by Addison Cain
Teeth chattering despite the heat, I got one word past the pressure on my throat. “George...?”
Nothing.
Sweat was in my hair, dripping up my temples. “Thiiis is... this issss Unit 17C. I require assistance.” I tried to move my fingers, to see if I might upset my balance and turn my body right-side up. “I’m caught in the rigging and I can’t move my left arm.”
It was a different voice that cracked through the static. “You suit shows an increase in your body temperature. Exposure to outside contaminants must be considered.”
The red consumption?
No...
I’d slipped midday. That infamous disease killed in a matter of hours. It was night now, if I’d been exposed to Red Consumption, I’d already be dead.
Another, blessedly familiar voice interjected. “Sir, her temps were up prior to the climb. Unit 17C is documented as running hot.”
Oversight would never believe I was uninfected if my every breath continued to rattle. I had to get myself stable if I wanted to survive. I had to prove I was viable, that I could still serve.
My shoulder ached, I could feel how swollen it was, but in a very unnerving way it didn’t hurt. With a left arm that would be useless and a right arm caught to my chest, only my legs might set me free. Straightening them was harder than I expected. First my right leg wrapped around the traitorous cable, left leg pushing off from Bernard Dome’s foundation.
I unrolled so fast I was in a scramble to find a grip before I fell to my death. Bloated fingers caught air, tore at my suite, and finally, finally, my glove found the friction of a sliding rope. Where the strength came from, I could not tell you, but I found myself holding on with one hand so close to the ground, my boots could feel the spongy give of the white flowered ivy’s leaves.
The sound of my own heavy breathing echoed through my earpiece, a strained grunt all I could offer the team listening in on the other end. Feet to the wall, I began to climb, one handed, until I found a way to loop my only lifeline back through my harness.
Arm burning, panting in huge gulps of tainted air, I let go. The moment I sat back safely in the harness the strangest thought crossed my mind.
It was jasmine... the white flowers were jasmine.
I’d never smelled anything so beautiful.
“I have reattached and will proceed to the nearest decontamination hatch. Please advise.”
No response crackled in my ear.
Over the next several hours, no one helped me scale the Dome - though I made continuous status reports as I crept up the side like a bug.
Oversight was watching. George was silent.
When I finally crested the nearest hatch, I was left waiting for those inside to decide if I might live or die. I was exhausted, and Oversight’s accusation was true: I did not feel well.
My left arm hung throbbing at my side and required immediate medical attention. I was thirsty, so very thirsty that my tongue stung even worse that the crusted gash on my cheek.
They left me there until sunrise. Dozing against the hatch, I felt it give, scrambling to my feet as best I could. The mechanized door opened, the first of five decontamination chambers waiting for me.
Had my uniform not been damaged, all I would be required to do was stand on the mark, arms raised and legs spread. Fire would blast the outside of my biosuit, heating me to the point my skin would almost blister underneath. Unfortunately, with my suit damaged and my helmet’s visor in shambles, incineration decontamination would kill me.
The room’s COM boomed, “Unit 17C, you are to remove your bio-suite and place it on the mark for incineration.”
Fumbling with the catches and clasps, leaning against the wall because my legs shook, I pulled off the broken helmet and tossed it where it would be burned to ash. Gloves, boots, the suit, every stitch of my protection I peeled from clammy skin, hissing when my damaged arm refused to budge from where it had swelled in the sleeve.
Tears running down my face, I had to force my arm free, praying to the gods my screams would stay locked behind my lips.
When it was done, I stood in only my sweat soaked underclothes, and the hatch to the world with white scented flowers hermetically sealed. In the next few moments, I would find whether or not this was to be my crematorium.
A click made me jump, set my already racing heart into my throat. The room’s only other door, the door that would lead to my potential salvation, swung inward.
The chamber beyond was lit, and there were crates stacked right in the center of the space. While I had been waiting outside, a cot had been set up for me, emergency rations left in a bin.
Once I was sealed in, I was not allowed to leave the cramped room. I did not have a toilet, though when the bio-suit protected scientists charged with observing me came to administer a daily barrage of tests, they took my full bucket and brought me a fresh one.
Beyond the point of embarrassment, I let them poke and prod, take samples and scrapings. If they told me to spit, I spit. If I was ordered to take off my clothing, I stripped at once.
I ate from the supply crate’s rations and drank stale water that from emergency pouches older than I was.
