The Rebels

by Eliza Green

  Anya must have sensed the same thing because she pulled back from him. He groaned as her vanishing body heat left him feeling cold inside.

  She stayed on his legs and cupped his face. ‘You’re perfect.’

  Dom squirmed beneath her gaze. ‘I’m not.’ His eyes dropped to her throat. ‘Not like you.’

  Her gaze studied every inch of him. She must see something he didn’t because he was not perfect. His scars, the ones he was terrified to show her, proved that. Every time he got undressed, they served as a reminder he was only half a man. The other scars, the emotional ones his father had carved into him, cut deeper and made him doubt himself every day.

  He watched, curious, as she moved to sit behind him.

  She placed her hands on the outside of his T-shirt.

  No. No!

  She tugged up the edges.

  He grabbed her hands. ‘Anya. What are you—’

  ‘Please, let me see.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please, Anya. I—’

  Don’t ask me to show you. I hate them and what they represent. A lost childhood, a lifetime of compensating for my physical loss. I’m not who you think I am. I’m a killer. I murdered my father and I can barely control my anger most days. I thank Carlo for that.

  He kept a tight grip on her hands. She didn’t say anything, didn’t move away. Sheila had seen the scars by accident. Kaylie had seen them when he fooled around with her. So had Mia—he’d taken things further with her in a darkened room. When she’d woken up, her shocked face told him all he needed to know.

  Maybe Anya was different from Mia and Kaylie. He wanted to believe it.

  But he couldn’t bear to think of her shock or disgust when she saw how ugly his body looked naked.

  He loosened his grip on her hand and leaned forward. She pulled the fabric up without hesitation.

  He waited for her to gasp, like she had in the bathroom when he’d spilled hot coffee on himself. He’d known that would be her reaction. It was everyone’s reaction at first. But he heard nothing except for a quiet, steady breath. He jerked when she traced his C-shaped scar that ran from under his armpit to the middle of his back.

  He felt her pull away, but she touched it again. Her fingers warmed his skin.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ she whispered.

  ‘The opposite,’ said Dom. He turned partially. ‘I just don’t like people seeing it.’

  ‘Sheila says you have more.’

  Sheila’s words from a few nights ago shouted inside his head. Show her, Dom. Get it over with. It’s all in your head.

  He undid his belt buckle, unbuttoned his combats and inched the waistband down a little.

  Anya touched the straight scar running from the middle of his back, curving around his left side. He shivered beneath her touch.

  ‘And another one on the front.’ He turned around to face her, so she could see the straight line across his flat abdomen with a small intersecting cut in the centre, heading north.

  ‘What happened?’

  He explained his sickness, his surgeries. She asked about Sheila. He told her how they knew each other.

  Anya fell silent.

  ‘I wanted to show you before now,’ said Dom, his voice tight with emotion, ‘but I didn’t know how you’d react. It’s not attractive.’

  She bent her head and kissed him, along his scars. It both terrified and soothed him.

  ‘Like I said, perfect.’

  She looped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his back. For the first time in years, he felt himself relax. Anya’s touch soothed his anger. He wanted to stay like that, in her arms.

  Forever.

  He drew strength from her touch. She mended something deep within, making him more accepting of the scars that had weakened him for so long.

  Yeah. Anya was his anchor.

  18

  Dom

  Dom ran a shaky hand across his neck. ‘What are they doing? I mean, how?’

  Anya stood beside him in the eighth-floor room, on one side of a large red velvet curtain. Five of them, including Sheila June and Yasmin, had rotated from the seventh floor a couple of hours ago after answering questions designed to test their loyalty. Anya had received a message from her brother, Jason: the rebels were inside Arcis and were coming for them. A final question of who to save, Sheila or Anya, had left Dom reeling.

  But the shame of answering that question on the seventh floor didn’t compare to how he felt now. On the other side of the curtain, Sheila, June and Yasmin looked after babies ranging in ages. The curtain shielded the nightmare before Dom from them.

  A large Perspex box filled with children all separated from each other rooted him to the spot. But it was the sight of a boy clutching the stubby crayon that escalated his worst fears. When the boy leaned forward over his picture and Dom saw his perfect C-shaped scar, he almost threw up.

  He swallowed back bile just as Anya finished her full circle of the box. She was looking for a way inside. Dom couldn’t tear his gaze from the boy, no older than four, who ignored them standing there, watching.

  He drew in a sharp breath when a girl around the same age as the boy flashed a scar on her waist similar to his own.

  Dom tugged at his hair. ‘What are they doing here?’ He felt Anya’s eyes on him. ‘Why does he have—?’

  Anya pinned his arms down by his side, but the action only aggravated him. Rage, confusion and terror made him want to run. Why were these scarred children here? Where were their parents?

  The more he watched the children, the more unsettled he became by their quiet natures. They lacked the energy of normal kids.

  ‘Maybe they were sick, like you were,’ said Anya.

  He didn’t answer her. Too many possibilities ran through his mind for him to formulate a response.

  ‘Talk to me!’

  Dom snapped his gaze back to her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the babies on the other side of the curtain.

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t... I need to leave.’

