by Eliza Green
‘You can’t talk to me like that, loser,’ said Sheila. ‘You’re just jealous that Dom doesn’t want to hang around with you any more. And that’s all it is. Hanging around. He would never want to be with someone as childish as you.’
A look of hurt flashed across Anya’s face. It was so fleeting, he almost didn’t catch it. He prepared to tell Sheila off when she jabbed at Anya again, making her flinch. He didn’t notice the switch in her brain flick over, the one that turned her from a compliant worker into a normal human being. He sat, stunned, when Anya grabbed Sheila’s finger and twisted her arm behind her back.
‘Get off me!’ said Sheila.
Dom stared, as the shorter Anya held off Sheila’s advances with one arm.
Shit, that girl is strong.
Anya pressed her foot into the back of Sheila’s knees and eased her down onto the ground. As Anya straightened up, Dom caught the tension rolling off her shoulders. She was heaving, her face flushed, her temper barely contained. She flashed him a cynical look to which he responded with a smile.
Screw Sheila. Screw the plan. He wanted to tell her everything, about Mariella, about the rebellion. He wanted to spill about Max and Charlie and what they believed Praesidium was doing. Mariella would have liked Anya.
His heart ached. He was thinking about Mariella as if she was already dead.
Anya stormed off and Dom tried to help Sheila to her feet. She waved off his assistance.
‘I think I hate that girl even more than I did before. Did you see what she did to me?’ She rubbed her shoulder. ‘She almost broke my arm.’
‘I think you’re exaggerating a little.’
Sheila’s look was venomous. ‘You are not telling that little witch anything. You hear me?’
Yeah, he heard her.
Sheila leaned into him for support as they walked back inside. ‘Now, come on. Let’s play this up for the cameras. I get the feeling this place likes the drama we teenagers create.’
He jerked back in surprise when he saw Anya stood just inside the door. Dom kept his gaze low as he passed, but caught the look Sheila gave Anya. He did everything he could to stop from looking back at Anya, to see the look on her face. What was she feeling now? Regret? Anger? Nothing at all? But he had to play along. With one word, he could ruin everything he and Sheila had worked so hard for.
They slipped inside the elevator and rode it to the first floor.
‘You want that psycho on the first floor? Are you crazy, Dom?’
‘Sheila, I love you, but you can be judgemental at times. You went a bit overboard back there.’
‘Call it me getting into character.’
‘Then, you can’t be surprised if things spiral out of control.’
The elevator door opened and they crossed the changing room floor.
‘How about I don’t say anything and you give her a chance?’
Sheila mulled it over. ‘Okay. But I’m telling you right now. That girl isn’t worth your time.’
9
Dom
Dom saw no point to the work on the first floor in Arcis. The participants had to beat the clock to a records room where they collected a file with a specific number and a barcode. Then they raced back to scan the barcode at a specific computer terminal. If the clock ran out, the terminal would shock them. Fifteen others worked alongside him and Sheila. The countdown time changed at will and almost all of them had received a shock. Dom and Sheila took their punishment like the others, even though they’d figured out the system early on. Not being on Compliance gave them an advantage.
Now, as Dom ran between the records and terminal rooms, his thoughts drifted to the next floor and what surprises it held. Would there be more shock treatment? Or something worse? The days between rotation had been consistent so far: between twenty-five and thirty days. He’d reported that detail back to Max. Max had rebels stationed in one of the towns beyond Essention who waited on key information about Arcis, and worked to decipher the operators’ motives.
Dom burst into the records room and went into hunt mode. Sheila had raced ahead of him and was already up on one of the ladders searching for her file. Sheila had struggled with the shocks more than Dom had. They reminded her of a bad time in her life, in her early teens when she started to notice girls for the first time. Her parents had signed her up for shock therapy to “cure” her of her affliction. She had begged them to stop, even got a boyfriend so they would believe the cure had worked. But they pressed on with the treatment that turned her from a ballsy girl into a meek, withdrawn one.
