The Circle

3.The Maze

As I stand at the front of the line I stare up at Isaac. He looks straight at me or rather through me as his gaze isn't focused on me directly, it's as if I don't even get the respect of his eye contact. Obnoxious idiot. Frankly I don't like him, not one bit. Not even a smidgen, the slight minuscule amount of attraction I felt was hypothetically lost as I gaze at a heartless robot. I make a promise to myself to not let myself get that way if I make it out alive.

He turns and leaves without any sort of acknowledgment to us newbies and we all follow behind numbly. We follow Isaac down the corridor and to the stairs which I can see go down a long way.

"How far down is it?" I ask.

Isaac turns around slowly and arches a brow at my question as if I dare speak to him without permission.

"22 flights" he answers before descending without a single reservation.

We follow him down and after 3 flights I become out of breath and slow down to a more steady pace, everyone behind me seems to follow suit and we find ourselves left behind as Isaac powers on without breaking a sweat.

"If I don't see you running down these stairs I will personally make you run them everyday, all day till you can't walk no more." I hear shouted up.

That's enough encouragement for me as I jump up and race down the stairs like a crazy person with hell on her heels.

When I finally reach the bottom with Isaac standing there with a disapproving look on his face I open my mouth and before I know it I'm speaking again unwarranted.

"You can't expect us to be perfect soldiers in 5 minutes. All we've known has just been taken away from us and we're now being herded like a bunch of cows for slaughter. We're totally clueless to what's about to happen to us and we have no choice. So why don't you dig real deep and find that slight bit of humanity you have inside you and give us a break ok?" I tell him before going over to Kayla and sitting with her.

"You're my hero" she tells me.

"Are you nuts? You totally disrespected him again and now he's probably gonna kill you, or us" someone tells me.

"Relax he was probably gonna kill you first anyway" I tell him "I saw that blanket you tried hiding in your backpack".

Everyone laughs and he shoves away from the crowd.

"You" I hear and the crowd goes deathly silent.

I turn to find Isaac pointing to me. I point back to myself and mouth me? he nods, I take a breath and walk over preparing for the onslaught of verbal and probably physical punishment.

"Name?" He asks.

"Kira" I tell him.

"Well not only have you disrespected me twice-"

"Twice? What no I count once" I interrupt.

"Ok three times you've now disrespected me, and you'll be punished but you also make a good point. You lot are clueless to the ways of being a sentinel so I'm going to tell you about it, once and only this once so listen up" he tells us before taking a step back and leaning against the wall.

"Our job is to protect the colony. Protect it from itself and others beyond the wall. We do this with an honoured sacrifice as The Circle fights to find a cure. We do this and we do this proudly. We do not ask questions, we do not interfere with MK-175 and we especially do not go rogue. Do you understand?" He asks everyone but his piercing gaze holds my eye. We all murmur yes sir and pick up our stuff before following him through a set of doors and into a large room that holds a maze type cage in the air. I gaze at it and see people running through it and dodging others in black. There's ropes and slides, ladders and holes but the most frightening thing is that the 'others in black' are armed. With knives.