I stand on the ledge of the Hive with the sun scorching the back of my neck, no other building in sight. The water below is very black.


Block C3, Floor 091
The irregular beeping of my communicator has made my head throb. The corridor is brighter than the lower floors - too bright for eyes accustomed to the dimness of underwater rooms. Dehydration makes my vision blur as I sink back against the wall and hold my breath. Sometimes, if I pretend that I'm a diver from Before, I can hold it for a long time. My lungs start to protest but I keep holding until I feel my pulse slow. Feel the sluggish way my heart pumps the blood around my body. If I close my eyes and really focus I can tune out the hum and buzz of the Hive and drown in the thudding of my heartbeats. It's an easy way to escape. Once I held my breath for so long I passed out and came round to my Grace's face, half anxious half angry, hovering above me. That was the first time I ended up at MedCent, before they got suspicious. I ignore the protestations of my body and count to ten slowly, until the floor falls away and I float to the irregular beats of my heart. I used to have dreams like this, of hanging suspended in space. Not for years though. Now it's just fragments; odds and ends from Before. The view from my kitchen window. A man running towards me across a field. Waves crashing over the roof. The gleam of a rifle in Grace's hand. The spaces between are filled with tossing and turning, trying to ignore the dryness in my mouth and the breathing of the other women in the dormitory.

I'm so lightheaded I know that in a few moments I will lose consciousness. It's dangerous, but I forget how addictive this escape is. Grace will kill me.

'Hey. Hey!'

The shouting permeates the fog in my head. Something cold slaps my face and I gasp, flooding my lungs with oxygen. Someone has me by the upper arm and is applying steady pressure. I blink rapidly and her face swims into focus, thinner than I remember and framed by the blue hood of an Inter, but unmistakeably Ellen. She's frowning, glancing back down the corridor to see if anyone is nearby.

'Beth? What are you doing up here?'

I try to answer but my tongue is swollen and heavy. I'll be for it now. She has no choice but to report me.

'Are you on duty?'

I nod and the movement makes the walls spin. I reach for my canteen but it's empty. There's never enough for a sixteen-hour shift.

'Get up. Now!'

She forces me upright just as a group comes around the corner. Men. Dressed in the brown robes of the Nobodies and led by an Apex who nods at Ellen and ignores me. We watch their bodies shuffling behind her, graceless and awkward. At least we don't have to see their faces or hear their voices since the last law was passed. To think that they used to live amongst us as people. As superiors. Not that any female asked them to be. It was the men who assumed superiority. The men who decided that physical strength equalled power for no real reason other than that it allowed them to dominate. To take what they wanted without consequence. To write and pass laws dictating how women should be treated; how we ought to conduct ourselves; how we should procreate, work, dress, and behave, whilst they took freedom as a birthright and blamed us for their unhappiness and failures. We never asked for our value to be based on what we could offer them.

I repress a shudder as they move out of sight. Thank God they're under control. Not that there is a god. Another thing they made up to control us. I try to stand by myself, leaning heavily against the blue wall, but my knees buckle and my stomach churns.

'I'm going for faint.'

'Christ. Hang on.' She slides a card over a disk on the wall and pushes me through the nearest door. I forget to question why she isn't hauling me to MedCent to report me as I'm hit with a refreshing draft of cold air. Her room is cool and quiet and smells very faintly of lemons. There must be some expensive air conditioning system in place up here. Better than we get on the lower floors.

'Here.' She hands me a bottle of water. 'Drink it slowly.'

That's the first thing they taught us about dehydration. I take a small sip. It has a chemical, lemony taste, and the dizziness stops instantly. It's nothing like the water we get on the lower floors.

'What have you added?'

'You know I can't answer that.'

'Sorry.' I know I should leave before I'm missed but it's been so long since I was in a furnished room and longer still since I've been this high up, above the waterline. Everything is brilliantly clean. The countertops gleam, blue blinds hang precisely to the bottom of the large window, the walls are the same spotless blue as the corridor outside. I try not to think of how she and the other Inters afford these luxuries. There are personal touches here and there; the large oil paintings, the arrangement of the Keep Vigilant magnets on the fridge, the untidy way her books are scattered around the room. I scan the titles of those closest but I’m disappointed; nothing new or non-regulation.

'Nosey, aren't you.' She's watching me closely, scrutinising my face, my green worker's clothes, the thin layer of dirt on my skin.

'Why haven't you reported me?'

She ignores the question and reaches out a hand, gently touching the skin below my eyes. 'You need sleep. Do you want to stay for a bit?'
I don't know how much authority she has as an Inter but I don't think it's enough to allow me in here, let alone to leave my post. Her fingers are cool. I remember the way she used to make me feel Before, even with Grace. At the thought, I move my head away stiffly.

