by Megan Curd
“Minneapolis and Saint Paul. They were in Minnesota, United States of America. You do know we’re in the United States, right?”
I rolled my eyes, grateful we were behind him. “Of course.”
“Just checking. But don’t roll your eyes again if you want any more answers.”
“How did you—”
“There are no secrets in your voice, Avery Pike. You’d do well to learn to control that, lest your whole life be laid out to be read like a book.”
Alice shrugged at me. “I thought I could read you because we’ve known each other so long.”
“I’ve known her for less than twenty-four hours and could tell you her life story,” Jaxon said.
“You don’t know anything about me.” Indignation rose within me, but I was careful to keep my voice from wavering.
He whipped around, accepting the challenge I accidentally gave him. “Avery Jean Pike, your middle name probably comes from a deceased loved one. You have lived on your own cleverness for so long you don’t think you need anyone. You walk with a chip on your shoulder. You desperately want to be normal, which means you have a very powerful ability. You lost one or maybe even both parents at a young age.”
My mouth opened and closed as I tried to formulate a response, but he hit nearly every part of my life on the head. How did he know those things? Mr. Riggs must have told him before sending him out.
Alice leaned into me, her voice low. “He’s a guy after your own heart—overconfident, good looking, and witty. It’s like you in male form.”
“I’m not like him.”
Alice giggled. “Uh huh. Don’t look now, but I think I can already see your dreads growing in, which, by the way, would be disgusting. I bet his are moldy inside.”
“I resent that,” he called back. “There’s no mold in my dreads. They’re probably cleaner than the grease ball you call a hairdo.”
Alice opened her mouth, but I waved her off. “Just let it go,” I whispered. I closed my eyes and stopped to try to clear my head.
When I reopened them, the scene was different.
The field we were standing in flickered like an old TV, and was replaced by an alternate Twin Cities. I saw Jaxon up ahead, weaving through and jumping onto abandoned cars. A windshield cracked under the pressure of his heel. In the distance were huge craters in the road. Chunks of cement stuck out of the lower levels of buildings. Empty gun shell casings were everywhere, making it feel as though the ground was rolling and swaying under our feet.
“What happened to the grass?” I called.
Jaxon turned around, his brows furrowed with concern. “What do you mean, what happened to the grass? It’s still here.”
Alice looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Avery, we’re standing on it.”
I looked around, and the grass flickered once more, as though fighting for existence. In front of me sat an old tank.
Jaxon leaned against it, and the image changed to a tree. He crossed his arms, eyeing me carefully. “What do you see, Pike?”
Instinct told me to lie. “A tree.”
Jaxon nodded, seemingly relieved. He looked at Alice and tapped the side of his head. “Has your friend ever been checked? You know, to see if the hamster is still on the wheel?”
“She doesn’t need to be checked. I saw a tree, but now I see a tank.”
He blanched. “Pike, did you lie to me?”
“Well, I thought I saw a tank, but it changed to a tree and…” I ground my teeth in frustration as I ran my hands along the cold metal of the aged, decrepit tank. The military insignia was still emblazoned brightly on the side, as if it could spring to life at any time. I rapped the side with my knuckles and heard a hollow twang that seemed to reverberate through me.
“Done playing?” Jaxon asked, his eyes peering over the treads on the opposite side of the tank.
The fading in and out of my surroundings made me question my sanity, made me question this place. At least Dome Four didn’t lie about its appearance.
“What happened here?” I asked.
His eyes darkened again. “Same thing that happened everywhere. The war. This was one of the areas that the Resistance tried to take over, since it was at the heart of the United States.”
“You can’t be much older than me. How do you know so much?”
“There are libraries and such.”
“We didn’t have free reign to go dig up information on the war in our dome.” Alice interjected.
“I don’t remember much of the war, to be honest. Riggs brought me here when I was five, and the domes were already built. This was the last one constructed. I’ve only seen what was recorded on television or documented in papers.” It was plain to see I’d never receive a straight answer from him.
“You didn’t tell us how old you are,” I reminded him.
“I’m sixteen.”
He hopped an overpass lane barrier doubling an old wooden fence, and slid down an embankment. Mud slapped his face and hands, and spraying a wake behind him until he disappeared completely below another highway rising off the ground. I would have never seen the hole had he not slipped through it.
Alice screeched in horror. “He can’t expect us to act like cavemen and slide around in mud!”
“I don’t think he left us a choice,” I said with a chuckle. Following suite, I hoisted myself over the barrier. Mud caked itself in the folds of my jacket and in and behind my ears as I wound down the slope. Finally, my feet hit the stable, dry ground below.
“You look good as a brunette, Pike,” Jaxon said as he tried to clean his hands.
“I prefer my natural red, thanks.”
He laughed. “I didn’t say I disliked your flaming locks.” He eyed me with a devious smile. “I simply said that you looked good covered in dirt, too.” The ensuing heat rushing to my face seemed to please him.
The wailing above indicated Alice was coming. Limbs flying in all directions, her back hit square against the ground, and air whooshed from her lungs. She coughed and batted at her dress as though it were alive and trying to attack her.
