by S. Harrison
“Yes, Commander,” she says as she pushes the hatch lid open and climbs up onto the glossy black floor. She looks up, and her eyes go wide as her head ping-pongs back and forth between me and my mother.
“It’ll take too long to explain,” I say as Gazelle stares bewilderedly at me and my doppelgänger. “All you need to know is that she’s here to help.”
“Hello,” my mother says, smiling at Gazelle.
“Ohhh-kaaay,” Gazelle mutters blankly as I take her hand and help her to her feet.
“What’s next?” I say, turning to my mother.
“I’ll announce myself, pretending to be you, and demand to see Graham and your friends are safe,” my mother explains.
“She promised she would let them go if I faced her,” I say.
“Good. Hopefully she’ll keep her word and release them,” replies my mother. “If that happens, I can insist that they safely leave the dome before she does what she came here to do.”
“You mean . . . kill me?” I ask.
“Yes,” my mother says solemnly.
“Why does she want to kill me?”
“She blames you for things that are not your fault.”
“What does she think I’ve done?” I ask.
“Well, among other things, Theresa holds you responsible for my death, and she believes that was the beginning of your father’s descent into madness.”
“Why?” I murmur. “I . . . I don’t understand.”
My mother looks at me curiously. “What exactly have you been told about your Nanny Theresa?”
“I know she was a doctor of some kind and she was married to Graham, but that’s all. Apart from that she was just an angry old lady that used to live at the house.”
My mother looks surprised. “So no one has told you who she really was?”
I slowly shake my head, frowning.
“Finn, Theresa was your grandmother.”
The lines of my frown deepen, and my eyes narrow with confusion. “What?”
“Theresa was married to a man named Reginald Blackstone, and your father was their only child,” replies my mother. “Reginald died in a terrible train crash when Richard was very young, and it would be many years until Theresa would remarry, but when she did, it was to my father . . . Graham.”
“Dr. Pierce is your father?”
“That’s right. My mother, Linda, passed away from an illness when I was young. Graham and Theresa worked together. They were both lonely, and they grew very close. But after I died and Richard shut himself away and the military took more and more of your time, Theresa and my father were all each other had, and eventually they married.”
“She’s my grandmother?” I blurt out, still trying to wrap my head around what I’ve just been told.
“She was also my stepmother, too, I suppose. But the Theresa in this dome with us now is very different from the woman she used to be. I fear she’ll stop at nothing to eliminate the one who she blames for her son’s insanity.”
“Me.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, sweetheart,” my mother says sadly.
“You said there were other reasons why she wants me dead.”
“There will be time to discuss that later, but right now we need to concentrate on getting everyone to safety.”
I nod in agreement. She’s right; I should be focusing on one thing at a time.
“If Theresa doesn’t release them, I will hold her back for as long as I can, and you two get them out, OK?”
“OK,” I reply.
“Yes, Commanders,” Gazelle says, still glancing back and forth between my mother and me.
“I’ll reduce the size of this enclosure, so it isn’t blocking the hatch and to lessen the chance of Theresa noticing it. I’ll also change the view on the wall so you can see out my eyes and hear what I’m hearing. If Theresa breaks her promise, I’ll let you out right away, and you be sure to move fast.”
“No one moves faster than me,” Gazelle says to my mother.
“Alright. Good,” my mother says with a determined nod. “Are you both ready?”
“Yes,” I say and turn to Gazelle. “Ready to do this?”
“Ready, Commander,” she replies.
“Commander,” my mother says with a bemused smile. “I like that. It’s nice to know my daughter is so well respected.” My mother looks at the floor and opens her palm, and the flare I dropped before suddenly resurfaces and rises to her palm on a shiny black column. “This should get Theresa’s attention,” she says as she grabs the flare and the column sinks back down.
I can’t help myself, and I lunge across and throw my arms around her shoulders, hugging her to me. “Good luck,” I whisper, and she holds me tight.
“Thank you, honey. I’ll be fine. She can’t hurt me.”
We separate, and she looks me in the eye. “Be careful,” she whispers, then she turns, strides across the floor, and walks right through the wall of the minidome like it isn’t even there.
