by S. Harrison
“Well, well,” Nanny Theresa says with a smile in her voice. “It seems that your sins are finally coming home to roost, Major. But as much as I’m enjoying this little stroll down memory lane, my patience is wearing very thin, and your little friend’s time is growing shorter by the minute.”
I hear a rustle of movement, and the sound of short, quiet breaths is followed by Bit’s frightened voice. “Finn? I’m . . . I’m scared, Finn.”
“Bettina!” I shout into the radio. “Please, don’t hurt her.”
“Bettina? Is that the girl’s name?” says Nanny Theresa. “I will let her go, Infinity, but not until I see you first.”
“Don’t do it, Finn,” says Jonah. “Theresa’s construct can’t exist outside the boundary of Dome Two; if you go inside, she’ll kill you!”
“This is between Infinity and me, Major,” barks Nanny Theresa. “If I hear your voice again, I will hurt Bettina, and if Infinity refuses to face me, I will do far worse.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can, I swear,” I say into the walkie-talkie.
“Finn! No!” shouts Jonah.
“It seems you weren’t listening to a word I just said, Major Brogan,” says Nanny Theresa. “Perhaps you’ll listen to this?” I hear a muffled snap, and Bit’s wailing scream vibrates loudly from the speaker.
“Bettina!” Brody shouts, his face contorted with anguish.
“I’ve just broken her arm,” says Nanny Theresa. “Another word from you, Major, and I break one of her legs. Just like a matchstick.”
“Please. Leave her alone,” I plead into the radio. “I’m coming to you, I promise.”
“See that you do,” says Nanny Theresa. “And if I were you, young lady, I’d be quick about it.”
I shove the walkie-talkie back into Brody’s hand and turn to Gazelle, pointing down the long, dim corridor. “I need to get inside that dome. Right now.”
“Yes, Commander,” she says as she immediately turns her back to me.
“What should I do?” asks a clearly rattled Brody. “I don’t know what’s happening or why, but I need to help. I need to do something!”
“Then you start running right behind us. I’ll send Gazelle back to get you as soon as she’s taken me to the entrance to the dome.”
Brody nods fervently.
“It’s gonna be dark in there,” I mutter as I put my arms around Gazelle’s neck and grip her waist with my legs. “What I wouldn’t give for a flashlight right now.”
“Here,” Brody says as he rummages through his satchel. “I don’t have a flashlight, but will these do?” he says, holding out a fistful of glow sticks and flares.
I smile at him. “Yeah, Brody, those’ll do fine,” I say as I take them and tuck them away in my bag.
“I’ll see you soon,” Brody says, and I give him a stoic nod.
“Let’s go,” I say in Gazelle’s ear.
“Hold tight,” she replies, and my head whips back from the sudden acceleration as Gazelle takes off in a blinding burst of speed down the passageway. The air rushes in my ears as the walls whizz by to the sound of Gazelle’s thudding footsteps echoing all around me. The lights set into the ceiling at four-yard intervals flick past rapidly overhead as Gazelle strides powerfully onward, and in no time at all, I can see the corridor up ahead widening as we approach the quantum-grain reservoir.
Gazelle slides to a halt beside a curving handrail that runs around the edge of a walkway inside a huge concrete cylinder. Lights built into the wall illuminate the reservoir all the way up. It looks like I’d imagine the inside of a city water-storage facility, except in the center there’s a massive pillar-like conduit that extends high up into the middle of a giant circle of darkness above. That’s obviously the underside of the dome, and instead of water being piped up to it, the outer surface of the central tube moves in ascending ripples like it’s completely covered in a pitch-black, shivering liquid.
“The stairs, quickly!” I bark, pointing at the concrete staircase to the right that spirals upward around the wall of the reservoir.
Gazelle nods and dashes toward them, bounding up the stairs a dozen at a time. Piggybacking on Gazelle is not a comfortable experience on level ground, but adding stairs to the equation makes it feel like I’m on the back of a bucking bronco. I hold on as tightly as I can without strangling her as we go higher and higher and higher around the inside of the towering cylinder.