“Good Lord, this…is…ridiculous! Can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” She narrowed her eyes at me, but the softness within them gave away her true feelings. “Do you know how long it took me to make this?”
“I hope not long,” said Jaxon. “Why would someone roll in the mud if their clothes were important to them?”
She muttered something about a conspiracy before glaring at him. “Well? Are you going to take us to this Academy?”
He wore a Cheshire grin. He was getting the exact rise out of her he wanted. “Sure, sure, we can go now. I just wanted to see if you’d roll down a hill of mud to follow me, and you did. Haven’t met a woman yet who hasn’t if I’m the prize at the bottom.”
If he heard the growl that bubbled from her diminutive throat, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he hopped over another ledge, leading us deeper into what appeared to be an old parking garage below the highway.
I glanced out over the waist-high cement walls of the garage and saw a massive building with a white cross and a snake coiled around it. “That’s a hospital, isn’t it?”
“It used to be a hospital, yes. We ransack it for antibiotics when someone falls ill, but it’s nearly cleaned out. There are two other hospitals in the dome, though. Another reason to use electricity. It keeps the refrigerators running in the hospitals, which keeps the medicines cool. They’ll eventually expire, but until then we’ll keep them at the ready.”
The odor of dank disrepair grew more prominent the deeper we wandered into the garage. Sunlight began to wane, casting long spindly shadows along the walls. The hairs on my neck stood on end at the thought that someone might be watching us.
“Hurry,” Jaxon urged us, sliding a card through a machine to the left of two grey metal doors. It flashed red, then green twice before it beeped. He opened the door, but suddenly barred us with his long wingspan.
C
aught off guard, Alice ran into me. She sniffed in aggravation.
“Once we go in there,” he whispered, “don’t talk about you saw out here. No one has ever questioned the holograms before you two. Don’t talk about what you saw.”
“But why?” Alice asked. “Why use energy to cover up the ruins? Don’t you have more important things to use the power for? And why hasn’t anyone else noticed?”
Jaxon’s face grew pale. “Haven’t you ever wanted to believe the world isn’t as ugly as what you see every day?”
“Of course,” I said, “but we don’t try to hide what the world is. What good does that do?”
“Have you ever heard of morale?”
“Where we’re from, we don’t have time for morale. Surviving is priority number one, and if you don’t see life for what it is, how do you expect to survive the ugly when it’s thrown at you?”
He appeared stunned. “You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“Sure am, but you know what? If I piss in your Wheaties, you’ll know it. I won’t try to hide it with a hologram.”
“We don’t like to talk about the war any more than your dome did. People avoid looking too deeply into anything. It’s better if you keep your nose out of places it doesn’t belong, and the holograms are one of those places. Trust me.” Apparently, secrets lurked in the shadows of this dome too.
We walked through the door and into a hallway so plain it felt surgical. Was this place all that different from home? The odor of stale medicine and sickeningly clean sheets tore at my nose. A camera was mounted in the middle of the hallway ceiling, and a red light blinked beside the lens.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Lower level of the hospital, but only for a moment.”
He swiped his card at the door on the other end of the hallway. Another beep sounded, and we marched on. He led us down a flight of stairs and through another set of double doors. This hallway was as white and bare as the previous one. There were no windows or doors and nothing to indicate where we were or even whether we were above or below ground. I held my gaze on the nondescript tiles and listened to our footsteps echo off the walls. After what felt like forever, we reached a pair of metal grated doors.
“Elevator going up,” he said. He pulled down a grate that locked us into the contraption, its bare cogs and pulleys out for everyone to see. It reminded me of Dome Four, and my stomach twisted with homesickness that I never knew existed.
Jaxon stared into my eyes, his mouth half open. “Say, why are your eyes two different colors?”
“Got into a fight. Guy punched me, and they said he permanently altered the color.”
“That’s not possible.”
“What isn’t possible is that I won’t punch you and do the same thing,” I said matter-of-factly.
Alice kept a straight face to make it convincing. We played this game together—seeing how many unlikely scenarios we could come up with for my heterochromia. “You should see the other guy if you think her damage is bad.”
After that, he was quiet but kept glancing nervously towards me. It was all I could do to not burst out in laughter.
Alice leaned in. “What did I tell you? You’re a match made in heaven—full of crap and just waiting to call one another’s bluffs.”
I elbowed her in the ribs. She giggled, and Jaxon glanced between us with trepidation. That’s right, Mr. Pierce, you should be the one out of their element for a change.
The elevator groaned and lurched upward, throwing us forward and doing nothing to ease my tension. From the way Alice had one hand on the solid side of the elevator and the other covering her eyes, I pleasantly wondered if she wouldn’t throw up on Jaxon’s dirt-spattered shoes.
Without warning, the elevator halted. Jaxon shielded his face as light poured through the bars. Through watering eyes, I saw him step out of the elevator, and his tall frame briefly blocked the light. He bowed, his body thrown into shadows from the glow behind him. The rays that filtered between his arms and body gave him the appearance of having angel wings. His voice was now different, proud and proper.
“Welcome, my ladies, to Chromelius Academy. I’m quite sure you’ll find your new home to be a bit more opulent than your last one.”