“I’d ask,” Gazelle says, staring at me in confusion. “But you’d probably just tell me it’s a long story, wouldn’t you?”
“Something like that,” I say, smiling at her.
All around us the enclosure begins shrinking, and the opening to the hatch appears to shift away, out of sight beyond the border, as the little dome gets smaller. Gazelle and I shuffle together and crouch down, huddling together on the floor as the minidome reduces down to a tiny version of itself, barely ten feet wide and five feet high. The bright white wall of the minidome suddenly goes pitch-black, but it doesn’t stay that way for long as I hear the strike of an ignition pad, and suddenly everything illuminates in the intense red light of the fizzing flame burning from the end of the flare. It really is a strange sensation as the wall of the dome displays the view from my mother’s eyes. It’s like Gazelle and I are sitting inside her head as she walks forward holding the flare aloft in her hand. The smoke pouring from the flare billows into the air, painted scarlet by the glow of the flame beneath it, and all around my mother a thirty-foot-wide circle of red light flickers and dances over the shiny black floor.
“I’m here!” my mother shouts. “Now let everyone go!”
Suddenly Nanny Theresa comes into view like a ghoulish apparition, and Gazelle gasps beside me. I also shudder at the sight of Nanny Theresa, not walking but seemingly floating an inch above the floor, sliding out of the darkness toward my mother, the wrinkled skin of her face made all the more severe by the vivid chemical hue of the flame. She’s looks just like she did when she was alive two years ago, with her long, plain dark dress, her dowdy cardigan, and her hair tied up in an ample gray bun on top of her head. But her simple, practical clothes don’t detract in the least from the fact that in the harsh red light of the flare, Nanny Theresa is the very vision of a demon bathed in hellfire. She comes to a stop six feet from my mother.
“You’re hardly in any position to make demands, now are you, child,” Nanny Theresa says snidely.
“I’m here like I promised,” says my mother. “Now you keep yours.”
Nanny Theresa folds her arms on her chest, glowers at my mother, and then snorts indignantly. “Fine,” she says, waving her hand through the air. “Far be it from me to renege on a deal like the members of your disrespectful generation.” On the edge of the circle of light, a big black box slides into view, and its walls quickly lower into the floor.
Bit, Dr. Pierce, and Dean flump onto the shiny ground. Dean still looks as gormless and floppy as before the crash, and Dr. Pierce’s hands seem to be bound together, and he has a glossy black gag over his mouth. Bit looks like she’s in a lot of pain. She groans, cradling her broken arm, and I glare at the emotionless face of Nanny Theresa, angrily gritting my teeth.
“Go! Get out of here!” my mother shouts at Bit and the others.
“I’m not leaving without you!” shrieks Bit.
“Yes, you are!” my mother shouts back. “I’ll be fine, Bettina! Now go!”
�
��No!” she yells. My heart swells with pride that Bit is so loyal to me, but at the same time I can’t help wanting to slap her in the back of her stubborn head. Her selfless bravery could ruin a perfectly good plan.
“She needs to see you, Finn,” my mother whispers as she glances back toward Gazelle and me. “I’m going to lower the enclosure. Be ready.”
“OK,” I reply.
“Who are you speaking to?” Nanny Theresa growls at my mother.
“Go straight for Bettina,” I say to Gazelle as I reach into my satchel, retrieve a couple of glow sticks, and shove one into her hand.
“Yes, Commander,” she says as she shuffles around into a sprinter’s position. “Judging by the other Commander’s view, I estimate the hostages are approximately thirty yards straight ahead.” She cracks and illuminates the stick.
“I’ll lower the enclosure after three,” my mother’s voice whispers from the wall of our enclosure as Gazelle tucks the glow stick under the wristband of her watch.
Nanny Theresa glares at my mother. “What are you babbling about, child?”
“Two,” whispers my mother, and I crack a glow stick of my own as Gazelle raises up on her haunches.
“Is someone else in here with you?” Nanny Theresa says, looking around into the darkness.