Dom found his file and ran back to the terminal room. The timer that day held steady at seven minutes. He and Sheila scanned their barcodes and dropped the files into the box at the side of the terminal. Others, a little slower and less sharp, got caught out. One girl, Brianna, sixteen years old, had been in the infirmary twice that week to be treated for shocks. She pressed her barcode to the scanner, looking fit to collapse.
The lunchtime bell rang and with it the clock stopped. An exhausted Dom followed Sheila to the dining hall. On the ground floor they had pretended to be a couple. But without Anya to see it, Dom had lost the motivation to keep up the pretence. He’d done all he could to shock her into action. And it had worked. He hoped.
Arcis had picked him because he pretended to be normal. Now, he wanted to know if his friendships had been the catalyst for rotation, or if he’d been just a random pick.
‘I’m so sick of this floor,’ said Sheila. ‘I don’t mind a bit of manual labour, but what if I mess up again? I’m freaking out about it. Have you seen how pale Brianna is?’
‘I know, Sheila. But you have to let it go. It might happen, it might not. You can’t stress out about it.’
‘Easy for you to say. Nothing scares you, except...’ Her eyes raked over his T-shirt, which hid the scar on his stomach. ‘The chance of that happening in here is probably quite low.’
He shivered. It had crossed his mind but he’d pushed the thought away. Sheila had undone those efforts with a single look.
‘I’m living my worst nightmare on this floor,’ said Sheila, pouting. ‘And you don’t even care.’
‘Of course I care. But we can’t do anything about it. We can’t influence the outcome. If Arcis wants to shock us, it will.’
‘Says Mister Control over here. You’re telling me you’re fine playing those odds?’
No, he was fine with none of it. But he’d gone over every detail in his head to find a way to cheat the system. He’d come up with nothing.
Sheila played with her food. She propped up her head with her hand and sighed. Dom considered going outside to look for Anya. They’d gone running together last night. He hadn’t taken anyone to the running track before, not even Sheila. And he’d broken that rule for a girl he hardly knew who was still on Compliance. But it had felt right, natural, to take her there. He hadn’t told Max, but he suspected Charlie knew, as he’d told Charlie he wanted to give someone the antidote a few days earlier. Charlie was the father he should have had.
Sheila’s changeable mood on this floor got on the last of his nerves. ‘Come on, Sheila. Eat something. You’re more likely to slip up if you’re tired and hungry.’
She shot him a poisonous look, but it slipped away. Her moods with him never lasted long, only because he refused to take her bullshit. With others she let the bad fester. Sheila was worse than a child at times. Demanding. He’d confronted her before in her teens when she acted like a brat. But he hadn’t known what her parents had put her though to make her that way. He knew nothing about her confusion over her sexuality, what her parents thought about it, or the shock treatments they’d administered to ‘cure’ their child. She’d stayed silent on all of it until one day, when she was fourteen, she’d blurted it out to him.
‘They don’t understand me,’ she had said, sobbing. ‘I don’t even freaking understand me. I’m trying to be what they want me to be, but it’s hard. They keep taking me to a specialist. I don
’t like him. After the treatment he tries to get me alone. Says there are other ways to cure me.’
Dom had asked for the doctor’s name. Gone to his house. Stood outside the window. Watched him eat dinner with his wife and kids. Followed him for a week. Took some compromising photos of him and another woman. Left threatening notes in his letterbox. Told him if he didn’t back off, he would kill him. It had worked for a week, until the doctor resumed his normal duties, including seeing Sheila as a patient. Her parents had stopped going to the clinic on the doctor’s orders, so Dom accompanied her to her next appointment. The doctor had ordered him to be removed from the clinic, but Dom showed a few snaps of him and the other woman. It was enough to get Sheila reassigned to another doctor.
Two years later, her parents, who were experienced hikers, died while exploring in a nearby mountain range with a hiking group. One person survived and reported wild animals had attacked. Some had fallen to their deaths after a section of the mountain gave way.
