The Icers
The pain was real. The darkness around him was real. But none of that seemed to be real. He was confused and disoriented. A bright scene appeared over him. It was cold, really cold. Some girls showed up over the place he was in but they looked as bewildered as him. “Is he dead?”, “Wait another one already,?”, “it hasn’t even been a day”, “A boy?” voices from the crowd began overlapping, there were too many of them for him to keep up. “What the hell is happening?” a final voice spoke. He gasped for breath as the pain got worse, the words rang hollow in his mind. For some reason he felt like he needed to say something, so he said the only thing his mind seemed able to conjure, “Pandora ''. He fainted.
***
Two hours earlier Lily was checking the zone around the box. She was truly, deeply outraged at Dorcas, and she no longer knew exactly why. She was just mad. They had a rough fight and she was still upset. Lily knew that Cas and Marls were the leaders, but that didn’t give them the freedom to say or do whatever they wanted. Especially if they were talking about her job. Don’t get Lily wrong, Cas and Marls were two of her closest friends, they meant the world to her but they tended to make decisions about her job, a job neither of them had ever done, without even talking to her first. I mean who did they think they were telling her to reduce running hours? The girls were all managing fine and they were getting closer and closer by the day to finishing up the map.
She was the keeper of the runners. She had all the right to make decisions for the safety of her girls. A new Icer had arrived earlier that day and the redhead was really hoping that she would turn out to be a runner. She needed it, especially after the last attack of the Shades. Alice was seriously injured, and Lily needed another runner with her to help map the maze. She sighed trying to keep the frustration out of her voice as she finished checking the box.
She turned and began to walk away and moved towards the map room. I might as well get everything set up for when the runners return, she thought as she entered the room. As always Lily had reserved her off day to align with when a new girl was brought up, it had long been deemed her job to greet and show them around and the new Icer was no exception. She’d left the newbie in the ever-capable hands of Amelia.
As ever the map room was darkly lit, the only light originating from the gaps in the walls and roof, a table in the middle of the room took up two-thirds of the floor space, and on it was Lily’s greatest accomplishment, a map of the maze. A map that the runners believed to be almost perfect seeing it gave Lily hope, something there seemed to be a shortage of after the last attack.
***
The four runners who had been out today filled into the map room about an hour later, each beginning to work on the map. After a quick greeting and checking that everyone was uninjured, Lily filled out of the room and decided she might as well go and find the new Icer, and find out what she was like. Lily searched around the Spring for around five minutes before she saw the newbie and Hestia by the crops. She began to make her way over to them before she heard a familiar voice shout her name.
“Lils” it was Marlene. Lily took a moment to compose herself before turning around. “Gonna tell me how to do my job again?” She was still seething from earlier. Marlene paused for a second and Lily thought she almost looked guilty, “Look I just want to apologise okay? You know that me and Cas just want what's best for everyone and sometimes we get carried away and we didn't take your points into account and that’s on us.”
Lily paused for a moment, Marlene hardly ever apologised like this, normally it was quick and unemotional, but this was, well, new. “Thanks, sorry for snapping at you earlier too, it was uncalled for” Lily offered a weak smile and Marlene returned it. “I was just going to talk to the newest icer, wanna join me?” Lily offered up like a truce.
“Nah I gotta go find Dorcas, but let me know what she’s like alright?” Marlene began to jog away with a quick smile and wave. Lily smiled back before making her way over to Hestia and the Icer.
“How’s everything going? I hope Hestia’s treating ya well” Hestia gave Lily a playful glare before saying. “Yeah I think we’re good, she still doesn’t know her name yet but that’s expected so nothing to worry about.” Lily nodded
The newbie spoke up, “I was wondering if I could ask you something?”
“Of course, you can”
“Why am I here? Why are you all here? I mean what’s going on, I don't know who I am or where I was before that box. It’s like I know all these things but I don't know how? I'm probably not making sense, sorry.”
Lily smiled softly at the girl before replying, “No you make perfect sense, we’ve all been where you are. As for your first question, I don't know. None of us do, one day we were just here, around 20 of us, with that same knowing but not knowing that you're experiencing right now. All we know is someone put us here, and that each month we get another, as well as some new supplies to keep us ticking over.”
The girl nodded slowly before asking “So what do I do now? Now that I'm here, what is ‘here’ by the way?”
“This is what we call the Spring, it's where we were when we arrived and you see those walls?” Lily points to the walls that tower over the Spring that were covered in frost and almost seemed to never end. “Well behind them is what we call the Maze, there are doors on each of the four walls that open at sunrise and close at sunset, which is good cause after sunset is when the Shades come out. They-” “What are the Shades?” the new girl cut across Lily.