“One!” my mother shouts as she suddenly turns and breaks into a sprint, dashing away from Nanny Theresa, her arms blading at her sides as the flare fizzes in her hand.
“Finn!” Bit shouts after my mother as she bolts away into the darkness.
“Come back here!” Nanny Theresa bellows as she sweeps through the air, floating after my mother. “You won’t escape me again!”
“Now, Finn!” My mother’s voice rings inside the small dome, and all of a sudden it opens and instantly disappears into the floor. I quickly stand up, waving the glow stick above my head.
“Bettina! I’m over here!”
With my mother’s flare now streaking through the blackness on the other side of the dome, Bit and the others are in complete darkness, but she must see me as her confused voice echoes through the blackness toward me. “Finn? Is that you?”
Bathed in a halo of glowing green light, Gazelle is off like a shot, and in three and a half strides, she sails though the air and skids to a halt, covering the distance to Bit and Dean and Dr. Pierce in three seconds flat. In the light of the glow stick, I see Gazelle quickly crouch down and grab Bit’s hands, pulling her arms around her neck. Bit screams out in pain, as Nanny Theresa bellows like a monster from the darkness, “Who’s in here?”
Nanny Theresa immediately halts in her tracks, and I can see her dark silhouette turning away from the red halo of the flare as she looks back in the direction of Gazelle’s glow stick. Nanny Theresa holds her hand up high, and a glowing ball begins forming in her palm, lighting up the section of the dome all around her. My mother, suddenly realizing that she’s no longer being chased, skids to a stop and turns on her heels.
“Theresa!” she shouts as Nanny whips her arm, sending the luminescent globe flying through the air. As it travels, it gets brighter and brighter and bigger and bigger, swelling to the size of a beach ball before coming to a stop, hovering in midair right above Gazelle and the others, illuminating the entire dome with bright white light. Even from all the way over here, I can see the rage on Nanny Theresa’s face as our deception is revealed.
With Bit clutching on to her, Gazelle leaps back toward me, and after a few powerful bounds, she skids to a halt right beside me. Gazelle gently lowers a grimacing Bit to the floor, and I immediately crouch down beside her. Bit looks up at me with a mixed expression of pain and confusion.
“Finn?” she whispers bewilderedly.
“Yeah, it’s really me this time,” I say with a little smile. “Get the others!” I yell at Gazelle. She nods and takes off toward Dean and Dr. Pierce.
“Where’s Brody?” Bit asks. “That crazy woman took our walkie-talkies. Is he OK?”
“He’s safe,” I reply. “C’mon, I’ll take you to him.”
The hatch is a few feet away, and as I help Bit up, I glance over my shoulder to see my mother sprinting at a glowering Nanny Theresa, hurtling toward her from behind. My mother has almost reached her when Nanny Theresa’s whole body suddenly drops in a straight line, vanishing down into the floor as if a trapdoor has opened up beneath her feet.
My mother skids over the spot where Nanny Theresa was standing and looks in our direction with panic in her eyes. She quickly dives at the floor, disappearing into it as if it were water in a swimming pool, leaving the still-burning flare spinning like a Catherine wheel on the solid black surface behind her.
Bit and I reach the hatch. “Quickly,” I say, pulling the lid open. “Let’s get you out of here.”
All of a sudden the lid of the hatch slams shut, and the shiny black floor around it becomes liquid. It washes over the closed hatch and then solidifies into floor again. “No!” I shout as I drop to my knees and claw at the spot where the hatch used to be.
In a rush of air, Gazelle slides to a stop beside me, with a loose-limbed Dean flopped over her shoulders in a firefighter’s hold. She lowers him to the floor and takes off again as an amorphous blob begins rising from the ground six feet away. Panic ripples through me as it reaches its full height and carves itself into a fully formed, menacingly glowering Nanny Theresa. I jump to my feet and begin walking backward, shielding Bit as Nanny Theresa slowly glides across the floor toward us.
“Tricky, tricky, girl,” she seethes as her right arm begins morphing into the shape of a long, sharp, shiny black pointed spear. “This needs to end, child, and it needs to end now,” Nanny Theresa says as she draws her spear arm back, preparing to strike.
