by S. C. Green
“Are you from inside the dome? Did you have something to do with the quarantine breach?”
“What’s it like in there? How many people are still live?”
“How did you get out?”
“What was that cloud thing?”
“Can you give us an exclusive interview? We’re prepared to pay!”
I bared my teeth and growled at them, but this only made them snap their cameras even more vigorously. One reporter excitedly stated that living inside the dome had turned us feral. If only she knew.
We were shoved into the back of a windowless van, with an armoured guard blocking the doors. They forced Raine, Lorcon, and Alain to swallow a tiny pill – I assumed it was the drug Raine described that disabled their ability to shift – then took off into the night. The van drove for a couple of hours, often slowing down to manoeuvre around what I could only guess was debris on the road. I longed to look out a window and see the world through which we drove. My memories of the land outside the city were stuck in time, and out there was the reality – a wide world that didn’t have edges, a world where sun shone and plants grew and supermarket shelves were restocked with fresh food every day. But even if there had been windows in the back of the van, our guard would probably have discouraged me from utilising them.
Alain’s hand gripped mine. We sat on a metal bench against one side of the van, facing Raine. Her face was drawn, her eyes downcast. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Good. It was taking every ounce of self control I possessed not to punch her stupid fucking perfect face or tear those sparkling earrings out of her ear. She had done all this. She had doomed us all.
Lorcon leaned forward and addressed the guard. “Can you tell us—”
“Shut up.” The guard aimed his rifle at Lorcan's head.
Lorcon sat back again and folded his hands in his lap. None of us were super chatty after that.
After what felt like hours of driving in tense silence, the van stopped. We were hauled out and carried through a parking lot. It could have been any building in the city.
Alain leaned forward and whispered to me, “This used to be the Reaper Affairs office. I can only assume we’re now at the Institute.”
I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good sign.
We were shoved into an elevator and taken up twenty storeys. Three men stayed with us, their weapons aimed at our faces. Alain never once dropped my hand. His touch was the only thing preventing me from collapsing with rage, frustration, and fear.
Meanwhile, the cloud was somewhere out there. Who knew how many people were being burned by it right now, while we were being herded around like rodents?
Unease galloped my heartbeat faster. I remembered what Raine had said about the way Reapers had been treated. About the drugs, the forced labour, the experiments, the prisons. If they hated Reapers so much, I could only guess what they’d make of me. Was this what awaited us all?
Ding. The elevator doors opened, revealing a plush waiting area. A long mahogany receptionist desk took up one wall of the room, and another held a full-height painting depicting the Harrowing of Hell, a story I remembered well from my mother’s battered copy of the Apocrypha. Light jazz music played over a hidden sound system. The computer at the receptionist desk looked impossibly small and thin compared to the computers I remembered. Of course, out in the world, technology hadn’t remained frozen as it did in the dome.
We were ushered down a short hall and into a large boardroom. The guards slammed the door behind us, locking it and standing in front of it with guns poised. The only other way out was through the large glass windows overlooking the city, and knowing how high the drop was, I didn’t much fancy it. Call me crazy.
My skin itched. Agitation crept through my veins. I didn’t like being shut in like this, with the guards on the door. Even though I was now free of the dome, I was still a prisoner. Claustrophobic terror had dug out from inside me, and it was scratching just below the surface, ready to overwhelm me at any moment.
To distract myself, I walked around the table and scanned the city skyline through the window, watching the twinkling lights of the surrounding buildings. I recognised the skyscraper across the street – it was a ritzy hotel I’d stayed in with my mum when we’d visited the city. Just down the road was a branch of the Bank of America. I’d done clerking work there until they discovered I was living in the building after hours.
Lorcon, Alain, and Raine joined me at the window, their eyes wide. Everything about the city appeared shiny, sparkling with silver polish. The streets teemed with people, moving between the parking buildings, the office blocks, and the restaurants that lined the street. I’d forgotten what a real city looked like, how vibrant and exciting they could be, how the skyscrapers could seem welcoming, instead of foreboding.
Someone cleared their throat. I whirled around. Two men sat at the table, a phone between them, the receiver still in its tray. The one on the left had sleek blond hair that seemed to glow as it reflected light from his starched white shirt. He gave me an amused look. They’d probably been there a long time. I’d just been too distracted by the window and the world I’d been deprived of.
“Please sit,” White Shirt said. He wore a black suit over that crisp shirt, perfectly tailored and impossibly free of wrinkles. His tie was black silk, simple, no pattern or cartoon characters. He looked like a man who never hurried anywhere.
Raine pulled out a chair and sat across from him, knitting her fingers together. Jack slumped into a chair at the end of the table, his face pale and drenched with sweat.
“You’ve brought us to New Vegas, right?” I asked, deliberately not sitting.
Alain moved to stand beside me, and Lorcon continued to hover by the door. Raine glanced up at us, her expression one of abandonment.
“Perhaps,” the man said casually. He opened a file, his deft fingers flipping through the pages.
“You’ve got a real problem on your hands,” I said. “A giant cloud is headed this way, if it isn’t already here. It’s going to—”
“You’re not in charge of this interview, Miss Cale.”
