The Defiant

Two, Three and I sat on the floor in silence, watching Four tinker with the panel in the wall next to the door, speaking quickly as she worked.

“Apparently whatever phenomenon caused our collective amnesia had no effect on our technical skills or mental capacities. We understand the concept of language and can thankfully still communicate. We retain our previous skills, obviously, as I can still understand what’s going on in the wiring of this door. Or at least I would if it hadn’t been constructed by some idiot with the IQ of a domesticated hamster,” she muttered grumpily in her soft Irish brogue, using her tiny hands to cross seemingly random wires within the door’s mechanism.

“So you remember how to work this sort of thing, but you don’t remember where or when you learned?” Two asked.

“Aye. It appears that we were only wiped of our personal and experiential memories. As to why, I have no idea.”

As soon as she had gotten some answers from us, Four had walked right over to the door and pried off the cover of the panel with the help of Two and I. She’d quickly disabled the electrocution function and searched the doors with her hands for any kind of hidden switch. Four had needed Three for the top of the doors because she was the tallest of the group. Four was easily the smallest, I estimated less than five feet tall. I myself was about five foot five, as near as I could tell.

Having found nothing on the door, Four returned to the panel, where she’d been for the last ten minutes.

Cursing impressively under her breath, Four severed a wire with her nail and turned to me, clouds of freckles scrunching on her white face as she frowned.

“I don’t think we’re meant to be out of here until the others wake up. None of this is working, which means there are no controls on this side, and that’s impossible for a functioning door that can be opened from both sides.”

“Wait, what does that mean?” Two asked.

“It’s locked,” Three said exasperatedly.

“So we’re stuck in here?” I asked.

“Apparently, although I assume that if someone went through all this trouble to abduct us all and wipe our memories, they’re not just going to let us rot in here,” Four pointed out.

“Unless we’re just here for ransom or something, and they’ll let us die if the ransom doesn’t get paid,” Two suggested.

“But then why would they erase our memories? It doesn’t add up,” said Three, cracking her knuckles one at a time. Pop. Pop. Pop.

She was almost done when Four turned around and said, “Oh, please continue. I do so love that sound.”

Three looked Four right in the eyes and popped her final finger, then cracked her neck loudly, daring Four to challenge her. I saw Four’s left hand tighten into a fist, but she turned back to the door without reacting. Three smiled smugly, but fell silent, having run out of joints to crack.

“Hello?” The four of us whipped around in surprise at the sound of a clipped British accent. Standing half inside the pod on the wall opposite of the door was a straight-nosed, strong-jawed blond boy. “What’s going on here?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but was interrupted by Two, who recapped the entire situation as we knew it in one quick breath. I watched the new arrival as Two spoke, oddly unsettled to see that he showed no surprise or fear at the news.

The tall blond boy, who I supposed was now called Five, nodded pensively and took his place on the floor between Two and I.

I didn’t like Five. I just got a bad feeling from him. He’d sat down with us just like Three had done, but he didn’t ask any questions apart from his first. This was immediately suspicious. What kind of person wakes up not knowing who they are, surrounded by strangers, and doesn’t ask any questions?

Five, evidently. He also seemed to feel entitled to order us around because he was the oldest. At least, I assumed he was the oldest, as he appeared around seventeen or eighteen. Three and I were a bit younger, probably seventeen, and Four was by far the youngest, most likely fourteen or even thirteen. Two, I put at about fifteen, though I wasn’t quite certain.

Five immediately began to boss us around, beginning with Four, who I had already guessed would not take kindly to such a treatment. I was proved correct when Five told Four to continue work on the door, which she’d been doing anyway. Naturally, after he told her to continue, she stopped.

“What makes you think you can order me around, pretty boy?” she’d said grumpily, which I was beginning to realize was her default emotion. She’d then stood there stubbornly for several minutes with arms crossed until Five had retracted his order.

Immediately after Four restarted her work on the door, Six appeared.

None of us noticed him at first. He melted from his pod, silent as a shadow, and simply stood there, not speaking, waiting and watching.

Two was the first to notice.

“Hey!” he said, surprised. Three, Five, and I spun around. Four was totally absorbed and didn’t even appear to notice.

Six remained silent, regarding us curiously before beginning to gesture quickly and smoothly with his hands.