The easiest thing to do would have been to bring Sheila home. But he couldn’t subject her to the abuse of his father. So Sheila lived at home for the next six months while Dom brought her food. That’s when Mariella found out and took her in. Carlo had gone on one of his benders again and never knew anything about it.
Now, Sheila’s refusal to eat pissed him off. ‘Sheila! Eat something now. Or I’ll—’
She looked up at him. ‘Or you’ll what?’
‘I’ll take you over my knee and spank you.’
She stared at him then burst into laughter. ‘God, Dom, you used to be so much better at dishing out threats. What happened to you?’
Dom grinned. ‘You’ve heard them all. I needed to try a new one.’
Sheila bit into her sandwich. ‘Well, it worked. If you can believe that.’
While they ate their lunch in silence, Dom’s normally controlled mind slipped to think of Anya. What was she doing right now? Was she thinking about the self-defence lessons he’d given her last night after they finished their run? They’d ended up in the abandoned playground. Alone. Her body pressed up against his did things to him, things that risked distracting him from his true purpose. She must have felt his reaction to her in more ways than one.
Of course she had, Pavesi. She wriggled like a wild cat. She couldn’t put enough distance between you.
He’d grabbed her hand. He hadn’t planned it, it just happened, but she’d pulled her hand out of his.
God, why did she make him feel like a perverted schoolboy? Because you are, Pavesi. You’re the worst kind. You can’t get this girl out of your head and she’s sending you signals to stay away. Yet you keep going back for more punishment because, Christ, it wouldn’t be you if you didn’t put yourself through this crap at least once a week. If it’s not her, it’s remembering what you did to your father.
No, his feelings for Anya and what happened to Carlo were unrelated. One was about new beginnings, the other was about burying the past.
It frustrated him that he couldn’t read Anya. Sometimes she gave off the right signals, like she wanted him to make a move. Then she would blush in a way that made him want to kiss her, right before she backed off.
He had blurted out last night that he wanted to tell her too much about himself. He almost let slip what he and Sheila were to each other, about their ploy to keep her moving through Arcis. But while she was on Compliance, he had to keep his mouth shut. The brain processed things differently while on the drug. Any one of these teenagers could support him or rat him out. It depended on their perspective at the time, and how they viewed the new world on drugs. He remembered what being on Compliance had felt like—as though he’d been caught in a daydream. He hated how little control he had over his thoughts that seemed to revere Arcis. While Anya was under its influence, he would remain cautious around her.
Charlie had been hesitant to give him a spare dosage of the antidote, so he’d stolen one from Charlie’s special hiding spot, in the floor space hidden beneath the living room carpet. He took it last night after he dropped off the key for the gate to the running track. Anya had waited outside and they took the Monorail back to East. Charlie would notice the missing vial, but Dom planned to use it before he could do anything about it.
The bell for the afternoon broke him out of his thoughts. With a heavy heart, he returned with Sheila to the terminal room. Brianna waited by her terminal, too pale, too skinny and with a wild fearful look in her eye. She should never have been subjected to this torture. She was just a kid. They all were. Dom wished he could shield her from the misery of this place. But he had a job to do and it didn’t include fixing the problems of others. He and Sheila must push on to reach the ninth floor.
The terminals started up and it pleased him to see Sheila more alert than at lunch. She stared at the screen, looking up for a moment to give Dom a nod. He nodded back. Nothing more. Two cameras, one visible, one hidden watched over the room. He wasn’t sure what Arcis hoped to see.
Five minutes flashed up on screen. Two minutes less than before lunch. Arcis appeared to drop the timer when someone hadn’t been shocked for a few days. Brianna was the last to have been shocked three days ago. It was almost as if Arcis wanted another incident to happen.
Brianna tensed up and tugged on the ends of her long hair. Looked around. Looked back at the screen. Her eyes were stuck on wide. A file number flashed up below the timer, which set the clock to count down. Sheila bolted out of the room and Dom grabbed Brianna’s hand.