ALICE AND I stepped out of the elevator in awe. We were at the top of a magnificent, dual-winding staircase made entirely of black granite. The edges of the stairs and the rails appeared to be gold. Silver was inlaid within the stairs themselves in extravagant designs—swirls, planets, and all manner of mankind’s knowledge—creating a breathtaking montage. The flecks of color within the granite gave me the impression I was looking out into a vast galaxy with millions of stars. It probably cost more than the food rations for the entire population of my old dome.
The wall to the right was covered in gold and silver cogs; intricate designs of precious stones glinted in the light as they turned on the cogs, casting mini rainbows on the floor. Brass pipes rose from behind the cogs, bolted into place along the curvature of the cathedral ceilings. They angled back down to the ground in the center of the atrium to a fountain large enough to be a swimming pool. The marble carving in the center of the fountain depicted a family sitting in the grass with a picnic basket in front of them. They were all leaning back on a blanket and looking skyward to the enormous skylight that covered most of the ceiling. Below them on the platform the words Restore our future were carved. Water—clear water—flowed out of the sides of the monument and into the pool below.
What a waste to use clean water like that.
Banners hung from the ceiling rafters in every color imaginable with clichés like Take pride in your gifts and The future is now scrawled in calligraphy. It all matched the decor; nothing felt out of place.
Except me.
“Like what you see?” Jaxon asked.
Alice nodded, awestruck. “The banners are made of silk, aren’t they?”
He leaned against the golden railings, dropping his regal façade. “Very good. The best we could find, considering the circumstances.”
“The circumstances,” muttered Alice. She’d probably wrap herself up in one of the banners and never return if she could. Silk was impossible to find at home, and she loved new materials.
I gazed out over the ledge and took in the atrium below us. The floors were laced with silver and directed a path to the back of the main room, where a traditional clock larger than any I had ever seen covered almost the whole wall. The iron pendulum swung rhythmically, and brass cogs visible behind the main face indicated the time in onyx Roman numerals.
“The floor and railings are my design.” Jaxon’s words overflowed with pride. “I thought the place needed some life.”
I looked once more to the cogs that hummed quietly on the right and the condensation that dripped from the pipes. “I thought you didn’t use steam here.”
“Yes and no. Like I said, we use electricity, but we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We use the same mechanics as your dome, but we do it more efficiently with electricity.”
“That’s illegal in our dome,” Alice quipped.
Jaxon’s grin lit up his face. “It’s not illegal if you’re the one making the rules.” He pushed off the railing and extended an elbow for us. “Riggs instructed me to meet him in the library when we arrived, and afterward I’ll show you to your room. Ready to go?”
Despite his question, we didn’t seem to have a choice. We silently intertwined our arms with his and set off down the staircase. The water from the fountain playfully trickled and plopped as we passed. It was so clean, so clear. Part of me wanted to jump in and splash around to see if it was real. There was no time to stop because he kept leading us on into one of the multitude of hallways that led away from the central room.
“This hallway leads to the individual studies wing. The library and a few training rooms designed for specific abilities are back there, along with a quiet room for meditation,” he said in a blasé tone.
&
nbsp; This corridor was adorned in deep blues and lush reds. The carpet was so thick I could see the impressions our feet made as we walked. Above our heads were crystal chandeliers and every few feet candelabras sat in arched niches lined with steel and brass. The candles threw flickering rays of light to illuminate our path. Upon closer inspection, I saw they were actually tiny light bulbs, flickering intermittently. More than once I caught the red blink of another camera like the one I had seen in the hospital hallway. Riggs must really value his security here.
“What’s with all the candles?” I asked.
“Riggs likes the mood they set. Lord knows we have enough electricity to use regular bulbs, but for some reason he prefers the ambiance of the candlelight, even if it’s fake. Here we are,” he indicated as we reached the end of the foyer. A sliver of soft light flickered through the frosted windows of the cherry French doors.
I looked to him for guidance, and he nodded toward the doors.
“Miss Avery Pike, so glad you could make it,” Mr. Riggs said jovially from across the library as we entered. The large fireplace behind him crackled merrily as the logs burned, filling my nostrils with the strong scent of cedar.
To his right was a cozy-looking alcove with brown leather chairs and a couch. An old keg had been cut in half, and a circular piece of grey steel lay on top to create a coffee table. The Victorian feel of the library was comforting. It felt like home but so much more than Dome Four had ever been. Perhaps this place wasn’t as awful as I’d imagined on the way. I couldn’t wait to curl up in that corner with a book and enjoy the serenity this room exuded.
Mr. Riggs strode toward us with his arms extended in welcome. On either side of him mountainous rows of books loomed overhead going up to a second floor. The ceiling was adorned with cogs, metal windmills, and coils that wrapped around open wooden rafters. It was mesmerizing.
Mr. Riggs’s pleasant baritone brought my attention back from overhead. “I see Mr. Pierce successfully retrieved you as well as Miss Dobson. I’m sure we’ll find her suitable living quarters.”
Alice and I stared at each other, dumbfounded. The thought of us living separately sent a cold sweat over my entire body. She found my hand and squeezed. I knew how she felt without having to speak.
