by Eliza Green
He saw the boy soldier lying flat on his back.
All the flesh had been burned off his bones.
Jason gagged as he crawled to the gate. A thought stopped him from going inside. He turned round to where the boy lay, knowing he had to go back.
The guns were online. His suit jerked him towards the remains of the boy. A gun swivelled as it tried to find him. Jason dragged his body back to the gate. His suit rendered him and the boy’s remnants invisible. Jason shivered hard as the nearest guns continued in their hunt of him. At the gate, he separated the boy from the vest, waders and helmet, and then carried the items inside.
He couldn’t let the machines find their specialised equipment. He tried not to think about the boy he’d left behind.
Charlie greeted him with a brief nod.
‘Hurry. Roll up your sleeve.’
Jason stuck his arm out while Charlie waved a blue light over his arm. He then removed the pearl-coloured magnetic disc from Jason’s wrist.
‘It will temporarily disrupt your location in the system. Just a precaution while their system updates your whereabouts. You can’t wear the discs in here. The scanners would detect them.’
With his back against the wall and his eyes closed, Jason tried to forget how close he had come to dying. Someone tugged on his arm and he opened his eyes.
‘We’re not safe yet,’ said Max. ‘We need to get everyone off the streets.’
Jason and the others followed Max and Charlie through a series of gates that gave them access to the scanner-free zone between the outer wall and Essention. Before he knew it, they were back in Southwest, at Charlie’s house, where their journey had begun.
They slipped inside and gathered in the living room.
Max turned around, and nodded at Jason’s extra burden: the suit of the boy soldier.
‘That was quick thinking. We can’t risk them finding it.’
Jason dropped the suit to the floor and peeled off his own.
Soldiers collapsed into the sofa and chairs, others folded onto the floor. Jason noticed Preston and the soldiers each sported a new incision on the inside of their left wrists. If the soldiers hadn’t originally been part of Essention, they wouldn’t have had a chip. Charlie had probably given them one so they could blend in.
Charlie disappeared into the kitchen then reappeared with a jug of water, several glasses and some fruit, pots of meat and bread. They all drank deeply, and the others ate as if they hadn’t tasted food in a week. Except for Jason, who hardly touched his food.
Charlie cast a critical eye over each of them. ‘What on earth are you feeding these skinny boys?’
Max smiled. ‘The same thing you used to feed me, Dad.’
‘Is this it? Is this everyone?’
‘Except for Noah. Preston and Jason have been able to boost the signal. But we need more time to communicate with Pavesi and Kouris. This would go a hell of a lot quicker if we had the frequency code for the force field.’
Charlie nodded and collected the suits. He gestured for them all to stand up and pulled back the rug. He opened a trapdoor in the floor and stashed the suits in a hidden storage space.
‘We’ll get these back to Glenvale as soon as possible.’
‘So when do we make our move on Arcis?’ said Jason.
Max turned his tired gaze on him. ‘Getting inside Essention was the easy part. If we can’t get the frequency code, we’ll need to find another way inside. Talking to Pavesi and Kouris is our best bet. We expect the place to be heavily guarded, so we’ll need as much detail about the layout as possible. It won’t be easy.’
Jason’s enthusiasm dropped into his shoes. He didn’t want to wait. He was ready to go now.
Preston was occupied with his screen. Charlie disappeared for a second time and returned with a screen of his own. Preston sat up straight.
‘We’ve been doing some monitoring of our own,’ said Charlie, sitting on the armrest beside Preston. ‘I’m sure with your comms experts here, we can do more to work out the rotation pattern.’
Charlie looked up at Max. ‘You probably haven’t heard, but there have been a few casualties since you left. How many here still have immediate family in Arcis?’
‘I do,’ said Jason, his voice cracking. He was the only one. The rest of the team who’d originally escaped through the tunnel was still back in Glenvale.
‘Anya, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, is she—’
He sucked in air.
