The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade

by A. P. Kensey

  A scream echoed down the long hallway. Colton stood up, his eyes fixed on the door as the scream tapered off into silence. A moment later, it started again, quiet at first, and then louder, like a demented siren cranking to full power.

  “It’s Adsen,” he said, and ran out of the room.

  The hallway had never seemed so long. Colton’s legs felt as if they were moving too slowly—like his own body did not want him to go any farther.

  When he finally ran out of the hall and into the dome room, he immediately wished he had stayed away.

  Kamiko stood in the middle of the room near the shattered fire pit, her skin shimmering with dark blue flame. Long, electric legs of lightning stretched from her back and held Adsen twenty feet off the floor. They spun him in the air slowly, like a spider cocooning its prey in slow motion. The ends of the legs crackled over his skin, leaving black char marks in their wake.

  In her madness, Kamiko had released her energy with no consideration for anyone else in the room. Two of the three soldiers that had survived the earlier attack lay in a heap behind her. Their armor was burnt and fused with their skin. Thick smoke rose from their bubbling face-masks.

  Adsen let out another ear-piercing scream as one of the legs brushed over his chest.

  Colton ran down the corridor of shelves toward Kamiko, blind to everything else. For the first time since he had been infected, he felt the presence of his ability. As he ran, he drew from Kamiko’s energy. It radiated from her body and seeped into the room, and Colton took it in and stored it, letting it fill him like a charging battery.

  He was only a few feet away from her when a rifle cracked him in the skull and he tumbled to the ground. Colton’s world threatened to go dark but he fought to stay conscious. A soldier stepped out from behind a metal shelf and stood over him. He brought his rifle up slowly. Colton knew he was going to shoot. The soldier racked a round into the chamber, then rested the butt of the rifle gently against his shoulder. He let out a deep breath as his finger found the trigger and started to squeeze.

  Colton closed his eyes but no shot came. Instead there was a long whuuuUMPH, followed by a short scream. He opened his eyes and the soldier was gone. He lay in a heap on the other side of the room. Suddenly Dormer was there, helping Colton to his feet. He was a little paler than usual, but the deep cut on his head was almost completely healed.

  “Let’s get him down,” he said.

  Colton nodded and together they ran at Kamiko. She turned to them at the last second. Two of the lightning legs holding Adsen detached from his skin and disappeared into her body. Colton reached out for her neck and the strands shot out and slammed into his chest.

  But he had been ready. He focused everything he had on absorbing her energy. There was so much raw power in her attack that he knew he couldn’t hold out for long. Dormer stood a few feet away, fighting against the same kind of attack. The long bolts of lightning held the two men in place.

  Adsen screamed once more, and then was silent.

  Dormer looked up at him and his concentration was broken. Kamiko’s energy surged into his torso and he launched back into the air. He smacked into the dome wall and slid down to the floor, unconscious.

  Colton yelled and pushed forward, ignoring the sensation of pain that was slowly spreading out from his shoulders and down his spine. He knew Kamiko was overloading his system—knew that she was forcing more energy into his body than he could disperse. If he didn’t break free, eventually his ability would simply stop working and he would melt from the inside-out.

  Kamiko’s eyes burned brighter than Colton had ever seen. Her black hair floated around her head in silken waves.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

  “You sure don’t act like it,” said someone directly behind her.

  Kamiko turned quickly as June grabbed her face. Two black and blue energy spheres blossomed from June’s palms and enveloped Kamiko’s head. The spheres exploded and Kamiko flew backward. The lightning sprouting from her back and the fire covering her skin instantly vanished.

  Adsen fell to the floor and hit the hard concrete with a dull thud. He looked at Colton with glassy eyes. Adsen smiled—a smile full of peace; a smile of a man content with his own personal redemption. The light faded from his eyes and Colton knew he was dead.