I look above me, and I can see the huge black disc getting closer and closer. Gazelle leaps up the last of the stairs and comes to a skidding stop on a wide landing made of metal grating. At the end of the landing is a ladder with a safety cage around it that reaches thirty feet straight up to a circle of glowing blue lights set into the wide disc of shimmering black.
“There’s the hatch. I’m going in,” I say as I release my arms and legs from Gazelle, step onto the grating, and stride toward the ladder.
“I’ll go get that Brody guy,” Gazelle says as she turns to leave.
“No,” I order her, and she immediately stops in her tracks. “There’s someone very dangerous up there,” I say, pointing toward the hatch. “Brody means well, but he’ll just be another thing for me to worry about if he enters that dome. I need you to climb the ladder behind me and wait by the hatch. When I give you the signal, I want you to get my friend Bettina out of there as quickly as you can.”
“Of course, Commander. What does your friend look like?”
“She’s fifteen years old. She has brown hair, glasses, and she’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a picture of Einstein on it. It’s very important that she’s kept safe. She might be the only chance any of us has of getting out of here alive.”
“Yes, Commander,” Gazelle says stoically.
“Even if I’m being attacked, you get her to safety. Understand?”
“Yes, of course,” says Gazelle.
“Thank you,” I say as I take a deep breath and look Gazelle right in the eyes. “Let’s do this.”
I turn to the ladder, grab the rungs, and begin making my way up to the hatch. Gazelle follows right behind me. After a thirty-foot climb I reach the dark-gray hatch, and in the glow of the blue lights around its border, I see a keypad in the center of it. Thanks to Dr. Pierce’s handiwork, its button panel has been levered off and is hanging by a tangle of multicolored electrical wires. I push against the hatch, and it easily opens inward; it’s not even heavy.
I crawl up through the opening onto a shiny, smooth black floor. It isn’t silent inside the dome. I can hear a quiet hissing sound all around me. I shuffle on my knees and look back at Gazelle, who’s perched on the ladder below, looking up at me. I reach into my satchel, take out one of the flares, and close the hatch over her, carefully wedging the flare between the lid and the floor to leave a small gap for Gazelle to hear me through.
“Wait for me to call you,” I whisper.
“Yes, Commander,” she whispers back.
I retrieve a few glow sticks from my bag, get to my feet, and quietly walk around the hatch into the darkness, bending one of the sticks as I go. The activation capsule inside it breaks with a muted snap. I give it a quick shake, and it lights up with a bright green halo in my hand. I hold the stick high, waving it from side to side as I walk farther into the dark, but all I can see is the shiny black floor, illuminated in a circle of green, ten feet in every direction.
I look over my shoulder, and for some reason I don’t understand, I can’t see the ambient light coming from the gap in the hatch behind me. A ripple of fear shudders through me, and my first impulse is to go back and look for it, but the thought of Bit trapped somewhere in here hardens my resolve. I haven’t gone very far, and I know the hatch is vaguely back in that direction, so I decide to lay a trail of bread crumbs, so to speak. I crouch down and put the glow stick on the floor, then I crack another one and walk on another twenty feet or so before I quietly place the second stick on the floor, too.
My heart is beating quickly in my chest,
and I gulp nervously as I crack and shake another stick. It lights up in my hand, and after walking twenty more feet into the darkness, I place the third stick down. I turn back to survey my markers, and I freeze in my tracks with frightened surprise. There should be three glow sticks, twenty feet apart from each other, all in a row, pointing the way back to the hatch . . . but I can only see one. The other two have vanished. They stay lit for hours, so they can’t have gone out. I quickly stride back to the last stick I dropped and stand over it, looking in every direction for the next one, but there’s nothing but darkness and that strange, quiet hissing sound all around me.
I’m starting to panic. I want to call out to Gazelle so I have a point of reference in this pitch-black darkness, but I stop myself. That might alert Theresa to Gazelle’s presence and jeopardize my chances of getting Bit to safety. If Theresa has moved or taken my other markers, then she already knows I’m here.
