Conundrum

/kəˈnəndrəm/

noun

a confusing and difficult problem or question

I awoke again to no bell ringing or girls running to their bathroom. No boys laughing at the stray curls in their faces as they ran. I awoke to utter silence, which both did and did not please me. It was a change I would probably never get used to.

I got ready quickly and walked into the bathroom to let the warm water wash all the stress off my body. It was surprising they had warm water, yet the lab almost never had warm water. This change was welcomed as I breathe the steam in and out before exiting and changing into my new clothes provided.

I open the door and step out into the dome. The events of last night were still fresh in my mind as I saw Luke speaking with the boys I had met the previous day. I ducked and tried to hide to no avail when Calum called me over.

"Hey Lis," he yelled to me. I breathed out a sigh of aggravation toward myself before standing and slowly making my way to them.

"Hey," I mumbled when I finally reach them. Michael's face held a smug but knowing look. I cowered under his penetrating gaze and fixated my eyes on the floor.

"I see you all know each other," the blonde said, motioning from his apparent friends to me.

"Yea, we met her yesterday," Calum spoke up with enthusiasm. "Riley likes her too."

The teen, whose name I had yet to be told, looked shocked but kept a guarded expression on his face. "Good because you are going to keep an eye on her for a day," he smugly said, looking for any sign of argument on the three other boy's faces. There was none to be seen, so he gave a slight nod. "I'm going to discuss some issues with Ben." With that he turned his heel to leave, but before he takes a step, he faced me and pulled me close, his lips near my ear.

I gasped and tried to squirm out of his grasp, but his hold was as strong as iron, making me give up only a few seconds later.

"If I catch you anywhere near that safe then I will personally come and put you in an isolation room," he practically spat into my ear, venom lacing his words.

"Is that a threat or a promise?" I asked him sassily. Though the other boys are facing away, I can hear their chuckles at my remark.

"Test me and you'll find out sweetheart," he muttered before releasing me.

He turned his heel to walk away, this time not turning back, and took a step forward. I, however, stop him mid step, wrapping a hand around his bicep and pulling him back.

"I don't think it's fair that you can call me sweetheart and I don't know your name quiffie," I whispered in his ear from behind him.

He let out a light laugh and tugged his arm away.

"That's for another time sweetheart."

And like that, he was walking down the hallway. His attitude honestly ticked me off, but in some weird way it intrigued me. Like the door painted another color, hiding a secret, he was a person, different from the others, hiding many secrets. And I was determined to find them out, and their reasoning.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, making my body jerk forward from the sudden contact, and turned to find Michael behind me.

"I'm going to take Lissa somewhere. Don't worry about her," he said over his shoulder to the boys, his arm wrapped around my shoulder despite my protests and leading me away.

When we get a fair amount of distance between us and the other boys, Michael's arm unraveled from around me. I looked up to his six foot stature, confused as to why he did this.

"I doubt you're dumb enough to run, and if you are, then I can simply radio, as you call him, quiffie and get a red alert out for you," he stated simply, shrugging his shoulders and walking beside me with his hands stuffing into his pockets.

"You're probably the only one that thinks I have brains in this place," I remarked, letting out a slight chuckle. They were all treating me as if I would be dumb enough to go against the rules, and always took precautions around me.

"It's not that," he assured me. "They are just scared of what you know. They have only seen this place mostly, and they want to make sure you can't tell the enemy about our 'fort.'"

I shook my head at their reasoning. It would be foolish to think that I could get out of here. Especially with all these people walking around me. They could probably stop me from leaving before I reached the treeline.

"I agree," he said, smiling down at me. "You were talking out loud," he told me when I look up at him with a confused expression.

"Sorry," I mumbled under my breath. "I have a bad habit of that."

"Most people have those weird habits. It's admitting that it's a habit that they can't do," he wisely stated.

My mind was blown with his amount of knowledge and wisdom. It was like he was a leader or something. He just had that natural instinct. That alone raised another question in my mind. Why wasn't he a leader? Clearly, he would be a better leader than that quaff haired boy.

"What are we doing?" I asked curiously. He was leading me down a long hallway that I have never seen before, but it looked oddly familiar.

"Nowhere really. I just figured that I could answer your questions, besides what's quiffie's name. Can't answer that," he shot down my question before it was even asked.

"You're a mind reader aren't you?" I asked him, slightly in awe from his knowledge of me in so little time.

"No, you just seem like the type to care about that type of stuff. Like I wouldn't be bothered by not knowing his name." He shrugged it off, continuing to walk beside me.

