by Eliza Green
It surprised him to find it unlocked.
A large room awaited that was similar in size to the atrium on the ground floor. Warren walked inside the dark and quiet space, not checking to see if the others had followed. He looked around the windowless room with a half bell-shaped ceiling. The outline of a large machine became clearer, sat idle in the middle of the room.
Warren hid his relief from the others at making it to the ninth floor. The truth about his parents had to be hidden here somewhere.
Small round lights in the machine blinked on and off. As his eyes adjusted more, Warren noticed bodies on the floor. Someone moved, a brown-haired man who looked to be in his early twenties. He was shaking the shoulders of a middle-aged man who sat on the floor with his arms looped around his bended legs.
‘Max, come on, we need to go,’ said the younger man.
Max didn’t respond.
‘Hello?’ said Warren. He proceeded with caution, aware he might be in the company of rebels. ‘What happened here?’
The young man’s eyes darted to him and he climbed to his feet. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘We were trapped on the seventh floor. The elevator took us up.’
The young man narrowed his gaze at him. ‘And why the hell would you go up? You need to get out of here. Arcis isn’t safe for you. Didn’t you hear the gunfire?’
Warren nodded at the man he suspected to be a rebel. ‘Yeah. We thought you might need a hand.’
The young man seemed unsure. He looked at Warren, Jerome and the other five.
‘Come help me with Max. I need to get him to his feet.’
Warren and Jerome each hooked a hand under Max’s armpits.
‘She’s not here,’ muttered Max, as they struggled with his dead weight. ‘I thought she’d be here.’
‘Come on, Max. Look at me. It’s Jason.’
Max stared up at him. ‘Where’s Preston?’
‘He’s dead and so are two of the soldiers.’
Max looked dazed as he glanced around. A boy of about fifteen, dressed in a soldier’s uniform, was pressed up against one of the walls, staring at the male supervisor. The supervisor seemed frozen into place.
Warren walked over to the soldier. ‘What’s wrong with the supervisor?’
‘They just shut down when the others went through the machine.’
‘What do you mean “shut down”?’ said Warren.
‘I mean, they’re not human. They’re copies. Check the next room if you don’t believe me.’
Jerome and Warren marched to the door located at the back of the room. They found a second identical male supervisor, half in, half out of the room, frozen into place.
Warren opened the door wider and shivered as he stepped around him. The next room was dark except for dozens of wall units, each with its own faint backlight. He gasped when he saw dozens of male supervisors all standing ramrod straight, slotted into the units. Their eyes were open, and all of them stared vacantly ahead.
‘What the hell is this?’ said Jerome. He walked further into the room and studied one of the supervisors. He poked the supervisor’s face. It didn’t react.
‘Shit, they feel so real. Warren, come over here. Touch one, and you’ll see what I mean.’
Warren shook his head at a brazen Jerome. He could barely tolerate being in the same room as them, let alone interact with a dead one. ‘Nah, you’re okay.’
Warren forced himself further inside the room. Now was the perfect time to look for a control room or a console or something; anything that would give him the coordinates to the Beyond.
‘Quick,’ said Warren. ‘Before we have to leave. Help me look for some kind of control panel.’
Jerome did a full lap of the room, while Warren touched whatever he could to see if he could activate something. Apart from the wall units, which had no visible controls, the room was empty.
‘Shit.’ Warren ran his hands through his hair. ‘It has to be here somewhere.’
Jerome stared at him. ‘What do you need the control panel for? Unless you’re planning on reactivating these copies?’
‘No I wanted to see if we could learn a bit more about Arcis, that’s all,’ Warren lied. ‘The control room for the tests must be on this floor. Maybe it’s off the main room.’
Warren got out and away from the dead supervisors as fast as possible. In the main room, he saw Jason get Max to his feet with the help of the other boys. Jason gripped Max’s chin and looked him in the eye. ‘Come on, Max. I need your help to get out of here. Anya’s gone and we need to find out where she went.’
‘Wait,’ said Warren. ‘What happened to Anya?’
Jason looked at Warren. ‘You know my sister?’
His chest seized. ‘You’re Anya’s brother?’ What had Anya told him? He imagined Jason beating him to a pulp when he found out what he’d done to her. He shook off the thought. ‘This is Jerome. We all met on the ground floor.’
Jason stepped forward and shook both of their hands. ‘Nice to know she had friends in here.’
Warren discreetly wiped his hand on his trousers. He had just touched a rebel. And that made Anya one too. He was glad they hadn’t paired up in the end. But he was still curious about what had happened to her.
‘Were there others with her? Dom? Sheila? June? Yasmin?’
Jason nodded.
‘What happened to them?’
Jason jerked his head towards the machine in the centre of the room. It had an open tunnel to the front connected to a series of archways inlaid with blinking lights that led to a full-length mirror at the end. ‘Arcis forced them to go inside that, and then they disappeared. Arcis stole their memories.’
Warren stared at the machine. ‘How?’
‘The machine downloaded their memories of their time in Arcis and then forced them to walk through the last arch.’
