by Dima Zales
We dash down the stairs. I can’t help but notice that Liam’s breathing is growing more frantic, and his speed is decreasing with every step.
“Dude, do you want to lean on me as we walk down?” I ask him when his dash becomes a careful walk.
“Me, lean on you?” Liam says with a wheeze. Though talking is clearly difficult for him, Liam’s somber expression brightens a little. He thinks I’m kidding since he was always considered the stronger one in our crew. “Right. That’s happening. Now shut up. Oxygen is low, and we’re wasting it by talking.”
“It’s just that the climb down is easier for me,” I say. “There’s a reason for it, and I’ll explain when we get outside, but just trust me when I say you should let me help.”
Stubbornly shaking his head, Liam starts walking down at a faster pace. His burst of energy doesn’t last, though. As we approach the second floor, he falters, and to stop himself from falling, he slows to nearly a crawl. A few moments later, even walking slowly seems beyond him, and he clutches at the handrail, wheezing.
“Okay, that’s it. You’re letting me help.” Without waiting for him to object, I grab his left arm and drape it around my neck. Once I have a good hold on him, I move as fast as I can.
I thought Liam would complain, but he gives a grateful grunt and leans on me as we make our way down. I press my index finger to his wrist and sneakily check his pulse. His heart is beating frighteningly fast. I look him over, keeping my expression neutral to mask my worry. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a side effect from all the red alarms, but Liam’s eyes look bloodshot and his face has a blue pallor. On top of that, the veins on his forehead and neck look swollen.
Half a staircase later, my back is hurting from stooping to accommodate Liam’s shorter height. On the bright side, I don’t feel any effects of oxygen deprivation.
“Phoe,” I shout mentally. “You don’t even have to answer. Just enable Liam’s Respirocytes, please.”
She doesn’t respond.
Liam leans more heavily on me, forcing me to slow down. We’re only one floor away from the ground, but once we reach the main floor, we still have five long corridors to traverse.
Halfway down to the first floor, Liam begins wheezing harder and clutching at his throat.
I grit my teeth and ignore my back screaming with every step.
Twenty steps to the bottom.
Fifteen steps.
To distract myself from the strain, I focus on counting the stairs and ignoring the biting cold seeping into my bare feet. I also listen to Liam’s quick, gasping breathing.
Then a new development shatters my concentration. Liam’s frantic breathing ceases—or slows to barely audible. At the same time, he slumps, putting all his weight on me.
We’re ten steps away from the bottom, but we might as well be on top of Mount Everest.
No. I’m getting Liam out of the building.
My heart starts beating like an ancient power tool as adrenaline blasts through me. I tighten my grip on Liam, and in a haze of ripping muscles, I get us down a step.
One step conquered, nine more to go.
Ignoring the pain in my back, I drag Liam down another step, and then another.
The last seven steps go by as though I’m in a trance. All I see is red; all I hear is the blaring of the announcement. I no longer feel my muscles straining or feel my spine aching.
Only when my foot touches the flat ground does the weariness hit me with full force. Instead of giving in to it, I carefully lay Liam down, then grab him under his arms and begin dragging him out of the building.
Twenty feet later, my arms feel like I have lead coursing through my veins. I also catch myself breathing heavily, though I’m not sure if it’s from the lack of oxygen or the exertion. Not that it’ll matter to Liam soon.
I can tell that my muscles will fail in a matter of seconds.
3
“Phoe,” I scream, straining to be heard over the blaring alarm—as though volume ever mattered in communications with Phoe. “Help me. Please.”
There is no answer.
I try to quell my panic. Phoe is gone, and I need to come to grips with it. The attack on the beach must be related to what’s happening here. The Jeremiah-blob virus has something to do with Phoe’s silence, as well as the oxygen problem in the building, but how it all fits together, I’m too overwhelmed to work out. It’s best if I clear my mind of everything and focus on dragging my friend to safety.