  He couldn’t stand it. He felt his knees go weak. Anya supported his weight with an arm around his middle. He leaned into her for a moment then righted himself. Now was not the time to lose his focus. That’s what Arcis wanted. If he was to survive this place, if he was to find his mother, he had to stay strong.

  The lights dipped and a strong vibration ran through the floor. For the first time, Dom didn’t report either event to Preston.

  He busied himself with the babies while Anya watched him from a safe distance outside the box. She was the only one who chose not to look after the babies after the female supervisor had instructed them to do. But that wasn’t why he couldn’t look at her. He’d lived his life being the strong one, being the shoulder for everyone else to lean on. But inside, he barely kept things together. One look at Anya and he’d lose it for sure.

  One of the boy babies made a laughing sound and he picked him up, checking his eyes, checking for hidden scars, searching for signs of a life that mirrored his own. To his relief, the baby had no scars and looked normal, right down to the pigmentation in his eyes.

  Not like the children in the next room.

  An hour later, the female supervisor appeared.

  ‘Put the babies down. We’ve learned all we can from your interactions. You’re being rotated to the final floor.’

  Dom returned the baby to his crib and tucked a blanket around his wriggling body. The baby kicked it off and cried at Dom’s absence. He left the box and the unsettled babies behind and followed the supervisor to the elevator.

  Only one more floor remained: the heart of Arcis and the source of the power dips and vibrations. This close to freedom, Dom had no idea if they would make it out alive.

  19

  Dom

  The giant machine in the centre of the room rattled, sending deep vibrations through Dom’s legs. A hidden voice had greeted them upon their arrival on the ninth floor. The r
ebels showed up on the ninth floor of Arcis but they’d been ambushed by the supervisors.

  The voice pushed each of them to enter the machine. It was the last stop on this crazy journey. It was the only way out of Acis.

  Dom felt sick as his brave Anya volunteered to go first. He could barely watch as she stepped through the first of the arches with the flashing lights. He had wanted to take her place, but the voice insisted she go first, even threatened to kill Jason if she refused.

  If Anya was scared, she hid it well. He hadn’t understood why she’d delayed the machine from taking them by asking questions, or why she’d acted so calm when all he wanted to do was to yell and punch something. Mariella wasn’t here. Neither was June’s sister. He’d failed in his attempts to find either of them. But when Max, Preston and Jason, along with three soldiers, had come through the door at the rear of the room, he’d understood her reasons for stalling.

  Anya walked without complaint through the first part of the machine after the supervisors shot Preston and two of the soldiers. Jason was next, according to the voice. In the second part, a blue light scanned her from head to toe. She paused in front of a mirror in the third part and stared at a reflection of herself.

  ‘Don’t forget!’ Dom yelled. Anya didn’t turn around. She continued to look at her mirrored image. She appeared distant, like she wasn’t really there.

  The voice had warned they’d lose their memories of this place. Dom’s memories of Sheila and June would be safe because they had met before. But everything in Arcis, every piece of knowledge he’d learned, every experience he’d had, would be stripped from him and probably passed on to Praesidium.

  Anya walked through the mirror and disappeared. Where did she go? He stared at what he now realised was a portal.

  His heart slammed against his ribcage. ‘Where did you send her? Tell me!’ He yelled at the voices until Sheila grabbed hold of his arm.

  ‘We’re going to the same place,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll see her again. You need to calm the hell down.’

  He bit his bottom lip to keep from speaking, so hard he tasted blood. Something moved in the mirror, the portal. He yanked his arm out of Sheila’s grip and moved closer. A residual image appeared stuck in the mirror. But Dom jerked back when the image became whole and moved from the back of the portal to stand in front of it.

  Dom stared at a dazed and disorientated Anya. She was naked.

  ‘Anya!’ Dom shouted, averting his eyes. He ignored Sheila’s warnings to keep quiet.

  The strange version of Anya didn’t turn around. She stepped through the portal.

  When it was gone, Sheila said, ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘That was a copy,’ said the voice. ‘A perfect replica of her. Hurry. We don’t have much time. You all must step through the machine to complete the process.’

  ‘And if we don’t?’ said Dom.

  ‘Then I will order these men’s deaths.’

  Dom’s gaze flickered over to where Max, his commanding officer, and Jason and the third soldier were being restrained by the almost identical male supervisors. Copies, he now realised. Anya had been right when she’d said that on each floor, the supervisors were a little different.

  Sheila stepped towards the machine. He didn’t stop her. He wanted to go last, to make sure Max, Jason and the soldier were okay. Sheila took the same route as Anya. When she passed through the first part of the arch, he noticed her go from alert to despondent in a matter of seconds.

  The first part must erase memories.

  When it came to his turn, he would fight the process.

  Sheila passed under the blue scanner and stepped through the portal. Dom shuddered when her naked copy did the same thing one minute later.

  It was June’s turn next, then Yasmin’s.

  Dom stepped forward last. ‘Max, I’ll come find you.’

  ‘Anya’s all the family I have left.’ Jason squirmed against the supervisor restraining him. ‘If she means anything to you, you’ll keep her safe.’