  Kamiko lay on the ground twenty feet away, groaning. June and Colton ran at her, their fists humming with built-up energy. They were still ten feet away when Kamiko screamed. A blue sphere of solid energy formed around her body. Colton and June stopped short, just outside the sphere. Kamiko was barely visible within. She stood slowly, stumbled and fell, then stood again.

  Her eyes burned with rage as she looked first at June, then at Colton.

  “You made a promise,” she said.

  “What?” said June. She turned to Colton. “What is she talking about?”

  Kamiko’s eyes shifted back to June and Colton remembered the deal he had made. Dormer groaned and tried to sit up against the wall. Kamiko’s gaze drifted over to him and the sphere flared out, widening in diameter.

  June pushed her hand through the barrier and screamed. One of the lightning strands shot out of the barrier and hit her like a truck. She skidded back across the floor and slammed to a stop against the rubble of the fire pit.

  “Don’t hurt them,” said Colton. He held up his palms and let his built-up energy drain visibly from his palms as he stepped toward Kamiko. “I’ll go with you.”

  She smiled at him like a girl who had just been asked to the school dance. For a split second she was Kamiko the girl, and not Kamiko the psychopath.

  The sphere disappeared in the blink of an eye and the lightning returned, arcing out from her back to grab at the inner walls of the dome. She beckoned Colton over. He went to her and she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close. She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed happily.

  “Hold on tight,” she said.

  Colton wrapped his arms around her as their feet slowly lifted off the floor. The lightning scraped along the surface of the dome wall like the inside of a plasma globe. It carried them up toward the hole in the ceiling and out into the sunlight. Colton looked down as Kamiko set them at the edge of the hole. Down in the darkness, he saw June crawling across the floor toward Dormer. She reached him and looked up at Colton.

  Tears streamed down her face. She turned away and tried to get Dormer to wake up.

  The distant sound of a helicopter drew nearer. Colton shielded his eyes from the sun to look up as the aircraft approached and set down nearby. Kamiko stood a few feet away, staring at Colton. After one last look into the dome room, he turned away. Kamiko held out her hand for him and he stopped. Her smile faltered just enough to be noticeable. Colton took her hand and allowed her to lead him away from the only place in the world that felt like home.

  38

  The Jeep was a mile away from the Dome when Haven saw the helicopter take off. She knew the stop to refuel in Billings would cost them, but there had been no other choice.

  The chopper was long and sleek, with two heavy machine guns jutting out from the front. It made a slow circle over the Dome, like a buzzard circling a corpse. As the helicopter turned, Haven suddenly knew that Colton was inside. She felt it in her bones.

  “Drive faster!” shouted Haven. She stood up in the back seat and held onto the roll cage bar. The Jeep bounced harshly over the rough ground leading up to the Dome.

  “It’s too late,” said Bastian.

  He was right. The chopper rose quickly into the air flew in the opposite direction. By the time Roku pulled the Jeep next to the massive hole in the ceiling of the dome room, the helicopter was nothing more than a shrinking black speck in the sky.

  Haven jumped out of the Jeep and ran to the hole. She fell to her knees and peered over the ragged edge. The only light in the dome room was coming from the hole in the ceiling. A thick shaft of bright light pierced the gloom, illuminating a broad circle of the flo
or. Dormer and another woman—Haven realized she was one of the medical facility survivors—sat against the wall at the edge of the light, looking up.

  “The ladder’s gone,” shouted the woman. “She melted half the stuff in here when she left.”

  “Is my brother okay?”

  “Noah’s fine.”

  Haven hesitated before asking her next question. She was certain she already knew the answer. “And Colton?”

  There was a long pause. “Kamiko took him,” said Dormer.

  Haven looked up at the sky, but the helicopter was gone. Nothing but clear, empty blue as far as she could see.

  “Haven,” said Dormer. She looked back down. “There’s a cure. Everyone here was inoculated.”

  Her breath escaped her and she felt like she was going to cry from relief. “Do—do you have any more?” she asked. Her voice was shaking and she covered her mouth with her hand. Tears squeezed out of the corners of her closed eyes.

