by Eliza Green
With nothing to do but explore, the group of five navigated their way back to the exit and checked the map that showed a maze with three parts. Dom divided everyone up into two teams of two; he and Sheila agreed to split up so they could cover the maze faster. He concentrated on the only part yet to be explored: the black section. Anya said she’d checked out the section while everyone was asleep and reported nothing of interest other than an elaborate maze. But Dom wouldn’t be happy until he’d checked every corridor, seen every turn for himself. A second look wouldn’t hurt. Maybe she’d missed something.
While Dom had exhausted his route, Sheila had better luck. They rejoined their groups and discovered a glossy gold door at the back of the black section. The group couldn’t agree upon whether to open it or not. Dom broke the tie and chose to wait. Something felt off about this seemingly innocuous floor; the girl who’d suffered a near amputation had come from here. It didn’t escape his notice that those on Compliance were practically lunging at the door. He and Anya had voted against. Lilly copied Anya.
But it surprised him Sheila had voted to open the door.
To his relief, they returned to the green section where Dom set up a darts tournament designed to let off some steam. If the others relaxed a little, maybe they would be less likely to take chances. After an hour, the novelty of the tournament wore off.
Sheila led the boys back to the screen at the entrance, to see if she could find out more about their purpose here. Her exit gave Dom his chance to talk to Anya alone. Lilly chose to stay, but stuck on a pair of headphones and tuned him and Anya out.
He swallowed. The talk he didn’t want to have, but secretly did, hung over his neck like an axe. This could go only one of two ways.
A bout of nerves made him feel sick. Were they friends because of the Compliance? How did she feel about him now?
She wore her hesitance like a second skin. He hated this distance between them.
‘So,’ she said, ‘what was life like on the second floor?’
Those nine words lifted the heaviness between them.
They chatted for a while and to Dom’s relief, their ease with each other transcended Compliance. Maybe Anya would take his other news well.
But first he needed to ask her about Tahlia. He could tell she’d been left shaken by the event.
‘You’re different,’ he said.
‘Yeah, so are you.’
Her answer surprised him. Maybe he was. Maybe he’d had enough of pretending in this place. The only person he cared for other than Sheila sat on the beanbag next to him. He wanted nothing more than to be honest with her. But with cameras in the room, he had no choice but to keep the conversation light.
‘How are you?’ said Dom. ‘You know, after Tahlia?’
‘I’m still shaking.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t see you after, you know, when she died. I asked, but the supervisor wouldn’t let me. I even tried to pretend it was part of some routine check-up.’
A nervous laugh bubbled up and out. He folded his arms. The access pad to the infirmary had flashed red when he’d tried his floor card. When the supervisor had told him his and the others’ assistance wouldn’t be necessary, he began to suspect that Tahlia Odare’s death had been planned.
Maybe June Shaw would shed light on the mysterious girl who’d once lived in Praesidium.
He and Anya talked about what happened. While Anya was clearly upset by Tahlia’s death, Dom couldn’t stay quiet about the fact she’d disconnected Tahlia from the terminal. Sheila had tried the same thing with Brianna and had almost died.
‘It was dangerous, Anya. You could have been killed.’
‘I can handle myself.’
‘You need to be careful in here.’ His fingers grazed the top of her hand as he watched for her reaction. ‘I need you to be careful.’
She snatched her hand away and stared at him.
‘It was my fault, okay? Is that what you want me to say? I killed Tahlia. It was my fault.’ He reached for her again but she jerked away from him. ‘I felt guilty. That’s why I helped.’
He hated seeing her like this, under such stress that was of Arcis’ making. He laced his hand in hers and felt her relax a little. He told her about Brianna, about how the first-floor participants had targeted her because she was the slowest.
‘Was it you?’
Her accusation surprised him and he looked away. ‘It was all of us. We were set up.’ He looked back. ‘It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t ours. And I’m guessing you didn’t come up with the idea all on your own.’
She shook her head.
