I slammed my palms against the cold glass wall that separated us, but they didn't even flinch.
"Mom!" I roared. "Dad!"
They didn't look up. No matter what I did, they didn't look up from their work. The white lab was cold and unwelcoming but they seemed at home in it. They didn't know what was coming, it was just like any other day.
I banged my palms on the glass again, my heart thrashing with panic, but they couldn't hear me. They could never hear me.
A blue light started flashing above their heads and they both turned abruptly to stare at it. My mom dropped the vial she was holding and it smashed into a thousand tiny pieces by her feet.
"Mom!" I screamed. Tears were running down my cheeks. "Dad!" My throat was raw as sandpaper, but I kept screaming and hammering on the glass, desperate for them to listen, to run.
Mom grabbed my dad's hand. Their eyes met and the love they held for each other shone in their gaze. They knew what was coming for them but they gave their final moments to each other.
“No!" I yelled. "Please, run...please.” I sobbed as the too familiar scene played out, begging for it not to be true.
Dad pulled my mom into his arms, burying his face in her hair. Their fingers dug into each other's clothes and they held on so tightly it must have hurt.
I screamed again, agony pouring through me as the inevitable happened.
The flames dove from the ceiling in a wave. They washed over my parents, kissing their skin and wrapping them in tendrils of orange flame. I lost sight of them as they were devoured by the inferno. There was only fire, burning and my screams.
***
I woke with a jolt and gulped down a lungful of air as panic gripped me. My heart was pounding and real tears stained my cheeks. That nightmare had haunted my dreams for too long but the grief of it never lessened.
I twisted my fingers through my sheets and pressed my head back into the pillow as I closed my eyes again. My breathing slowed as reality closed in and I tried to get back to sleep.
I rolled over but light pressed against my eyelids as the panels on the walls slowly illuminated. They were designed to give the illusion of windows and reflected what was going on in the sky far, far above. Apparently today was a very grey day. Which was pretty much the same as it had been all month. Repetitive. Dull. Bleugh. Just like my life.
The idea was to give residents the feeling that we weren't enclosed by layers and layers of stone, metal and human flesh. It didn't make me feel that way. It felt like someone had decided to take up most of my wall space with stupid light boxes that forced me to wake up at an unnatural hour. But maybe that was just me. Maybe everyone else in this city didn’t mind that the Guardians did the thinking for them. Why make a decision when someone else could make it for you? Oh yeah, because I had a personality, dipshits. Gah, sometimes I just wanted to break free of this place and make my own rules.
"Good morning Maya. The time is now six thirty," a mechanical female voice spoke, breaking the silence.
I groaned and threw an arm over my eyes. Six thirty still counts as the middle of the night as far as I'm concerned, you robotic early-rising bitch.
When my parents were alive, we had a huge apartment on level one sixty two. We even had one real window, though it only looked at other buildings. After they died, I was relocated to a tiny apartment on level forty. The Guardians had wanted me to live with foster parents higher up. I’d told them where they could stick that idea. Sometimes I regretted that choice though. I’d chosen independence on a lower floor where people looked at me like I was basically a Dweller. But anything had to be better than sharing a home with some prissy top floor family who had sunbeams shining out of their asses. Right?
The TV flickered to life and I pulled a pillow over my head. Why won’t the city let me sleep today, dammit?
The news caster's voice filled the room but I tried my best to block it out.
"...population is reaching such a high that more talks to extend The Wall are underway, in order to create desperately needed new housing. An area outside The Wall on the south side is being checked for air and soil quality and, if the assessment goes well, the construction could begin soon.
Anti-extension groups are calling for population controls to be enforced rather than merely recommended, with compulsory sterilisation to be given to everyone after their first child if they live below level one hundred and after their second child if they live above. This measure is already in place for people who carry any genetic deficiencies. The discussions will start officially in two days time and the term for deliberation on this topic has been set at one month.
In other news, there have been thrilling scenes in this week's Lawless Trials. Andre Ferez has entered into the eighty second trial of his lifer sentence for killing his neighbour three years ago. If he successfully survives six more trials he will be the longest surviving lifer since the infamous Thomas Peters-"
I flicked the TV off as I opened my eyes and pushed the pillow away. I really didn't fancy waking up to shots of the Lawless Trials searing into my brain. Andre Ferez was slowly becoming a celebrity just because he was freakishly good at killing people. I wasn't about to join his fan club. Even though I had checked out his six pack two seconds before he’d slayed a dude in yesterday’s roundup. Like, only for half a blink, and only before he’d started chopping. But still, that was definitely going in Maya’s least proud moments box in the back of my brain.
When The Wall went up seventy six years ago, it quickly became clear to the City Guardians that there wasn't room to contain criminals within a conventional prison. They would have been a drain on the city resources. So, as a kind of twisted solution to the problem and a discouragement to crime, the Lawless Trials were created. Criminals were given sentences in an amount of trials they competed in rather than time spent in prison. Pretty sick and definitely not my cup of tea.
Murderers and rapists received lifer sentences which simply meant that they kept fighting until they were killed in a trial, their motivation to continue being little more than self preservation. A burglar might get a sentence of ten trials after which, if they survived, they could rejoin the population safe inside Harbour City.
It was often shown in sickening detail on the TV which was supposed to serve as a constant reminder to everyone of what awaited
criminals. In reality, it had become a perverse sport with people placing bets on the survival of individuals. Hence the pseudo-celebrity status of Andre Ferez.
I understood it. I was even in support of it. I just didn't like to watch uncensored footage of people trying their hardest to kill each other in every thinkable way whilst I was eating my breakfast. I’d once been eating cheerios while watching a man’s head get cleaved off. My favourite cereal had been ruined for me for life. How sad was that?
I clambered out of bed and pulled the release catch beneath it with a sigh then pushed as the bed rotated up and over until it fitted snugly against the wall and gave me some measure of floor space.
Yawning, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and crossed my apartment in three steps which delivered me neatly into my tiny bathroom.
The phone rang as I was getting out of the shower and I glanced at the name on the display as I answered it.
"Taylor - hey." I didn’t know why I checked really, no one else would be calling me at seven in the morning. Thinking about it, no one else ever called. But I didn’t mind that. Taylor was the only person in the world who I cared about calling.
"Hey Maya, are you up?" Taylor's irritatingly cheery voice chimed at me through the speaker. If I was the moon, Taylor was the sun by comparison. The only thing that made me shine was him.
“No," I replied through another yawn.
The shower had helped but I wasn't in a good mood. The nightmare hung heavily on me like it always did. It was a recurring bitch of a dream which just so happened to be my worst memory in living history too. Not that it was real exactly. I hadn’t been there so I couldn’t actually remember it, but my brain had stitched together the images of what I’d been told about it and made that horrifying reel to replay in my head night after night. The scars left on my heart by the loss of my parents felt like fresh wounds again and I drew in a breath as tears pricked my eyes and tried to break through the carefully woven mask I always wore.
“Well you won't want to hear the news then." I swear I could hear him grinning down the phone at me and it helped to distract me from my thoughts.
“No," I replied again to tease him. I ran a towel through my hair and wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Okay, I'll just have to go outside without you then."
I paused, the towel hanging limp in my hand as my heart did somersaults in my chest.
“Outside? As in outside The Wall?" He was winding me up, I knew it, but my stomach flipped over all the same. I’d always wanted to go outside. To see a world that wasn't contained within concrete and steel.
"Yeah. It was on the news earlier. The city needs environmental chemists to carry out soil and air checks for contaminants and they need a team of inferior science students like us to do the leg work. I just happen to know a pretty important environmental chemist-"