I don’t know what kind of sick game she’s playing, but she can obviously see me, and I can’t see her. She could strike me down in an instant if she wanted to, so what is she waiting for? Maybe she wants me to draw this whole thing out for her own warped satisfaction, have me cowering in the dark, shaking with fear before she does the deed?
Well I’m not having it. Sorry, Nanny, but I refuse to play by your rules. I refuse to be afraid.
“I’m here! Show yourself!” I scream out. My brow furrows with confusion. That didn’t sound right at all. When Bit radioed me from inside the dome, I could hear her voice echoing in the cavernous space. But my voice had no more echo than if I were standing in a tiny room. I don’t know what’s going on, but something doesn’t feel right. I need more light, so I reach into my satchel and pull out a flare. I’m about to pop the plastic cap and light it when a woman’s voice gently whispers through the dark. “Wait.”
I was already on edge, but now my blood feels like it’s boiling with adrenaline as I spin on my heels, glaring into the blackness all around me. “Hello?!” I shout. “Who’s out there?!”
Suddenly a lump begins rising from the floor beside the glow stick at my feet, and I leap backward in fright, holding the flare out in front of me, wishing that it was more than just a glorified Roman candle. Come to think of it, even if I had a knife or gun, I don’t imagine it would do any good against a quantum construct, which is exactly what is growing out of the shiny black ground right in front of me.
The construct is the same color and has the same glossy sheen as the floor it’s emerging from, and it hisses quietly as it gets taller and taller. I anxiously stare at the amorphous blob, not knowing whether to run or not as it rises in a rippling liquid column until it’s standing a few inches higher than me. In the sickly green hue of the glow stick, I watch as the thing begins changing, molding itself into a distinctly womanly shape.
The darkness around me begins to brighten, and when I look around I’m shocked to see that I’m standing inside a small enclosed dome, thirty feet across and fifteen feet high, and the increasingly intensifying bright white light is emanating directly from its curved wall. The glossy black female shape shimmers, then the surface of it quickly begins sliding down from the top like an oily veil, revealing the details of the person underneath.
Whoever she is, she’s facing away from me. First I see long, straight black hair, then shoulders, and in the following few seconds her arms and her back, then her lower body, all the way to her feet, are revealed. She’s wearing a crisp white dress. I’ve only ever seen it in a photograph, and only from the front, but even from the back I recognize it instantly. My heart leaps into my throat, my hands drop loosely to my sides, and the flare slips from my fingers and thuds to the floor.
“Mother?” I whisper bewilderedly.
She slowly turns to face me, and I’m completely lost for words. There she is. The flawless skin of my mother’s brow crinkles with emotion, and her beautiful, gentle sapphire-blue eyes seem to shine with joy. A smile trembles onto her lips, but then it widens into a beaming grin as she suddenly lunges at me with open arms and pulls me into a warm embrace.
“Finn,” she sighs, hugging me tightly as she lets out a breathy giggle. “My darling daughter.”
I don’t know how to react. My mother is dead. She has been ever since I was born. Before today I’ve only ever seen her in photographs, and when her face appeared on that Drone shortly after we arrived here this morning, I was so shocked I fainted. Now her consciousness has a physical form, she’s holding me, and I have absolutely no idea how to feel. This is all too sudden. I’m speechless and numb, and as my mother pulls away and looks at my stunned expression, I can tell that she sees how overwhelming this is for me.
“You must have endless questions,” she says as she takes my hands in hers. “But right now I need your help to get everyone to safety.”
All I can do is stare at her, dumbfounded, gormlessly watching her lips move as she speaks.
“Theresa has them confined in an enclosure much like this one, on the far side of the dome. I overheard her plan to lure you here, so I waited for you to arrive. I’ve deactivated the motion sensors, concealed your lights, and created this shield over you to hide you from her. She has no idea you’re already inside, and she doesn’t know I’m here, either, so we have the element of surprise on our side.”
I still don’t say a word.
