to street level, forcing Anya to jog to keep up. He slipped through a crowd of people who’d gathered at the base of the stairs.
The road curved to the left before it straightened out to run parallel to the inner wall. Dom passed the food processing factories on the right, walking towards the residential area at the end of the road. Anya looked up at Arcis’ scanners, perched high on wires which criss-crossed the city. She’d determined so far that they scanned at certain times of the day. She’d make sure to return to East before the next scan, two hours from now.
Beneath the stilts of the Monorail, a train hummed overhead. Anya kept to the shadows.
Dom slipped between two bungalows, one with a faded-green door.
She followed him and heard voices to the rear of the house. Who was Dom talking to? When she heard a door slam shut and the voices vanish, she crept to the back of the house. A single light from the kitchen brightened the garden. Gentle laughter drifted through the wooden door.
Bushes as tall as her camouflaged the back of the house. She noted the tree stump at foot height with an empty can in the centre, and an upturned plastic chair and table.
She crouched beneath the worn and peeling window frame. Her pulse pounded, but it was too late to turn back now. Dom and his secret life had forced her to do this. The laughter inside gave way to murmurs. She lifted her head up. Slowly. Dom and an older man with grey hair were in the kitchen.
Dom sat in a chair while the man opened a drawer and pulled something out.
‘You have to go deeper. You need to blend in more.’
Dom sighed. ‘I know.’
Her fingers gripped the worn edge of the window; the bungalow differed from the soulless prison block in East she called home.
Her grip intensified when the man turned, brandishing a small pair of scissors. ‘You could have done this yourself.’
‘I already tried, believe me. It’s harder than it looks.’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘You’re the only one I trust to do it right.’
The man pulled out one of Dom’s twisted locks and cut it off at the base, then handed it to him. Anya dulled her surprised squeak with her hand. The next dreadlock fell to the floor, and the next, until all of them had been cut off.
Dom grimaced when he looked in the mirror. ‘It’ll take some getting used to this.’
Why would Dom grow dreadlocks for a year only to cut them off?
Her foot knocked against the tree stump, rattling the tin can. Anya cursed and groped for it, then cursed again when it clattered to the ground.
‘Stay here,’ the man hissed.
Her feet almost tripped her up in her efforts to flee. She shouldn’t have come.
But she had no choice.
Anya didn’t look back as she raced through the narrow gap between the houses, down the street, along the edge of the inner wall, past the food processing plants, past the closest Monorail station. She turned right when the inner wall opened up. Her lungs burned. She hid in a dark corner and panted. She saw no sign of the older man or Dom.
<
br /> She staggered, breathless, to the next Monorail station. Only when she sat on the train did she think about what she’d heard.
Blend in, go deeper. What did that mean? Were there really rebels in Essention?
Jason worked in Southwest. She’d ask him what he’d heard
Ω
The first thing Anya heard when she unlocked the front door was the sound of running water. She found Jason in the bathroom with the tap on and his hands—bloody and dirty—in the sink.
‘What happened?’
He looked up sharply. ‘Jesus, where did you come from?’
‘I just got home.’ Anya stayed by the door.
Jason tried to hide his hands from her but then gave up and continued to wash them. Anya stepped inside the room. His knuckles were scratched and raw.
‘Have you been fighting?’
The thought both frightened and confused her. Jason was not a fighter. Essention was supposed to be a safe place.
‘It’s nothing. There was... an accident at work. One of the guys fell off a ladder on top of me. I scraped my hands trying to move him.’
She pointed to his fingernails with dirt caked under them. ‘There’s dirt on the factory floor now?’
‘Max asked me to help out in the food farms. Didn’t have time to wash my hands.’ When Jason finally looked at her, it felt like an afterthought.
‘What’s going on? You can talk to me.’
‘It’s nothing, Anya. Just leave it.’
She glared at the boy who’d become secretive over the last few weeks.
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘No.’
He continued to wash his hands. His normally pink lips were thin and white.
She had her fill of secrets tonight and was in no mood for a fight. Her eyes drooped from exhaustion. Her muscles ached from lifting strangers onto stretchers.
‘Well, remind me not to eat any food that your filthy hands have prepared.’ Her laugh came out as a strangled whine.
Jason lifted his brows. ‘Was there something else? I need to get on with this.’
Anya’s forced smile vanished. ‘No. Nothing.’
‘I’ve left some of my rations on the table. Take them with you tomorrow.’
‘I don’t need the food, Jason. Arcis feeds me.’
‘I know, but please take the food. And when you can, swap it for the rations they give you.’ When she didn’t respond, Jason’s eyes widened. ‘Just do what I ask, Anya.’ He placed one wet hand on the door.
‘Fine.’
‘Good.’
Jason flicked the door closed.
Anya listened to the sound of running water for a moment, then gave up and went to her room. She’d lost her appetite.
Wide awake, she stared up at the ceiling. Memories of her family on their last night together slipped in and threatened her fragile peace.
Before the rebels came, Grace had told her she’d spoken to other mothers from the town about matching. Anya had refused to listen to more nonsense about the archaic practice.
‘Why must you always fight me, Anya? Their daughters accept matching,’ she’d said. ‘Why can’t you?’
‘Come over here, Anya,’ her father interrupted. ‘Let me teach you how to play gin rummy.’
With a few words, Evan could break up the worst fights between his wife and daughter.
Gin rummy was a psychological game, but Anya never could figure out her opponent’s next move—unlike her mother.
Jason had been in the kitchen that night, preoccupied with one of Praesidium’s hand-be-downs.
She’d tried to explain her feelings for Grace to Jason, about how her mother treated her like she was a constant disappointment. But Jason didn’t get it.