‘Dom says she’s safe. Please don’t worry.’
Jason released a breath.
Safe. But for how much longer?
44
Anya looked around the packed fifth-floor changing room. Everyone from the previous floor had made it, except for two girls and two boys. Two rails of clothing dominated the room; one for the boys and one for the girls. Supervisor Two had instructed them to dress fast.
Anya thumbed through the girls’ clothes that included T-shirts and combat trousers. She shrank back as the girls hovered around her, picking sizes and pulling off their dresses. She shivered at the thought of changing here, with Warren only a few feet away. From across the room Dom watched her, his eyes flicking from her face to her arm. She covered her injured arm, which only seemed to harden his gaze.
Biting back tears, she grabbed a T-shirt that looked to be her size. The memory of Warren’s touch, his body pressed up against hers, made her want to vomit. He was supposed to be her friend. His entitlement, the pressure of his insistent kiss... Her anger made her grip the fabric too hard.
She consoled herself that Dom and Sheila had made it. She just didn’t want to think about how they’d earned their points.
Sheila, Yasmin and June were already half-dressed. A quiet Lilly dressed slowly. Anya snatched a pair of trousers off the railing. She pulled each leg up with the dress still on her. She turned away from Dom’s angry gaze. Judging from the look on his face, he’d definitely seen her arm. Nothing she could do about that.
Dressed in trousers and a T-shirt, she felt less vulnerable.
The elevator buzzed and the doors opened. Three new people piled into the room.
Warren stood too close for her to ignore. She glared at him until he looked away. He would not intimidate her again. Her eyes flicked her eyes to Dom who looked between them both, trying to figure out what he’d missed.
She gave Supervisor One her full attention. Dressed in an all-black tunic, he was a thinner version of the man who’d supervised the first floor.
‘Welcome to the fifth floor.’
He sounded different, too, with a cooler tone than his first-floor doppelgänger.
‘The fourth floor was designed to keep you apart and test the responses of both sexes. But here, males and females are back on even terms.’
Anya glanced at Warren. He looked like less of a threat already.
‘This is the games floor. We conduct combat to test your reflexes and instincts.’
Anya hoped for live ammo so she could get revenge on Warren. Nothing life-threatening, just enough so he’d feel an enormous amount of pain.
Supervisor One looked over the group. ‘Get changed quickly and follow me. There’s no time to waste. We need to begin straight away.’
Dom was whispering something to Sheila. Anya hadn’t thought it was possible for the pair to get any closer, but perhaps their naked experience on the fourth floor had done just that.
Anya moved to the next room. June stayed close to Anya’s side. Once, it might have been Tahlia beside her.
The supervisor led them to a weapons room. At the centre was a large black unit with inbuilt recesses. Each compartment carried a black gun with blue veins running through it. The unit looked to be a recharging station, and these were Electro Guns, with metal casing and insulated core. She’d practised with them while learning how to shoot clay discs out of the sky. ‘Clay pigeon shooting’, they had called it. Except in the old days, they used shotguns and real bullets.
Sheila, Dom and June looked at ease with handling firearms. Jerome examined several weapons.
‘Doesn’t matter which one you take,’ Anya said to him. ‘They’re all the same.’
Supervisor One waited by the door. Lilly gripped her gun with both hands, its handle nestled in her stomach.
They followed the supervisor onto the walkway.
Anya wasn’t afraid of heights, but a latent problem with vertigo unsteadied her. She gripped the railing. Before she could stop herself she looked down. Two people she didn’t recognise crossed the fourth-floor walkway.
A flash of movement beside her caught her attention. She looked up to see Lilly—her expression flat, her eyes blank—lifting the gun and pointing it at Ash.
‘Lilly, no!’ said Anya.