I jumped. How did he know my name?
The man gave me a thin-lipped smile that didn’t extend to his cold eyes. “Oh, yes, I know all about you. All of you. We ascertained your identities as soon as we had you in custody. Do sit down.”
“Don’t you understand?” I nodded my head toward the window. “If that cloud reaches the city, everyone is going to die. This is not the time to be playing good cop, bad cop.”
“We’re well aware of the cloud, Miss Cale.” The second man with the blue shirt said, “We have our best people on it. It’s not your concern any longer.”
“Your best people won’t do shit. You don’t know what you’re up against.”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Raine said, her voice dejected. Tears glistened on her perfect cheeks. “This was all my doing. All of it. They’re all innocents. Please don’t hurt them. Please. Jack urgently needs a doctor—”
“I imagine he would, for a bullet wound that’s only had two days to heal. Tsk, tsk.” The man knitted his fingers together and pressed his thumbs to his chin. “You’ve successfully evaded our sights for days, Raine. I lie awake at night and wonder, how did you manage it?”
“You do not,” Jack wheezed.
“We have the two of you on camera, breaking into a secure facility, stealing a vital specimen, hacking an official vehicle, evading the authorities, and in the process comprising the entire integrity of the dome. You’ve brought through these people, who may be contaminated, not to mention the dust cloud your friend here seems so concerned about. You know better than most the charges you’re facing for this is treason.”
Raine nodded. She dug her nails into the side of her hand so hard a drop of blood rolled across her thumb.
“And yet, the officers said you turned yourself in. Why?”
“There’s something bigger at stake than my freedom,” Raine
said, her voice wavering. “It’s true that the dome has been compromised. Wraith have escaped.”
“They have. You helped one of them do it. Where is Specimen 22?”
“His name is Red, and he’s been taken inside that cloud. He’s innocent in all of this.”
“The magical talking wraith is the cloud that is leaving a trail of destruction around the dome?” White Shirt drummed his fingers against the table. “Oh, I’m sure it is innocent.”
“He is.” Raine’s voice carried a hard edge. She was so defensive of that damn wraith. “That cloud are new wraith, raised from Brookwood Hill. But they aren’t the same wraith we know. They don’t have a humanoid form, or even a solid mass. They have been made from the souls of the cremated, and they take the form in which they died – ashes and dust.”
“None of our men were husked when this cloud emerged from the dome,” White Shirt said. “They were burned, as though the cloud were some kind of corrosive chemical.”
“These wraith don’t husk. They burn their victims alive to obtain their energy. Look it up. One of those news crews would have footage of it. Then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
The second man typed furiously on his laptop. A few moments later he pulled up a video that had just been posted online. He spun the computer around so we could all see.
The local news station logo obscured the corner of the screen. The camera followed an army truck as it juddered over the debris-filled streets. The grey expanse of the dome completely filled the background, making it appear as if the truck were on a film set, wandering past a blank screen that would be filled in with a CGI backdrop later. A female reporter gave a commentary about the break-in at the Reaper Institute, how a Reaper was suspected, and that security around the dome had been increased. The loathing with which she spoke about Reapers made me cringe. There was the years of discrimination and mistreatment Raine had spoken about, confirmed by this one woman’s commentary. So she hadn’t lied about that, at least.
The camera jerked to the left, and the woman’s voice broke off into a high-pitched scream. Though the camera was now tilted to the side, I could still clearly see the thick cloud of grey smoke billowing from an apartment building. It quickly spread to fill the street and raced toward the vehicles. The camera operator swore, and the camera itself wobbled madly as their driver gunned the engine and sped away from the wall.
The crew talked excitedly about the cloud as it billowed out of the building. A thick pillar of smoke zoomed toward them, appearing more solid than smoke should be. It slammed into the car, and the whole thing spun across the street, hitting a power pole. The bonnet crunched as its staved in. The windscreen shattered. Everyone in the car panicked as the alarm beeped incessantly. One of the women tried to open her door, but it was buckled against the frame. They were trapped.
The operator tried to hold her camera steady while the dust cloud entered the car. Haze obscured the lens. The other reporters faded into silhouettes.
“What’s happening?” someone yelled. “What is this stuff?”
Their cries turned to screams as the cloud surrounded them. Now the cloud was so thick I couldn’t see a thing.
“It burns! It burns!” a male voice yelled.
There was a sound like the crackling of a campfire. The screaming abruptly stopped. The camera kept running, showing only a film of grey. The video ended. It already had 20,039 views.
“Shit,” the second man said. He shut the laptop.
“That cloud is coming this way.” I leaned against the window, folded my arms, and set my mouth in a firm line. I didn’t want them to see the way my leg jittered, or the hairs on the back of my neck had stood on end.
The first man jabbed his finger at Raine. “You let this out of the dome.”
“It was an accident.” Raine’s voice wavered.
I wanted so badly to slap her. I doubted White Shirt would mind.
Raine turned to me. “But I brought a weapon to stop it.”
