Exile: Arc

by Jack Lance

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about a thing.” Bailey said supportively. “We’re in this together now, right?”

  She nodded slightly as Bailey took the clip from around her head and flicked it over the side of the chasm.

  Thom was now close along the highway. He could feel his skates starting to heat up at the heel and knew that soon it would become dangerous to maintain these speeds.

  Eventually he reached a highway tunnel that led into the Old Gang Central district, and let himself slow. He rolled out into the place and began skating hard along the carriageways over the main street. He relayed between cars that were moving extremely fast through the dark outer roads of the lawless place.

  As he realized that the lane ahead had been blocked by an accident he used his speed to bunny hop onto the rear window of a car, catapulting him over a busy fast lane and onto another more relaxed lane on the other side.

  After a few minutes Thom had made it around to the end of the highways at a point that was closest to the factory district containing the exit to the dome. He used a tunnel beneath the end of the twisted up tram track, exitting Old Gang Central and entering the next district over.

  As he skated out over the moss encrusted factories he looked down at the streets along the dome wall, using the height and view to find where the action was.

  He was unable to see anything in the murky cavern apart from at the slip road leading down there was a small barricade of Old Gang thugs. At the exit lane he hopped up on the rail at the side and grinded down while balancing carefully. At the bottom he leaped at the thugs, landing just behind the barricade.

  Ignoring the pain in his ankles Thom pressed on along the lower street keeping his speed high, taking advantage of the dull disorientation of the Old Gang heavies behind him. He made it to a point in the road where it turned slightly to accommodate for the curve in the dome wall.

  “Oi!” he heard a chorus from behind, then some gun fire. Thom turned sharply and skated low along the black tarmac as the bullets flew by. He disappeared behind a red brick wall before any more bullets could find him.

  He skated along the foggy lane until he saw a light, and then a group of people near the base of the large door Randall had told him about. He hadn’t seen anything like it in any cavern he had visited in the city, a tall doorway, with what looked like natural light spilling in thought it.

  Thom swallowed his fear and began skating down the lane toward it, using the gentle slope to build speed. He left the lane and mounted the wide runway leading to the opening.

  There were three very big men standing before it, but didn’t look like they had expected company so skated between them into the tunnel, and on through the dome wall.

  There were more protests behind him but no gun fire, which was good since there was nowhere to hide in the tunnel. He skated on trying to keep up his speed, then near the outer door shouted the command to retract the wheels.

  Thom ran outside onto the rock precipice, seeing only two men there looking down over the misty crater below with binoculars.

  He ran up to them and grabbed the nearest man by the shoulders, flinging him back onto the snow, while snatching the binoculars from him.

  He saw now that it was Josep Fincle, with Nash now looking at them both wide eyed, but he was too infuriated to care.

  Thom looked through the binoculars in the direction Josep had been looking, and saw two motorbikes racing through the snow from a cable car that led up to a shed a few meters to their left.

  “Steal your girlfriend, did he?” Josep said, then laughed through his pain while standing up.

  Thom lowered the binoculars and looked at the two dots far below, and whispered “Jayne.”

  There were more laughs from Josep and Thom turned to look at he and his brother, and the three huge body guards that had now joined them.

  Thom smiled, knowing what was coming and said “Who’s first?”

  The expressions on their faces changed to one of extreme fear, and the five men turned and ran away toward the dome. Realizing that it wasn’t him they were running from he looked over his shoulder at the sky. A large black cloud was unravelling itself fast, and the edge of the crater suddenly turned from grey with white patches to pure white, and expanded in size.

  Realizing that the eye of the storm was passing, and the real winter storm was approaching, Thom wasted no time in sprinting after the others. He ran through the door as it began to slide down.

  Thom gave the command to turn on the blades and then skated fast past the five Old Gang leaders.

  They shouted after him things like “We’ll get you.”

  Thom was fast and escaped from them, and then with a little cunning and persistence, from Old Gang territory as well.

  Below in the crater, Bailey and Jayne took the bikes toward their destination, which was now getting closer and closer. The dome had grown in size so that now it was larger to the eye that the dome from which they had come.

  Neither of them really looked, but above them just behind the blue screen of the clear sky sat the orbs of the planet and its other moons. It was presently beginning to haze again as the storms neared the farthest mountain sides.

  “Bailey, look.” Jayne said over the helmet radio, which was a part with the silver suit they had to wear while outside the dome. She let Bailey find what it was she had seen.

  In the far distance across the crater a black spot was moving, and getting larger. There was a hideous electronic howl and then a line of gunfire hitting the snow close by. A faint rainbow beam swept over them a few times and then another, louder howl chilled Jayne to the bone.

  Then suddenly, she saw far off the heletank suddenly drop from the air and crash into the snow.

  “What?” she began.

  Bailey saw this and shouted “Oh my God! Put your foot down! Quick!”

  She did so, although her bike was already at top speed.

  Close to where the heletank had crashed she now saw there were sheets of snow falling from the black cloud above. The eye of the storm was passing, and now the coldest storms of the moon were about to engulf them.

