Chapter Text
She began her new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air.
The platform beneath her jolted upwards, sending her lurching to the left, crashing harshly against the metal fencing. Her fingers curled around the edge, desperately trying to stay upright. Wherever she was, whatever kind of makeshift elevator she was in, she did know one thing.
She was going up.
After what seemed like hours, but in reality was barely a couple of minutes, the room grinded to a halt, metal on metal screaming. She stayed where she was, breathing heavily, frozen in place.
Then a light came on.
Below her, on the ground, were ten or so bodies, curled up on the ground- whether they were sleeping or dead, the girl didn’t want to find out. She didn’t know who they were, couldn’t put names to faces, despite the nagging feeling that she’d met them all before. Whoever they were, and however she knew them, she couldn’t remember.
In fact, she couldn’t remember anything.
The one thing that stuck out was a name- Maxine. Was it hers? Her name? It felt familiar, but so distant, as though it didn’t quite belong to her.
Surrounding her, were four walls of chain-link fencing, a layer of stone behind it. This wasn’t a room, or an elevator- this was a cage.
And the cage was opening.
The ceiling seemed to push apart, mechanical gears clicking as it slid open. Light streamed in- bright sunlight, replacing the artificial glow of the single bulb in the corner. Looking up, lifting a hand to shield her eyes, she deemed the wall too tall, far taller than her. She’d never climb out alone
A shuffling sound came from behind her, and she turned fast enough to make herself dizzy, finding a boy around the age of 13. He sat up, confusion and a little fear lacing his features.
“You alright?” The girl asked, watching the boy cautiously as he pulled himself to his feet. She trusted him, really, vague recognition trying to cloud her judgement. The boy nodded, joining her by the wall, carefully navigating the maze of bodies on his way over, looking above at the bright blue sky, just as puzzled as she was.
“Let’s get out of here,” she continued, holding two hands out to lift him out. He shook his head, mimicking her, motioning for her to climb out with his help.
“You look stronger than me- you can pull me out,” he argued, clearly better at thinking ahead than she was. She nodded, a foot on his hand, before pushing up, gripping onto the top of the box.
She flung her legs over, moving to kneel beside the edge, hands lowered for him to grab. He clutched them tightly, letting himself be pulled up to the top, sitting beside her.
Just as she thought things couldn’t get any stranger, her surroundings hit her at full force. Around her, stood four, towering walls, made of stone and covered in thick vines of ivy. The rest was greenery- grass, trees, a lake, and a couple of wooden features, something resembling a hut and a barn.
Their new home gave cage a whole new meaning.
“What is this place?” The boy asked from behind her, sounding both shocked and scared. The other girl shook her head slowly, eyes trained upwards on the top of the walls.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think those people in there are dead?” Will’s harsh question barely startled Max, who was honestly numb to the absurdity of the day she was having. Glancing back at the box for reference, she shook her head.
“No. They’re probably just unconscious. Why would they send two living kids and some dead bodies to.. Wherever we are.” Will only nodded, letting the question lingering on their lips go by unsaid- why would someone send two kids to this place anyway?
They lapsed into silence for a few moments, before the girl turned. “My name’s Max,” she supplied, the name slipping off of her tongue. Where the shortening came from, she didn’t know, but it felt right, a lot more familiar than Maxine did, anyway.
“I’m Will,” the boy replied.
“I know.”
Will did a double take, staring at her with wide eyes and an agape mouth. “You remember? I mean- what?” He seemed just as surprised as she was to have known that, clearly experiencing the same amnesia.
“I don’t remember you. But… I don’t know.” She sat down on a fallen tree branch, arms resting on her knees. “I just feel like I know you. It’s like I know things, but I don’t. Trust me- I don’t even know what I look like.”
Will nodded slowly, taking in the explanation. However absurd it sounded, it seemed to resemble what he was feeling, as he didn’t feel the need to argue. Then again, Max wouldn’t have dubbed him as the arguing type. “You’ve got red hair and blue eyes- really blue eyes,” he started, eyes scanning her face. “You look really short and you’re covered in freckles.”