“Oh, you have?” The second man nodded, crossing his arms, and leveled a skeptical glare at Raine. “What kind of weapon could possibly stop this kind of power?”
Raine pointed directly at me. “Her.”
Me? What the hell happened to not throwing any of us under the bus? “Fucking hell. You and your government friends can fight this thing on your own. This has nothing to do with me.”
“Sydney has very unique abilities,” Raine explained. “She’s not a Reaper, but she’s something even more powerful. I know you don’t place much stock in what the Reapers do, but you have to believe me. She alone will be able to take down this new enemy.”
I slammed my fist into the window. Nothing happened except that my knuckles hurt. At least it momentarily stopped me from pummelling Raine’s face. She’d done this on purpose. She’d turned herself in just to bring me here, so that I could save the whole damn world again. If I knew how to do it, I was pretty sure I already would have.
White Shirt nodded his head at one of the guards, who inched along the wall toward me, his gun poised.
I glared at him, tightening my fists. I wouldn’t go meekly into the good night.
“That’s ridiculous.” Grey shirt narrowed his eyes at me. “She’s just a human woman. Nothing special. She was a homeless bum. She’s not even a Reaper.”
“She destroyed the wraith once before,” Raine explained. “That’s why I got into the dome in the first place. There was a bright flash inside the dome, and our instruments stopped picking up signs of the wraith. All those wraith we had trapped inside were gone in a flash. She did that.”
“Can we not talk about me like I’m not here?” I snapped.
Alain shot me a pained look. Both Raine and White Shirt ignored me.
Grey Suit tapped his fingers against the lid of his laptop case. “How did we not hear about this?”
“We didn’t report it,” Jack said, his eyes fluttering closed.
“I wanted to get inside the dome, and I knew if you heard about it, you’d just as likely nuke the whole city.” Raine jerked forward, her voice wavering. “Don’t blame Jack for this. He had nothing to do with it. It was all my idea. I forced him to go along with me.”
Wow, being acquainted with Raine was proving to be quite dangerous. I glanced at Jack’s sickly face, at the bright red veins in his blue eyes, and a wave of sympathy for him coursed through me. Raine really was a force of nature, destroying everything and everyone in her path, much like the wraith cloud.
“Raine didn’t force me to do anything,” Jack croaked out. “I wanted to get into the dome, too—”
“You’ll each be questioned individually to establish exactly what happened,” Gray Suit said.
White Shirt turned to me, his beady eyes following the contours of my body. I wanted to reach across the table and wipe that smirk off his fishy face, but I figured that wouldn’t help our situation. Still, it might’ve been worth it.
“What exactly is it you can do?” he asked me, his lips smacking together, like he was eyeing up a particularly juicy steak. His mouth curled over the word ‘do.’
I curled my ferocity into my fists so I wouldn’t launch it at him. Not yet, anyway. “Why would I tell you?”
He lifted his hands from the table, palms up. “Because the three of you are fugitives from the dome, and Raine is a felon facing the death penalty. Because I have three Reapers in this room who the current government doesn't consider to have rights under law. Because I have the authority to grant you pardon. Or I can have you all shot right now. You’re here bargaining for your lives. I thought you knew that.”
“And just who are you?”
“This is Arnold Wu,” Raine said. “He was Minister of Reaper Affairs, although he has a very different title now.”
I waited for someone to announce his new title, but no one did.
“Shouldn’t the Reaper Affairs Minister be, you know, a Reaper?” I asked.
“Once upon a time, yes.” White Sh
irt’s--Arnold’s--eyes flicked over Raine. “Now, our ministry’s job is not to further the rights of Reapers, but to monitor them and ensure they know their place.”
“Which is beneath you.” I lined my words with sharp teeth and lots of bite, otherwise known as ‘my BJs sometimes end with a castration.’
He quirked an eyebrow and glanced at his buddy.
“You’re filling me with confidence and trust,” I said.
“Show him, Sydney,” Alain said, his grim stare moving between me and Arnold.
I wasn’t sure what Alain was trying to do. Keeping my abilities a secret seemed the best idea to me, but I trusted him. So I stood and walked across the room. My boots fell heavy against the thick carpet, making a dull thud, the only sound other than my quickening heartbeat. I stood on the far wall and placed my hand against the wood.
“On the other side of this room is another boardroom,” I said, feeling the weight of everyone’s gazes on the back of my neck.
“There’s a map printed in the lobby,” Gray Suit said. “You could easily have seen the layout of this floor.”
“In that room, five men wearing suits are seated around the table,” I continued. “They’re listening to our conversation through headphones plugged into a laptop like yours. Three of the men are bald. One is trying to hide it with an ill-fitting toupee. Two of them are drinking coffee, and there’s a plate of banana nut muffins on the table. There are ten more guards with guns, standing around the perimeter of the room and in the hall. “Now they’re standing up. They’re feeling the wall where I’m standing, looking for a weakness or a peephole. They won’t find any. This wall is as solid as rock. I can see every layer of it.” I glared over my shoulder. “Would you like me to go on? I can describe the light fixture in perfect fucking detail.”
“Impressive,” said Grey Suit.
