Lira's appearance shattered Ari's cocoon of safety. It was over.
Her name instilled pure terror in every March City citizen. So what was Lira, "the Dancer" and the second strongest User in the city, doing outside Ari's flat? Ari stared up at willowy Lira for several seconds, gobsmacked. Her stomach clenched. She wasn't prepared. Fully refreshed and rejuvenated after maintenance day, yes, there was no way she could lie her way out. Lira knew Ari had trespassed into Area Six and rescued Mina, blinded Cryo, the highest ranked User in March City, and got tangled in the rebellion that compromised the core of March City. Lira knew everything.
"H-hello." Ari swallowed and gave a grin. "What are you doing here?"
No, Lira didn't get vaccinated against the maintenance drugs. She wouldn't remember a thing after maintenance day, where students' memories were modified with whatever was decided by Central Administration, the mastermind of March City. The new memories would likely not include the kidnapping of Users, Kena the mad scientist's illicit experimentations to amplify their powers, the city's true nature as a toy for an outside power, and the riot involving almost the entire population, which almost got them all killed. As far as Lira was concerned, it was just another day.
Ari tried to rid her face of any guilt. Lira was calm and graceful as always, her hair perfectly straight and her cold grey-green eyes unblinking. She might not remember a thing, but that didn't stop goosebumps from rising on Ari's skin and her mouth going dry when she gazed at Ari steadily. Ari tried to keep her body language and face neutral. Lira had an uncanny ability to read through almost everything and predict people's reactions and movements, and the more a student tried to hide something, the more they would suffer before spilling the truth. Ari's heart slammed against her ribcage. Her mouth dried.
"I'm going to school, okay? You've chosen a bad day if you're here to give me trouble for skiving." Ari tried to sound cool and unaffected. Lira didn't bat an eyelid. She reached out a long arm and grabbed a handful of Ari's long-sleeved green hoodie. "Wha—hey!"
"Come with me," said Lira. Her tone was impossible to decipher, soft and melodic. Ari couldn't fight against her. For someone so slender, Lira had surprising great strength. Ari protested and received a laser glare, silencing her words in her throat. Mina, Ari's sister, hurried along, her face white, no doubt terrified Lira knew about the whole thing and was about to send Ari to her death.
Lira took Ari onto the ground in the lift in silence, and then to the teleporter. The streets stood empty, abandoned. The polished ground reflected the outline of buildings and street lights, with no traces of the riots that had taken place earlier. Switched off lights lined their paths at regular intervals. The faint hum of electricity reached Ari's ears. How many days had passed since the riot?
Lira squeezed into the cylindrical titanium structure, tugging Ari behind her with a steely clamp on Ari's wrist.
"What the heck are you doing, Lira?" Ari said, pulling a face. Lira faced forward; her stoic features reflected on the inside of the door. An undulant sound filled the air. Lights flashed on the side.
When the noises stopped, the doors slid open. Smooth grey marble ground stretched ahead with artificial dark green bushes set in delicate patterns along the edges. A large, multi-storey building stood at the top of a wide sprawling staircase. Green-tinted glass covered most of its exterior, through which intersecting sky bridges could be seen on the inside. The lights set above the front entrance stating 'Area One: Hospital' were turned off. Normally lifts glided up and down along the interior bridges, but today they stood stagnant, empty.
Lira ignored the rest of Ari's questions and just tugged her through the glass sliding doors. The air smelled of antiseptic and overly-filtered particles. Their footsteps echoed in a series of hollow noises against the large hall spanning at least a hundred metres left and right, and about ten storeys upwards. The lights overhead left the interior dimly lit, unusual as they were usually glaringly bright, and with a deadened feel. Normally the front desk would be stationed by receptionists and clerks of the hospital, but today they lay unmanned. Even the electric stairs stood still. It was as though all the students vanished and time stood still.
That thought made Ari's stomach flip. Just how many students were purged this time round? Surely not enough to make areas unable to function. That seemed impractical – and so immoral. March City had at least four hundred students when Rale, the conspiracist and editor of the gossip newspaper The Conspicuous Conspiracy, last showed her the student database. Ari hadn't seen a single other student so far.
Lira took Ari and Mina further and further into the depth of Area One, through several double steel doors that were usually locked or stated 'staff only'. Ari had never been there when she was healthy and functional, only ever as a battered patient, and she hadn't been conscious enough to take in her surroundings. Their pat-pat-pat of footsteps echoed down long sterile corridors. Overhead lights stayed turned off. Once the artificial external lights that shone through the green glass disappeared, Lira took out a thin pencil torch to light the rest of the way. Ari stared at it in surprise. Why didn't she just use her phone? It seemed very inconvenient to just have the one device for one function.
The corridor snaked until it turned into to a circular courtyard with an open top. White sunlight poured onto the fake green grass. Steel benches sat around the outside edge. Skylights set along the ring at the tops of the buildings were switched off. A ring of charred black sat in the middle, surrounding a large smooth rock. Its ugliness clashed with the glossy appearance of the garden.
Standing huddled were about a hundred students. A low-volume buzz filled the air. That died down when they spotted her.
"It's the Transformer!"
A cheer rippled through the crowd. Heart palpitating, Ari stared, a blush burning at a steady rate up her neck and into her face.
"What's going on?" she said aloud. She scanned the crowd, looking for an answer. To her relief, Shon, her Peacekeeper friend who'd rescued her from the abandoned research facilities in Area Six alongside Rale, waded through the crowd. "Shon!"