I move my left foot, followed by my right foot, over and over for what feels like hours, though rationally I know only minutes have passed. My muscles almost tearing with effort, I drag Liam another half corridor. As I go, I notice I’m slowing down.
No. I can’t slow down. If I do, Liam will die.
Suddenly, there’s a blur of movement as someone joins me at the intersection, and Liam’s overwhelming weight is made incalculably lighter. Dazed, I stare at the Youth who caught up with us and grabbed Liam by his legs, helping me carry him.
It’s Owen—the closest thing to a nemesis Liam’s had in his sheltered Oasis life. Owen—the person I knocked out yesterday when he was acting like an ass, and whose head, according to Phoe’s retelling of the story, adorned the manifestation of my worst nightmare as created by the anti-intrusion algorithm of the Elderly’s Test.
“Thank you,” I manage to say, fighting off my shock. “I don’t think I could’ve carried him much longer.”
Owen bobs his head, the movement making him look like a rescue dog. Instead of speaking, he purses his lips and nods at the alarms, the message clear: “Don’t waste oxygen, dumbass, and don’t force me to do the same.”
Emboldened by the help, I increase my pace to the point where I feel as if I’m dragging both Owen and Liam out of the building. The rest of the journey is a foggy blend of red lights and Phoe’s mechanical announcements.
I’m almost shocked when we reach the entrance.
I let go of Liam to manually open the door to the Dorm building, and when it opens, the air feels a modicum fresher. I can tell Owen is breathing a little easier, though Liam’s chest is still motionless.
We rush out of the building and push our way through a crowd of disheveled Youths.
“Make room,” Owen yells.
“Move the fuck away,” I echo.
Youths aren’t used to hearing that kind of language, and it shocks them into motion. They clear the area, and we set Liam on the ground.
I lean down to check my friend’s bulging neck vein, and my insides freeze.
Liam’s pulse is barely detectable, and he’s not breathing.
Owen says something before rushing away, but I don’t register his words. I’m too busy trying to recall what I know about first aid. What was that technique the ancients used in these types of situations? CPR?
Doing my best to copy what I’ve seen in old movies, I move closer to Liam’s torso and place the heel of my hand against the center of his chest.
Something doesn’t feel quite right, so I put my left hand over my right and interlace my fingers.
“Okay, this looks like what all the people in movies do,” I think at Phoe, then recall she isn’t there.
Positioning my shoulders above my hands, I use the weight of my upper body to push down. Liam’s chest presses inward. I release the pressure, wait half a second for his chest to bounce back, and then repeat the compression.
Nothing happens.
“Try breathing into his mouth,” a female voice says. I instantly recognize it as belonging to Grace, though I didn’t notice her approach. “It’s more effective in combination,” she adds when I glance up at her.
My hands shaking, I perform another set of compressions and say, “I’m not sure how—”
In a flash of red hair, Grace kneels on Liam’s right side and puts her hand on top of mine. I stop my compressions and watch as Grace carefully pinches Liam’s nose closed and puts her lips on his, creating a tight seal. She then breathes into
him, and I feel his chest rise once, then twice.
“Now you,” Grace says.
I do two dozen compressions before she stops me and gives Liam more air.
We alternate for another couple of rounds. I compress Liam’s chest, and Grace relentlessly forces her breath into his lungs. The air around me is cold, but sweat is pouring down my face. Not all the moisture on my face is solely from sweat, though; some of it is from the burning tears streaming from my eyes.
“Liam,” Grace says after another round. “Liam, can you hear us?”
Fighting the chill of fear inside me, I stare at Liam, but he’s still comatose.
“He’s breathing on his own,” Grace says, answering my unspoken question when I glance up at her. “And his heart rate is more stable.”
I move my hand on Liam’s chest to the left, and my breath whooshes out in relief.
She’s right. His heart is beating steadily.
“You don’t need to do the compressions anymore,” Grace says. “We just have to wait for him to regain consciousness.”