‘I have to. I can’t live like this—’
Lilly fired once, twice, three times at Ash. The shots sent a deep shudder through his body, but somehow he remained upright. She stared at Ash, blank-faced and open-mouthed. He looked exactly like Tahlia after her shock. Then he began to sway, creating a ripple effect in the walkway. Anya grabbed the railing tighter and crouched down low when it felt like the walkway might buckle.
The supervisor had reached the other side. He turned around, making no remark.
Anya gasped as Ash’s left leg slid out from under him. But then he righted himself. Lilly took a step towards him. The walkway shifted again causing his body to lean too far one way. Then, in one swift and silent movement, he disappeared over the side.
Lilly froze, gasping for air, tears falling, still gripping the gun to her stomach.
Sheila inched towards her and reached out her hand. She spoke softly.
‘Give me the gun, Lilly.’
Lilly pressed the gun into Sheila’s hand. She handed it to Dom then turned her attention back to Lilly.
The walkway was moving too much, causing Anya’s stomach to lurch.
Just as an unsure Sheila glanced back at Dom, Jerome called out ‘No!’ Lilly’s pale-blonde hair danced around her paler skin. One leg was already over the railing. She kicked over the other, and fell, like Ash.
The next sound was Lilly, hitting the ground floor, and then June, screaming into her hand.
Anya stood and looked over the edge, to see the quiet, mousy girl lying on her back, arms splayed, left leg curled beneath her. Ash had landed in a spot far away from her, near Anya’s old cleaning section. She snatched her gaze away. Lilly had needed Anya’s protection, and Anya had pushed her away.
The suicides came from this floor. That was Anya’s only thought as she walked on, in a daze.
‘Unfortunate,’ said Supervisor One. He held open one side of a double door with ‘5B’ stamped on it.
Nobody spoke as they followed him inside.
Death and Arcis appeared to go hand in hand. What was Anya doing to stop it? Nothing. Maybe Dom and Sheila, with their contacts on the outside, could help. The thought carried her forward, gun in hand.
The supervisor’s voice snapped her mind into focus.
‘The rules are simple. There are fourteen discs scattered throughout the maze.’
The mention of a maze sent a chill through her. But at least the room looked nothing like the one on the third floor. It was twice the size, for a start. The room spanned a kilometre in width, close to what she believed to be the full floor size of Tower B. A white-walled unit sat near the edge, made of the same frosted glass as the boy’s section on the floor below: white, bright and thin. She saw several entry points leading inside the maze. Anya looked around for a gold door.
‘You may enter the maze through any of the points along the four edges. You must shoot each disc to claim points. You can decide to find them separately, or work together as a team. The game is timed and the person to shoot the most discs earns the most points. The cutoff is undecided as of yet, but those who rank high at the end of the game will rotate.’
He pointed to a square white box attached to the wall behind them.
‘Everyone must tag on to join the game. If your Electro Gun runs out of juice, tag off and recharge in the room across the walkway. But for your points to be counted, you will have to tag on again before rejoining.’
Coming and going from the maze could work to Anya’s advantage, and make it easier to learn the layout.
‘There’s one catch. As soon as you become familiar with the layout, the maze will change.’
But it might prove impossible to find all the discs before the maze changed.
‘Okay. The game starts now.’
‘Wait,’ said Anya. ‘How lethal are the shots?’
‘The worst you’ll get is a medium shock. Not life-threatening.’
They dropped their backpacks by the exit and headed for the maze. Anya was the fifth person to press her wrist to the box and tag on. Thumping music kicked in. It rattled her insides and made it harder to think straight. A giant screen above the maze showed a live scoreboard.
Yasmin, June, Sheila and Dom had already bolted for the four openings to the front. Anya headed for the side, where there were four more. She ran as far as the corridor would allow and almost immediately found a floating hologram of a black disc. She shot it with her Electro Gun and her name hovered in the air for a few seconds, then vanished. She began her search for the next one. Others fired off their first shots close by. The first one in any game was always the easiest. Anya followed the serpentine corridor, but got turned back by dead ends. She cursed when she heard someone take their second shot in the corridor next to hers.