Both Warren and Jerome moved in for a closer look. The last arch looked like a portal, but he could see through it to the unit at the end.
‘Shit, look at this,’ said Jerome as he neared the unit.
As Warren got close, he drew a tight breath. ‘What is that?’
He stared at the bottom half of a torso, copied as far as the tops of the legs.
‘The final copy didn’t take,’ said Jason. ‘Dom was the last to step through the machine.’
‘Hold on one minute.’ Warren shook his head. ‘What are you talking about? Are you saying Anya and Dom stepped through this machine, lost their memories and were copied in the process?’
‘That’s exactly it,’ said Max, standing behind them, sounding more alert. ‘Perfect 3D representations of the original design. They’re all gone. Both the originals and the copies.’
‘Please don’t talk about my sister like she’s dead,’ said Jason.
‘We need to face facts; she may well be,’ said Max. ‘We have no idea what happened to them when they went through that thing.’
Jason shook his head. ‘I won’t give up looking for her. And you shouldn’t give up on your wife until you know for sure what happened to her.’
Max sighed. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Our priority is getting out of here. Now. The copies may only be temporarily frozen.’
Warren froze at that suggestion. He hadn’t finished his search of the room. There had to be some kind of control room to give him access to Arcis’ inner workings. At a minimum, some place from where the tests on the seventh floor were being monitored and controlled. Maybe the tester had catalogued the other participants’ responses.
‘Before we leave, we should check the room. Make sure there isn’t some clue as to why Arcis is doing this.’
‘We don’t have time,’ said Max, moving towards the room with the frozen copies.
But Warren ignored him. He ran to the walls, pressed his palms flat against them. He felt no hidden doors. The only door was the one leading to the room with the copies. He continued to run his hands over the panels, concentrating on the space behind
the machine. His heart kicked up a notch when one of the surfaces clicked.
‘Over here,’ he said, as a secret door exposed a concealed room.
He wanted to go in alone; rebels had no business seeing this. But right now he had to pretend he was with them, that they were all on the same side.
Warren stepped inside what appeared to be a viewing room. He discovered dozens of television screens on one wall, each showing what was happening on the different floors. He recognised the Electro Gun room on the fifth floor and the records room on the first. He searched the room, touching walls and checking for more hidden panels, but there was nothing else but the screens.
He saw the participants on the lower floors, looking dazed and disorientated.
‘We need to grab as many of them as possible on the way out,’ said Max looking over his shoulder.
‘Good idea,’ said Jason. ‘We should do a sweep through the floors, pick up who we can along the way.’
‘There’s ten of us,’ said Jerome. ‘If we take a floor each, more or less, we can be out of here quicker.’
‘Agreed,’ said Max, picking up guns from the floor and handing them out.
Warren took an Electro Gun and held it close to his chest. He wanted to leave the rebels behind, but without the coordinates for the Beyond, he needed them to escape Arcis.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Out of Arcis and Essention then to a safe place in the mountains,’ said Max.
Jason stopped. ‘No. We need to get to Praesidium. That’s where Arcis has sent Anya. It has to be. The two places are connected.’
‘Soon,’ said Max. ‘But we’ll need food, guns and reinforcements. I won’t hit that place with limited weapons and a bunch of drugged-up kids.’
Warren went still at the mention of the rebel mountain stronghold. His parents had told him once about such a place existing, but never mentioned it again. He hadn’t placed much value on that information until the day they left him behind. Could his parents have ended up in the stronghold?
If Warren’s parents had indeed joined the rebellion fight, then the rebels in the mountain location would know where they’d gone. Perhaps the Beyond really did exist.
What had Arcis called it? A place beyond the safe zone?
Warren knew his only remaining option was to pretend to be a friend of the rebels.
10
Warren
Warren followed the others through the room with the frozen copies. A stairwell at the far end presented itself and they used it to reach the eighth floor. He knew there had to be a staircase. He and the others had just combed every inch of Tower B on the seventh floor, but hadn’t uncovered any secret way to access the upper floors.
‘I’ll take this floor,’ said Max when they reached the eighth. ‘The rest of you do a sweep of the other floors and we’ll meet in the lobby. You’ll have to remove a wall panel when you reach the back of the dorm to access the floor.’
Jason took the seventh while Jerome covered the sixth. Warren took the fifth floor and the others carried on to the lower levels. He entered a corridor that had panels on one side and nothing else. He slid one back until it exposed the dorm room. He passed through the dorm to exit the other side and entered the main room with the combat-maze test in it. He carried out a visual search of the floor. The walls hadn’t retracted into the floor. Less than two days ago, Warren had shot at discs using an Electro Gun in this very room. He avoided entering the maze with the changing walls that could trap him inside. Instead, he called out. One girl and two boys answered and told him they were stuck inside the maze.
‘We can’t get out!’ said the girl.
Warren stood at one entrance to the maze ‘Follow my voice. Use your Electro Guns. Do any of you have shots left?’
‘I should have seven shots,’ said one boy. ‘But our guns stopped working a while ago.’
‘The power went down for a bit. Try the guns again.’ Warren waited. He heard a discharge of electricity, but it sounded flat.