Even in my dazed state, I have to wonder at Grace’s unusual competence. “How did you know how to—”
“I want to be a Nurse one day, remember?” Grace says with a slight disappointment in her voice.
As soon as she says it, I recall her talking about that when we were very young, back when she was friendly with our crew. I even recall her going by the Nurse’s stall on that Birth Day.
“I thought you might’ve changed your mind by now,” I mumble in an effort to cover up my faux pas. The icy panic inside me is receding slightly. “It was more than a decade ago.”
Grace opens her mouth to reply when, with a gasp and a grunt, Liam opens his eyes. “Grace?” he says faintly. “What are you doing in my room at this time of n—”
He notices me then and falls silent, his gaze moving slowly from side to side. I turn around and, for the first time, notice the Youths around us, their faces pale and worried.
“There was an emergency, and we got out of the Dorm,” I say, turning back to Liam. “You might’ve blacked out a little toward the end.”
Liam closes his eyes, furrowing his caterpillar-like eyebrows. Then he says, “Oh yeah. We were going down the stairs when—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Grace says. “But I have to go.”
“Wait, what? Where are you going?” My question comes out a little too forceful. More calmly, I say, “What if Liam loses consciousness again?”
“Now that he’s outside and conscious, he should be fine,” Grace says. “I just spoke to Nicky.” She nods toward a white-faced Youth about twelve years of age. “He evacuated the Middle-Grade Dorms for the same reason we evacuated ours. Their alarm went off even earlier.”
She looks at me as if that explains everything.
I rub my temples. “Sorry, but I don’t see why that means you have to run off. My mind is—”
“It must be all the adrenaline,” Grace says. “I need to go because I’m worried they might’ve had the same oxygen issues at the Elementary Dorms.” She glances in the direction of the forest, where the cylindrical building in question is located. “The little ones might need help.”
“She has a point,” Liam says and attempts to sit up. “We should go help.”
“You need to lie here for a bit,” Grace says sternly, kneeling to push him back down. “But you, Theo, could be useful.”
“I don’t know,” I say, my hesitation at the idea of leaving my just-regained-consciousness friend fighting with mental images of little kids suffocating. “What about—”
“I’ll be fine,” Liam says. “Go help Grace.”
I scan the faces of the Youths around us for someone to volunteer as Grace’s helper in my place. I spot Kevin, a Youth we don’t know too well. We make eye contact, and I wave him over.
“No, it should be you,” Liam says when he sees the Youth approaching.
I’m about to voice a counterargument when it occurs to me that with my Respirocytes, I probably am the best person in Oasis to deal with any kind of rescue operation involving limited oxygen conditions. In contrast, pretty much anyone can look after Liam at this point.
Kevin stops next to me with an expectant look, so I say, “Can you please look after Liam? He’s not feeling well, and I want to make sure he recovers. Did you see the CPR stuff Grace and I performed earlier?”
“Yes,” Kevin says uncertainly.
“Can you do it if he loses consciousness again?”
“I won’t,” Liam interjects.
“He really won’t,” Grace assures.
“Okay,” Kevin says. “Go help Grace. I’ll take care of Liam.”
I get up and tell Nicky, “Help Kevin if he needs it.”
Nicky nods.
Grace gets up and makes her way through the crowd of Youths, and I follow, trying to block out the deafening din of hundreds of voices. Some Youths are panting and wheezing in the aftermath of their oxygen deprivation, some are shouting questions about what’s going on, and many are weeping or telling each other reassuring lies about this being only a drill.
As we navigate our way through the human obstacle course, a few oddities stick out to me. For one thing, everyone is shoeless and wearing night clothes. Some Youths are even half-naked. All this makes them look like a pack of lost puppies in the red glare of the sky—which is the next oddity.
The sky is not sunset red, but rather blaring-alarm red, like back at the Dorms. It’s as if someone painted the Dome with red, luminescent paint. More than a few Youths are staring up at the sky with a mixture of horror and fascination. I presume this means the Augmented Reality has malfunctioned, though it’s possible the sky is supposed to look like this in case of emergencies.