  “Just enough for Marius,” said the woman. “Kamiko destroyed everything else.”

  Haven couldn’t speak. She nodded and walked back to the Jeep. Only after she was a few feet away from the hole could she take a deep breath and begin to calm herself down. Marius stirred in the back of the Jeep. His eyes opened when Haven gently brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. His face was icy cold.

  “There’s a cure,” said Haven. “They have it below. But the ladder’s gone. We need to find a way down and then we’ll get you to Corva, okay?”

  Marius rested his head against the seat and nodded weakly. He closed his eyes and shivered despite the heat.

  “What do we do?” asked Bastian.

  “Let’s try the garage,” said Haven.

  She hopped up into the Jeep and Roku drove over to the small, rocky mountain nearby. The garage roll-up door at the base of the mountain was in good condition except for a big dent right in the middle. Roku and Bastian went to either side of the door and forced it open inch by inch. It groaned as they pushed it upward until there was finally enough room to get into the garage.

  “Well, that’s just great,” said Haven after she walked inside.

  Dormer’s black sedan—or what was left of it—was parked next to several large chunks of concrete that had fallen from the ceiling. The frame of the car had been liquefied until all that remained was a mound of wrinkled black metal. It looked like a melted candle.

  “So they parked the car and then melted it.”

  Bastian shook his head. “Some people, right?”

  All of the shelves lining the walls of the garage had been overturned and some of the walls had crumbled inward, revealing wet, red clay. Part of the roof lay in huge pieces against the elevator cage which led down to the main dome room. The front of the cage was bent inward until it almost touched the back.

  “Let’s find some rope to lower us through the hole,” said Haven. “The elevator is useless.”

  She poked around the rubble, searching for anything that would help them descend into the Dome. Bastian stood still, staring at the elevator.

  “You going to help, or what?” she asked.

  “There’s a winch on the front of the Jeep,” he said.

  “You want to lower us with the winch?”

  “We can pull this debris away with the Jeep and maybe coax that cage back into shape, and bingo.”

  Haven looked outside at the Jeep, then at the pile of concrete in front of the elevator. “Worth a shot,” she said.

  A minute later Bastian was back in the garage, pulling a long steel cable that was attached to a spool under the Jeep’s front bumper. Roku drove the Jeep slowly forward and got close to the garage. He waited behind the wheel while Bastian and Haven ran the steel cable around the largest piece of concrete blocking the elevator. Bastian fed the cable under to Haven and she looped it back over the top, then he connected the large metal hook to the cable, creating a giant lasso around the chunk of debris.

  Bastian gave a thumb’s up and Roku flipped a switch in the Jeep. The spool reeled back in, pulling the excess cable until it became taught. He shifted the Jeep into reverse and backed slowly away from the garage.

  The huge chunk of concrete scraped loudly over the floor, pushing smaller chunks out of its way like a glacier cutting through icy water. It hit the side of the melted black sedan and stopped. The steel cable groaned and there was a loud TWANG as the winch snapped off the front of the Jeep. Roku got out and looked down at it, frowning.

  “Maybe you should get your money back,” said Bastian, grinning.

  “It’s okay,” said Haven. “I think that cleared enough room.”

  She went to the elevator and put her hands against the bent metal cage. Bastian stood next to her and did the same. The cage bars glowed blue and yellow as Haven and Bastian used their energies to heat the metal. They bent the bars back into their rightful places one at a time, as if the cage was made of molding clay.

  They removed their hands and the cage bars cooled quickly, losing their glow and hardening into place.

  “I’ll get Marius,” said Haven. She went back to the Jeep. Marius was already standing next to it, swaying slightly on his feet.

  “Everything good?” he asked.

  “It’s getting better,” said Haven. She took his arm and helped support his weight as they walked to the elevator. Marius breathed slowly and heavily, like a man in a deep sleep. His eyes were glazed over as if he were drunk. They got into the elevator with Roku and Bastian.