I had always been obedient, just as I had always been a dedicated hard worker. Like the other Betas in my unit, I, Brenya Perrin of Palo Corps, was fiercely loyal to Bernard Dome’s combined effort of survival and prosperity.
From the best I could reason, I had been in quarantine over two weeks, most of that time spent alone with nothing to do, no one to talk to. The only reason I knew my freedom had been earned was a slight shift in routine - the scientist who’d set my shoulder in place the first day, who’d given me a sling to wear over my underclothes, had returned.
After a thorough exam, he offered me a fresh jumpsuit.
He then notified me that I was to be allowed to vacate the decontamination chambers and rejoin my people. Pride made me smile under the stitches in my cheek. I pulled the zipper up under my chin, eager to go home. Smoothing the tangled bob of dirty hair that lay lank to my jaw, I was careful of my arm in its sling, and walked surrounded by bio-suit clad scientists out to greet my friends.
Clearing the final room, I found no one waited for me - not even George, the tech I had worked with for five years.
It was not until I returned to my bunk at Palo Corps Barracks that word I’d been grounded until further notice arrived. The women I had known since birth, the ones I had been raised with, educated with – the ones I’d played with and thought of as sisters – all one-hundred who shared the room with me kept their distance.
I had never willingly looked at the horizon, I had not studied the shapes of leaves or how the wind moved the trees. It didn’t matter. I was counted as one of the tainted.
That first night I cried in my bunk, wishing I had never seen the white flowers or smelled jasmine on the wind.
Every morning when the call was made to rise, I would watch my fellow Beta’s climb from their cots and dress in the uniform of our zone. I too wore the grey jumpsuit, I too broke bread in the mess hall with my sisters, but unlike them I no longer had an assigned purpose.
Oversight, it seemed, believed I had nothing to offer to the collective.
After a week living as a borderline pariah, after endless skewed looks and terse answers to my attempted conversation, I found I could no longer choke down my meals. I stopped eating. My head ached, my stomach was always in knots. To prove myself useful, I’d taken to unordered janitorial work. I scrubbed the toilets, the floors, the walls, every surface inside our barracks. When I ran out of things to clean, I walked East Sector looking for debris on the ground.
It was two days of cleaning garbage before I found myself outside the East gates separating the various engineering corps from the techs and central Oversight.
George would help me... it’s not like I didn’t recognize that he had been the one to save my life. He would help me earn an assignment and end this torment. But I was denied entry. The A
lpha guard sneered behind his helmet once I’d been scanned, my rank and designation displayed.
To my shame, I felt my lip shake. “Please.”
He looked to my sling, to the gash atop my cheekbone that would scar and remind everyone why my face was marred. My visor had broken, I had breathed contaminated air.
I was infected, even if I was not.
When I continued to stand there, waiting as if he might change his mind, the Alpha guard raised a hand to my damaged shoulder. It was not a gesture of comfort or reassurance. Instead, he used his grip to shove me back. Before citizens free to come and go, before all who kept their distance, I fell. Crying in earnest at this point, I put my hand to my screaming shoulder and cowered.
No one made a move to help me, though I could see a reflection of pity in the expressions of those nearest. When I could not bear the shame another moment, I tucked my feet under my body. I made myself stand no matter how dizzy I’d become. Stumbling step by step, I wandered like a kicked dog in the direction of my barracks.
Halfway through my journey, I was distracted by the sound of running water. Sweat beaded at my temples, I was so hot. Upon seeing the fountain sparkling at the center of East Sector’s square, I altered course.
Laziness was frowned upon, but I sat there at the water’s edge, taking in the beauty of a precious piece of art installed in the Dome before the gates were sealed. This relic had once sat outside the Place de la Concorde. Who designed it, I could not say. Art history was not emphasized amongst those chosen for engineering education. Just as I could not tell you how old it was or why it was culturally important to our people.
What I could say was that dipping my hand into that cool water, wiping my feverish, face felt more beautiful than the fountain might ever be. Just as put my lips to that sparkling blue resting in my palm, a roar startled me. Backing away from my perch, my eyes went wide, darting all around the superstructure for a sign of what ogre might have made so terrible a noise.
I heard it again, coming closer.
There was the violent sense of inevitability, the feeling of my impending doom. I could not tell you what came over me, why that noise threw me into such a panic, but I could say that never in my life had I run so fast.
Blood was pounding behind my eyes, my legs were wobbling as if I were under the influence of some unknown drug. I had almost made it to my barracks - where all I wanted was to climb under my blankets and hide.
Almost...
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