by Megan Curd
“Shut up and kiss me, Jaxon.”
“Your wish is my command.”
His lips pressed against mine, and we found our pace again. My heart was thrumming in my ears. He commanded every sense of my body. Every touch sent flames and electricity and excitement through me. I never wanted it to end. I rolled to my right to sit on top of him and we slipped back under the sensation of rain, back into the dome.
Hell ripped through our little sliver of heaven. High-pitched alarms blared, threatening to burst my eardrums. Jaxon pushed me off of him and clutched his ears in agony.
“Jaxon!”
He was jerking uncontrollably, blood dripping from his ears. It felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over me. I fought through the pain that assaulted my eardrums.
“Jaxon! We’ve got to go!”
As the alarms receded, the broken pavement trembled and shook. His eyes grew wide. “The dome isn’t meant to keep people from leaving, it’s meant to keep people from coming in!”
“What do you mean?” I yelled over the din.
He launched himself off the ground and hauled me in tow behind him, shouting as he ran. “Why would anyone want to leave? Riggs makes sure his students are happy. He doesn’t need to keep people here. They don’t even know they can get out!”
“So why not let people in?”
Rain began to fall, except it wasn’t rain.
It was fire.
I screamed as the droplets singed my clothes and burnt my skin. Jaxon batted a small flame that erupted on his shirt, but he couldn’t contain it. The fire quickly spread up his shirtsleeve. He panicked, and I did the only thing that came to mind.
My hands stretched to the heavens. Praying my desperation would make it true, I closed my eyes and screamed, “WATER!” As soon as the word escaped my lips, I felt the cool relief of actual rain. Steam hissed and billowed up as the water extinguished the flames on the ground. I immediately began to feel the backlash of using my ability. “I can’t hold this for long. We have to go.”
As we ran, darkness threatened the edges of my vision. Red and yellow spots danced before my eyes as I pushed my ability to keep the rain from turning back into fire. By the time we reached the car, I was spent.
Jaxon looked at me with wide eyes as I swayed on the spot. “What in the hell are you doing? Get in the car!”
“I can’t keep the rain going.” I gasped as I felt my control wane. Even now the rain grew warmer, like a too-hot shower on my skin. It wouldn’t be long before the flames came back. “Get out of the car.”
“What do you mean?”
“Get out of the car!” I exclaimed again as my knees buckled under me. The raindrops were now an impossible combination of both water and fire. It came down in buckets and splashed against the ground, licking my skin and burning through my clothing.
“Gas and f-fire…” I sputtered. “You…you don’t have to be genius to know what that’ll cause.”
“Crap!” he yelled as he leapt from the car and scooped me up in his arms.
My consciousness faded as he ran, and I finally gave up trying to hold off the deluge of fire. The moment I did, my strength began to return, but now we were pelted with miniature fireballs.
He yelled in agony as one hit the side of his face, sending us both off course as I slipped from his embrace. I crashed hard into the ground, and my neck whipped around like a rag doll’s.
Where was he? I squinted to see through the haze of heat. He was underneath what was left of an overhang, clutching the side of his face. I ran to him and put his arm around my shoulder, willing him to stand. “We’ve got to keep moving!”
He moaned in assent and struggled to put one foot in front of the other. Just as we got the hang of walking together, an explosion erupted behind us, the force catapulting both of us off our feet. The car’s gas tank must have exploded.
A high-pitched hum reverberated in my ears from the blast. I skidded to a stop beside a car tire and touched the side of my face. My skin felt shredded. I whimpered under the light pressure and knew even Xander might not be able to fix it.
Jaxon lay a few paces away, struggling to pull himself up.
I forced myself to cross the gap between us and help him to his feet, both of us scrabbling for purchase against the gravelly ground.
He seized my hand and pulled me toward a nearby alleyway. “We need to get to cover before the next wave hits!”
“The next wave of what?”
Thunder erupted above and howling winds threatened to whip us into oblivion. I looked to the west where the sound had originated and saw a huge funnel cloud taking form. Cars and other debris spun wildly, and fueling its violent trek. Jaxon pulled me into the alley, but my eyes refused to budge from the horror coming for us. “It’s going to kill us, Jaxon!”
“No it won’t! We need to get to lower ground!”
His pace was too fast, but he managed to half-drag, half-carry me into a nearby derelict building—down a pair of industrial stairs, down into the bowels of darkness so deep I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I prayed he knew where he was going.
The angry howl of the wind came closer and closer, and my panic increased as the earth rumbled underneath its fury. Just when I thought we couldn’t go down any more stairs, the ground leveled out, and a light flicked on in front of me.
“You waited until now to use a flashlight?” I didn’t even know he had one.
He slid down a nearby wall and put the light between his knees. He closed his eyes, and I realized how badly injured he was. Gashes lined his right cheekbone and flesh hung awkwardly from his left shoulder, the blood staining his shirt as it pulsed out of his body and into the fabric. “We were running for our lives, but I apologize for withholding information. I’ll be sure to give you a detailed inventory of everything on my person the next time we’re thrust into a life and death situation.”