‘Come on, let’s do this one together.’
The girl looked up at him like he was some kind of hero. He was anything but. Brianna’s hand was cold and thin in his. She kept up with him, fuelled on by having someone at her side. They made it to the records room and Dom found Brianna’s file first. He handed it to her then told her to go. Her lips pulled up into a faint smile as she disappeared through the doors back to the terminal room.
He counted across the rows for his own file and found it quickly enough. Sheila was beside him with hers. They ran back to the room and scanned their files with thirty seconds left on the clock. The others made it back and stopped their clocks. But Dom’s clock kept counting down. He picked up the scanner again and pressed the button. The red crosshatch lit up the barcode on the front of the file. It even registered it with a beep. But still his clock counted backwards. Five, four, three...
His terminal emitted a deep whir. He gritted his teeth against a build-up of power that made his hand ache. The surge snapped at him like it wanted to split his arm in two. He tried to drop the scanner but nothing worked. Not his arms, not his legs. Rooted to the spot, Dom could only yell through clenched teeth. The electricity pulsed through him. Flashes of red caught his eye as the time counter flash repeatedly at zero. The raw flesh where his hand gripped the scanner ached. Air stayed trapped inside his lungs, so inoperable and tight he couldn’t breathe. Someone controlled the strings that controlled his arms and legs.
The electricity released its hold on him and severed those strings. He flopped to the floor in a heap. Sheila hovered over him, holding his head. He heard new voices. Strange people in white boiler suits tended to him. He closed his eyes and the voices drifted away.
10
Dom
Dom woke up in bed to see a closed curtain round it. Other people were close; he could hear them breathing. He turned the hand that had pulsated with fire earlier and found no damage. No pain either.
He got up and yanked back the curtain.
‘Wait now,’ said a boy with blond hair wearing a white boiler suit. ‘You’re not supposed to be up.’
‘Where am I? What am I doing here?’
‘Protocol. You have to stay here after an electric shock. They need to monitor you.’
Dom shook his head. ‘But I feel fine. Why do I feel fine? I should be...’
Dead? Injured? Suffering from horrible burns at least.
‘It’s Praesidium’s medicine. Heals everything. The team ga
ve you a shot to counteract the effects of an electric shock. It steadies any heart arrhythmia you might have. The paste takes care of any wounds.’
Dom stared at his hand again, the one that had been glued to the scanner. It looked like nothing happened. He stepped forward, prompting the boy to block him. ‘You can’t leave the infirmary. Not until they say so.’
‘Who says I can’t?’
Dom pushed past him to door, but at the exit he hesitated. He was supposed to be on Compliance, living up to the drug’s name.
Screw it, I need to see Sheila.
A female supervisor appeared at the door and interrupted his plans for escape. ‘Is there a problem in here?’
The boy dropped his gaze to the ground. ‘No, ma’am. I was just explaining to the patient—’
‘I’ll take over. You go on now.’
The boy hurried away.
Dom stood face-to-face with the supervisor. She was new. He’d only seen the male supervisor on the first floor. Her cold blue eyes unsettled him.
‘You are Dominic Pavesi, correct?’
‘Yes. Where am I?’
‘You’re in the infirmary on the second floor. I’m afraid I must ask you to return to your bed.’
‘But I feel fine.’
The supervisor placed a hand on his shoulder. It turned to ice beneath her touch. ‘Starting to feel fine and relapsing are two related things. I must insist you stay here until you are well enough to return to your duties. The health of the participants is our top priority.’
‘Is that why you shock them?’
The supervisor’s gaze hardened, causing Dom to go still.
Careful, Pavesi.
‘The shocks are not meant to harm, but to remind the participant that tardiness is not permitted on the first floor. If you are asked to complete a timed task and you fail in that completion, then there are consequences. It is no different from what would happen in the real world.’
‘Is it what happens in Praesidium?’
The supervisor’s thin mouth pulled up into a strange smile that sent a shiver through Dom.