I shook my head at him and laughed lightly before we fell into a silence. My mind swirled with questions to ask, but I was trying to decide which to ask first.

"What were you?" I blurted out not meaning to sound intrusive of him.

"What?" he asked, obviously not expecting me to ask such a question.

"Before you came here, what were you?" I repeated, going more in depth on my originally question.

His eyes widened, but he relaxed a minute later and looked ahead of him, slightly shaking his head. "Wasn't expecting that," he started, but still answered truthfully, "but I was a brain though."

"You were a brain? But you seem like a people person," I said, confused as to why he was put in the brain category.

"My brother and I were both people persons, but he had a bit more than I did," he explained. His hands shoved themselves further into his jean pockets.

"How'd you get out?" I asked softly.

His whole body tensed up, but then he calmed down and released the tension.

"The ducts," he stated simply, obviously not willing to elaborate.

"The what?" I asked incredulously. No one had ever mentioned the ducts to us. Then again, they never spoke of the Raiders either. It was an unspoken rule to never mention anything Raider related unless it was about how we thought there was one in the lab or how they were hypocrites deserving death.

"Where do you think the air you breathed came from?" he asked, looking down at me like I'm crazy.

"You mean, the vents-"

"Went out to the real world," he told me, shaking his head at my stupidity. "Maybe this is why they think you're dumb," he suggested.

"Hey!" I protested, hitting his arm lightly.

"Just saying," Michael laughed and jokingly rubbed his arm where I hit him, pretending it hurt.

Silence overtook our conversation until I opened my mouth to ask one last question.

"What happened to your twin? He was on my computer monitor I think. With my sis-"

"He was put in the robotic system a while ago," he cut me off, silencing my question.

"Then who was on the computer screen?" I asked after a moment of quietness overtook our conversation.

His shoulders tensed again, but this time they didn't relax. He opened his mouth to say something, but instead is greeted with a blaring alarm emitting from the speakers. His already tense body somehow gained rigidness. The look in his eyes told me that this is not normal, and I was face to face with the scariest flame sparking in his eye. Fear.

He feared something and if he was scared, I think I had the right to freak. I looked up at him once again as his hand wrapped around mine and started tugging me down the hallway towards the stairwell on the other side.

"What's going on?" I asked him, almost too scared to function, let alone ask.

"Those are the air raid alarms," he explained, tugging me with greater forcefullness.

My body froze and I stood rigid. He stops moving and looks back at me, concern filling his brown irises.

"Liss-" he began.

"Go," I told him, getting out of his grip. "I need to find him."

Without further explanation, Michael knew who I was talking about and shook his head, disagreeing with my choice.

"I can't let you do that Lissa," he pleaded, his voice broken. He knew why I wanted to go back, it was his friend, but he also knew that it was his job to get me down to the shelter. His hand grabbed my wrist tightly and began pulling mine toward him, dragging me to the descending staircase.

"Did I ask for your permission?" I spat in his face, tugging my delicate wrist from his rough grasp.

"Did I give you a choice?" he fired back, trying to grab my wrist again but I was too quick. My feet were taking me toward the main halls before I could register what was happening.

"Get down to the bunker!" I shouted back at him.

My body continued to travel down the hallway, into the black darkness of the colony's hall. His face was etched into my brain as I ran. It was filled with contempt, terror, concern, but in the mix was a bit of admiration. I was not sure if it was because I was resisting his force or if it was because I was going back to save his friend, who I only had known for a few days, but it was there.

My heart rate sped up as I heard a voice come over the intercom. It wasn't like the comforting messages we always got in the lab. No, this one was a warning, and it scared me to my core.

"The bomb shelter doors will be closing in five minutes," the slightly robotic, male voice announced.

No countdown followed to remind me of the amount of time I had, nor did I think another reminder would air and inform me when I only had minutes to get to the shelter. I was on my own.

All that could fill my brain with were the possibilities, and not all of them were pleasant. As I ran, I imagined the members finding my body in the ruble or me going back to the shelter without the blonde boy running on my side. I shook my head and continued searching, taking in the amount of people running the opposite direction as me, toward the stairwell I just came from. A familiar sense of deja vu swept over me of when the boy I'm currently looking for broke into the lab.

I kept running, despite seeing the children crying in strangers arms as they were carried to the safe area. I could only wonder where their family was, or where their mothers were. But my speed increased when I stopped thinking of their well being and reminded myself to be on the look out for the blue eyed, quiff blonde haired boy. But through this, one thought remained constant in my brain.

I better get Quiffie's name for this. If I was risking my life to save him, I expected to know his name.

Edited: 16 October 2016