by Eliza Green
He ignored Anya as he strode towards the exit. She followed as did the others. The next room—directly two floors above the first-floor records room—was empty. The walls were painted a muted grey that reminded Anya of her Essention bedroom. Anya’s trainers squeaked on the wooden floor.
Dom opened a set of doors marked ‘3A’. A new walkway, much higher up, beckoned.
‘Come on.’ Dom didn’t slow down. ‘Maybe the supervisor’s waiting for us on the other side.’
Anya stepped onto the third-floor walkway. It felt more stable than the one two floors below, but her nerves gave her pause. The trick was not to over think it. Or look down. She moved fast, keeping her eyes level with the door. A twinge of guilt over her quick progression took hold. She shook it off. She had questions for Dom.
Her heart lifted when she saw June, Jerome and Warren following a female supervisor on the second-floor walkway. They wore the white boiler suits of the first-aiders. Jerome’s and June’s suits were too big on the sleeves, so they had rolled them up to their elbows. She steadied herself as she looked down.
Then they were gone. She caught up to Dom following him into a space marked ‘3B’.
Anya couldn’t see much in the dark room at first. But then her eyes adjusted to the weak and muted light enough to see more detail. A wall was ahead of her with three openings marked by three separate colours. The contained space spanned several hundred metres in length. Three sconces lit up each plain entrance point.
There was no supervisor.
A flickering light on the wall behind Anya caught her eye. She turned to see a small screen that appeared to show a rough map of the room.
‘Hey, there’s a map here,’ said Sheila, pushing her out of the way.
Anya gritted her teeth.
Dom stepped in and examined the map.
‘Seems to be some sort of maze beyond these walls.’ He ran a finger over the smooth, thin screen. Sheila was at his shoulder blocking Anya’s view.
‘There are three sections, apparently.’ He looked back at the wall. ‘We didn’t need a map to know that.’
Anya studied the wall with its three colour-coded openings: black, dark-green and royal-blue. She turned to see Sheila’s shoulder grazing Dom’s, and snatched her gaze away.
‘According to the map, there are corridors beyond these entrances,’ said Sheila, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. ‘It’s listing the blue section as the dormitories. The green area is a communal space with a kitchen. The black area isn’t listed at all.’
Dom’s mood brightened. ‘Well, I know where I’ll be. Whoever’s not sleeping, come wake me if someone shows up.’
Sheila followed Dom. Anya’s overactive imagination pictured them crawling into bed together and spooning for warmth. Why did she even care?
Seeing Sheila again had knocked loose some dormant feelings inside her. Jealousy. Anger. Hate? Such a strong word. Maybe ‘dislike’ was a better fit. Sheila didn’t deserve her strongest emotions.
But spending the next month with her on this floor might change her mind.
Could she bear to listen to Sheila’s taunting? How soon before she vomited at the sight of Dom and Sheila making eyes at each other?
Anya caught herself before she forgot why she was there. Because she had helped to kill Tahlia. There were worse people in this world than Sheila.
30
The lack of urgency in Foxrush was getting on Jason’s last nerve. It had been three weeks. Shouldn’t they be leaving for Essention to rescue those caught up in Arcis?
At least he hadn’t been idle. He’d worked with Thomas to figure out the rotation pattern, but all they had so far was basic information about Arcis’ power dips. If Max had a strategy to get back inside the urbano he wasn’t sharing it. Jason had enough of waiting. It was time to get Anya out.
He’d come to know the soldiers in Foxrush. He even called some of them his friends now.
People like Thomas, the inventor of the group. Or maybe even Preston, the communications expert, when he wasn’t being a narcissistic control freak. Jason’s job matched his skill set—electronics. But Preston refused to let him help.
Without an action plan, the days spent in Foxrush blurred into one long, boring routine.
Jason usually started his day with breakfast. He then waited for the all-knowing Preston to hit a wall with some new modification and call him to take a look. But Preston was funny about people touching his stuff. Jason could only look at, not touch, the signal-booster.
The latest attempt to help Preston was no different.
‘If you just let me closer to look at the machine properly, I might—’
‘I thought you were smart, Macklin,’ Preston taunted. ‘What’s wrong, you can’t figure it out from there?’
Jason ground his teeth. ‘Yeah, I can. But we’ve been at this for weeks and clearly you don’t want my help.’
Preston banged his fist on the table. ‘I don’t need one of Max’s favourites telling me how to run this operation. I can do this on my own.’
‘Fine. Call me when you really want my help.’
Jason walked away, but he didn’t go far. He leaned against the house gable, eager to sort through Mrs Jenkins’ elaborate set-up in the living room: a long workbench with resistors, heat sinks, an oscilloscope and hundreds of other smaller items any electronics enthusiast would die to own.
Stuff he’d seen as a kid.
Mrs Jenkins had given him his own starter kit to practise with at home. It was where he felt most at ease: surrounded by resistors, polymer capacitors and transistor blocks, fitting them together, seeing how they completed or broke a circuit. He was sure he could build a better booster for Preston if he would just let him look at it.