  “Let’s hope this piece of junk still works,” said Haven.

  Bastian lowered the cage door. A small control panel was welded onto one of the cage bars, and a small silver key dangled next to a red button. Bastian turned the key and the button lit up. He smiled and pushed down on it until the elevator lurched in place. For a split second, Haven thought they were going to break free of the supports and plummet to their deaths. To go through everything they had endured only to be flattened like pancakes right at the very end struck her as universally cruel.

  The elevator jumped again, then slowly moved down the shaft. Haven let out a sigh of relief when it finally touched bottom and the door slid up.

  “First floor, Housewares,” said Bastian. He stepped aside so Haven could help Marius out into the long, wide hallway that led to the rest of the Dome.

  The four of them walked in silence, their footsteps echoing down the corridor. The end of the hallway was destroyed. The large door lay on its side in three separate pieces. Haven stepped over the rubble and brought Marius to the wall next to Dormer and the woman from the medical facility. She eased him down and brushed her hands off against her jeans.

  “Is the cure for real?” she asked.

  Dormer nodded. “It’s for real.”

  Bastian put his hand on Roku’s shoulder and led him away. They spoke quietly to each other, just out of earshot.

  The woman from the medical facility crouched next to Marius holding a syringe containing clear yellow liquid. “I’m June,” she said. She injected Marius with the serum. He smiled at her but was too weak to speak. “Nice to meet you, too,” she said.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Haven.

  “In their rooms,” said Dormer. “Resting. Fade hit some of them harder than the others.”

  “But are they okay?”

  Dormer looked away. “Micah and Adsen are dead.”

  “What?” whispered Haven. “H—How?”

  “Micah was trying to protect us,” said June. She put the cap back on Marius’s syringe and set it aside. “One of the soldiers thought it was a bad idea.” She stood up abruptly. “I’ll go check on the others.” She walked away, toward the dormitory hallway.

  “What about Adsen?” asked Haven.

  “He was supposed to be working on a way to make Fade more lethal,” said Dormer. “Instead he lied to Kamiko and produced a cure. She found out after it was too late to stop him, but that didn’t matter. She killed him anyway.”

  “I’m so s
orry.”

  Dormer smiled weakly, then he looked at her for a long moment. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “So am I.”

  “Listen, there’s something you should know about Noah.”

  “What happened? I thought you said everyone was okay!”

  “They are, they are. It’s just that—well, after Micah was killed, Noah displayed some of his ability.”

  “What do you mean? He’s just a boy, there’s no way he can—”

  “Haven!”

  She turned as Noah ran across the room and leapt into her arms. She hugged him so tightly that he coughed. “Oh!” she said, loosening her grip. “Oh, Noah, I’m sorry! I was just so happy to see you!” She kissed his forehead and his cheeks. He wiggled away from her and then came back in and gave her a big hug.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  “I missed you more.” She kissed the top of his head.

  “Micah’s gone.”

  “I know, sweetie. I know.” She held him as close as she could. She wanted him to stay a little boy forever, or at least for a few more years. Noah shouldn’t have to deal with any of the problems that plagued her and the other adults in the Dome. He was just a sweet little boy who never asked to be cursed and never did anything to deserve the Nova ability. Haven wondered if he would ever be safe once people found out the truth.

  Marius suddenly cried out and sat straight up as if someone had splashed a bucket of ice water over his face. He looked around, confused, like it was his first time in the Dome. “What?” he said.

  “It’s okay, Marius,” said Haven. “You’ve been given the cure.”

  “Corva!” he shouted.

  “She’s fine,” said Dormer. “Recovering nicely.”

  Haven reluctantly released Noah and looked into his eyes. “Noah, would you mind taking Marius back to see Corva?”

  Noah nodded and held out his hand. Marius took it and stood up. He allowed the small boy to lead him through the rubble and down the dormitory hallway.