“Sorry, not today,” says my mother’s voice. Suddenly, my mother’s hand grabs Nanny Theresa’s neck from behind. Her other hand grips Theresa’s thigh, and in one fluid maneuver, she easily lifts a wriggling Nanny Theresa in a straight-armed press high up over her head.
“Unhand me, Genevieve!” Nanny Theresa wails. My mother has changed back into herself again, but the beauty of her elegant white dress is a stark contrast to the determined frown on her face as she turns away, takes two quick steps, and, without the faintest hint of effort or strain, throws Nanny Theresa twenty feet through the air, clear across the dome.
Nanny Theresa sails through the air, flailing her arms, but instead of landing hard on the floor, her body completely disintegrates into a mass of black liquid in midflight, speckling the glossy ground and part of the crumpled transport wreckage in the distance like droplets of oily rain.
I look over at Gazelle, wondering why it’s taking her so long to retrieve Dr. Pierce, and I immediately see the reason as the gagged and bound old man bucks and kicks while Gazelle desperately tries to wrangle a hold on him.
My mother forcefully waves her hand over the floor where the hatch was, and the glossy sheen covering it slides away. “Quickly,” she says, looking anxiously from side to side.
I immediately dash at the hatch, and I’m taken by surprise as it suddenly flies open with a loud clunk and an arm reaches out of the opening and slaps onto the shiny floor. A heavily wheezing Brody hauls himself into the dome, looking around bewilderedly at all of us.
“Brody!” Bit wails, and Brody’s eyes light up. He quickly crawls to his feet, lumbers toward her, and wraps his arms around her. She grimaces with pain for a second, but that gives way to a smile as she looks up at his flushed and sweaty face.
“Brody! Get her out of here,” I yell at him. He gets the message, and with one arm around Bit, he begins quickly walking her back to the hatch. I look back at Gazelle. She’s given up trying to carry Dr. Pierce, but she’s already halfway back, dragging the struggling man behind her by the collar of his lab coat as quickly as she can.
My mother is clearly on edge as she scans the dome for any sign of Nanny Theresa, and we don’t have to wait for long. The hatch slams shut at Brody’s and Bit’s feet, and t
he liquid floor slides over it and hardens again. My mother waves her hand at it, and the floor recedes but only a few inches before sliding back into place. She tries again, but the same thing happens, so she tries yet again but still to no avail.
Gazelle drags Dr. Pierce over and has only just deposited him beside Dean when Nanny Theresa erupts from the floor ten feet away and hurtles toward our little group. Her face is twisted into a malicious sneer, her silver-gray eyes are sparkling with rage, and both of her forearms are sharpened into deadly spear tips.
My mother quickly waves her arms, and a circular wall springs from the floor, enclosing all of us inside a bright white dome. Two black spear tips puncture through the side of our enclosure, raining shattered fragments of white onto the floor inside. Bit screeches in Brody’s embrace as Gazelle reflexively snaps into a fighting stance. The spears withdraw, and my mother thrusts her outstretched hand toward the holes in the canopy of the dome. The holes instantly heal shut but are immediately replaced as Nanny Theresa slams her sharpened arms through the side of the enclosure again.
“Is there any other way out of here?” I whisper as my mother concentrates on closing the new ruptures in the dome.
“I can open a gap in the main wall,” she replies.
“Is that the only way?” I ask. “There are things out there somewhere, robotic spiders that—”
“I know,” replies my mother. “I felt them through the motion sensors and tried to sever them from Onix’s control, but I failed. I can’t stop them, but I was able to create a false motion reading and lead them away into Sector C. They won’t stay there for long, but it should give you enough time to get everyone to the school bus.”
“You’re amazing,” I say, looking admiringly at my mother.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I’ve been here for a long time. I know my way around,” she says with a smile. “Now, I think I may be able to breach the outer wall of the dome, but the system that controls it is separate from the floor. It will take all my concentration to access it, which means I won’t be able to protect you and your friends.”
“I can protect them, Mother.”