'I can't.'

'That wasn't the question.'

'I need to go. Thank you for the water.'

'I've got news bulletins.' Her eyes are gleaming. She knows that we don't get news on the lower floors. Reluctantly, I sit back down.

'Why were the men up here? They're not allowed in the buildings.'

'The Nobodies.' She corrects me gently but there's a contemptuous twist to her lips. 'They're talking about a treaty. Equality.'

'What's wrong with that?'

'What do you mean?'

I frown. 'Things can go back to normal.'

'Normal?'

'Equality. Co-existance.'

'You're joking.'

'Don't patronise me.'

'Then don't be naive. Equality was never normal. Look at the history of the sexes. We've never co-existed as equals. For years men thought the solution to their problems lay in controlling women. In making them undesirable by covering them up. Then by stripping and objectifying them. Then by attempting to empower them. They called it freedom. It wasn't freedom, it was appeasement. We didn't need to be told we could be empowered. We didn't need to be told that we could be strong but also feminine. That we could be as sexually liberated or conservative as we liked. We had no rights. Not in practice. They only pretended we could have it all.'

I try to protest but she cuts across me.

'How can we think of going back? We can't go back. Ever. Old society was structured on men's embedded sense of entitlement towards women's bodies and attention. They relied on their ability to dominate public and private spheres to purposely make women feel unsafe to the point that they questioned themselves and their rights, not only to their own bodies, but also to walk freely in the world. They educated us so that they could blame us. But no one ever thought of reversing it all. Of course they didn't - most of the people in power were men to whom our femininity was a threat.'

'It's not a threat.'

She gives me a look I can’t quite place. 'Nor is it a strength. It's just a characteristic. We're all humans. Our identity shouldn't be based on the fact that we can reproduce or invoke desire or multi-task or look beautiful. But men couldn't see that. They thought the solution lay in limiting and controlling us. If the flood hadn't come when it did-'

'It was an accident-'

'It was solution. Women survived because we were ready. The only men who survived were kept for a purpose.'

'It didn't have to become to this.'

'Maybe, if the world had been different. If men didn't need to put themselves inside women to have sex. That's where the imbalance started; with the need to occupy space in another person's body to feel validated; with the desire to dominate.'

'Isn't that just what we've done? Dominate?'

'Listen.' A coldness has crept into her voice and I understand for the first time why they chose her to be an Inter. 'It had to be done to restore the balance. To leave gendered history behind us. Don't you see? We will raise the New Children away from all this. We won't dress or treat them differently from one another, or assign them roles at birth based on physical form. We won't tell them what it means to be man or woman because the terms 'men' and 'women' will mean nothing. They will only know what it means to be a human. Gender will not exist. We are the creators of a new age. The transition. If the Apex go back now we'll revolt.'
Her eyes are bright with passion. I notice that the wine has stained her mouth as red as the lipstick she used to wear. To stop myself staring I glance around room and catch sight of the clock. It's hands are at ten.

'Shit.' I fumble for my Communicator. Eight missed calls. Frantically I try to return them but my signal is at zero. I've missed lockdown. I try to keep my voice steady but it's shaking with anger.
'You planned this. Waited to report me so you could add this to my offences and make the charges worse, didn't you.'

'What did you expect?'

'How much will this earn you? Enough for an additional room?'

'Safety. They're already questioning my loyalty. The resistance cannot fail before it's started.'

My eyes dart around the room for a way out. She'll have called the Apex by now and I'll be taken away, tried, and expelled from the Hive. They'll make me swim, if the rumours are true, and there's no guarantee I would make it to another Hive. They say that you relax just before you drown. That once you start to swallow water your body breathes easily and you don't feel any pain. They're wrong. You vomit up water as reflex as your larynx spasms until you run out of oxygen and pass out. I jump as the lights flicker. The two minute warning.

'It's for the good of the New Children.' She’s so close that I can count the tiny lines in the corners of her eyes and the pulse at her neck under the blue blouse. 'Anyone who doesn't agree is a threat. I'm sorry.'

'Sorry?'

'It's for the future. We need a generation who can grow up without the burden of the past. Who can finally be equal.'

The second flicker. One minute to PowerDown.

'Grace-'

'Will be told the outcome of your hearing. No doubt she'll be upset but rash behaviour will not be tolerated.'

'I want-

The lights go off, plunging us into darkness.


The Apex behind me clears her throat. It's time. I take a deep breath. Hold it in.
Jump.