He wanted to hold her, to tell her she wasn’t alone in here. But she still believed the rebels had murdered her parents. It was a lie Praesidium had spread among the towns and it would be hard to convince her otherwise.
‘I went back the next night, after the self-defence classes,’ said Anya. ‘But you weren’t there.’
His lips parted as he looked at her. He’d forgotten about that, about promising to show her more moves. He swallowed and took a moment to really look at her. His gaze stopped on her slightly parted lips; lips he wanted to kiss. Then down to her throat, and up to her inquisitive eyes. He thumbed a tear that was halfway down her cheek. She drew in a quick breath.
‘Arcis forced me to stay after my first shock,’ he said. ‘Then Sheila was shocked the next day.’
Anya tensed and pulled her hand out of his. He missed the warmth of her fingers. These stolen moments weren’t enough for him. He needed more. He had to know if she felt the same things for him as he felt for her.
‘I don’t think Sheila would like it if we were, you know, holding hands.’
Jesus, that’s why she’s resisting? She thinks you’re with Sheila.
‘Yeah, I wanted to explain about that.’
But the others returned and cut his time with Anya short. While they all sat and talked, the first thought he’d had the moment he saw her on this floor nagged at him again. Why had Anya and Frank skipped the second floor?
14
Dom
The day turned into one boring hour after another with nothing to do. Dom and the others had been on the third floor for nearly twelve hours. No supervisor had come. They took turns napping in case one did.
It was close to midnight when Anya gave up waiting and called it a night. Dom wished her pleasant dreams.
His sleep cycle was all over the place, and while he knew he should turn in too, the urge to explore more overruled his head. He started with the communal space and kitchen and spent a few minutes cataloguing the layout of the rooms. He opened cupboards, pulled out plates and cups, pulled the dartboard off the wall. Nothing. He examined the section with the headphones. Everything looked normal.
Tiredness hit him and forced him to make a strong cup of coffee. On the way back to the dorm, Dom checked over every wall in the blue section of the maze. To find nothing out of place bothered him. The walls felt sturdy when he touched them, the floor cold beneath his stockinged feet. As his gaze pressed into every blue panel one thing he couldn’t find was the cameras he was sure Arcis had hidden.
If he couldn’t find the cameras, he couldn’t work out the location of the blind spots.
He made it to the entrance of the bathroom when he stumbled, jerked upright, and knocked the coffee over him. The mug dropped from his fingers and rolled across the floor, unbroken.
He hissed from the instant burning sensation and stumbled into the bathroom. It wasn’t empty, as he had hoped. Anya was there.
Shit.
He muttered his apologies. A shocked Anya stared at him, at the stain on his T-shirt. There was no time to explain.
His skin pulsated with heat as he groped for the cold tap and turned it on. He yanked up his T-shirt, gathered handfuls of water and splashed them on his skin. He let out a long sigh as the cool water cancelled out the raging fire.
His shirt was still up when he heard Anya pull in a sharp breath. Double shit.
Only one thing would cause her to draw breath like that: the C-shaped scar he’d got when doctors in Praesidium removed one of his lungs. He’d been sick as a child and Praesidium was the only place with the technology and medical knowledge to fix him. He yanked his shirt down, but it was too late. He’d worked so hard to hide them. His scars weakened him.
She would have found out eventually, Dom. Why not tell her?
No. He wasn’t ready to relive the pain of his childhood.
He bolted from the room and almost knocked Sheila over.
‘Where are you off to?’ said Sheila.
‘Nowhere. I’m going to bed.’
Sheila knew exactly what Praesidium and their medical teams had done to him. She was the only person who knew how much he hated his scars. But she would keep his secret for as long as he wanted. He opened the door to the dorm room, glancing behind to see Sheila enter the bathroom. What would Anya ask her? What would Sheila say?