He was sarcastic even on his deathbed.
I crawled next to him and pulled off what was left of my tattered jacket to make a tourniquet. A crash reverberated and the room trembled, cement raining down from above.
“The top floor is collapsing. We’ve got to get into the tunnel.”
I worked quickly to try to stop the bleeding. He winced when I pressed the sleeve to the gouge in his shoulder, and I gagged a little when I felt the squelching of marred flesh under my fingertips.
I asked questions to distract myself from the task at hand. “What tunnel? And how do you know what’s going on?”
He pointed weakly with the flashlight across the room, the beam bouncing in his unsteady hand. The light glanced off a small hole that appeared to have been dug out with bare hands. It would be a tight fit.
The idea of crawling into such a small hole made me claustrophobic. “You want me to go in there?”
“The tunnel’s only small for a short while then it opens up. I promise.” He coughed and spit out a tooth. “The other option is we stay here and get crushed by rebar and concrete. Take your pick.”
It wasn’t much of a choice. I helped him to his feet, and we made it across the room as fast as our mangled bodies would allow. He dropped to the ground and crawled in first, dragging his right foot. It appeared broken, but I wouldn’t be able to tell until we had more light.
I followed the meager light and listened to him shuffle ahead as I heard booms, crashes, and explosions on the ground above us. I wondered how long we had until everything collapsed on top of us. After descending farther, the tunnel gave way to a wide room made of simple concrete, as he’d promised.
When we emerged into the more spacious room, Jaxon collapsed to the ground. I propped him up in the corner, and he laughed.
I shook him gently. “I have no idea what could be funny in this situation.”
“I never imagined I’d finally meet someone I cared about, only to die with them not three hours after I admitted it,” he said, his voice uneven and raspy. “It seems ironic, don’t you think
?”
He pointed to the thick center beam with the flashlight. “There’s a gas lamp there. It’ll give us light for a while.”
Crouching, I made it over to the beam under the weak direction of his flickering flashlight. The lamp was there as he’d said it would be, and I fumbled to get it going. After a few moments, flames burst to life. I brought it back to his corner, sat it down next to us and curled into his good arm.
He sighed. “We’ll be okay,” he muttered weakly. “This tunnel leads to Xander’s office. We need to rest and wait out the rest of the onslaught.”
“What else is coming?”
“Loads worse,” he said as he winced from repositioning. “I didn’t put it together until everything started coming down on us, but Riggs said that the dome was protected from intruders. He talked about all the precautions in place, and I know the alarm, fire rain, and tornado were some of them. The Polatzi got away with murder, getting that close to the academy. I’m sure he ramped up the security after last week. Sari was forced to program the onslaught.” He leaned his head against the cold wall, closed his eyes and let out a hollow sigh. “I think we’re okay down here. We just need to hunker down. I need to sleep.”
“Jax, I don’t think you’re supposed to sleep after a concussion—”
A smile lit his face for a moment before being replaced by pain again. “You called me Jax.”
“I don’t think it really matters at the moment—”
He wrapped his arm around me with a little more force, but it was still weak. “But you called me Jax. That means I’m your friend.”
I leaned my head carefully against his shoulder, afraid to hurt him. “Of course I’m your friend.” I laughed, trying to make light of the situation we were in. “Do you think I go around kissing complete strangers?”
“Girl like you? I’d believe it. You must be made of steel to survive on your own all these years. Doesn’t seem like kissing guys would be that hard for you if you can control the elements.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“I’ve been through a major trauma, Avery. Give me some slack. I don’t have to make sense.”
I didn’t fight him any more. Instead, I turned off the flashlight and let the flickering light of the gas lamp illuminate our tiny grotto.
So much for our big date. I’d never been on one, but I was confident that they didn’t usually include fire raining down, tornadoes, explosions, or any other malevolent force trying to sully the night.
Maybe I could get a rain check. If we survived, that was.
I AWOKE TO the sound of feet shuffling across the cement. Afraid to move, I cracked one eye to see if I could make out the shape in the blurred glow of the gas light.
“I know you’re awake, Avery,” Jaxon said, his voice tired. “You got still, and for the past hour you thrashed like a wild woman and talked in your sleep.”
I looked for the source of his voice. He was sitting at the center beam, his arms wrapped around his knees and head resting against his legs. He smiled weakly when I caught his gaze.
“There you are.”
“I talked in my sleep?”
“Yep. About me, of course—how stunning I am and that you wanted to kiss me forever if we survive this hellhole.”
“I think you were dreaming,” I said with a laugh, cutting it off when the motion sent a stab of pain through my ribs. “How are you feeling?”
“Like the luckiest man alive. Who doesn’t want to feel like a bus ran them over, then put it in reverse to get in an extra swipe?”
“Will you ever take a day off of the sarcasm?”
“Probably when I’m dead, although I’m sure I’ll find a way to get in a comment or two beyond the grave.” He picked up the fading gas light and shook it a little. “We’re on our last leg with this thing.”
I slid closer, stealing a glance at him from the corner of my eye.