She rushed forward and hugged him in relief. He got the vaccine. He remembered what had happened. Shon hugged her back, awkwardly. When she broke off, a pink flush rose from his cheeks up to his curly light brown hair. He wasn't in his usual Peacekeeper cloak and badge and instead wore a jacket over t-shirt and jeans. Ari turned around. Lira discarded her sleek black cloak, appearing much younger in a plaid shirt and skinny jeans. The short sleeve of her shirt revealed a hint of severe scarring at the top of her shoulder. Long dark brown hair, parted down the middle, reached her elbows, as straight as the expression on her face. Ari turned back to Shon. Behind him, Rale crossed his arms, eyebrows raised in his usual smug manner.
"But... maintenance! How – what happened?"
"It was my idea," said Lira from behind, her voice impossible to read. Ari spun around, ogling at Lira in disbelief. Her?
"How...?" It dawned on Ari. "You took the vaccine?"
She nodded. Ari's jaw fell open. It was impossible, and yet Lira stood proud as day, staring at her with those intense grey-green eyes. Her lips were pressed ever so slightly together.
"We can talk about the whys and wherefores later. There's not much time." She swept past Ari. The students parted to allow her past. "Come with me, Ari."
Ari followed, at a loss for words. Standing at the far side were another group of Users.
"What are you doing?"
"We are getting out of March City." Lira's voice made the atmosphere drop by a few degrees. "Generators: I need you to blast at the Transformer. Ari: focus their energy at the second floor window up there."
Ari followed Lira's long, pointing arm. It was a nondescript one-way window that overlooked the garden, but by the serious look on her face, she was very specific about her target.
"Why that one?" Ari said, rolling up her sleeves. She caught the eyes of Fris, her red-haired best friend she'd mistakenly thought of as a traitor in the underground bunker during the terrorist attacks. Fris smiled with relief. Around her, the Users raised their arms, varying forms of energy — electricity, flames, magnetic, light — concentrating on their hands.
"That is one of the edges of March City. That—" Lira jerked her head over her shoulder at the charred remains in the middle. "—is the fuse that previously prevented damage being done to it. The generators here together managed to blow it up, but nobody's been able to breach that wall. We need a high enough blast of energy to destroy that barrier, which is where—"
"—I come in." Ari heaved a shuddering sigh and nodded. "You're asking for an awful lot. I can't suck in all these types of energy at once."
"I know how your gift works. They'll take it in turns: one type at a time. Store the energy until you're about to surge, and we should be able to break it down."
Ari opened and shut her mouth. Lira gave her an arctic stare.
"We don't have much time until Central Administration reboots. I sabotaged some of the cores in Area Ten during maintenance, but if our puppeteers are close enough, it may only be a matter of minutes before they realise what's happened and we'll revert back to the old days."
Hundreds of anxious eyes focused on Ari, whose throat closed a little. Swallowing, she nodded again.
She looked up at the window Lira pointed out. Flexing her neck left and right, she let out another sigh, and pointed the palms of her hands out at the group of generators.
"Okay. Go."
The electricity generators, including Fris, came first. Bolts of electricity crackled and leapt at her. Her palms tingled. Ari's blonde hair puffed out in its ponytail. The energy coursed through every muscle fibre, filling her with potential. She shivered, clinging onto the energy, against her normal response, which was converting it to another and emptying herself immediately.
The first group stepped back. The next shot flames at her. The heat blew loose strands of hair across her face and made her eyes water. Again, she sucked that energy in. The internal meter jumped up again. Her muscles itched to release, but she reined in the instinct.
The light beams filled her to the top. Squinting against the excess light that didn't get fine-tuned onto her, Ari gestured to Lira, indicating she was full. The energy saturated every cell in her body. Ari bloated, like a sponge that had spent too long in the water, and one gentle touch would result in a torrential flow.
"No, one more," Lira said in a steely voice.
You're kidding me, Ari thought, her stomach twisting in knots. The energy stored within her was practically oozing out of her eyeballs and pores.
"I'll sur—"
"Redirect the energy at the window when they give you more. It'll prolong the duration of your output."
"You're crazy!"
Lira paused just long enough for Ari to consider ripping out her own hairs. "I was one of the examiners in all your grand finals except for the year you fought against me. I know how to break down your gift. I made plans to extract you and our escape the moment I saw March City for what it was. You won't surge. Trust me."
Trust her. Lira was meticulous and had never made a mistake: that was her reputation. Bile perched on the edge of Ari's throat, but she grimaced and nodded, holding out one arm for the magnetism generators to hold and pointing her other at the target.
Her ears rang. Her eardrums throbbed and thumped with each heartbeat. If she opened her eyes, she was sure her entire body glowed. Energy rippled out of each cell and down her extended arm, pooling at her fingertip, and rocketed as a tiny, silvery arrow. Magnetic energy raced up her other arm, condensing to her core energy before reassembling and tearing out of her body again.
The tip of the energy arrow made contact with the window. Instead of shattering, the surface dipped inwards. White light shot off in all directions, following strange right-angled lines until the entire surface resembled a giant art piece made out of tiny squares.
Ari released the last of the energy with a grunt, her head light and entire body buzzing. Cold sweat covered her skin. Fris scooted under one arm and Shon the other, holding her up when her knees shook.
Before their very eyes, the outer wall of March City peeled away.
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