Ghost Hope

by Ripley Patton

  And visit Kaylee.

  She hadn’t forgotten me. Far from it.

  She’d idealized me.

  I was the one who’d escaped the dome and lived in the real world. And I’d come back for her finally. To save her and set her free.

  It was only when she told me that, looking up at me with those deep, dark, trusting eyes, that I realized it was true. From that day forward, I no longer worked for Alex or Fineman. I worked for her.

  No, I hadn’t died as a result of incident 47.

  But I had been changed.

  The whole world had.

  It just didn’t know it yet.

  “You gonna stand there all night staring at that sign or what?” Jason called from the truck.

  “No,” I answered, turning away from it. “Let’s get to the dome.”

  19

  OLIVIA

  It took over forty-eight hours for Chase and T-Dog to hack into the dome portion of the compound, and I think it was a serious blow to their egos. They kept apologizing and trying to explain to me, in very technical terms, why it was taking so long. And I just kept saying, “It’s okay. We’ll get there.”

  My first step back into that huge, open space was somewhat surreal. A clear desert sky spread over me, giving the illusion that I was outside, which was nice after being trapped in The Hold’s windowless computer lab for so long with only cold fluorescent lighting. Even better, the noise of the mob outside was barely a murmur inside the dome. I could almost forget they were out there. I could almost forget we were trapped as precisely as the tiny mouse in the game of Mouse Trap.

  Then, I had to remind myself that my sister had been trapped here all her life. This had been her home, and if she could live and thrive in it, so could I. We had so many resources at our disposal, and I had good, competent people with me. Chase and T-Dog seemed to think working from inside the compound might actually be an asset, rather than a detriment, and Pete agreed.

  “You gonna let us in, or just stand there gawking in the doorway?” Chase teased from behind me.

  “Oh, sorry.” I stepped fully into the dome and moved aside so the rest of them could enter.

  Chase and T-Dog came through first and crossed to the far door, immediately plugging their laptops into various control panels. “This should go much faster, now that we know what we’re dealing with,” Chase assured me.

  Passion and Samantha came in next. They both looked around, taking in the homey furnishings, the ornate tile floor and plush rugs, the rows and rows of library-sized bookshelves filled with books. It was all exactly as it had been before I’d displaced it. Off to one side, behind one of the many oriental screens that divided the room, the corner of my sister’s four poster bed was just visible.

  “Wow. It’s really not that bad,” Samantha said, and then she looked at me guiltily. “I mean, it was still wrong, keeping your sister trapped here all her life. I’m not trying to excuse—”

  “Samantha, it’s okay,” I said. I knew what she meant. The dome had a certain serenity. It didn’t give off a prison vibe at all. It felt more like a museum or an old library, somewhere you’d talk in hushed tones and accidentally learn something.

  Grant and my mom came in next, her limping and him assisting her across the threshold. Grant had been here before. With me. But we hadn’t exactly gotten the scenic tour. My mom, on the other hand, had never seen the place they’d hidden her first born child away from her for years, and I didn’t miss the haunted look in her eyes as she entered. This had been Kaylee’s home, instead of our house. And maybe the furnishings were nice and the ambiance wasn’t bad, but Kaylee had still been a prisoner here, unwillingly separated from her family.

  My mom limped forward and slipped her hand into mine. “So, this is where she lived,” she sighed. “I know it’s foolish, but some part of me was hoping—when we opened that door—that she’d be standing here waiting for us.”

  “Mike will find her,” I said, squeezing her hand. “He’ll get her back for us.”

  Finally, last but not least, Pete stepped into the dome.

  “Grant,” he said. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll take some inventory. I’d like to know what we’ve got here, and what we need to bring in from the rest of the compound.” They both moved away, disappearing beyond the screens.

  Pete was a good guy. I’d figured that out after only a couple days of living with him. During that time he’d nursed my mom back to health, sourced us numerous necessities from The Hold side of the compound, and helped Chase and T-Dog identify the most important files on The Hold’s computers, including the ones about the research he’d done with Reiny on internal PSS, and the files on the vaccine Mr. James had made from Passion’s blood, both of which had been huge revelations to the rest of us. Passion was still in shock. But she was also thrilled. She finally had a power and it was a pretty awesome one.

  And it had been Pete’s idea to make the dome our base of operations once we’d hacked into it. The dome was way more secure than the outer areas of the compound, plus we could see the sky. But that also meant we’d have to move some beds and other resources into it to make us all comfortable.

  Yeah, Pete had been such a huge help, I’d almost forgiven him for shooting my mom.

  Almost.

  “Let’s go check out the library.” I said, helping my mom along and waving for Passion and Samantha to join us. I’d only met my sister briefly, and most of that time I’d thought she was an apparition or a dream, but you could tell a lot about a person by looking at the books they read.

