1st June 2066.

His whole life had been building up to this moment. There was parts of him that wished he had been one of those kids who hadn't known it was coming. Had he been born forty years ago, would things have been better?

    The day the mail came, was a Tuesday like any other. The marked envelope which held Oliver’s fate sat on the doorstep, unopened and untouched. He had stepped over it that evening when he got home, opting instead to run a shower first, to tend to the ugly red splotches that decorated his thighs, having poured scalding coffee over himself earlier that evening. The twenty-minute ride home had been almost unbearable, the hot water had been shut off the day before - a habit their building had every now again - but this time he was grateful for that, the cold water soothing his burns. He slouched in his desk chair in his cramped room, in a pair of hole ridden jogging bottoms and a moth balled t-shirt that had once belong to his dad. He surfed the web on his laptop and skimmed the comments from the thousands of other sixteen-year-olds who were haunting the internet with their life changing news.

    ‘Seeker bitches ;)’

    ‘Crap. Hider.’

    ‘Might as well just die now. I have no hope.’

Oliver closed the tab and sighed wearily into his hands. The light outside was fading, casting a soft evening glow across his box room walls and finally , Oliver shut the lid of his laptop, unable to bear the comments anymore. So many were negative, those who were longing for death before it even begun - but that wasn’t the scary part, what caused the hair to stand up on his arms, was the comments that were happy, excited. There was a sudden knock on his door, and before he could grant access, it opened and a small figure of black hair and pale skin stepped just inside the doorway, clutching the letter in trembling hands, scowling. What the boy lacked in size and age, he seemed to make up for with anger and resentment.

“Oliver.” He said sternly, in his young, yet strained, voice. “You haven’t opened it.”

“Oh yeah,” He said absently, not giving his brother the satisfaction of meeting his eye, “I forgot.” Jacob growled and waved the letter in the air, incredulous.

“Are you crazy? This will determine whether or not you live or die and you forgot?”

    Oliver shook his head, rolling his eyes and opening his laptop again. “It’s no big deal.”

    “You know it is!” Jacob’s brows creased. “What if you get paired with a guy who’s bigger than you? Stronger than you? actually Driven?” He was getting mad, his voice trembled almost as much as his hands shook, his grip tightened on the envelope, his eyes darkened.

    “Jake, come on.”

    “Open it. Now.” He jutted out his hand, urging, forcing Oliver to take it.

    “Alright!” Oliver snatched the letter out of his brother’s hand, glaring and eventually exhaled, his breath shook, psyching himself up for the inevitable. He slipped his finger under the flap, releasing the hold of the wax which had been stamped with a government crescent. He ripped out the contents, two pieces of thick official paper sprawled across his desk. A banner across the top of both pages, reading: ‘Hide And Seek Ceremony 2066’ followed by ‘official documentation’. He picked up the first piece and Jacob grabbed the second. Scanning the page, he picked out the most important word.

    “I’m… a Hider…” He breathed, a wash of both relief and dread solidified inside of him. Sentences such as ‘a great duty to your country’ and ‘an offer of congratulations’ flashed on his eyelids - pretty, yet meaningless words. He swallowed a thick glob of saliva and his mouth went dry. Jacob’s face fell. He dropped the second piece and scrambled forward, ripping the first piece from his older brother’s hands. Oliver let him. Jacob’s eyes ran from sentence to sentence, his frown became deeper and deeper as he ingested the words. Oliver took the moment of shock to study his brother, the look wasn’t too unfamiliar, it was a frown that permanently set off his young features. His dark mop of hair sat messily on his head,  and scathing blue eyes searched back and forth. Oliver could almost see the worry lines already forming.

    “Glass…” Jacob muttered and looked up to Oliver, who had opened his laptop once more and was scanning the forums again. “Do we know a 'Lillian Glass'?”

    Oliver said nothing.

    “Hey!” Jacob grabbed Oliver’s wrist. He yanked it away from the desk with the mouse still in his grip. Oliver frowned and glared.

    “What?”

    “Do we know this girl?” He jabbed his finger at the page. Oliver glanced at the name and shrugged.

    “I don’t know.”

    “Well look her up!” He said, as though it was the simplest instruction in the world. “On the website, look her up. Right now. You’ll need to know her face anyway.” Oliver groaned.

    “She’ll be wearing a mask.”

    “Doesn’t matter, look her up.”

    “Fine.” Oliver shoved Jacob violently out of the way and drew his chair in closer to the desk, tapping away at the keyboard and bringing up the official ‘Hide and Seek’ website in a new tab. Jacob recovered himself, he shrugged his jacket back onto his shoulders. He glared at Oliver but turned his attention to the screen. Oliver had typed her name in the search box, bringing up six separate hits, but only one from their area. Oliver clicked. The page opened up which contained all of her credentials.

