We crawled through single file and gathered on the other side. The air was thick with all the dirt and dust that had been kicked up by moving the rocks. The smell of coal was especially strong and nostalgically familiar. While everyone from the Dome coughed and put their hands over their mouths, Reyes drew a big whiff in through his nose.
“We’re home,” he said.
“I can’t say I missed it,” Raine said.
“This way.” I headed toward the door that would take us into the main part of the Pit.
A lot of debris from the charges that had gone off to seal the entrance cluttered the way. I was worried we would have to do more excavating to get through the doors, so I was relieved to find them clear. We entered the second level of the Pit and headed toward the stairs.
Although the sun had set outside, the lights were still on in the Pit. I recalled that the circadian rhythm of the Pit was out of sync with the sun and moon. By my calculations, we still had a few hours of light down here before the bong bongs tolled and the lights went out.
“How much farther?” Hayley asked.
“To what?” Reyes asked.
“To the Pit,” she said.
Reyes gave her a confused look. “You’re here,” he said, just as we came upon the stone staircase. She stopped dead in her tracks.
An expression of horror marred her pretty features. “Jesus Christ!” she said, her voice catching on a choke. “This is where you lived? This is the Pit?”
Ted’s eyes scanned the enclosed hallway, taking in the low ceiling, the rock walls, and the uneven floor. “Even when Mom threatened to send us down here if we didn’t behave, I didn’t imagine it was this bad.”
Jack elbowed his brother and glanced at us. I shifted my gaze to let him think I hadn’t seen it.
“I’m going to go check on my parents,” Summer said.
I turned to Jack. “I’m going to go with her and make sure they’re all right.”
He nodded. “We’ll go see what we’re up against getting into the Dome.”
I kissed him. “Be careful. I’ll be up soon.”
***
It was strange to be in the Pit with barely a soul living here. I was used to crowded stairwells and hallways, standing in line to get my rations, and constantly bumping shoulders with someone else. Now the stairs and hallways were empty, devoid of the sound of the thousands of voices from those who had inhabited the Pit. A layer of dirt and coal dust was becoming thick in the unused areas of my former home.
“It’s kind of creepy now,” I said to Summer.
She shrugged. “I have dinner with my parents here every Sunday, so I’ve gotten used to it. I usually bring them blackberry wine. I hope they don’t mind that I didn’t bring any this time.”
When we reached the sixth level, we followed the sound of voices to the common room. We nearly gave the ten occupants in the room heart attacks when we walked in.
“Summer!” Mrs. Nazeem said, jumping up. “I’ve been so worried about you.” She hugged her daughter and then me.
“Me?” Summer exclaimed. “You’ve been sealed in here with a madwoman. Has she cut off your air? Food? Water? Are you okay?”
Mr. Nazeem waved her concerns away. “Leisel Holt’s just like her father—nothing but hot air.” He motioned toward the television screen in the room. “Every morning she comes on and tells us life in the Dome will continue as it always did before the doors were ever opened. That it was too soon to leave and everyone outside is doomed to die from radiation.”
A man sitting at a table raised his finger in the air and did his best impression of Leisel Holt. “We are the future of humanity and still bound by the terms of the treaty.”
The woman sitting beside him laughed. “Yep. Hot air, all right.”
I looked for the camera that used to be in this room, watching our every move, but it hadn’t been replaced since it had been broken during the uprising. “How many people are still living down here?”
“I’d say about seventy, give or take,” Mr. Nazeem said.
“You guys might want to get out of here for the night,” I said. “Jack and I are going to have a chat with Leisel Holt, and I don’t know how ugly things will get.”
“We’ll spread the word,” Mrs. Nazeem said.
I touched Summer on the shoulder. “I think while I’m here, I’ll go have a look at my old place. There was some stuff belonging to Dad I always meant to come and save. I’ll meet you upstairs.”
I left the common room and headed toward my old home. The foreign, lonely silence was completely at odds with the familiar route to my family home. I must have walked it at least a million times. The crack in the floor that Summer and I had always jumped over, firm in our belief that if we stepped on it the entire Pit would come crashing down. The recessed alcove that Reyes and I had always used as a make-out room. The hundreds of apartment units that looked all the same, and yet I could pick my home out from among them without even looking.
Even on the inside, our apartment looked the same as every other. It was a small shack with a couple of chairs, a sink, a few cupboards, and a small bedroom off the main room. And even though it looked the same as every other unit, it was different. Our scent—my mother, my father, and me—still clung to the walls, the towels stacked in the cupboard, the mattress my parents had slept on, my bedroll, and our blankets. The wooden floor was worn smooth where I used to sit in front of my mother while she colored my hair with coal or eased away my headaches with her gentle fingers. The chair my father had always sat in was still pulled up to the table where he would spread out his books and philosophize about the future of the world.
I choked back a sob as I ran my hand over his chair. A part of me still didn’t want to admit that he was gone—wanted to believe he’d escaped from President Holt, made it outside, and had just kept on running. That one day he would come back and ask if the coast was clear, and I could tell him that it was, that he had nothing left to fear. But so far that hadn’t happened, and every once in a while the thought crept into my head that he was gone for good.