“I’m sorry I didn’t show myself right away when you came through the hatch, sweetheart. I meant to, I really did, but you’ve grown into such a beautiful young woman, and when I saw you, I . . . I was a little overwhelmed. I also didn’t want you to faint again like you did this morning.”
I just stare at her.
“Finn?” she says, looking at me quizzically. “Say something; you’re starting to scare me.”
“You’re here,” I whimper. “But . . . you died.” I honestly don’t know why those particular words slipped out of my mouth. There are a million things I could or should or want to say right now . . . but of all the questions rampaging through my mind, I choose two of the most inane sentences I’ve ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth, including mine.
My mother just smiles. “Yes, my darling, I’m really here, and even death couldn’t keep me from you forever. In fact, I’ve never felt truly alive until this moment.”
“Mother?” I ask, staring at her in wonder.
“Yes?”
“What . . . am I?” Oh my god. Even though it is a question that has plagued me for every minute of this accursed day, I’m dumbstruck that right now it seems I’m unable to utter any more than three words at a time. That’s the last straw, brain. You’re fired.
My mother looks me in the eyes with a serious expression on her face. “You’re my daughter, and I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for, but I need you to focus. When this is all over, we’ll sit down together and you can ask me anything you want, I promise. But now I need you to be strong for me. We have to get Graham and your two school friends out of the dome. Can you be strong, Finn?”
“I can’t believe you’re standing here,” I murmur. “I mean, I know how you’re here. At some point before you died, your mind must have been downloaded, but—”
“Finn!” my mother barks. “This is not exactly the reunion I was hoping for, either, but I need you to be here right now. Are you with me?”
“What?” I say, snapping back to my senses. “Yes . . . of course. I’m sorry. Wait . . . what do you mean Graham and my two friends?”
“There’s a young girl. I heard you on the radio, you called her Bettina?”
I nod.
“And there’s a boy, skinny, with brown hair.”
“Dean?” I whisper. “He survived?”
“Is that his name?” my mother asks. “I peeked inside Theresa’s enclosure. They’re all OK, except for Dean, he looks dazed, confused.”
“He was connected to the R.A.M. when Nanny Theresa took control of it. Something happened to his mind.”
“Oh, that poor boy.
Then we need to get him and the others out as soon as we can.”
“OK,” I say with a huge breath and a determined nod. “What do we do?”
“That’s my girl. I have a plan,” my mother says with a smirk. She backs a few steps away from me and closes her eyes.
Suddenly there’s a quiet hissing sound, and my mother begins to get shorter as the top half of her dress sprouts long sleeves and a hood and instantly turns from white to black. The lower half of her dress turns gray and transforms into jeans on her legs as the flat-soled shoes on her feet morph into green sneakers with white stripes on the sides. Her face thins ever so slightly as the years melt away, reverse-aging her from the thirty-year-old I’d always seen in her photograph to a teenager my age. I always thought I looked a lot like her, but as she opens her eyes and smiles at me, it’s like staring into a mirror. My mother now looks exactly like me in every way, even down to the satchel hanging by her side.
“What do you think?” she asks.
“I think that’s amazing. And also really weird, but I think I know where your plan is heading.”
My mother smiles. “A little deceptive distraction while you get the others to safety.”
I return her smile, but then my eyes go wide as I remember Gazelle.
“I brought a friend. She can help. She’s waiting on the ladder underneath the hatch.”
“Then we’d better go and get her, I suppose, but first, I had better hide these.” My mother looks down at the glow stick and the flare at my feet, and they instantly sink, engulfed by the black floor. “OK, c’mon, this way,” she says with a flick of her head, then she turns and breaks into a quick jog. I follow right behind her as the white dome moves along with us, quietly hissing as it goes. Because of the opaque nature of the minidome, I can’t see where we’re going at all, but my mother clearly has no problem navigating, as it isn’t long before the hatch slides into view on the floor at the edge of the enclosure.
I crouch beside the hatch, take the flare from the gap, stuff it into my satchel, and fully open the lid. “Gazelle,” I whisper. “Get up here.”