    Given name(s): Lillian Rae

    Surname: Glass

    Date of Birth: 16 - 02 - 50

    Blood Type: O+

    Position: Seeker

    There was a picture of her too. An Asian girl, with long brown hair tied in two long pony tails, a plait ran across the top of her fringe. It made her look younger than sixteen. She was barely smiling in the photo, a school photo perhaps, from the look of the crisp navy uniform she wore - a school crest peeked out from just behind her hair. Jacob leaned closer over Oliver’s shoulder, to make out the school.

    “Is that a St. Anne’s uniform?” He asked, Oliver shrugged.

    “I don’t know. Maybe? I think I’ve seen girls wearing that uniform pass our flat before.”

Jacob hummed, absently scratching his cheek. The uniform was definitely St. Annes. Oliver knew it well enough, but there was no way either of them could know her if she went there. The private girls school was for the upper class, they were barely middle. Oliver noticed that Lillian’s brows pulled down in the centre ever so slightly over soft green eyes, they complimented her chocolate hair well. Oliver wondered if she had searched for him yet.

    “She seems nice enough.” He decided, gaining himself yet another glare from Jacob.

    “You’re missing the point.” Oliver sighed and rolled his eyes.

    “I get it. One or the other, seeker or hider.” He took a moment to examine his younger brother. “Jacob, you don’t have to worry about this for another two years, maybe you should just take a break?”

    Jacob’s frown increased, but he didn’t respond. He examined Lillian again. “If she’s at St. Anne’s, she’s likely to have a bright future ahead of her, which means she’ll have or the more reason to survive. Plus she’s a girl, a pretty girl, so guys will want to protect her, buddy up with her - They’d basically kill you for her…” He stroked his hairless chin. “At least, they’ll cut you down so that the kill is easy enough.” Jacob had been too focused on evaluating his brother’s competition that he’d failed to realise he was plotting out his own brother’s death. He stood up straight and looked long and hard at Oliver, a smidgen of something in his eye betraying him, before he bolted from the room. Oliver watched him go and listened out - down the hall, a door slammed shut. With a heavy sigh, Oliver closed down the page and went back to scrolling through comments. He paused and looked over at his letter, ‘you have been officially selected for the role of Hider.’ He shut his eyes and pushed the letter over the edge of the table.

 2nd June 2066

    The cafeterria was a hive, and his classmates were flocking and buzzing about like the insects they were. Even more so than usual, there was a constant chatter beneath the regular chair scrapes and tray clattesr. Oliver wanted to stand on the table and yell at everyone to just be quite. He didn't. He let it slide instead, focusing on the food that was in front of him which was some kind of enhanced meat product that Oliver was sure would give him radiation poisoning within a single bite to kill him.

Not that it would matter much.

He placed down his fork with stuff fingers. His two friends were equally silent. Both poking forks at their food. Oliver broke the silence.

"I'm a Hider." He kept his eyes on the table. Oskar looked up and glanced across to Julian, before settling his eyes downwards again.

"Me too."

Julian dropped his utensils with a clatter, his hands flying to hold his head. "I'm a freaking Seeker."

"Sucks." Oskar agreed. Oliver could feel the atmosphere becoming heavy. Julian looked stressed beyond belief, Oskar was on the verge of a panic attack. He shook his head and gave his classmates a disgusted glance.

"I don't get why everyone is so excited. It's a 'culling' ceremony. They know what that means right?"

Oskar was pale, paler than his Nordic genes would usually allow. He was washed out by the light of the school canteen. Julian took off his glasses and wiped them with his sleeve.

"This ceremony decides whether you live or die Oliver..." Oskar said in a small voice, he glanced nervously around at the others. "It's a big thing."

Julian grabbed his knife and drove it into the meat, when he let go, it stood on it's own, supported by the jelly-like base. A small smirk crept to his lips. "I can't kill anyone. I'm pretty much a dead man walking."

"They're excited that half of the kids in this room won't be coming back.” Oliver argued. Classes were already cramped, there should be no more than thirty per class, yet each of their classroom held at least forty or more kids each hour. After the ceremony, the class sizes would be halved.

Oskar had opened his mouth to say something, when he was distracted by something happening beyond Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver looked over with enough time to catch the moment Jacob was tripped. It was such a juvenile thing to do, yet they always did things to Jacob like that. Tripping him, riling him up, just to get him mad. They had no idea. Oliver turned his back on the scene. Julian caught his eye and raised his brow in accusation. Oliver shook his head and lowered his eyes. Eventually Jacob made it over to them, and slammed an empty tray in the spot next to Julian. His favourite black hoodie was stained with enhanced meat juice.

“I hate everyone.” He muttered, glaring at nobody in particular but the table top. Oliver frowned.