  I had other motives as well. Getting lost in one of Kaylee’s books might help me forget that every hour there were more people outside, gathering and building some kind of weird, refugee-like city in the desert. I’d seen it on the drone footage. I’d also seen them amassing on the feeds from the outside cameras. And this morning, Chase had shown me several news clips from the internet urging people to stay away from Umatilla for purposes of “national security and public safety.” But it didn’t matter. They just kept coming by the thousands. Something was happening out there way beyond the scope of the original special interest groups— something wild and beyond our control, drawing people from all walks of life. And we were the center of it, like the cast standing backstage on opening night of a sold-out play. The only problem was we didn’t even know what play we were performing. What did those people out there want from us?

  “That looks comfy,” my mother said, pointing to a leather chair near a table sporting a stack of magazines. I deposited her in it, then made my way to one of Kaylee’s bookcases, running my fingers along the spines while Samantha and Passion wandered off to an area with a bunch of potted plants and trees.

  My hand stopped on a book with a familiar title. It was The Bone Road by Mary Holland, its paperback pages tattered and worn as if it had been read a thousand times. I slipped the book from the bookcase, and it fell open instantly to a place where a page had been torn out. Page forty-seven was missing. So was page one hundred and thirteen. Those were the pages Kaylee had written me notes on when I’d been alone and desperate in my CAMFer cell. This was the book she’d torn them from, and she’d obviously loved it so much I could almost feel her presence leaking from it. There were random notes scrawled in the margins too. Our handwriting was sort of similar.

  “Hey, Olivia,” Chase called from across the room. “Check this out.” He pointed up at the dome, then tapped a button on his laptop.

  Immediately, the entire glass ceiling overhead went opaque, dispersing the sun’s morning glare into a gentle, ambient glow.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” my mom said from her chair, her face buried in her magazine. “It was getting too bright in here.”

  “Chase did it,” I told her, pointing upward as I put The Bone Road away. “But I have no idea how.”

  “It’s a built-in feature,” Pete said, walking up to us with Grant in tow. “Not only are the glass windows of the dome solar panels, they’ve
also treated with something called electrochromic film. It’s sort of like very expensive contact paper that can be stuck to any smooth, clear surface. Then, by running a very low electrical current through the film, you can change the transparency of that surface. The technology’s been around for a while, but the application on the dome is a little more advanced than most.”

  As if on cue to the phrase “more advanced”, we were suddenly plunged into darkness and the entire night sky hung over us, a full moon rising. Stars twinkled and a satellite passed overhead. If you’d asked me if it was real, I would have sworn it was, except I knew it was morning.

  “What is going on?” Samantha’s voice called anxiously from a few feet away.

  “It’s okay,” Pete called back. “Chase is just running a demo of the dome’s projection capabilities.”

  And the dome changed again, the world around us painted by an incredible red and orange sunset.

  Then another flicker, and there were foreboding storm clouds gathering over the desert and racing toward us, lightning rippling across a dark purple sky.

  Another flicker and it was the crack of dawn, the sun just peeking its pale morning face over the horizon.

  Then it was back to opaque, Grant, Samantha, and Passion all standing around me with their mouths hanging open.

  “That was spectacular,” my mom said, grinning from her comfy chair.

  “It’s done with digital projectors,” Pete explained, pointing around the dome to several devices mounted on the floor near the outer walls.

  “But why would The Hold or the CAMFers install something like that?” I asked, puzzled. “It seems like a lot of trouble just to pretty up a prison.”

  “Well, originally, there was just the opaque option to keep down the glare and heat,” Pete said. “It was a climate control feature. The projectors and the skyscape displays came later. They’re the product of a few bored techies working long shifts. They used to mock them up and test them on their lunch hour, much to everyone’s delight.”

  “Can it be seen from outside the dome as well?” Grant asked.

  “Yep.” Pete nodded. “It projects through the glass onto the other side. And it can do video too.”

  “So, this building is basically a giant drive-in theater,” my mom said.

  “I never really thought about it that way, but I guess so,” Pete said, smiling. “Except it doesn’t have audio. Although, there are external speakers mounted on the outside of the compound for announcements and alarms that could probably be hooked up to it.”

  “Can we see it again?” Passion asked.

  “Sure,” Pete said, giving Chase an encouraging wave.

  Chase waved back, tapped at his laptop, and the dome started to play its skylight demo again.

  But this time, as it flashed its fancy skies, I wasn’t filled with childlike delight or wonder. Instead, I was trying to figure out how I could use it to my advantage. Thanks to Mr. James’s research, we now had scientific proof that people with PSS weren’t freaks. In fact, just the opposite. People without any PSS like Grant and Dr. Fineman were the true anomalies. But you couldn’t just tell people the world was different than they’d always thought and believed. It wasn’t that simple. Most people didn’t want to know the truth. Most people wouldn’t take the news that there was a ninety-eight percent chance they had internal PSS as calmly as Chase, T-dog, and my mother had.

  No, before we could show people what we’d learned about PSS, we had to make them want it. We had to change their minds, but before we could do that, we had to change their feelings.

  And I suddenly had an idea for exactly how to do that.

  To make it as effective as possible, though, I needed something I could only get from the CAMFer side of the compound.