“They,” Lily continued, “live out in the maze, they’re these kinda bat-like creatures but bigger. They mainly dwell on the edges of the maze so only the runners who map the outer edges need to worry about them, or at least so we thought.” Lily muttered that last part under her breath but the newbie seemed to catch it.
“What do you mean so you thought?” Lily sighed, great she’d heard. “A couple days ago they attacked the Spring, in broad daylight, they’ve been active in the light hours before but they’ve never come anywhere near the spring. They killed one and injured Alice, she’s a runner.”
The new icer stood there shocked and scared. The redhead noticed her fear and quickly said “But I wouldn’t worry about that, it’s not happened since so I’m sure we’re fine.” She was of course lying about it being fine but her words calmed the girl so no harm done.
Hestia chose that moment to speak up, “And well if you’re wondering what you can do we have different jobs here, everyone contributes and we keep this place running. This building we’re in now is our greenhouse, it’s where we, you know, grow our crops which can be hard considering that fact the entire Spring is covered head to toe in snow all year round.” Before she could continue the newbie asked,
“What do you mean all year? Have you guys been here for a year? And you still haven't found a way out?”
Hestia looked over to Lily with an expression that said, ‘Should I tell her?’ Lily nodded.
“It’s been three years since the first group came up”
“What?!”
The new girl just stood there in shock for a moment, her eyes began to sweep around almost as if they were looking for something, maybe something to disprove what they had just told her.
“I know it's a lot to process, look let's get some food in ya and I’ll explain everything, alright?”
The girl nodded. Lily smiled and then led her over to what they called the mess hall.
Lily went over and got some food rations from the cooks, Amelia and Charity before leading the Icer to a table. As they ate Lily explained it all. What they knew of how they got here, about the bugs that they called the scutter bugs which seemed to monitor them. “They have a word on the side of them, WICKED, all capitals and it's the same on the side of our supply boxes.”
She told her about all the jobs they have here in the Spring and, to Lily's joy, the Icer immediately said she wanted to be a runner. “Well if that’s what you want then we can talk to Marlene and Dorcas about it. Dorcas is the one who runs this place, and Marlene is her girlfriend and second in command. Are you sure that's the job you want?”. The girl nodded. “Okay then, well we can go talk to them now about it.” They both finished up their food before clearing away. Lily led the other girl towards a building on the other side of the clearing.
***
Lily and the Icer entered the meeting shack, Lily called out, “Hey Cas? Marls? You here?” There was some quiet shuffling behind a door which Lily knew was just a storage closet before it abruptly opened and the two came crashing out.
Lily stifled a laugh behind her hand before commenting, “I see you two were being gay, in a closet, guys I thought you were past the whole being in the closest thing.”
Marlene glared at Lily before saying, “Well, because of your interruption, we didn't manage to make it as gay as I would've liked.” At that, Dorcas whacked the back of Marlene's head.
“Ignore her, she’s just sour. You must be our new arrival.” Dorcas offered her hand out to the icer who shook her hand whilst Dorcas continued. “My name's Dorcas and that idiot over there is my girlfriend, Marlene, now what can we do for you?” “Excuse me, I am not an idiot.” Marlene objected.
Both Dorcas and Lily turned to look at her, exasperated. “Fine, fine whatever,” Marlene mumbled before making her way over to one of the seats which littered round the room and seemed to form some sort of circle.
Before anyone else could speak, the new icer spoke up, “I wanna be a runner. Lily told me about them and I wanna help get-”
A loud alarm cut across the Icer before she could finish. An alarm that could only mean one thing.
It can’t be, no, surely not. Not yet.
Lily and Dorcas shared a look before immediately running out of the shack and towards the box leaving Marlene to deal with the very confused Icer.
As they ran Lily shouted, “They can’t have sent up another one right?”
Dorcas just shot her a look and picked up her pace.
As they got closer Lily could hear shouts of confusion coming from her fellow icers.
When they finally made it almost everyone was there, when they saw Dorcas they parted quickly down the middle to allow her through. Now that she was there Lily could hear what people were shouting.
“What’s going on?”
“There’s someone in there!”
“What the fuck?”
“Are they breathing? I don’t think they're breathing?”
“Is that a boy?”
Lily’s head snapped around to see who had said that, surely it wasn't true.
She began to push her way through the crowd, and after about a minute she could finally see what was happening. Dorcas was crouched down in the box next to-
Oh my god, it can’t be.
“Cas, please tell me I'm seeing things.” Dorcas looked up at her before shaking her head slightly. All of a sudden the boy was gasping for air.
Marlene suddenly appeared at Lily's side as she said, “What the hell is happening?” the boy's eyes opened before abruptly shutting again, he went so still that Lily would’ve thought him dead if he hadn’t whispered one word.
“Pandora.”