“What are you doing over here?” It sounded like an accusation. Jacob looked hurt for a moment, before his dark scowl deepened and he refused to look at Oliver. “I did some research on Lillian Glass. Turns out she does go to St. Annes, and she’s got good grades - and a whole family of brothers and sisters.” He looked up. “Which means she’ll be fired up and out for your blood.”

He narrowed his eyes, Oliver was sure his brother was enjoying this. They hadn’t had the best past of being brothers. He let it slide and tutted. “She’ll be out for my blood anyway.”

“Your seeker?” Julian asked, Oliver nodded quickly. Oskar snorted, rolling his head into his hand.

“You’re lucky you have a girl, maybe she’ll have some compassion and make it quick. Mine’s some all American blond guy. No doubt I’ll be dead within hours.” He said. “He’ll want revenge on the world and I’ll die a painful death to compensate.”

Jacob rose an eyebrow at the small boy, who merely shrugged when he caught his eyes. Oliver’s fist curled in his lap. He scanned the cafeteria and spotted someone from Jacob’s form.

“Hey, Jake, why don’t you sit with Yvea over there?”

Jacob turned to him, startled, “What? Why?”

“She’s your friend isn’t she?”

“We talk but-” Jacob cut off, he stared with disbelief at his older brother as the realisation dawned on him. “Fine.” He said with a clenched jaw, he picked up his tray and stormed off muttering to himself, “unbelievable.”

Julian frowned at Oliver, who went back to eating - there was definitely a taste of enhancement - although this time he did so with an air of shame.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Do what?” Oliver asked.

“Tell Jacob to go away.” Oskar said.

“I didn’t. I spotted one of his friends.” Oliver defended himself, putting his fork down. “Come on.” The two didn’t budge. Oliver sighed. “Fine, I may have indirectly told him to go away, but the kids got two years before any of this happens to him, he needs to stop being so intense about it all.” He shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. “And I don’t need him reminding me that I’m going to die in the next four weeks.”

Oskar and Julian shared a look. Oliver let it go over his head, he was too tired to be dealing with this. He grabbed his tray and left the lunchroom, neither of his friends attempting to follow him.

After lunch, they had History. Not that Oliver minded his teacher, it was just that Mr Higgs sometimes got a little too over-excited, especially today. He had begun writing the day’s lesson on the board, but had stopped in the middle of the ‘n’. His eyes were alight with boyish wonder as he recounted the story every child in the room knew off by heart.

“Forty years ago, there was a crisis. A huge population boom that the countries were unable to handle.” He grabbed the board eraser and quickly scrubbed away the ‘hide an-’ to start drawing a new diagram. It was a graph, the axis’ labelled ‘population’ and ‘year’, it was a steady horizontal line, Suddenly it shot up, almost diagonal. “It was out of control, and resources were beginning to fail us, food supplies were out of control and the government needed a solution.

“That solution just so happened to be a ceremony, a ceremony where children are given the chance to fight for the right to live. Every year, every July, for one week, every child of the age of sixteen is given the chance to enter the city.” He drew a circle, Oliver supposed it was meant to represent their district. He began to stare out the window, uninterested. Mr Higgs drew another circle in the upper right. He smashed the chalk against the board excitedly. Dust rained down from the cracks in the ceiling, Mr Higgs carried on, “‘The City’ as it’s known was an area evacuated in two-thousand-twenty - a perfect spot for the ceremony to take place, out of the way, large enough to hold the capacity. And then, what’s more, they built up huge stone walls around the circumference, a cage of sorts, the only exit being the large steel doors, located on the Eastern wall. The moment any child steps inside those walls is the moment they begin to prove themselves, prove they have what it takes to be part of society.” Somehow, Mr Higgs had drawn Oliver’s attention again, without his notice. Oliver caught himself frowning at the old man. He’d probably had his own revelation during his ceremony - he was early fifties at most.

“As most of you, if not all of you know, the government decided to base the ceremony on the classics children's game, ‘Hide and Seek’. During the late twenty’s the game itself lost popularity - understandably, of course - no one wants to play that anymore. In the Ceremony each sixteen year old would be paired with another from the same district, one would be given the title Seeker and one the title Hider, picked at random. The Hider would have to survive, the Seeker would have to hunt him down.” Out of the corner of his eye, Oliver saw Julian sink in his seat.

“If the Seeker was to-”

“What were you?” The man was cut off, he blinked in shock, having been on such a forward train of thought.

“Pardon?”

“Were you a Hider or a Seeker?” Oliver sat up a little straighter. The girl who asked was sat in the second row, two rows ahead of him. She spoke with such forward confidence, leant over her desk with a tilted head, it seemed that she didn’t understand that you didn’t ask about personal roles, especially to someone older than you. Though she didn’t seem to care, either. The whole class looked forward to see what their teacher’s response would be. Mr Higgs flattened his tie, smoothing it down with his fingers.

