Luca came back over and addressed the table. “We’re off. I’ll catch you both later.” Then to Everly he said, “Let’s go.”
She waved at Caleb and Anker as she stood. “Nice meeting you,” she said to the latter.
He glanced up at her, eyes skirting away from hers rather than latching on. “Sure,” he said, with a smile that seemed strangely forced. “You, too.”
Once out of the dining hall, Luca plunged them back into the endless maze of halls, with Everly following on his tail. The only good thing to come out of this mess was that Luca was showing Everly the building—finally, if slowly, she was getting some form of answers. “So,” she said, “what’s first?”
Luca was silent for a beat. Then he said, “First, Sophia.”
The desk lady, Everly thought. What were they doing with her?
Everly followed Luca until they reached a door that didn’t have a handle. She jumped back as the handle-less door swung open and a young girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, stepped out with a plate in her hand, bedecked with eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns. Despite the food Everly had just eaten, her stomach growled loudly.
“You’re late,” the girl said to Luca.
“You should be more flexible, Katie,” he said, offering her a sideways grin as he took the plate out of her hands. The girl huffed, then spun back through the swinging door.
Luca started to walk again, Everly fast on his heels. “Who was she?”
“Katie? Just another resident.”
“And the food?”
His eyes jumped down to the plate of food in his hands, as though he had forgotten he was holding it. He frowned. “You’ll see.”
With that, Luca spun right, pushing open a door that blended in with the wall. Everly followed him and realized that it was the same door they had exited from the day before, when he had helped her sneak out of the building, and that they were now in the lobby.
Luca cantered over to the large desk in the middle of the lobby, plate of food balanced in his hand. “Lovely morning, isn’t it Sophia?” The woman didn’t shift in the slightest at their entrance.
“I love what you’ve done with your hair today—impeccably styled, as always.”
She didn’t look at Luca, nor did she acknowledge the plate of food in front of her.
Everly glanced at Luca, expecting to see humor lighting his eyes, but instead she was surprised to see a softer expression. Something wistful, contemplative. Maybe even a little sad. Everly frowned, watching him watch Sophia, but before she could say anything he was walking away, back over to the invisible door.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a flurry of mindless activity. Everly helped Luca as he swept halls, wiped dining tables, cleaned a large stack of dirty dishes, and folded a considerable amount of laundered gray clothes. She took in everything around her as they worked. There were so many residents, so many of those residents being children. And everyone seemed to go along with everything they were asked to do.
What was keeping them in line? Did this Warden really hold that much power over them?
After a few hours of chores had passed, Luca led Everly to a new hall. Halfway down, she was surprised to find a door colored differently than the others—a tarnished bronze, stark against the green of the wall it was set into. Luca pulled out his keys, pausing briefly before unlocking the door.
“I want to show you something,” he said. “We’re not really supposed to be here, but I figured it was something you should know about. So just—try not to draw attention to yourself. Okay?”
Everly nodded quickly, her heart racing.
Beyond the door, Everly’s breath caught as she took in the wide, circular space. The room was huge, with a ceiling that extended up in a bowl shape, giving Everly the sensation of being caught in a colorful snow globe. Besides the walls, which were bright and colorful, a large round carpet full of pictures covered the floor, similar to what might be found in a preschool or kindergarten classroom. It resembled a room pulled clear out of an elementary school. Only, there were no children. The room was empty.
“We call this room the dome,” Luca said, but before Everly could ask what that meant, he was walking again, across the wide space.
More doors lined the perimeter of the room, each painted its own bright color. Luca approached a light green one, stopping to enter a code into a panel to the side. Everly couldn’t help but wonder how Luca was able to have so much access in the building—what made him so special, out of all the other residents?
A beep and a click sounded as the door unlocked for them. Noise erupted around them as they crossed the threshold. Children. Inside, Everly saw so many children, all under the age of ten or so, and they all roamed about the room, laughing and crying and playing.
Everly discerned little to no order in the room. At first, she didn’t see any adults, only a raging array of screaming kids. A moment later, though, she was startled by a blaring whistle. The kids immediately fell silent, forming a series of lines throughout the space. The older children helped the younger, and within seconds the chaos had transformed into an orderly assembly. Everly was not sure what she had just witnessed.
With the kids lined up, the adults were easier to spot, and Everly wondered how she had missed them in the first place. She saw five in total, all dressed in dark-blue scrubs that contrasted against the gray the kids wore. All five blue-clad adults were tall and bulky with awkward, stilted movements that made it seem like they weren’t meant to wear the frames they possessed. None of them spoke, but one of the adults jutted his head to the side, and the kids began to file through the same door she and Luca had used. She watched as they fanned out into the round room, separating into groups that headed toward the other colored doors within. Each adult headed up a line, unlocking the key code for the doors and leading the kids into their separate rooms. A small group of kids remained behind in the circular room, what looked to be the oldest group of kids that had been assembled. There were about fifteen of them, and one person dressed in blue among them. Runners, Everly remembered. Richard had called the people who worked for the building runners.
This one—the runner—was a woman with light-brown skin and thick, curly hair. Everly didn’t think she was much older than herself—late twenties, at most. As soon as the other children and runners had filed out of the round room, the woman slumped back against a wall, ignoring the children around her.
Luca, looking more comfortable, walked farther into the room. “This is where the younger kids go during the day,” he explained to Everly. “They do lessons, or tests, throughout most of the day. What you just saw was their free time, then they are split up. This lot here,” he gestured at the kids who stood talking around them, “they’re on their last leg in the educational phase of the building. Soon, they’ll be doing work like the rest of us. That, and . . .” Luca trailed off, face paling slightly, and cleared his throat. “They won’t be coddled anymore, at any rate.”
Everly looked around the room. “So, aren’t they supposed to be learning then, if this is the educational phase?”
“Yeah, that’s more of a formality,” Luca said. “Hardly any of the runners care all that much.” He nodded his head at the woman who was slouched against the wall and grinned at her. “That’s Julia,” he whispered to Everly. “Well, that’s what I call her. The runners don’t really have names. Or, at least, not ones they like to share.”
Everly nodded, taking it all in. As she watched, one of the younger boys broke away from the group and came over to them. He seemed small for his age, with dark wavy hair and bright blue, inquisitive eyes. He beamed at Luca, who bumped his fist.
“Luca! What are you doing here? I thought you had to work.”
“I do, little man, I’m just taking a break.” He tilted his head in Everly’s direction. “Showing my friend here around the place.” Luca leaned forward, mock whispering to the boy. “She’s new here—doesn’t know anything. How embarrassing, right?”
The boy laughed lightly, then looked at Everly with wide, curious eyes. “Hi,” he said to her with a smile, sticking out a small hand. “I’m Michael.”
She couldn’t help but grin back at him. “Everly,” she said, taking his hand in her own. When their palms touched, she felt a jolt go through her that made her drop his hand and take a step back. It had felt like lightning piercing her skin, like static electricity in her veins, like . . .
No. No, it hadn’t felt like anything, it had felt like the skin of a small hand in her hand, nothing more.
But it had also felt like memories.