I went into my parents’ bedroom in search of his beloved books. Stolen by my mother, who worked in the Dome’s library, they had been his only possessions. And more than once I’d thought about coming back to retrieve them. I lifted their mattress. Each one—six in total—lay flat and hidden underneath it. I gathered them up and took them back to the table. Sitting in my father’s chair, I opened them, selected familiar passages, and let my mind wander back to a time when the house had been filled with love. My vision was blurred with tears by the time I reached the last book, my father’s favorite. It was a collection with one piece he treasured above all others: Pacem in Terris: Encyclical Letter of Pope John XXIII On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty, April 11, 1963.
The door creaked open, startling me. Jack stuck his head in, and I quickly wiped my eyes.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I cleared the lump from my throat. “Yeah,” I lied.
He came in, the door closing behind him. “You don’t look okay.”
My mouth twisted into a frown and I motioned to the books on the table. “My dad’s,” I said and cleared away another lump.
Jack grabbed the other chair in the room, my mom’s, and pulled it up to the table. “What kind of books?” he asked, picking one up and leafing through it.
“Nonfiction political stuff. My father fancied himself an intellectual. He was always coming up with counterarguments to whatever political rhetoric the Holts were trying to shove down our throats.” I held up his favorite. “He read this to us so many times.”
Jack took the book from me and looked at it. “Pacem in Terris,” he read aloud. “What does it mean?”
“It’s Latin for ‘peace on earth.’”
He turned a few pages and scanned them. “He underlined this passage: ‘The progress of learning and the inventions of technology clearly show that, both in liv
ing things and in the forces of nature, an astonishing order reigns, and they also bear witness to the greatness of man, who can understand that order and create suitable instruments to harness those forces of nature and use them to his benefit.’”
I nodded, remembering my father’s discourse well. “My father was convinced that the existence of the biodome and the preservation of technology was a divine act and that the Holts were getting it all wrong. My dad underlined passages like, ‘A human being has the right to respect and—’”
“‘...dignity of the human person,’” Jack cut in. “I think your dad was on to something. We should have been listening to him instead of Damien Holt.” He closed the book then picked up my hand and kissed it. “I’m glad I got the chance to meet him.”
I stroked the side of his face. “Me too.”
He drew in a deep breath and let it go. “The charges are set around the door, so we’re ready to blow it whenever you are.”
I pushed my dad’s chair back from the table and stood, taking a last look around my family home. “Ready,” I said.
He stood and held his hand out to me, and as I laced my fingers through his, I remembered the first time I’d ever placed my hand in his, a year ago, when we’d decided to take on the Holt regime. It filled me with as much strength now as it had then.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jack
The stone stairs of the Pit were just as narrow and worn as I remembered. Not that I’d ever told Sunny, but sometimes I had nightmares about living down here. Like Ted had pointed out, it was worse than anything we had ever imagined. Aside from the stale air, coal dust, and poorly lighted enclosed spaces, I had the overwhelming fear that the Pit would cave in on me at any second. And as much as it scared the crap out of me, I was glad I’d experienced life down here. It gave me a better understanding of my wife, strengthened our bond, and gave me insight into the issues that plagued our two races.
Although we were not two races; we were the same. We had just been segregated by unjust politics. Justice was overdue.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Sunny as we climbed the stairs.
“A little nervous.”
“Only a little?”
She squeezed my hand. “I’ll be honest,” she said, a little out of breath from the stairs. “I’d like nothing better than to take you home, shave that beard off your face, and make love to you.”
I pulled her off the stairs into a hallway and thoroughly kissed her. My body responded to her warm soft curves, and for a fleeting moment I thought, Why not go home? Why not let someone else deal with Leisel Holt? Why was it always us?
Sunny pulled back a little and stroked my beard. “I could get used to it,” she said. She looked around us. “You know what level we’re on?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I didn’t bother to check.”
“Fourth level. Our apartment is just down there.”
It was a tempting thought. I kissed her neck. “We should go check it out.”
She groaned softly. “If only we didn’t have a bunch of people waiting for us to save the day.”
I slumped against her in disappointment. “If only.”
She pushed against me, and I straightened. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”
Neither of us mentioned that we might not make it home.
“Did you get the metamaterial or whatever it is?”
“Doc made me a cloak that goes over my head,” she said, shrugging her backpack off her shoulders. “It’s kind of like a ghost costume.” She opened her pack and took something out. It looked like nothing, but since I couldn’t see her hands, I knew she was holding something.
“That’s amazing. It actually is invisible.” She gave it to me, and I held it up. If I shifted it I could see something—like a variance in lighting that caused a subtle shimmering effect. “Did you get two?”
“No. There was only enough material to make this one.”
“Then I’ll wear it, and you stay down here.” I wasn’t okay with Sunny facing Leisel on her own... or facing Leisel at all, for that matter.