“He says hello, and he’s asking what’s going on and who we are and— Whoa, hold on, slow down,” Three said, holding up her own hands in a placating gesture to him.

We all turned to stare at her.

“What?” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘what?’” I said incredulously. “You speak sign language?!”

“Clearly,” Three said, looking rather surprised, like she hadn’t realized she was translating Six’s motions into words.

“Do—you—read—lips?” asked Two slowly, articulating every syllable.

Six made more gestures.

“He says he can hear, but not speak,” Three translated.

Six began to motion again, hands moving in a fluid dance around his head and chest. Three responded in English, and as she spoke, answering Six’s questions about the situation, I watched Six curiously, wishing I could understand his words for myself.

He was very tall, taller than the rest of us, and far broader as well, with enormous, wide shoulders and well-muscled arms. His skin was a smooth shade of dark brown, much darker than Three’s; nearly pure black.

It was hard to place his age. His size made me think he was older than I, but his face was almost childlike, with wide-set brown eyes and rounded cheeks. He could have been anywhere from fifteen to nineteen years of age. There was really no way of telling, as it wasn’t like he would know, what with our amnesia.

Three and Six continued to converse. Two, Five, and I stood around awkwardly for a moment before I sat down, trying not to watch the last pod and wondering who might come out.

I had started to doubt whether the final pod would even open when at last it did, expelling the final member of our makeshift group.

She stumbled from the pod, shielding her eyes from the light of the room. She was unbelievably tall, even taller than Five (though not quite as tall as the alpine Six), slender and gangly like a baby giraffe, with long waves of chocolate brown hair falling down her back.

The newcomer uncovered her eyes after a moment, and stared at us. I quickly stood, followed by the rest, including Four, who had given up working on the door a few minutes ago.

Seven was approximately my age, with the tan skin and freckles of a person who spent a lot of time outdoors, a cute button nose, and huge, staring brown eyes. She had the deer-in-headlights look of a person who had suddenly found themselves in a startling situation.

“Who—” she began.

Three cut her question off immediately. “Okay. That’s One. Two. I’m Three. That’s Four and Five and Six. Six can’t talk but I’ll translate. You’re Seven. We don’t know who we are or why we’re here. And the door won’t open, but we’re guessing it will now that you’re awake. Got it?”

“Uh—yeah,” she said after a moment, abnormally large eyes still boggling at us. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I felt as if she was staring mostly at me.

“Are you sure? You look kind of—” Two started.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Well, as fine as I can be, not knowing who I am. And you guys don’t know either, right?”

We all shook our heads.

“Do you know how long we’ve been in the pods?” Seven asked.

“No,” I answered. “I was the first to wake up, and the others followed at fairly regular intervals of ten to twenty minutes, except for you. We waited like an hour for you.”

“Well, sorry I was late,” she said jokingly. “What are we waiting for, then?”

“The door should be opening any time now that you’re awake,” Four said, turning to the doors in question.

“Speaking of…” Three said as a tiny spark emanated from the control panel by the door. The huge metal slabs separated without a sound.

The seven of us approached the now-open door with caution. The area beyond it stretched into unknowable darkness. A semicircle of faint blue illumination spread into what looked like a hallway of some kind before it dissipated into the shadows.

“Should we go?” Three translated for Six.

“What else would we do? There’s nothing for us here,” Four snapped, gesturing behind us into the octagonal room. She stepped forward into the gloom.

As soon as her bare foot hit the floor of the hallway, lights flared to life, practically blinding us with instant white brilliance. Until now, I hadn’t realized how dark it had been in the pod room. I blinked my tearing eyes and followed Four into the hall.

The rest of our group fell in behind me, heading out into the unknown.

The hallway was as simple as it was possible to be. The walls were white and free of ornamentation; the floor was alabaster tile. The stark illumination came from lighted squares set into the ceiling, which made me rather feel like I was in an interrogation room.

“I have a bad feeling about this place. Something is off here,” Two said from the back of the group.

“No duh. We got kidnapped, genius,” Four said, in front of me.

Two fell silent, but I could tell he was still thinking about it. We continued on.

We’d been walking for a long time with no end in sight when the trapdoor appeared.

Well, it didn’t appear, exactly, and I wouldn’t call it a trapdoor. Really, the floor just vanished beneath us, and we plunged into a dark pit.