  But the base of the dome was close, and she saw beneath the ice under the wheels the lines of a road close and then emerge from the ice. The road led directly into a traffic tunnel in the dome wall, which they entered at speed through it's shattered gates. Once inside they carefully slowed and dismounted.

  Standing in the outer cargo bay of the dome she felt a little lost to herself. She saw that Bailey was taking off the thin suit and helmet so she did the same, and then left them on the dirty stone parking lot and ran on.

  “Come on, quick!” Bailey yelled, and the two of them ran from the parking bays to a grotty door leading into a corridor filled with water to the ankle. They ran as fast as they could along the long corridor, seeing in the rooms to the left and right dining, and social rooms. It seemed that this dome was not exactly like the one they had come from.

  Jayne looked over her shoulder and saw the thick razors of snow and ice slicing the road outside. The freezing winds blew like a hurricane up the corridor, and quickly Jayne realized that she wasn’t going to be able to move her arms and legs very effectively.

  “Aaron!” she spluttered as she fell to one knee. “I can’t go on, friend.”

  She fell forward onto her side, and Bailey, who somehow had a higher tolerance for these extreme conditions started to panic.

  “Oh God! Wendall, I’m sorry! No, I won’t leave her!” he gathered her up and began dragging her along the corridor.

  Then suddenly the winds stopped, and he turned to look back along the corridor. There was a guttural sound like paper ripping, and Bailey saw the corridor fill with ice like a wall rushing toward them. The water in the corridor was freezing solid, as would all water in which he was standing, and the water in their bodies too.

  Panting against the cold air while dragging Jayne, he entered one of the doorways and up a sodden, carpeted stairca
se to what looked to be a games room. The corridor behind filled with white ice and then through the doorway to the bottom of the stairs, and then stopped, congealing and creaking.

  The room was wet and freezing still, and Bailey knew that he would have to be fast to save the girl. He picked her up high and dropped her onto a wet pool table, and began pounding her chest with his fist, blowing breath to her mouth intermittently. For a while there was nothing, and Bailey paced as if in an anguish of guilt. Then after striking her a few more times she opened her eyes, and gasped at the icy air.

  He cried slightly, happy to see her alive, and helped her down from the games table.

  She hugged her arms around her middle, shivering in her soaked dress.

  “Oh… my gosh that was cold.” she stammered, shivering hard.

  Bailey laughed and cried, and hugged his arm around her, not that it would give her much warmth.

  They made their way from room to room, finding them all equally waterlogged and rotten, and eventually found a place where the ice hadn’t filled the main corridor. Returning to the corridor they found themselves within a place they both recognized as being The Shell, or rather its equivalent in this city.

  They walked from the place within the dome’s wall, which turned out to be a Border Security mess for the top brass. This officer’s mess reaching back into the dome wall could very well be mirrored in their own city since they would never be permitted into those back quarters.

  It all led to a familiar cavern, very similar in layout to the Border Sec district she had seen earlier.

  They walked down the steps to the cobble stone square, with no one to be seen, and all the buildings apparently empty. They looked to have been this way for a long time, given the dirt and moss that had accumulated over everything, and there was a damp papery smell blowing through the place on the luke warm winds.

  There was a loud klaxon horn sounding every couple of minutes from another part of the city. It was meant to indicate that there was a serious emergency involving the safety of the people on a whole, and that everyone should stay in their homes.

  Jayne was freezing, and found it hard to concentrate on her walking, but hugged her water logged dress tighter and continued to follow Bailey.

  They walked from there to a factory district, finding it too, devoid of life. It was strange to see all the industrial units without power and pollution as they were. The highway and tramway seemed to have been destroyed as if an earthquake had hit, and toppled each of the segments from their supports.

  The dark tunnels in the wall leading to the biosphere seemed to howl, as if a huge cyclone were feeding the warm wind.

  They decided to head north to what would have been the old city center in their own dome, but in a place without Old Gang and the Fincles. Jayne felt strangely glad to be here, and away from all the spitefulness of the place they had left behind.

  From there they walked through an abandoned apartment district, that too looked to have suffered some kind of disaster, levelling most of the towers and ruining the highway.

  They found a route through it all, by a tower that had toppled to the right, and now stood, leaning steeply to the side held fast by its foundation girders

  “What could have done that?” Jayne said, pointing at the strange sight, and its gaping hole where its foundations had been torn away.

  “Earthquake?” Bailey smiled, and Jayne slowly shook her head.

  They walked past it along the rubble strewn roads, and then through a small field of unkempt grass, constantly looking around for any sign of life. For a moment Jayne thought she had seen the glint of eyes in one of the apartment windows as they walked by, but decided it was probably an illusion.

  They walked through a few more similarly derelict and crumbled districts until finally they came to the northern city center. On entering the outer road system they found that it may well have been in full use at the time of the crisis, in whatever form it had taken.