‘It’s sparking, that’s all. Now what?’
‘You’ll have to get out the old-fashioned way.’ He told them to follow his voice until they all appeared at the entrance, clutching their Electro Guns. They were younger than he was and looked terrified.
‘Are there more of you?’ he asked.
‘No. This is it. What’s going on?’ One of the boys looked around. ‘We were playing the game when the music just stopped. I tried to use my gun but it must’ve run out of juice.’
‘Is there a supervisor around?’
‘No, he left when we started playing. He was a bit agitated.’
Warren took an Electro Gun from the girl, pointed it away and fired. The gun stuttered and sparked but emitted no shock. He tried his own. It did the same.
‘The lights went out and so did the gun,’ said the girl. ‘I had at least nine more rounds.’
Warren tossed his gun away; it hit the ground with a thud. He had hoped to take some extra Electro Guns with him, but it appeared the ones in Arcis were tied in to the power. And since everything was down, only conventional guns would do.
‘Follow me.’
One of the boys looked confused. ‘Where?’
‘We’re leaving Arcis.’
‘We can’t. The supervisor said to stay put, not to leave under any circumstances.’
The Compliance in Warren’s system battled against his fear, making him less alert and dulling his focus. But he also felt its hold on him weaken due to the fact he hadn’t eaten in twelve hours. And because he knew what the drug could do, he could fight against it. For the scared group stood front of him, Compliance ruled their actions, thoughts and feelings. Warren would have to work harder to convince them to leave.
‘You’re going to have to trust me, okay?’ said Warren. ‘We need to leave. This place isn’t safe. The supervisors can’t be trusted right now. If you don’t come with me, I’m going without you.’
He would abandon them in this place, leave them to their fate. He didn’t need them slowing him down.
Warren started for the stairwell that lay beyond the dormitory, looking back briefly to check on the others. They followed him like frightened rabbits, like lambs to the slaughter. That’s how dangerous Compliance could be. He could be leading them into a trap for all they knew. He could have pretended to Max that he’d checked the floor and found nothing. His only reason for being in Arcis was to get information. Not to help Max or Jason. And he’d only used Jerome to get to the ninth floor. What a waste of time that had been because he’d come away empty-handed.
But Max and Jason had already seen people on this floor through the screens on the ninth floor, so he had to return with someone. To get out of Essention, Warren needed to earn both men’s trust.
He reached the exposed entrance and entered the area leading back to the stairwell. As the others followed, his determination to track down his parents and the place more important than him increased. All three fifth-floor participants were behind him as he jogged down the stairs.
He stopped at the top of the last set to see the stairwell ended one flight below at a door with the number two on it. Warren determined the only way out would be to cross the second floor walkway and access the elevator on Tower A. If the elevator wasn’t working, he might find stairs in the tower opposite this one. The elevator couldn’t be the only way out of this place.
Warren was about to move down the last set of stairs when the door below them opened. The female supervisor entered the stairwell, looking frazzled.
Her expression shifted to anger when she saw them. ‘Halt. What are you doing in here?’
The others gasped behind him. Warren thought fast. ‘There’s a problem on the ninth floor. The elevators aren’t working. We were told to use the stairs.’
The supervisor’s eyes shifted as if she was processing the information. She climbed the stairs until she was on the same level as they were.
‘It’s against protocol,’
she said, twisting her hands together. ‘I don’t understand. I can’t connect to the ninth floor. I don’t know what to do.’
‘I was just up there,’ said Warren. ‘Arcis said we should make our way outside where it’s safer.’ He went to move but the supervisor grabbed his arm.
‘Stay there until I can confirm that order.’ The supervisor pressed a finger to a spot above her ear, activating a tiny silver circle beneath her hair. ‘Please confirm the subjects may leave Arcis?’
There was no reply that Warren could hear.
She waited, getting more impatient and irritated. She repeated the request twice more. For a split second, Warren thought about asking the supervisor if she had the coordinates to the Beyond.
‘Please send your instructions.’ The supervisor’s voice shook. She still had an iron grip on Warren’s arm. ‘Your humble servant awaits your command, Quintus.’
Her impatience stoked Warren’s anxiety. This was his last chance to ask where his parents had gone.
Screw it.
‘Do you know the coordinates to the Beyond?’
The supervisor turned and gave him an icy stare.
‘What did you say?’
He shrank back from her glare and swallowed. ‘Nothing. I said nothing.’
In one fluid motion, she spun him around and looped one arm around his middle, locking both arms to his side. He struggled against her restraint, but she was as strong and unyielding as a machine.
He kicked out. ‘Let me go!’
‘I have a rebel in custody, Quintus. Please advise.’
Warren twisted and grunted, but the supervisor’s grip afforded him no room. A loud piercing noise almost deafened him. He was close enough to the supervisor to hear the feedback play through whatever device was attached to the side of her head. She loosened her grip and dropped to the floor. Warren stumbled as his foot caught on the edge of the step. He tumbled down the stairs sideways and landed at the bottom with a thud. The supervisor followed and he rolled out of the way before she could crush him.