His heart pounded too loudly in his chest. With shaky hands he removed his soiled T-shirt and pulled on a fresh one before crawling into bed. He pretended to be asleep when Sheila, then Anya, came in. As soon as they had settled, he flipped onto his back and stared into the darkness. The memories of his youth never left him. His surgery was a day he would never forget. His mother had been fussing over him, while his father had been nervous about something, but not so nervous he couldn’t flirt with a couple of the nurses.
Dom had just turned seven when he started to feel ill. Shortness of breath came first, and then a too-fast heartbeat that felt like someone was sitting on his chest. His parents contacted Praesidium. They sent a team to get him and bring him to the city where the doctors there diagnosed Dom with pneumothorax, or a collapsed lung. It took three days for the doctors to re-inflate his lung. After, they sent him home. But the same thing happened again and again, until a lung replacement was the only option left open to Dom.
Then his kidneys stated to fail. In one year, Dom had lost a lung, a kidney and part of his liver.
Mariella had tried to be strong, but even she had trouble understanding why this had happened to her only son. Carlo had seemed most interested in what the surgery entailed, not the welfare of his son. After each surgery, Carlo would disappear for a month only to come back a sober, changed man. He was attentive to Mariella, and spent time with Dom. Then in a week, he would revert back to his old drunken habits. Dom had almost looked forward to the next surgery.
He’d spent years learning to live with the loss of a lung. It hampered his ability to run, but he trained hard and overcame his loss in later years. His surgeries had attracted unwanted attention from the school bullies who’d call him a reject. That’s when he’d met Sheila, a loud, obnoxious girl who had everybody in the palm of her hand.
Dom remembered at age eleven being ordered by an older boy to lay face-down in a mud patch. He was half way to the ground when Sheila had appeared and began kicking and punching the boy until he gave up and left. Without a word, she pulled Dom to his feet. He stood there, staring at her, shocked into silence.
‘Are you okay?’ she said
He brushed the mud off his trousers. ‘Yeah.’
‘What happened to you?’ She was pointing to his lung scar.
Dom yanked his top down. ‘Nothing.’
‘Doesn’t look like nothing to me.’
‘Thanks for your help.’ He walked away but she followed him.
‘Hey, what’s your name?’
He glanced back at her. She was a pretty girl with brown hair and sun-kissed golden streaks. ‘Dominic. Why?’
‘Mine’s Sheila. How about we stick together, Dom?’
He faced the front. ‘No thanks. I don’t fit in with your crowd. And my name’s Dominic, not Dom.’
She walked alongside him. ‘Well, I prefer Dom. And who said they were my crowd?’
He flashed her a look that said he didn’t believe her.
‘Okay, so I hang around with them, but that’s a survival thing.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I prefer you to them, anyway. I think you and I should be friends.’
She linked her arm through his.
He tried to pull his arm away. ‘I don’t need a friend.’
That only made her grip harder. ‘I wasn’t asking, Dom.’
A noise in the dorm broke Dom from his reverie. He sat up and noticed Anya’s and Frank’s beds were empty. His first thought hit him in the stomach hard. Were they together? No. They hadn’t seemed like a couple. But Anya had made it clear she didn’t feel that way about Dom either.
That was because she thought you were with Sheila, you idiot.
So why are they up at 1am?
His thoughts raced to the gold door, the one they had agreed not to open.
He clambered from his bed and shook Sheila from her sleep. She mumbled something rude under her breath.
‘Sheila, wake up!’
‘What, Dom? Just let me sleep.’
‘You have to come, now. I think Frank and Anya are about to do something stupid.’
15
Dom
There was only one other girl in Arcis who made Dom’s blood run hot besides Sheila. He’d almost lost Anya to the game on the third, when she and Frank had opened the gold door. He’d raced to catch up to them. But it was too late for Frank.
Sheila liked to annoy him just to get a reaction. But how he felt about Anya was different to his best friend. When he closed his eyes Anya was there. He dreamt about her when he fell asleep. His heart almost derailed from its steady path every time he thought about her.