“Nice try, Jack,” she said, plucking the garment away from me. “But it’s just my size. It’ll be too small for you. There’s no way you can be invisible with your feet and hands showing.” She draped the cloak over her arm and half of her went missing. “Plus I have my exoskeleton and you don’t. I’m safe, Jack.”
“And yet I still have a problem with letting my pregnant wife sneak into the tiger’s den all by herself.”
She kissed me, took my hand, and pulled me back to the stairs. “Come on, Jack. They’re waiting.”
***
“There are going to be two doors to get through,” Bron said to everyone. “This one and then the big steel doors into the Dome. It’s standard procedure to guard both doors, but over the years we got slack with the rule because of our confidence in the steel doors to prevent anyone from the Pit getting in. Under the current circumstances, they might be adhering to standard procedures.”
Bron was the only Pit guard among us, and she knew the tactical measures they would be taking on the other side of the door. We still weren’t sure just how many guards would be on the other side. Although the number of people in the Alliance now far outnumbered Domers, there were still a fair number of soldiers loyal to the Holt family. Leisel wouldn’t have a huge army in there with her, but she would certainly have some security.
“And you know where the switch is to open the steel doors, right?” I asked her.
“Behind the security desk, next to the steel doors. Try to get the doors open before reinforcements are sent.”
Hayley handed me a communicator, and I clipped it to the strap of my gun holster.
“Won’t a reinforcement team come through the doors?” Reyes asked.
“No,” Hayley said. “For security reasons, on-duty personnel are in the defense wing of the Dome, by the hangar. If there’s an uprising, the first protocol is to ensure the steel doors remain sealed and the president is protected.”
“I can get to the switch,” Sunny said. “Just keep the guards busy.”
“I can get to the switch too,” Reyes said with purpose.
“If Leisel knows the Dome has been successfully infiltrated, she might decide to go ahead and blow the warheads,” Sunny said. “We get the door open, I slip through, and then you guys retreat back to the Pit and make them think they won.” She wagged a finger in Reyes’ face. “Don’t show off the power of that suit until you have to.”
“If we don’t hear from you in forty-five minutes, Reyes can go ahead and show off all he wants,” I said and held up my gun. “And I will too.”
Ted clapped me on the back. “We all will.”
“Are we ready?” Hayley asked.
Sunny put on the cloak, disappearing in the fabric. My stomach clenched. I wasn’t ready for any of this. My mind started swirling with the idiocy of it all. She was my wife, she was pregnant with my child, and I was letting her do this?
“Ready,” Sunny said.
“I changed my mind,” I said. “This can’t happen. Give me the cloak.” I held my hand out, but she didn’t give it to me. “Sunny,” I said and made to grab her arm, but she wasn’t there. “Sunny!” I yelled. But she was gone.
Before I had a chance to find her, hold her one last time, tell her how much I loved her, Hayley had set off the charges. Rapid machine gun fire followed, bullets whipping through the open door.
Reyes and Mica were already creeping up the stairs toward the opening where the door used to be. They returned fire, forcing the guards to seek cover.
I took the stairs two at a time. “Sunny!” Still no answer from her.
The rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns sounded again, and I flattened myself against the wall. I watched in fascination as Reyes and Mica were both drilled with bullets and not one penetrated the suit.
“I’m going to get one of those when all of this is over,” I said.
; Reyes shot me a lopsided smile. “Good luck getting Doc to make you one.” He shot another round through the door.
Summer and Raine came farther up the stairs to stand behind Reyes and Mica.
“Is she through?” Summer asked me.
“I don’t know.” Staying against the wall, I walked the last few steps to the open door and peeked around. In the five seconds I allowed myself to look, before they saw my head and started shooting, I took stock of what we were up against. “Six guards. Reinforcements are probably already on the way.”
More gunfire. And then there was a commotion. I heard someone yell, “I didn’t open it! I didn’t touch it!” And then an order: “Get that damn door closed.”
“I think she’s in,” Summer said.
I peeked around the corner again just in time to see the doors closing, and I wished I knew if she had made it in or not. I unclipped my communicator, the urge to call her strong, but I put it away. A message from me right now would give away her position. The most I could do was stay close to the door, out of the thick rock of the Pit that blocked communication signals, and wait to hear from her.
Then the sound of reinforcements sent us into action.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sunny
Jack reached for me, and I stepped out of the way, letting his hands grab at thin air. It was hard enough on both of us without dragging it out. I knew what it would do to me to watch him go, but at least I was clothed head to toe in a suit that was indestructible. I was fast, armed, and bulletproof. Jack was not. So using the enhanced speed my suit gave me, I had dodged his outstretched hand. Then Hayley blew the door, and before the smoke even cleared, I ran through the opening straight for the security desk.
I half expected every guard in reception to turn their guns on me and start firing. But I passed through unnoticed. I stood at the security desk, and from my vantage point, I could see the switch to open the door. But if I leaned over the desk, my boots might show. The cloak was a little longer than floor length to ensure my feet remained covered, and I had to hold the cloak out a bit so I wouldn’t trip. Three of the guards were hiding behind the desk, and I waited for them to muster the courage to join the fight and get out of my way, hopefully before reinforcements showed up.
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