Shayne’s Unfortunate Choice

The water was already hot.

Danielle held her hand under the tap, warming the palm, letting the water spill onto her wrist. There was no handle to turn; if she'd pretended she'd missed it, she hadn't switched anything on.

She removed her hand, and the water ceased.

A strip of light opened in the wall across the room, showing her clothes folded for her in her size. She closed the panel, but a neighbouring one slid open, revealing food arranged on a tray. The house had already decided hunger was next.

Danielle locked the panel while the room held its breath.

The only sound came from the ceiling: a soft pulse that rose and fell with patience, as there were no locks on the door, no holes in the walls, and no seams except the ones the house showed her. Too much, Danielle thought.

Danielle went to the door; it opened as she got there.

The hallway had too much of a curve to it, bowing away from her in both directions. People passed, in the same clean clothes the house provided for them. Nobody ran. Nobpdu raised a voice. But eyes dodged glances, as if a long stare wanted something.

Children slept in the middle of the house under hanging lights.

There were dozens of them, in loose circles on a floor that swelled under each child like a shallow bowl. There were no blankets, no pillows, and not a grown-up in sight. The hanging lights made their faces look blue-white.

A girl rolled over, which made the overhead light flare.

Danielle moved closer before she could stop herself.

One of the boys opened his eyes halfway and looked at her, not with fear but with the weary, tired patience of someone who had already been awakened too many times. And then he fell asleep again. And he slept, once again.

Danielle spun too fast. Danielle’s arm tightened up as a hand touched it.

A boy beside her smiled as if they'd met somewhere ordinary, waiting for coffee, or standing in line at a bank.

“First day,” he said.

Danielle stepped back.

He thumped his chest. "Shayne.

She nodded once; to refuse to answer seemed dangerous.

Shayne looked down at the kids. For the first time, his smile faltered.

“They're still there,” he said. How long?" He studied the sleeping children, then glared at her. They did not wake up.

Danielle knew people did not give answers there, so she said nothing.

She took the opportunity and left for her pod to sleep. Overnight, her room changed.

By morning, the bed had sunk into a cradle, more than anything for an adult body. The drywall, softer now, unsettled her, but Danielle did not reach out to confirm. By her bedside, a glass shape had sprung from the floor, high enough for her to stand in and tapered at the top like a teardrop. She circled it only once. Just once, it opened before she had a chance to decide whether she would touch it.

She heard somebody laugh somewhere down the hall. Then she heard another voice, louder and almost gay, followed by a pause, then applause that built to a crescendo and faded too soon.

Danielle boarded the capsule. The glass closed around her, and her throat tightened as if a snake were wrapped around her body and focused on her neck. Heat crept up her legs and settled inside her chest. It was uncomfortable and painful, and it felt untrustworthy. She stood for minutes, gasping for breath, and the house listened.

The glass opened again just enough for a small white light to hover across her door.

Shayne noticed it at dinner. “You got one,” he said.

Danielle looked up from her plate, which she hardly touched. "But what, exactly, did I get?"

A smile plastered his face, but he stopped before it reached his eyes.

She quit questioning him. She saw the rooms, with their surges of beach behind their doors, that could have been from anywhere. Inside the house, a woman sat for hours. A man ate every meal the house served until his chair knew his shape far too well. Every afternoon, a different man cried in the arms of a woman who could have passed for his daughter or his mom, depending on how the light fell around her face.

Danielle never saw what happened behind those doors when they were closed forever.

People disappeared without a peep. The house wasn't talking; the house was silent. The others never asked what happened or where the kid was. As more lights came on over more doors, the children slept under their bluish-white beams.

By the sixth day, Shayne had Danielle on the path. And it was also on the sixth day that Shayne fell behind her. Once he realized he fell behind, he never got close enough to touch her. It would have been simpler to name it.

Instead, he hung back in the room and appeared in reflections, doorways, and in the polished curve of the pod glass the moment Danielle turned too fast. Which meant, when she turned, he did, too.

When she reached her room, he met her in the doorway, as if they had a date.

"You don't talk much," he said.

Danielle said nothing. His eyes flickered as he looked to the pod; once he focused on what was in it, it altered his face.

She slammed the door in his face. The pod opened straight away.

A drawer opened from the wall beside her. Inside were a pair of pristine knives, wrapped in black foam, for her. Danielle gazed at them until the first knock sounded at her door.

Then came another.

“Danielle?”

The pod remained open, and the room was excessively hot.

She took the knives and climbed inside; the glass closed behind her.

Soft snorts came from the other side.

Shayne said, “You think I can’t get inside, too?”

He touched the glass-top surface with his hand. The seam popped out on him.

Danielle didn't move as Shayne got inside, one shoulder first, and he reached her. The glass locked behind him, and his smile died.

The heat still radiated.

And for one horrible moment, Danielle heard the wet click of his swallows. Then she heard herself. By morning, the second light burned above her door. Nobody asked where Shayne went.

In the middle room, the children slept more deeply than they had before. One of them smiled. A dream. Danielle resented that it meant she had done something right.

The beeping came later, or earlier, or somewhere beyond the time the house would let her keep.

At first, Danielle thought the sound was coming from inside the pod. The sound, thinner than the pulse of the house one and too regular to be the heartbeat of whatever was alive, made the walls shake.

The children's lights faded, and the glass opened, and a gust of cold air hit her face hard enough to make her gasp.

Someone distant called her name.

"Pressure's dropping," a different voice said urgently.

Arms moved in unison around the room as the pressure must be restored.

Danielle pushed something away from her chest, feeling it tug at her. She watched the pod tighten, the walls caved in, and the house let out a long, low sigh through all its vents as if it had learned to grieve.

She heard a rip. Then silence. She did not know which she feared more.

White lights shone into Danielle's eyes.

A masked doctor peered at her from above. His face, hazy at the edges to Danielle, but she knew he looked at a screen, then back at her with the cautious smile people have when they have decided terror can wait.

“The valve held,” he said. “The surgery was a success.”

Danielle lifted her head and looked around.

She saw beds in rows in the same room with many lights overhead, and lots of wool blankets covered the people in those beds, all asleep; the machines beeped beside each one. Tiny green light bulbs flickered over all of the beds.

Then another one. And one more person opened an eye after the doctor shone the light into the patient's eyes.

“Doc, thank goodness. I know you said that anesthesia could affect the mind, but you brought me back just in time. I think somebody wanted to kill me in there. I didn’t feel safe.”

The person in the next bed jerked upright and turned in her direction. “Danielle, is that you?”

Her eyes diverted from the doctor to Shayne. “Shayne? Oh my God, it was you. I have never met you before today. But I knew you inside my anesthesia dream.”

“I was there, too.” He clicked his tongue, looking stunned as he shifted his gaze from her to the doctor. “How can that be, doc?”

The doctor shrugged. “Strange things happen with anesthesia. Maybe you two were having a mental, telepathic moment together?”

“Could be,” Shayne agreed.

“I’ll be around tomorrow to see you both again in the morning. I have to go. Have a good night.”

He left, and the two looked at each other like they had unfinished business. Danielle felt something sharp beneath her backside. She saw Shayne get up and move toward her. She reached beneath her and pulled the knives out. She held them out between her and Shayne.

Shayne did not see them in his rush to finish her off. He plunged himself onto the knives and impaled himself. Danielle screamed, and nurses came to see what the commotion was about.

They rushed Shayne, with the knives still inside him, into surgery. Danielle knew she had seconds to either stay and face trial or run and be free.

Before anyone returned to monitor her, she…