  He nodded. With every fibre of his being he would find Anya and keep her safe. And if all traces of her were erased from his mind, he would find a way to keep the memory of her alive.

  He scaled the short steps, stared up at the arch and shielded his eyes from the bright white lights. His memories thinned out, became wispy. He reached out for them, but it felt like they didn’t belong to him any more. The last thing he remembered was his conversation with Jason. But even that lacked certainty.

  The machine pulled him almost magnetically under the blue scanner to stand in front of the portal. Activity began in the space behind the portal. He watched as the lower part of a torso materialised in front of him. It began with two feet, then two legs, then it stopped just below the start of the hipbone.

  ‘Why has the replication process stopped?’ commanded the voice.

  Another voice, quiet until now, replied. ‘The machine can only copy biological parts, Quintus. He has Praesidium tech in him.’

  ‘What do you mean “Praesidium tech”?’ said Dom, staring at what he assumed was a replica of his legs. ‘He must be one of the earlier subjects, Quintus,’ said the voice. ‘We assumed he did not survive, like the others.’

  ‘Erase this moment from his memory. We must study him further. I want to know how he has survived for so long with our tech.’

  The machine whirred around him and Dom felt dizzy and light-headed. Then the mirror pulled him forward.

  20

  Dom

  A man dressed in white spoke to another in similar clothing. ‘He’s to be taken to the harvesting centre.’ They stood by the entrance to an all-white room that Dom and the others had woken up in an hour ago.

  ‘What about the others?’ said the second man.

  ‘They’ve been already assigned. The Collective wants this one to be taken for further study.’

  Dom vaguely recalled a similar conversation: two voices arguing over him, one telling the other something hadn’t worked right. The girl called Anya had already been taken away by a dark-skinned woman in a vibrant green dress. He heard them mention something about a library.

  Sheila, June and a wiry blonde haired girl were taken from the room, leaving Dom alone and barefoot. He glanced down at his outfit of white trousers and white top. He was dressed identically to the men who had come to take him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Is this Praesidium?’

  The men spoke about him as if he didn’t exist. Snippets of unfamiliar memories slipped back into place. He had stepped into some kind of machine. The lights had dazzled him. It was before he’d come to this empty room.

  He had made a promise to a man he hadn’t met before, to keep someone safe. Max was there, and a soldier he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember why they had stood together in a large space with a machine in the centre. Or why he’d been staring at a half-completed torso. Dom shook his head and tuned in to the conversation between the two men by the open door.

  ‘The procedure didn’t work. The copy didn’t take. He is to be enrolled in the harvesting programme.’

  ‘Why this one?’

  ‘Quintus says he is part of a testing group from twelve years ago. The Collective lost track of them when their tracers stopped working. They were all presumed not to have survived. The Collective wishes to learn from him now.’

  ‘Will we also be given the opportunity to learn?’ said the other man.

  ‘If the Collective wishes. Hurry. We must move him. I feel Quintus in my head. He’s irritated by the delay.’

  One of the men grabbed Dom’s arm and pulled him from the room.

  Dom resisted but the man was too strong. ‘Where are you taking me? What’s the harvesting programme?’

  The man didn’t answer. Squirming only made him pull harder. He bundled Dom into an open-sided car. The brightness of the outside hurt his eyes. It was as if he hadn’t seen daylight for some time.

  The car took them a few minutes by road t
o a building on the west side of the city. Dom’s eyes watered in the dazzling sunlight. Through the tears he absorbed as much of Praesidium as he could. He had never been to the capital city before, but he knew it from the bright, white, sterile look.

  The car pulled up outside a building marked “Medical Facility”. One of the men got out and dragged him inside. They entered an elevator and rode it down one floor. Dom couldn’t tell if they were on the lowest level or if there were more floors. There were no buttons inside the elevator; the man had controlled it by pressing his wrist to a plain panel.

  The elevator doors opened and the man pulled Dom along a lengthy corridor with multiple doors on either side. The man opened one of the doors to reveal a plain white room with a single bed on one side and a chair on the other. He pushed Dom inside and left.

  Dom ran to the door just as it was being locked from the outside.

  ‘Wait! What is this place? Why am I here?’

  He banged on the door but the footsteps moved away. He tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge. He searched the room. No cameras. No windows. No way out except through the one door, which had a small food hatch at the bottom.

  A few moments later, the hatch opened and someone slid a food tray across the floor. Dom kicked it away, spilling what looked like a bowl of porridge. He lay down on his stomach and put his face up to the hatch. He slipped his hand through just as it was being closed. A man knelt down and a pair of eyes, cold and lifeless, stared through at him.

  ‘Take your hand out of the hatch space unless you want to lose it.’

  ‘Tell me why I’m here. What is this place?’

  The dead expression in the man’s eyes didn’t change. ‘Machines are superior in every way. You humans are weak, susceptible to emotions, and the Collective hadn’t expected you to survive. Up until now, its focus was on adapting machines to accept human parts. But your acceptance of Praesidium tech has given it another option. You will be its new toy, its new experiment. The Collective has been trapped inside Praesidium for too long. It wishes to live beyond its confines and you’re here to help it achieve that goal.’