Gunfire sounded nearby. Jason followed the source to a practice area behind the accommodation block and saw six of his group from Essention being shown how to handle weapons. It was the first week of practice and the third practice session that week. He guessed Max trusted them enough to arm them.
Jason stood off to the side and watched.
The guns the six used weren’t familiar to him. Anya probably could have reeled off the names of every single one. She had studied ancient sport as her skill in school, including rifle and pistol shooting. Jason remembered laughing when Anya had first told him what her skill would be. Any organised sporting endeavours had died off a long time ago. The towns, he told her, needed people who knew how to fix machines, farm and nurse; not how to win races. But Anya had told him the point was to become physically able to adapt, to handle change, not to win medals.
Given his current location, Jason wondered if he’d picked the wrong skill.
He glanced at the guns laid out on three trestle tables. Some were made of greyish metal and smooth. Others were boxy and matt-black. Some shot electricity, others fired projectiles. The generic-looking guns took standard bullets. He’d seen the soldiers practising with all of the weapons on the tables at one time or another. The group looked eager to learn.
The soldier cocked his gun. Six paper targets rustled in the distance, pinned to the front of one of the gutted houses.
‘To help you get used to holding a weapon, you’ll be practising with real bullets.’ He bent his elbow at a ninety-degree angle, and trained the gun on one of the targets. He steadied his shot by supporting his wrist with his other hand. ‘Bullets are fine if you want to hurt people, but they’re no good against force fields and machines. We use other weapons for that.’
He took a steady breath, then pressed the trigger. The gun recoiled and Jason searched the paper target. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if the shot had found the centre.
An acrid smell lingered in the air. The six trainees tried to mimic with live weapons what the soldier had done. Jason stood well back when he noticed their shaking hands. They popped off a couple of shots without incident, but Jason’s racing pulse wouldn’t settle.
He considered looking for Max and asking him
if he needed help, but Max was usually out doing supply runs to the other abandoned towns. They had uncovered caches of weapons buried under floorboards in most towns. Had his parents ever stored weapons in their house in Brookfield?
Recently, Max had been returning empty-handed.
Jason thought about the work he and Thomas had done. They’d been trying to work out the pattern for rotation and why the power fluctuated in Arcis at certain times. But with so little information to go on, their theory remained just that. Jason walked away from the gun range, wishing he could help more.
A skinny boy of about fourteen bounded up to him.
‘Preston says you need to come with me.’
Jason’s mood brightened. But not for long. Preston didn’t need anybody.
‘I’m going to get lunch. Can it wait?’
The boy shook his head.
‘Does he actually need me for something?’
The boy just said, ‘You have to come now.’
Curious, Jason followed. He approached the house nearest the entrance to Foxrush. Soldiers sat with guns and binoculars on a flat roof, to the front of the house. Jason climbed the stairs to the second floor while the boy ran ahead.
‘He’s coming,’ he heard the boy say to Preston.
‘About time.’
Jason idled by the doorframe and looked inside Mrs Jenkins’ old living room, which Preston had claimed for his own use. The mantelpiece was thick with dust, and family photos hung crookedly on the wall. Preston had dragged the kitchen table into the living room and shoved it against the window leading out to the flat roof. All of Mrs Jenkins’ equipment was either on the table in neat piles or on the floor close by. Preston hadn’t bothered to label anything. That irritated the neat freak that lived inside Jason.
He wondered if Mr and Mrs Jenkins were still alive.
Preston sat at the table hunched over the signal-booster, which was wired up to a broken but operational screen.
‘Come over here,’ he snapped, not bothering to look up. ‘Take a look at this.’
Jason pulled over a chair and scooted closer to the box. He waited for Preston to move away.
Preston conceded with an irritated sigh. ‘I’ve tried everything to boost this damn signal, but it still won’t penetrate the force field.’
Jason peered inside the small rectangular box with a thick antenna on the side. The amplifier for the booster appeared to be connected properly. He examined the main signal box.
‘What about the external antenna? Have you tried repositioning it?’
Preston stood up and paced behind him. ‘Of course I have. It doesn’t make any difference. The signal won’t carry the distance we need. It won’t go any further than Arcis. Something’s blocking it.’
‘What about Charlie?’
‘Clear as I’m talking to you. The problem isn’t Essention.’
‘How did you get through to Arcis the last time?’
‘Just luck, I guess. That, and the power fluctuations weakened the force field. We’ve been using the exact same methods to communicate from inside Essention. There have been no issues, until recently. I thought it was the distance. I assured Max that Foxrush wouldn’t be a problem.’
Jason frowned as he disconnected the booster box from the screen Preston had propped up against some other equipment. He hooked up the main signal box.
‘I’ve already tried that. All the figures look right. There’s no reason why the booster can’t push it the distance we need.’
Data streamed and scrolled down the screen. Jason checked the numbers. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the booster. It has the range to reach beyond Arcis, possibly further than the other side of Essention.’
‘So, why can’t we get inside?’
Jason scrolled the data down with his finger. A series of smaller numbers appeared, one after another, all different, all containing sixteen digits. The numerals were gibberish, encrypted.
