Behind the Walls. NOVEL By Claire Darcy.

1. Classic YA Dystopian, Pal.

ACE.

I watched in agitated silence as Josh scratched away at the metal, his knife like nails on a chalkboard. One more strike to that wretched tally. It made me want to punch something.

"Five hundred and... Seventy-four," he muttered solemnly, shoving his knife into the pocket of his faded jeans, "That's a year and a half, almost exactly."

I nodded slowly, trying to relax and readjust my position on the top bunk. I was sick of these quarters already, but it beat staying with those prissy girls from before.

"We will get out of here- that much I promise you," I said, staring out the window. Escape, that was all that mattered. Escape, at any cost.

Rain poured down the grey concrete buildings outside, pooling on the floor and turning the dust to mud, thick enough to hide spilt blood - should the need arise. Smog hung in the air above, tinted eerily green. Outside, groups of pathetic adolescences streamed two and fro from buildings, lingered in corners, or stared dejectedly at the sky.

Work the Sheds, eat your portion, work some more, then sleep. Every day was the same, sweating under the unblinking eye of the faceless Enigma Council.

This drudgery was all the Council's doing; the aftermath of the coup they'd pulled on the old government system. For apparently no reason other than needing an army of sweatshop labourers, the Council had made it so that every teenager from thirteen to nineteen lived here, worked here, and as far as we knew, would die here. It was something straight out of the dystopian stories we all grew up reading - a painful cliché we all imagined but never believed in. Not until it was too late.

"Just accept it, Ace. We're never getting out of here," Josh groaned, climbing into the bunk below mine. His whiny defeat was a challenge. I rolled over and hung my head down the side, staring at him intently.

"I've got a plan," I smiled, ignoring what he'd said. I'd spent my life making plans. Mostly because I was being hunted, but that wasn't something I was willing to share.

"Tell me about it in the morning," he sighed, closing his eyes. I swung myself back onto my bed and frowned up at the dirty ceiling. I deserved better than this.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"I believe you've got a plan, I just don't believe it'll work," he said tiredly.

"It will work," I whispered, "It has to."

Again, I turned and stared out the window, twitching with the expectancy of something, something big and terrible that was about to take place - that I was about to orchestrate.

This was our concrete jungle - our grey, cement desert. This was our living hell.

This was Camp Three.

...

My eyes snapped open as the bell sounded the next day. I leapt off the bunk and stretched my legs. Already the air was heavy with humidity. Cold nights, sweltering days: that was our regular climate, manufactured solely to make our lives suck, no doubt.

"Wake up," I hissed, dragging Josh out of his bed and onto the floor. Josh rubbed his wrist where I'd grabbed him.

"You know, you are tough for a girl," he muttered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. I crossed my arms and smirked.

"Get it right- I'm tough, full-stop."

Josh jumped to his feet and led the way outside. "True that," he mused.

I pushed past him and began leading the way to Shed 5. The dust beneath our feet was worn and compacted from following the same path each and every day. Dry now, despite being liquid mud before.
I looked around me to see lines of other teenagers streaming out of their quarters and heading wearily off in different directions. All the time I had the same haunting feeling; the feeling of a twisted deja vu as we reenacted some kind of Nazi concentration camp- the kind I'd learnt about so many years before when the schools were still around.