He was looking back. “I suppose you deserve some answers for what just happened.”
“That’s your call. I’m all ears if you have them.”
He nodded pensively and licked his dry lips. We needed water; we were exhausted and hadn’t eaten since—how long had it been? It was impossible to know while underground. Even the scent of the damp earth and cement made me thirsty.
He pushed his dreadlocks out of his face, and even in this low light I could see the sheen of sweat on his brow. “Riggs is my father. You know that,” he said quietly, “but what you don’t know is that he wasn’t always this weirdo he is now. He was normal. Even now, I see glimpses of it once in a while, but it always gets squashed.” He stared at the ground.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Jax.”
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Call me Jaxon. I like the way it sounds when you say it.”
“Does that mean we’re not friends?”
“No. It means we’re more than friends. No one calls me Jaxon, but when you say it…well, it makes me feel better.” The kindness in his voice suited him much better than the bitterness he so often hid behind. “
I considered his words with new reverence. “Jaxon.”
He smiled as he put his hand on mine. “Xander has kind of taken care of me. After every test, he was the one who consoled me. He hated having to administer the tests, but he said my father was insistent that it be me. It would build my character if nothing else. He sat beside me at night while I had nightmares, and he was the one that would wake me up when they became too much to bear.
“You asked why my last name was Pierce. My mother and father were happy together when I was little, but my older brother—the one you met in the medical ward—was their breaking point. When he went missing in the war, my mom lost it. She left Riggs, blaming him for pushing my brother to join the cause. They searched endlessly for him to no avail, and one day my mom had enough. She left. I haven’t seen her since. I don’t even know if she’s alive. That was when Riggs went off the deep end, like a light switch had flipped. He said there was nothing to gain from fighting against the Resistance and that we were fools to think so.”
I sucked in a breath. Jaxon had seen so much, endured so much that I could understand why his bitterness lingered like a persistent raincloud. I squeezed his hand, and he continued.
“Pierce was my mother’s maiden name. When she left him, I didn’t want to have any connection to Riggs. I took it as my own, and he didn’t fight me.
“And then I met your parents,” he said with a deep sigh. “Riggs brought them in, but I didn’t know there was a correlation between you and them until I was told to pick you up. They talked about you, but they never said your name, only that they had a little girl before being captured. Your mother was positive you were alive. Your father…well, he wasn’t as optimistic. Still, your parents put pictures of you in their small room, keeping you close to their hearts. They told me about their lives in Dome Four, and then I saw what your mother could do.”
I sucked in a breath, entranced by the story. “Is she powerful? She’s only taught me simple things this past week.”
“She’s an incredible force. More than that, she became a source of comfort for me, and I trust her implicitly. When they lost rations due to insubordination, I scavenged the supermarkets for food for them. Got me in trouble, but I didn’t care.”
“You have supermarkets here?” I asked in wonder. “It didn’t seem like there was anything out in the rest of the dome.”
“There’s no people, but there’s plenty of stuff left behind—computers, non-perishable food, clothes.”
“You said my parents were insubordinate?”
“They refused to help Riggs in his experiments. He wanted your mother to help him find a way to make everyone like you two, and she fought him as hard as possible. Your father is a Traditional, so there isn’t much use for him in Riggs’s eyes, but he also knows if he ever did anything to him, your mother would never help aga
in. She’s made that clear.”
I shuddered at the thought.
He wrapped his arms around me and breathed deeply. “If I had known it was you I was bringing here, I’d have refused. You should have the opportunity to get to know your parents, but the cost of being here is too great. We’ll get them out, and you can have the family you deserve.”
“You deserve that, too.”
“I’m happy knowing that you know me, and I have Xander.”
“Why don’t we bring him with us?”
“I’ve asked him that before,” he said thoughtfully, “but he’s got a tracker. He wouldn’t risk us that way.”
“Then how are we going to get Alice out?”
He pulled back, so I could see him clearly. His face was grim. “We’re going to have to cut it out of her.”
I swallowed the bile in my throat and clenched his hand. “That’s going to hurt, isn’t it? Why couldn’t we cut Xander’s out, too?”
“It’ll hurt like hell. I cut my own out when they tried to track me. That’s when Riggs gave me a longer leash. It took thirty stitches to bind the wound. As for Xander, his isn’t in the crook of his arm like the rest of us. It’s in his heart. If we tried to cut it out, we’d kill him. He’s stuck here.”
Jaxon put a hand on the side of my face, and I grimaced.
He quickly retracted his hand. “Sorry—forgot. I didn’t say this would be easy, just that it would be worth it. Can you have your things ready to go quick? I have a feeling our welcoming party isn’t going to be a pleasant one, and you may have to plan the escape on your own.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll say I took you. Blame it on me, and get yourself as prepared as possible. If you can, get the word to Sari to get Alice and your parents ready. Maybe Kloey will help, but I wouldn’t count on it since her boy toy is in Rigg’s palm.”
I struggled to remember who was who from breakfast. It seemed so long ago. “Which one was Kloey dating? Asher?”