‘Are you reconfiguring the signal to match the force field’s frequency?’
Preston leaned over him. ‘The what?’
Jason pointed to the encrypted numbers. ‘Here. The frequency code for Arcis. It seems to change several times a day.’
Preston sat back down and pulled the screen towards him. ‘Shit. Since when?’
‘If they’re changing the frequency we need to match it. When the field is weaker, the signal makes it through, no issues. But the frequency code will get you in any time you want. Reconfigure the box and booster to match and we have our way in.’
Preston rubbed a hand over his hair and swore again. ‘I only have one. I didn’t know they would start randomising it. How are we going to get the rest of them?’
Jason looked up at Preston.
‘Your soldiers in Arcis will have to find them.’
31
The black area intrigued Anya the most, but it wasn’t where she needed to go.
Her rumbling stomach forced her inside the green-section corridor, which led to the communal area and kitchen. Maybe a little food in her stomach would help to release some guilt over Tahlia.
Dom had been quiet around her. Did he know about Tahlia? Was that why he could barely look at her?
She navigated a series of serpentine corridors which opened out into a large kitchen with a separate room off to the left. There was a sink, a wall unit with five cupboards, a silver refrigerator and a white kitchen table surrounded by eight plastic chairs. Anya looked up to where the grey ceiling met the walls. She thought heard snoring.
She was relieved to find the cupboards stocked with small pots of meat and canned beans. There was a bowl on the table filled with bread rolls. Another held apples and bananas. She opened the fridge and lifted her brow in quiet amusement when she saw milk and orange juice alongside several bottles of water.
Anya scooped some meat onto a plate. She took a bread roll, stuffed the meat inside and poured a glass of milk. She drained it in seconds, savouring the creaminess as the liquid slipped down her throat. This was too much food for just six people. There had to be other participants joining them. And where was the supervisor?
Anya continued to eat as she explored the communal room adjoining the kitchen. Several giant beanbags in various colours, sizes and patterns dotted the floor. The fabric was worn. The items in the room looked like they came from the towns. Anya had pestered Grace for a beanbag for her bedroom but never got one.
On one wall was a dartboard pricked with hundreds of tiny holes. She grinned at the other wall that had a dozen different-shaped headphones. A screen beside them showed a playlist of titles and artists. It had been so long since she’d heard music.
She slipped on a set of headphones and picked something upbeat. She sat on a beanbag and closed her eyes, allowing the music to carry her somewhere else.
Images flashed through her mind: Tahlia, helpless on the floor; the blue colour of her cold lips.
She pictured Dom and Sheila huddled in the next room discussing the killer in this one.
She imagined eyes on her, watching her from a monitor...
Her eyes flew open and she snatched the headphones off her ears. She jumped up and scanned the space but couldn’t find any cameras. But the feeling wouldn’t lessen as she replaced the headphones on their hook. She returned to the map room, eager to escape the green area.
The mystery black section beckoned. The sconces provided light and a starting point, but not much else. She navigated the route almost entirely in the dark, except for a weak overhead glow brightening the tops of the partitions. The first corridor ran straight, then split into three. She chose the right channel, but got turned around at a dead end.
She doubled back and tried the middle route. It carried on for a while before splitting, this time into four. She tried the first split on the left; it split again, into two. To simplify any backtracking, she stuck to only left turns.
A shiny black door appeared against what she assumed was the outer wall of the maze.
&n
bsp; Could this test be that simple? Just open a door and leave? Weak illumination leaked over the top of the partition, indicating that the ceiling carried on further. She tried the handle but the door was locked.
She doubled back and tried the right side of the two-way split. She soon arrived at another door so glossy it almost looked wet. She tested the handle. The door opened to reveal a brick wall.
Okay, so these two splits don’t lead anywhere...
She backtracked to the split of four and explored each route. But when the corridors split further again, it only confused her more. At the end of each split she found either a door that wouldn’t open or opened onto nothing, or a dead end.
Anya worked her way back to the start. But just when she thought she was almost there, a new wall forced her in a new direction. It took her ten minutes to make it back to the map room.
‘That was a waste.’
She thought about waking the others. But what more could they tell her about this place? Where the hell was the supervisor?
She tried the door leading back to the walkway. It was locked. No way out. The thought made her shudder. The large food supply suddenly made sense. They would be here for a while. She entered the royal-blue section, keen to shake off her feeling of being watched.
She had been avoiding the dorm. Avoiding Dom. And Sheila. The way wasn’t nearly as complicated as the black and green sections. A straight corridor led to a room with three doors. ‘WC’ was printed on the first door. The second had a picture of a sprinkler; she checked inside to see a row of showers. The third had no picture.
She opened it, not seeing much at first. Gentle and not-so-gentle snoring reached her ears. She tasted sweat, old and new, in the air. She breathed through her mouth while her eyes adjusted. There were ten beds; five on either side. It pleased her to see Sheila and Dom on opposite sides of the room.
Too wired to sleep, Anya went back to the communal area. Cameras or not, she needed the distraction of the music. She dropped into a beanbag, closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
