THE REST OF THE day dragged on slowly. The minute hand moved its way around the clock as if it were trudging through mud. I ate dinner alone, aware of the whispers behind my back, before I retired for bed, earlier than usual. It was only eight, four hours before midnight.

I quietly slipped under the covers, careful not to wake Isaac. Sleep was evasive, though, and I found myself too busy with thoughts that buzzed like bees in my mind.
The first was a thought that I had entertained for many months now: the deadliness of the beautiful complex we were kept in. At first glance, it looked like something straight out of a fairytale. The complex was pristine; the facilities were spotless. It must have been the only edifice for miles and miles, embedded in the heart of a desert like a hidden gem. The regal aura was only heightened by sand that stretched towards the horizon in every direction—sand that was so still and so beautiful that, from the windows, it looked timeless, never out of place, not even for a second. The place was, to many, what could have been a microcosm of Heaven. And once, I might have even agreed.

But I knew better. There were no princesses and princes. The banquet halls were often occupied, much like in a castle, but the food served was watery gruel and stale bread, not savory platters and delicacies. There was no laughter, and no happy endings.
Inside the walls and behind locked doors—intended to keep us in—it was black and lifeless, the stone cold, often slick with blood. The passageways were engulfed with clandestine shadows that flickered and seduced like a scorpion’s tail, ready to lash out and take you under at any time.
It was there, in arcane rooms where there was no electricity and no light, save that of the moon or the sun, that the Elites prepared for war. A war that they ignorantly trained for, even though survival was predetermined, cast by two hands: mine and Kierra’s.

The Elites, I scoffed. It was a pretty name, especially for what we really were: puppets, chess pieces—literally—ensnared in a game darker and bigger than we could ever imagine.

It was worse than a maze because there was no way out, no matter how many walls you broke down or how many lives you took. It was worse than psychological warfare because it was psychological warfare, only on a scale greater than you could ever imagine as you sit with running water and your loved ones laughing beside you.

And it was worse than the most gripping of nightmares and all the fear and helplessness that accompanied it because the game was real; it didn’t fade away when the lights turned on, or when you opened your eyes. It was tangible and all-consuming, especially on nights when you could never wash away the blood on your hands, even when you’d scrubbed them with acid and scraped your palms raw. The game was endless.

And I was the queen. I led the pawns, the knights, the bishops, the rooks—I led them, maneuvered them on the board, decided who would be taken, and who would remain, all because I knew better. Knowledge was a weapon in this game—a double-edged sword, one that protected and put the ones I loved in danger. I knew secrets, little pieces of the grand puzzle; and yet it had never mattered the slightest. In the end, they knew more. They knew everything, and they had not only I, but also my eight-year-old brother, caught in their spider’s web.

I am the queen. It was an unspoken mantra in my mind that gave me strength and confidence in my darkest hours. And yet, as I stared at the ceiling in my unit, my brother’s head pillowed against my arm, little beams of moonlight playing across the walls like fragments of hope, I could not help but think. I couldn’t help but think that I was no different than the pawn, or the knight I had taken earlier today, and that I had known this for a long time now. I’d simply danced around the fact in circles of denial.

Because what was power, if I was still enslaved to another piece? The king—he was faceless. Whether he was handsome, old, young, I did not, and would probably never know. He attended the games with a white mask that hid his face and a robe that otherwise covered the rest of his body. But nonetheless, my limbs were fused to strings that he moved against my will. Without needing to speak even a word or lift even a finger, I was controlled by his hand, his desires; everything revolved around his being—his protection on the board, his satisfaction.

The clock struck a quarter to midnight. I held my brother closer instinctively, breathing in his familiar scent and relishing in the way that his chest rose and fell with such ease. He was the only thing that kept me anchored to humanity—and my only memory from before I found myself here, locked in the complex. And it was rare moments like these, when there was no one but the two of us, that I felt like I was human again.

The puppet strings snapped. The chess board fell away, and the blood seemed to disappear. I sighed and kissed his forehead, and I could almost forget.

Almost.

The clock struck again, incessant and unable to be ignored this time. Isaac stirred, though his eyes were alert only an instant afterwards. “It’s time already?”

“Yeah,” I said, squeezing his shoulder, exhaling jaggedly. “Sorry, Izz.”

“Are you nervous?”

“No, of course not,” I said—whether to comfort him, or to comfort myself, I did not know. “I won last time, remember?”

Isaac looked up at me with his doe-eyes, the light hitting the round, full contours of his face and italicizing the peachy fuzz at the nape of his neck. “I remember,” he said.

Of course he remembered; the moment still felt like yesterday. We had all thought the end of the first game would mean the end. It hadn’t; they’d simply executed the first queen—her name had been Merlette—along with the rest of her army. The next day, they brought in Kierra, and all the other fallen pieces had been replaced, on both sides. And the game resumed. 

“I’m still scared,” said Isaac. A foul stench met my nose at that instance, and I realized that he had wet his pants. Not caring, I pulled him into a tight embrace, the beginnings of tears forming.

“I love you, Isaac. I won’t ever let them get to you, okay? Trust me,” I said, reaching for a new pair of pants in the drawer. Slowly, I pulled him out of bed and helped him put his legs through the holes.

“I just want to go home,” Isaac pleaded.
He always said this—even more so nowadays—but I didn’t even know what home was anymore. I only remembered fleeting memories of a small suburban house and a green park, but even those memories were faded, blurry.

“Soon, Isaac,” I said finally. “I’m still
trying to find a way.”