  Above them the block had split from the roof and toppled slightly to the side and now rested against the cavern wall. It stood over them as they walked onto the drafty main street. They had at last reached somewhere with an intact highway system, but the tram lines had toppled and stood at angles digging into the main street.

  Here there were signs of struggle, with most of the shop windows in the arches along the main street being broken in and outwards, and their contents strewn across the pavements and road. A lot had been taken, but for the less needed items in a crisis. There were designer clothes littering the road before them, blowing around very slightly in the gale.

  “Strong wind here.” Jayne said shrugging and hugging herself tighter against it.

  Bailey looked up and said “It’s coming from the biosphere. That’s where we need to go.”

  “Peachy.” Jayne said and followed Bailey slowly up the spaghetti junction lanes to the one leading into the cavern wall. They shouldered against the press of the wind into the tunnel and then walked up the steep inclining carriageway to the biosphere.

  With the lower city further behind them they felt the draft begin to die down. They walked from the dark tunnel out through the sea bed, over what would have been the surrounding sea. The trench that surrounded the central island was empty, just a dry trough of sand and dirt. The holographic illusion of sky and sea was also inactive, and they could see the heavy duty industrial rigging that supported the outer dome shell.

  “The rivers and seas are dead.” Jayne said limping after Bailey along the clear tube.

  They walked on to the first crossroads and found that the wind became more calm.

  The glass like road continued on over the thick temperate forests that seemed to have taken over most of the island. Their canopies were being tugged, pressed down hard by a powerful, relentless wind of hurricane force.

  After a long time of walking over the darkened island, they took a road that led down to the central lands, to the moors, which had grown wild also, and were within sight of what had been the arctic center. The snow and ice there had all melted into a large lake, with the central control tower standing up from its middle. The revolving light was still powered though, and Bailey pointed to it as they walked the last distance of the crystal highway.

  The two walked from the serenity within the highway network to the fierce winds that were circulating in the biospheric dome.

  “Good gosh!” Jayne yelled over it.

  “Just follow me!” Bailey yelled back, and began staggering across the tangled grass of the moor.

  Jayne followed him a long way until the highway behind them was almost impossible to see. The central lake and the dark grey tower were now much closer.

  Then suddenly the motion scanner on Baileys wrist began it’s alternating tone.

  They both flushed with fear and Bailey began searching the ceiling of the dome high above. It was very dark and too far away, but then they saw something.

  Something very big dropped from the ceiling, beyond the distant tower and slammed down into the waters there. It kicked up a high wake of water that crashed over the tower, and began rolling toward the shores of the moor. The wave rolled inland a way, quite far from where they were, then dissipated and began to retract back to the lake.

  The waters of the lake were completely disturbed now, but after they had stood watching and waiting for a few minutes, they looked to each other.

  Bailey yelled over the wind flow “It’s close!”

  “Is it really worth it, Bailey?” Jayne yelled. “We’re gonna die if we don’t go now!”

  “Just a bit further!” Bailey shouted and walked on.

  Jayne hobbled after him, hunched and freezing still. Eventually he stopped and brought a small, expandable shovel from his shoulder sling. He dropped to his knees and began digging with all his strength.

  Jayne stood hunched and leaning against the gale. There was still the loud klaxon intermittently sounding off in the distance, but slightly quieter here in th
is place.

  She had wiped her eyes and was looking around when she heard a bubbling of the water, and looking in its direction she saw something emerge from it.

  Whatever it was, it had been just below the surface of the lake, and now lifted what could only have been its head up and out to look at them. She assumed it was looking at them, from the water between the tower and the shore.

  “I see it!” she shouted, and Bailey looked.

  It was huge, and in the dark it was hard to really make out what it could be. It looked like a round ball of a head, draped in a greasy cloth.

  “Keep an eye on it for me. Tell me what’s going on.” Bailey shouted over his shoulder as he continued to dig.

  A long rope like arm lifted out of the water and began waving high in the air. Then another and three more.

  “There’s an arm!” Jayne yelled. “More arms! Alright, what the hell is it?”

  “It’s what killed the people here. I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  Jayne stood shivering and afraid. She had almost expected to be double crossed somewhere on this trip, but not like this.

  “Looks like a fucking squid!” she shouted, stepping back but not hoping to get away.

  “Don’t run!” Bailey shouted at her, and she froze on the spot. “Wait a second. I said I’d take care of you, didn’t I?”

  Jayne simply looked at him, as he dug a little more then at last, found a box.

  He pulled the box from the soil and dragged it out across the grass.

  Jayne stepped forward to see why it was they had risked their lives so.

  Bailey opened the wooden lid and looked inside.

  Another of those klaxons sounded in the distance, and Jayne could have sworn that the giant head had moved closer.

  She looked down into the box, and saw within a small metal ball. She laughed uncontrollably for a second and then held a hand over her mouth. Bailey looked at her, slightly worried, then took the ball from the box and stood up.

  He threw it in the air and caught it a few times, watching the beast that was now clearly closer than before.

  Bailey looked over his shoulder at Jayne, who was now on the verge of tears.