Max made an offended noise, jumping to her feet. “Stand up,” she ordered, making a beckoning motion with her hand, despite having just sat down. He did as she was told, and she stood close to him, a hand on her head. She moved said hand forward until it hit the stop of Will’s head, comparing their heights.
“I’m not short- we’re the same height!” She protested, crossing her arms. Will raised an eyebrow at her.
“I never said I wasn’t short too,” he pointed out, sitting back down on the log, “I was just saying that you were.”
“Whatever,” Max huffed, flopping down beside him, facing him again, doing the same. “You have dark brown eyes and brown hair- and a really bad haircut. I mean, that doesn’t suit you at all .”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” He exclaimed indignantly. Max raised an eyebrow at him.
“You look like the hairdresser used a bowl as a template,” she said- Will shoved her lightly, smile on his lips.
Yeah, Max concluded, whoever they were before, they definitely knew each other.
-=+=-
It was late evening when the others had woken up and joined them, finding their way out of the box and into their new, walled off home. Some of them were in shock, wandering around in some form of dissociated state, leaving those of them most unaffected to hold their own meeting.
The group consisted of Max, Will, and a few of the older kids. The oldest, Steve, they’d deemed to be around 18, the other three a year or so younger. There was Nancy, one of the three girls, that had come up, Max and Barb making up the other two, Jonathan, a quiet boy who didn’t have much to say, and Billy, who for some reason, despised Max with his entire being.
In the short amount of time they’d been there, they’d taken inventory of the place. The cage elevator- that the group had started calling ‘The Box’- had come with various crates of seeds, material, and some tools. The worst part of their findings was that it was all survival gear, intending for them to be self-sufficient. That definitely pointed against them getting out of there anytime soon, but on the bright side, at least they wouldn’t die instantly either.
The crates themselves were something suspicious. They were wooden, nothing out of the ordinary at a first glance, until you saw the letters ‘W.I.C.K.E.D’ printed on the sides of them. None of them had managed to remember what it meant, or figure out what it stood for. Some people, Billy, in particular, had argued that it was a warning, that they needed to get out and not trust the things that had been put in there with them. Max disagreed.
“Shouldn’t we focus on… I don’t know, survival? Rather than getting out?” Max suggested. Billy scoffed harshly.
“So you want to stay here?” He accused, narrowing his eyes at her.
“No! No, I just think-”
He cut her off immediately, glaring daggers at her. “Good. If you don’t have anything helpful to say, you might as well fuck off and wander round with the other airheads.”
Max glared back, the only thing holding her back from ripping his head off was Will’s hand on hers, grounding her to the present. God, was she glad that he was there- she didn’t need to be labelled as a murderer on their first day.
“Max is right,” Steve spoke up eventually, having taken on the role of the leader, “we can’t find a way out if we’re dying of hunger. Shelter looks like it’s taken care of, but we need food and water.”
“There’s a barn,” Will spoke up, “there’s animals in there- and we can try growing food? We got seeds in the crates. And there’s the lake for water, we just need to figure out how to filter it.”
“Growing food? Why’re you talking like there’s no way out already?” Billy challenged- Will quietened, less argumentative than Max was. Against her better judgment, Max answered for him.
“We looked. We looked everywhere . The ivy doesn’t go to the top, and the wall doesn’t have any gaps. There’s weaknesses, almost like doors on each side, but they don’t move, and it didn’t do anything when we tried carving more out with a rock. We’re trapped here- might as well try not to die while we’re at it.”
Billy shook his head, rising to his feet and stalking off, muttering to himself about finding his own fucking way out . Steve just sighed, exasperated.
“Tomorrow we sort things out. We need food, water, jobs, all things like that. Anyone who doesn’t comply… well, we’ll deal with that when it comes down to it,” Steve concluded.
“Why tomorrow? Shouldn’t we start now? Why are we wasting time?” Max questioned, clearly anxious about the situation, despite how much she tried to hide it. There was only so much emotion a thirteen year old could hide.
“Give everyone the night to grieve,” Steve said, sympathetic but uncompromising.
No one argued with him.