Thinking of Augmented Reality brings my attention to a third, more subtle oddity. All the statues and many of the hard-to-reach trees and vegetation are gone, giving the environment a barren look that’s only enhanced by the red hue of the sky.
It’s Oasis as none of us have seen before: a place about as far from serene green paradise as one can imagine.
As we walk, Grace checks on several Youths who are lying on the ground. It seems Liam wasn’t the only person who ran out of air. Some of these Youths also managed to bang their heads when they passed out—at least judging by the bruises on one girl’s head. None of them are in dire condition, however, so Grace leaves them and proceeds to the edge of the crowd.
As Grace and I get farther away from all the Youths, I realize the cacophony of voices was masking a different sound. I can now make out a new message that the omnipresent, mechanical-sounding Phoe is delivering.
“Habitat heating functions compromised. Oxygen production—”
An ear-splitting alarm pierces the air. It’s so loud it drowns out the rest of the announcement.
A chill travels up from my icy feet and spreads through my body—a coldness that has nothing to do with the heating malfunctions and everything with the location of that new alarm.
It’s blaring from the Elementary Dorms, the cylindrical building a few hundred feet in front of us.
Grace was right to hurry here. What happened in our Dorms is about to happen to little kids.
4
As one, Grace and I start sprinting toward the building. When we’re halfway there, the first wave of kids bursts through the doors. Even from this distance, I can tell that they’re the older kids. Then more children run out, with the older kids leading out the younger ones.
A boy of about ten intercepts us near the building. “I had to leave two girls behind,” he says, desperately gulping in air. “Her roommates.” He glances down at the first grader whose tiny hand he’s holding.
“How do we find that room?” Grace asks, her voice taking on an Adult-like air of authority.
“It’s room 405, second on the right if you take the eastern staircase to the top floor,” the boy explains, panting, and we hurry toward the building.
; As we make our way through the horde of shivering, half-asphyxiated younger Youths, I curse under my breath. Whoever caused this situation has a lot of explaining to do.
“Grace,” I say when we reach the entrance. “Why don’t I go and you stay here? I might have a better chance at—”
Ignoring me, Grace rushes into the building. She was always stubborn, so I’m not surprised. Of course, she doesn’t know about my Respirocytes, so to her, my statement might’ve sounded like a boast.
Pushing my frustration aside, I run after Grace. In the glow of the alarm lights, her red hair looks sprayed with blood. The mechanical voice repeats the same words as in our dorm: “Oxygen production and circulation compromised. Evacuate the building immediately.”
When we almost reach the eastern staircase, I see a Youth my age in the distance, carrying a small child. As we get closer, I make out who it is and realize that this is where Owen ran off to. He must’ve had the same idea as Grace. I nod at him solemnly. He rolls his eyes at me, which is typical, but then he gives the little girl in his arms a worried look and continues hurrying toward the exit.
Grace and I keep running, and as Owen disappears from sight, I realize that I can’t help viewing him in a new light. I expected Grace to play the hero, but not Owen. Then again, it’s hard to predict how a person will react in a catastrophic emergency. Some cower in fear—I saw plenty of examples today—while others embrace the situation and step up. Sometimes people can pleasantly surprise you.
My reverie is broken when Grace stops near the first door and stares at a new figure.
It’s a Guard, only he’s not wearing his helmet.
I’m even more shocked than Grace. For a Guard to show up in the Youth section without his reflective helmet, with signs of aging on display, things must be dire indeed. This particular Guard isn’t too old, but I can still see the red light reflecting off his graying temples. I’m not sure Grace will notice it, though. Then it hits me: I actually know this guy.
It’s Albert, the Guard who objected to Jeremiah torturing me.
“What are you doing here?” Albert asks, audibly sucking in air.
He’s cradling a tiny boy in his right arm and gripping the hand of a slightly older girl with his left hand. The girl peeks at us from behind the Guard, her huge eyes wide and her bottom lip quivering.