  The second demo run was done, and Chase set the dome back to opaque to protect us from the glaring sun. I looked around at my friends, my mom, these people I knew I could trust.

  This dome wasn’t a prison anymore. It was our fort, and I wasn’t just going to hold it down and wait for Mike Palmer or someone to come rescue us. The way I saw it, we had a captive audience. We might as well give them a show.

  “Yes!” T-Dog yelled from across the room.

  “We got it,” Chase called, grinning and pointing to the door that led to the CAMFer side. It was hanging open.

  I smiled, feigning excitement. This is what we’d come for, to get all the dirt and research the CAMFers had on PSS—to understand what they’d been doing all these years and why, so we could use it against them. I knew that, and I’d known all along it would mean entering the CAMFer side and facing all my personal demons. But now that the door was hanging open—

  I squared my shoulders and walked over to Chase. “Can I talk to you for a minute, alone,” I said, hoping T-dog wouldn’t take it personally.

  “Sure,” Chase said, sounding concerned. “Everything okay?” he asked as we walked away from that looming door.

  “Yeah, I’m good. I just need you to get me something from the CAMFer computers. It’s top priority, but please don’t mention it to anyone else.” And then I told him what I wanted.

  “Sure. I can get that for you,” he nodded, his brow creasing, “but are you sure—”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  After that, Pete rounded us up and paired us off kindergarten-buddy style so we could cover more ground exploring the CAMFer side. I was paired with him. Passion was with T-dog. Samantha was with Chase. And Grant volunteered to stay back in the dome with my mom.

  My heart skipped a beat as Pete and I stepped over the threshold into that familiar hallway—the same hallway Grant and I had once been marched down accompanied by armed CAMFer guards. But it was okay. I was in charge this time. I wasn’t a prisoner, and there was no one on the CAMFer side to hurt me.

  20

  ANTHONY

  Waking up was like coming out of a deep fog. Murmuring voices echoed in my head, and I didn’t know where I was or what had happened to me.

  No, wait. They’d cut off my hand. I remembered that much, and I looked down, hoping it had simply been a bad dream.

  But my hand was gone, a hideous, crusty stump where it once had been, now throbbing with pain.

  I slowly sat up on the gurney. There were pills scattered all over the infirmary floor, some long and white, some short and blue, and I remembered spilling them right before I’d conked out. I had no idea how long I’d been out, though. It might have been two hours or two days. But I felt rested, so that was good. My foggy vision had cleared, and I was so hungry my stomach was growling like a wild animal.

  It had been stupid to fall asleep like that. I had to be more careful. I swung the PSS knife around to my back and crouched down on the floor, trying to figure out the best way to scoop up hundreds of pills with only one hand. I would sort them later. I had just propped one of the bottles between my legs to hold it steady when I heard the voices.

  Real voices, muffled and distant, but coming closer. They must have been what had woken me in the first place. Someone was on the CAMFer side of the compound moving toward me, not one person but a whole group.

  Fuck.

  It was too late to duck out without knowing exactly where they were or which direction they were coming from. I’d have to hide, but my only real option was under the gurney. So, I ducked into its undercarriage, pulled the sheet down around the sides, slipped the knife from my jacket into my left hand, and tried not to breathe or move.

  “Here it is,” a man’s voice called from right outside the infirmary door. “Just where I thought it would be.”

  “Good for you,” a female voice answered teasingly, and I clutched the knife handle so hard it bit into my palm. I knew that voice. It was her. Olivia. The freak I’d guarded until she’d killed Major Tom and I’d severed her PSS hand. She was here.

  They both came in, two sets of feet were all I could see, and right away the man’s shoe crunched down on one of the pills.

  “Whoa
,” Olivia said. “What a mess. Looks like someone was in the middle of filling a prescription when I displaced them.”

  “I hope not,” the guy said, lifting his shoe and stepping more carefully as he moved into the room, the second pair of smaller feet following him in. “Those two drugs are a bad combination. They’d knock out an elephant.”

  “Here’s one of the bottles,” Olivia said, leaning over and picking it up with her PSS hand.

  I made a sound then. I know I did. Deep down in my throat and barely contained. I had cut off that hand. I had seen it gone. And I had lost my own hand for taking it. There was my stump, resting in my lap. If my hand was gone, her hand should be gone. Except, I’d just seen her use it.

  “Are they something important?” Olivia asked. “Should we pick them up?”

  If she did, if she crouched down to gather those pills, she’d see me.

  I held out my knife, ready for her. Ghost hand or not, I’d cut that bitch. I’d cut her over and over until she couldn’t come back.

  “You’re kidding, right?” the guy asked, sounding appalled. “There’s no five-second rule with medication.”

  “Right. Sorry,” she said, and I heard the slight plastic snick of her setting the bottle on the counter.

  “Besides, there’s plenty more where these came from,” the guy said, moving to the cabinet. “Especially now that we have two infirmaries to pull from.” I could hear him opening the cabinet doors. “Excellent,” he muttered. “I need more of this for your mother. Oh, and this will come in handy. They’re well stocked over here.”