Maybe I should have died that night. Then everyone would be happier.
She was a loose end. The rebels could still come for her.
To keep Jason safe, she had to play it safe.
Her hunger trickled back, making her hands shake. A mix of emotions flooded through her.
A part of her wanted to let go, to scream as loud as possible, but something else sapped her energy to try.
She gave in to her dominant feeling, turned on her side and cried herself to sleep.
10
Orange light leaked through a gap in the curtains, adding a splash of colour to Anya’s prison-like bedroom. She nestled further under the grey covers on the iron bed, which was more comfortable than she’d expected. The non-descript grey walls kept her active mind quiet. She listened to the swirling wind catch the large trees beyond Essention’s walls.
The wind used to terrify her when she was younger. She would sit on her bed, her legs bunched up to her chest. Then one night Grace had told her the wind was ‘fairies collecting leaves for their new homes’, and had told Anya to go to sleep.
But Anya had stayed up night after night trying to catch the fairies in action. A few years later, over dinner one night, she’d complained about not seeing them.
‘It was just a story, Anya, to get you to go to sleep,’ Grace had said, laughing. ‘I didn’t think you really believed it.’
‘Now, now, Grace,’ Evan had said. ‘Maybe you should have told her.’
Anya hated her mother’s mocking laugh. It was always a pitch too high, always lasted too long. It was always directed at her.
When Grace’s obsession with lying had run its course, she’d taken up a new hobby: matching.
Anya was a teenager before she realised how bad her mother’s compulsion had become. It was a town-wide tradition: each girl was to be matched with a suitable boy for the purpose of marriage and bearing children. Praesidium had tried to convince the towns to put a stop to it, but the towns fought to keep the practice going, and the capital city backed down. Anya had refused—she would never agree to be matched.
‘You don’t understand,’ Grace had said. ‘It will help keep you safe.’
Anya didn’t care about ‘safe’. She just wanted to control her own destiny.
You can’t take her. She’s matched.
Her mother’s last words. Why had Jason never been matched?
Anya pinched her trembling lips together.
Why would the rebels care about matching anyway?
She got up. The questions she’d asked herself every day since her parents’ deaths remained unanswered.
Ω
An hour later, in Arcis’ changing room, Anya hung up her backpack, which bulged with food rations Jason had brought home. She took out a banana and ate it before anyone else saw her extra food. It didn’t taste sweet like the food from Arcis. Nor did it mute her lingering feelings of anger. She jammed an apple from yesterday’s lunch into her pocket. Anya took a deep breath, stood tall and walked into the atrium.
The ground floor buzzed with excitement—ten new participants had joined the existing eighteen. The newbies stood nervously in their own groups, waiting for instructions. It was a different space without Dom. Anya ignored the pain in her heart.
The incident with the bodies should have bothered her more, but the previous trip to Southwest Essention still played on her mind. Why had Dom been there?
You don’t know him, Anya.
She watched the newbies for a while, their eyes full of wonder and curiosity. She wanted to feel like that again. Not scared or numb. Just curious. She shook Dom’s conversation with the older man from her head. Jason’s cuts and strange behaviour worried her more.
Sweat rolled down her back as she took a hesitant step forward. Making new friends made her nervous. At first, she watched her feet. Then she drew in a deep breath and looked up.
Two groups of five had gathered, one louder than the other. Anya walked over to the group of quieter participants, who gave off an easier, less-manic, vibe. As she neared them, her confidence returned. She reminded herself she had experience, not them.
‘Hi,’ she said. Four of the five in the group turned towards her. One boy looked elsewhere.
&
nbsp; ‘I’m Anya.’ She touched her hand to her heart.
A girl with a delicate face and fine golden hair hanging just below her shoulders smiled at her.
‘I’m June.’ She pointed to the others. ‘That’s Tahlia, Frank, Jerome and Warren at the end.’
Anya nodded to each of them. Their smiling faces relaxed her. Tahlia was shorter than she was, and dark-skinned, but not as dark as Jerome. Her shoulder-length hair was dotted with streaks of fake pink. Frank grinned and bounced on his feet. He had messy brown hair and brimmed with energy.
Warren was taller than Anya, but not as tall as Dom. He had light-blue eyes and strawberry-blond hair and was quieter than the others. When Anya caught his eye, he looked away again. His shyness made her blush.
June pointed at her knees.
‘Is that blood?’
‘Where?’ Anya looked down. She’d forgotten about the faller’s blood that had turned a reddish-brown.
‘Oh, nothing. Just scraped my knee, that’s all.’
June looked relieved. ‘Good. I don’t like blood much. Turns my stomach.’
Frank, Jerome and Tahlia seemed okay with the sight of it. Warren just watched her. Should she tell them about what happened after rotation? Not yet. No point in ruining their day. Hopefully it was a one-off.
While other participants took care of the remaining five recruits, Anya marshalled her five and showed them the ropes.
Someone had already turned on the floor grid to illuminate the numbered sections. She showed them the arboretum, their assigned sections and explained their job. June had been given Dom’s old section. Anya pointed up to the location of the more hazardous spills. Then she nodded to the metal shutter.
‘Just ignore them when they come out.’
June and Tahlia frowned at her. ‘When who come out?’
‘Our supervisors.’
A bored Jerome and Frank roughhoused with each other. Jerome grabbed Frank in a headlock and scrubbed his scalp with his knuckles. Frank unhooked his head from Jerome’s grip and punched him in the arm. Both boys laughed. Warren was quieter than Frank and Jerome. Anya couldn’t get a read on him. Perhaps not shy as she’d first thought, but not interested in the play.