“Well,” He said, a line of sweat was gathering above his forehead. “I won’t lie to you, especially as you’re about to go into this yourselves - I was a Seeker.” He said the word firmly, to assure the class really knew what that meant. The girl in front became paler, she sat a little straighter, uncrossed her legs. Oliver swallowed, he glanced over to Julian, who was staring back at him. Mr Higgs, a man they all looked up to and admired had killed somebody.

    After the interrogation, Mr Higgs had gone off on another topic, perhaps to hide his shame, although Oliver wasn’t sure if the History teacher even felt shame for what he’d done. The bell rang and Oliver began to gather up his school gear, shovelling it all into his backpack, when he was approached by the girl from the second row. She held out a silver card. An invitation.

    “I’m having a ‘Live For The Last’ party,” She explained cooly, her eyes betrayed no enthusiasm, “You’re invited.” Grey eyes flickered down to the invite, clutched with her thumb, Oliver noticed her nails were painted black - in fact most of what she was wearing was black, or dark enough to be considered black. Oliver looked her up and down.

    Is she mourning? He wondered, but took the invite anyway.

    “Thanks.”

    “No problem,” She sighed and moved on to her next target. Julian appeared at his elbow. He took the invite from his hand and studied it.

    “An invite already?” Oliver shrugged, he closed his fist and crumpled the invitation between his fingers.

    “I’m not going. Those parties are stupid.”

    “What? Kids getting drunk, drugs and loosing their virginity? What's stupid about that?" He asked, Oliver could almost see the sarcasm dripping from Julian's mouth." You’re a real pessimist, aren’t you?” He grinned as they ambled out of the classroom - they were in no rush to get to Maths.

    “Haven’t really got a reason not to be.” He muttered. They were silent until they got to their lockers, when Oskar appeared next to them, gathering his own books. He groaned, audibly. Julian raised an eyebrow.

    “Something you want to share?”

    “Class is so pointless,” He leaned back against the locker and shook his inhaler absently. “When it comes down to it, the history of the teaspoon isn’t going to help me fight off a predator.”

    “A predator?” Oliver chuckled, switching his History books out for Maths.

    Oskar shrugged. “You know what I mean.” He looked at the younger students bustling the halls and sighed wistfully. “Young and free… If only that was… we.”

    “Oh god,” Julian groaned, tipping his head back. “Stop. Don’t go poet on us.” Oliver grinned.

    “Don’t exhaust your poetry skills on us Oskar, you’ll have nothing left when you want to court your next target - come to think of it, would it not be more appropriate to call you a predator?”

    A small smirk grew on Oskar’s lips. He played along with their taunting. “I have a thing for blonde’s. Doesn’t make me a predator.” Julian shut his locker and they began heading to Maths.

    “Wasn’t his last girlfriend in the grade below us?” Julian asked, looking straight over Oskar’s head to Oliver. Oliver nodded thoughtfully, but then put a finger to his lips.

    “Although his last boyfriend was in the grade above us.”

    Oskar laughed, his voice broke sweetly - he took a few extra steps and walked ahead of his friends, turning to walk backwards. He held a hand to his chest. “I just have a love of all people, so sue me.” Julian laughed, whilst Oliver smirked and shook his head. Oskar’s expression grew soft, he smiled at the medium boy of their trio.

    “Glad to see you’re feeling better Oliver.” He said. Julian glanced at Oliver, whose face fell. He pulled it back and flashed a small smile.

    “Me too, Osk.”

    Their moment of calm was broken, when ahead of them, a scream like an animal in pain caught their attention. Oskar stumbled forward. On the ground ahead, the girl from the second row was crumpled against her locker, her grey eyes were screwed shut and she clutched her head in her hands. Oliver could see the strain in her fingers as they latched into her hair and tugged wildly. A couple students dropped down to help her but she fought them off, screaming that she was going to die. The school councilor, Miss Davis came running down the hall and dropped down on her knees besides her, struggling to release the hold the girl had on her hair.

     Oliver's heart pounded in his chest. He'd seen this before, had to control a situation like this before. He was backing away before he realised he'd lost control of his feet. Julian dragged himself away from the scene and shot Oliver a wary, questioning look. Oliver caught it and rooted his feet. He cleared his throat. 

    "Come on, let's get out of here." He said, steadying his voice. "There's no point us getting involved." 

    Oskar whipped around and shot Oliver an uncertain look, but glanced to Julian and nodded. Oliver saw the look they shared, and inwardly rolled his eyes. The crowds were beginning to disperse, kids being shooed away by Miss Davis. They took their chance and headed down another corridor, the long way around to their classroom. Oliver didn't care. As long he could avoid the girl, he didn't care.