Anya was damn lucky to be alive. Her injury could have been a lot worse. It was there, in the prefab where he treated her injury that he’d blurted out what he was. What she feared most.
Her reaction? Well, it surprised him.
The fourth floor had its perks. The boys’ dorm sitting across from the sparse area dedicated to the girls was kitted out with virtual reality headsets and liquor. It also had privacy screens, something the girls’ dorm did not. Sometimes Ash would stand at the window that offered a one way view across the space, and, with a bottle of beer in hand, watch them. Dom remembered Ash from his time on the ground floor. He’d rotated the first time when Dom had been overlooked. This was Ash’s second rotation on the fourth floor. He was bitter about that, and he didn’t try to hide it. Dom made sure not to give the potentially volatile boy any reason to view him as a threat.
From the position of his bed, Dom craned his neck to look at Ash at the window again. His spying on the girls, on Anya, angered him. So much that he wanted to march over there and tell Ash to quit being so perverted. But he didn’t because of the raw, edgy desperation that also made him want to steer clear.
Dom sighed and cupped his hands behind his neck. He’d wanted more time with Anya to gauge her reaction, to see if she was still okay with his rebel status. But they’d been separated, and she and the other girls had to earn points to eat while the boys ate what, and when, they wanted. He had lied to Anya. He had kept things from her. And she had accepted his story without complaint.
She was bleeding from a cut on her arm, desperate. She didn’t have a choice but to accept your lies.
He shook his head to dislodge the feeling he got often: that he was no good for her. She’d threatened to leave Arcis and never look back. She’d asked him for a reason to stay. That’s when he’d blurted out the truth. Dom had forced her further inside Arcis. His games with Sheila had messed with her head, made her want to progress instead of staying put. But abandoning her on the ground floor had felt like a far crueller option to this. The only way out of Arcis was to finish the game.
He touched his fingers to his lips, remembering how it had felt to kiss her. His body had reacted instantly to the feel of her pressed up against him. It was like she was made for him.
Jesus, I can’t think straight when I’m around her.
You’re nothing but a liar, Dom Pavesi. You inherited that trait from your father. She’s better
off without you.
Her soft mouth had been swollen from his insistence, his raw need for her. From the prefab bed, she’d stared up at him with her beautiful blue eyes. Her lips had parted as she waited for him to explain. Her pale skin made her dark-blue eyes come alive. Then, when she kissed him... He’d imagined that for a long time. And it surpassed all expectations. It took his breath away. Literally. He didn’t trust himself to stop. He smiled at the memory of her tugging on his hair. The pain had shocked him when she nearly pulled it clean out from his scalp. But he didn’t tell her to stop.
It hadn’t felt like this with either Kaylie or Mia. They had been there when he needed a distraction. His mother had disappeared. He’d killed his father. The two girls had kept the darker thoughts at bay, but never released him from it. What he felt for them was lust. A longing. A mutual convenience.
But Anya was different. His heart sounded like a runaway train when she was near. He could tell she had no experience, but he would never rush anything with her.
No. He would go at a pace she was comfortable with.
But when she pressed her body into his, teasing him with her tongue, breathing like she couldn’t catch any air, he forgot all about pacing. Because he felt the same way, as if the breath had been sucked out of him. Her skin was like cotton, soft and smooth. He’d tried to be good, but then his hands ended up where they did. She’d touched him, touched his skin.
God, Pavesi. Focus.
Found his scars...
That sent him crashing back to reality. She’d been looking for them. She’d already seen them in the bathroom. But he wasn’t ready to talk about it, to admit his biggest weakness.
While Ash continued to drink at the window, Dom drifted off to sleep.
Ω
A whistle, loud and sharp, woke him.
‘Gather round. Someone’s here to negotiate.’
He got up and froze when he saw who it was. Anya stood in their dorm, her arms wrapped around her. She looked so vulnerable it ripped his heart in half. He wanted to drag her away, to keep her from whatever she was about to do. Where was Sheila? Why had she let Anya come here alone?