She followed the corridor logically, aiming for the centre of the room. A straight run brought her to another black disc. She fired at it and claimed her second hit. She heard another shot, but the music was so loud she couldn’t make out if it was the shooter’s second or third disc. Knowing Warren was one of her rivals made her work smarter.
She took the next left, checking all of the east part of the maze before heading right. Someone fired a shot close by and she followed the sound, running straight into Jerome. His eyes widened in surprise. But then he hardened his expression.
Anya couldn’t stand this strain between them any longer.
‘I’m sorry, Jerome. I’m so, so sorry,’ she yelled over the noise. ‘If you blame me, then shoot me, please. I tried to save him. He was my friend, too.’
Jerome’s gaze softened. It was then she noticed he had been crying. She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his waist. She felt his hesitation, so she held on tighter until he had to give in. Jerome rested his head on her neck and grabbed fistfuls of her T-shirt, sobbing silently.
Then he pushed her away and ran off.
Anya wiped away her own tears and turned her attention back to finding the next disc. The beat of the music cut through her concentration. She pushed through it and rounded the corner, where she found another disc. She shot it.
Three down, eleven to go.
A wall in front forced her back the way she had come, but she was turned around again in seconds. Supervisor One had said the maze would change as soon as they became familiar with the route, but she didn’t expect it to happen so fast. She brushed her hand against the wall. It felt solid enough, but a weird sensation made her think it could be organic.
The twisting corridors frustrated her. She screamed.
‘I don’t know the way. Stop changing on me.’
The music had become just noise. With no lyrics or rhythm to follow, it only dulled her senses. Seeing Ash die and Lilly kill herself still shocked her, but now wasn’t the time to lose focus.
She kept going. The corridor shifted to the left so she followed it. Then to the right.
Another dead end.
She turned around to see the corridor had changed again. The first three discs had been easy.
Then someone fired and she panicked.
Anya ran. It didn’t matter where. All her tactics had vanished. She didn’t even know what direction she was headed in. The noise deafene
d and distracted her. With each corner she turned, she hoped it wouldn’t be the one where she bumped into Warren.
The music was so loud, it drowned out her screams of frustration. Whatever way she tried led to a dead end.
Then, something came to her.
The wall.
Anya touched it again. It was solid as ever, but she felt something shiver beneath it.
Could she go through it?
Anya shoulder-charged the wall and winced from the pain.
Okay. Maybe not through it.
But why not?
She glanced at her Electro Gun. It emitted electricity, and organic matter was vulnerable to its blast.
She fired at the opaque wall and it shimmered before her. She slipped her fingers through it. It felt soft, like gelatine. But it solidified fast and pushed out her fingers.
Anya fired again, but this time she pushed all the way through. A slick feeling on her skin felt like the wall had coated her in its organic matter. But with just a leg and arm still to pass through, the gel suddenly tightened around her. She yelped and yanked both limbs out, then checked herself over.
Anya used this new method to gain access to new sections. She fired again, and again, passing fast through the shimmering wall. She found another black disc and fired at it.
Had anyone else thought to try this?
But the maze trapped her again, with closed walls on all sides. She raised the gun and fired. Nothing. She checked her gun to see it had no charge. With no way out, how was she supposed to continue?
She heard more firing. Six, seven.
She couldn’t move.
Eight, nine, ten. Vibrations from the deafening music ran from the floor through her feet.
A siren shrilled and the pounding stopped. The bright walls lowered into gaps in the floor and revealed the players’ positions to her.
Anya felt a new vibration through the floor, different to the ones caused by the music. She saw another disc in the next corridor. She’d been so close to the fifth. But would it have been enough?
The supervisor motioned them forward. Anya caught her breath; the boys were sweating heavily. She looked up at the scoreboard. They had been in the maze for exactly twenty minutes.