I grabbed our robes, pulling mine on and handing Isaac’s his, and we hurried out the front door, his small feet tapping against the linoleum. Once in the corridor, I stood away from the rest of the pieces as they filed into their place, waiting until the hallway was empty before I knelt before my brother, handing him two small earplugs.

“Don’t listen, and don’t look,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “No peeking, okay?”

Isaac nodded, putting them in. Nowadays there was something almost exasperated about the action, as if he thought it was a pointless gesture. And it probably was; no matter how hard I tried to protect him from all the violence and tragedy, he was still a piece, wedged in the very center of the war we waged each day and each night. 

“Let’s go, Bianca,” Isaac said, motioning towards the doors. “It’s nearly midnight.”

“You go on first,” I said, patting his head.
He wrinkled his little button-shaped nose distastefully. “Bianca—”

“I won’t be late,” I said, smiling tersely. “I promise.” He looked at me unsurely: being late to the game was a violation of the first of three rules in the game. The only other rule that prompted such terrifying course of action—Do not enter the room at the end of the hall—had yet to be broken, but we had all seen one of Kierra’s youngest fall prey to the first rule. It had been the first night of the new game, and his death was so unexpected; he had only been a couple seconds late to his square.

Isaac disappeared behind the door to the playing field. I waited for as long as I could to put some distance in between our entrances before slipping into the control room, mere seconds before the clock struck twelve. 

“Cutting it close, are we?” rang Kierra’s voice. There was something off about it: it wasn’t as level, as impassive. If I hadn’t known her better, I would have thought that she was about to explode. “You seem very fond of that pawn of yours, don’t you?”

I knew she was prying—guessing, even. But even as I tried to keep the muscles on my face carefully arranged, I knew by the victorious smirk on Kierra’s face that my eyes had betrayed me.

“Finally, a crack,” she said, with a  small, taunting smile. “Tell me, how do you know him?”

“I don’t. I do know that it’s your turn, and that you’re wasting time,” I said quietly, a soft edge to my voice.

“Indeed,” said Kierra. “You know you took someone very special yesterday. He was the only face I ever recognized in here. My best friend.”

I stiffened.

That was what was off—she had been crying. The signs were all there: scratchy voice, puffy eyes—although she had concealed that well with make-up—and angry, angry eyes.

My stomach dropped, just as she proceeded to lift her rook—the only thing protecting her king from my bishop—and moved it across the entire board.

Things seemed to play out in slow motion. Someone was screaming—I vaguely realized it was my own voice—and then the little pawn, too small for its own square, tipped over, rolling on the silver board for several moments before stilling.

I stared at her in unadulterated horror. As a queen, I should have been celebrating: it was checkmate now, her side officially a lost cause. I just had to wait twelve hours for the last move, and she would be executed, along with the rest of her army. I had survived yet another round.

But when I saw Isaac’s still form, crumpled at the edge of the playing field, I could only see red.

ODDLY ENOUGH, I did not blame Kierra, even if she had cast the final blow and knocked down my brother’s piece. No—even in that second, she had been a mirror of my own tumultuous emotions. For a long time, I had seen her as much an adversary as a victim: subject to the same situation, the same fears, the same guilt.

My legs moved erratically, taking me out of the control room and down the corridor. I was sobbing now, choking on tears as I reached for the forbidden door at the end of the hall.

When the distance between the doorknob and I shrunk to a mere couple feet, Kierra suddenly appeared beside me, clawing at my robe. She caught the material in her fingers and yanked hard, pulling me backwards. I was so frenzied that my legs collapsed, my head tumbling towards the ground. The impact was jarring, but I barely acknowledged it at all. I was on my feet again in a second, hands reaching out to grab a fistful of Kierra’s hair. She screamed, digging her fingers into the skin on my neck.

“Congratulations,” spat Kierra, although there was no good feeling in her words—only furious, broken malice. “You’ve won the round…so where are you going?”

“Let go.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Kierra said darkly. “I’m already dead—it’ll only be twelve hours before they kill me anyway. But you, on the other hand…you don’t get the easy way out. Not on my watch. Live with what you’ve done. It hurts, right? To see him fall…the blood…”

My eyes flashed. “I said, let go.”

And she did. She fell backwards, twisting the doorknob and falling through the forbidden doorway. There was a loud thud as she hit the floor, her legs keeping the doorway propped wide open.

Rooted a couple feet behind the hazard line, I stared into the room, shocked speechless.  

Nothing could have prepared me for the sight I came face to face with. The room was large, with a twenty-feet diameter at least, but it was empty. No furniture, no bed, no pictures. Instead, there were two computers, one stationed on each side of the room. One was white; the other was black. They were supported by huge blocks of machinery with smaller screens—these blinked green, with numbers and codes running so fast the lines blurred—and one large one, on which was streamed the chess board from the control room and the playing field.

“You have broken rule two,” said a voice—it was the computer’s, too mechanical and too monotone to be even remotely human.

“My God,” said Kierra. She turned towards me, her sea-foam green eyes widened in horror, before the collar around her neck chirped with electricity. Her body crumpled against the floor, squirming and trembling, until it was cold and still.

In the process, her feet curled towards her, and the door began to shut once again. I stared straight ahead at the thing that had controlled me for so many days and so many nights. I stared at my King, whose face was neither handsome, nor old, nor young. Really, his face was not a face at all—it was a screen, a screen that held all the secrets and all the stakes.

The door clicked shut, but the image of binary codes running across green screens remained engrained into my memory.

“End of round three.”

The game was endless.