Chương 7: Dome

Ch 7 - Dome As she passes the final orange building an exit passageway emerges through the curve of the dome, the road leading her directly to its door. The same spiral logo is stamped onto the cube-shaped building that interrupts the mesh wall. Below the dirt-encrusted porthole a series of symbols on the extra wide door give her no clues as to how the lock mechanism works. Two black rods protrude from the centre of the dull metal. She assumes these are the handles she needs to move.

She pulls the levers first left, then right, leaning her body to each side with the effort. Shouts grow louder behind her. Through the porthole she can make out a similar door on the other side of the cube. Her chance for freedom. Whatever this dome is, it must be to contain the fantasy world of its inhabitants. On the other side she's sure she will find a field, or abandoned airfield or industrial estate. Hopefully a landscape she recognises and can navigate. Again, shouts ring out.

She detects the smallest notch of movement in the right lever as she presses it left. She jerks them right to try again with extra effort, the left lever gives a few millimetres. She focuses on the right lever, her body weight pressing both heels of her hands into the black bar. Both hands are so numb with cold it is only the ache of her forearms that reassures her that her efforts are targeted correctly. There is no movement. A laugh rings out over her shoulder. It is the woman with the high cheek bones. Joss.

She casually strolls the final few metres to where Cara stands heartbreakingly close to freedom. Joss adjusts the shoulder strap of the long object strapped to her back.

"I have her," she says, the smirk of her thin lips give her a feline smile.

"Exit passage B-03."

"Please," Cara takes a step back, "I just want to go home. I won't tell anyone." Joss rolls her eyes, her smirk sinks into a curl of disgust.

"She's resisting." Cara stumbles, her injured foot failing to adjust for the loose ground underfoot. Joss is a blur of black as Cara's legs are swept out from under her. Her elbow bears the brunt of her sideways fall, her shoulder crumbling after it. Spasms erupt from her bandaged forehead, clawing into her skull. She yelps, her fingers pressing into the bandage as if to block the source of the stabs. Her shock is cut short by Joss's kick to her stomach. Once. Twice.

The third connects with Cara's knees, drawn up in protection. She braces for the fourth. Gravel crunches. Dust showers down on her.

"What the fuck are you doing?" a man demands. Joss is flying backwards, her face a contortion of anger as she lands heavily on her backside. Draig looms above Cara, assessing her, his eyes lingering on her injured foot.

"I was making sure she was subdued," Joss insists from where she has come to a stop a couple of metres away.

"I was-""Your orders are no harm," Draig snarls.

"But after what-" Draig bares his teeth as he thunders his order, "Enough!" Cara flinches. His features soften. He holds out his hand to her. She ignores it, pushing herself up into a sitting position, wincing at the complaints from her elbow, stomach, head and ribs. She suspects her knees are complaining too but cold numbness has consumed them and is hungrily weaving up her thighs. She needs to get off the ground.

Reluctantly she accepts his offer of help, pulling then pressing hard on his steady hand as she stands upright. He shrugs off his coat, draping it over her shoulders before taking a step back. It is heavy, draping down to her calves. Its inner layer retains a blanket of his warmth. She wraps it eagerly, protectively, around her. Hating that the final embers of her fight, her bid for freedom, have been snuffed out by accepting first his hand then his coat.

"I told you there is nowhere to go," he says simply.

"Can you walk or should I carry you?" She ignores his question, overwhelmed by a singular thought, "Why?" She detects the impending return of her tears in the flaring of her nostrils and dampness of her exhale.

"Why have you kidnapped me? I'm not- I'm nobody. I don't have any money." He lets out a long sigh, his head dipping as he runs a hand through his short hair.

"Wyndeer told you. You have not been kidnapped. You have travelled to our world."

"You're insane. You're all insane." He sighs again, glancing briefly to the door she had failed to open. His indigo eyes study her. She resolves to hold his stare, resorting to silently counting to herself to endure the weight of his consideration. At eight he huffs and turns to the door. With only an initial grunt of effort he pulls both handles up, over, then inwards to join into a central bar. The door opens as he pulls on the bar with one hand.

"Come. Look." He invites her into the cube, throwing a hard stare at Joss whose mouth has dropped open in astonishment. She stumbles as she steps over the high threshold, again she must rely on his offered hand to keep herself steady. He guides her to the outer door. His fingers wipe a small clearing in the grimy porthole.

"Does your world look like this?" he asks. She doesn't admit it to him but the world on the other side of the porthole is unrecognisable to her. Ignoring the weather – strong winds fling debris back and forth across the window, two columns of twisting tornados funnel towers of brown earth up into the oppressive ceiling of cloud – the landscape is barren, scarred with harsh brown-red rocky outcrops scattered across a ground of grey clawed with black.

Just in sight on the right, she can make out the curve of a beige dome rising bravely towards the furious sky. Carving out from behind the second dome and cutting across in front of the porthole is a jagged canyon. The black drop-off definable only by the sight of the cliff face marking its far side. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Well?" he prompts.

"It's-" she searches for her words, "It's-" Could it be somewhere she doesn't recognise? She has travelled enough in Europe and South-East Asia to be confident they are not home to the place he is showing her. If it is North America, she surely would have heard of such a place or seen it in a film. Somewhere in South America? Peru? Chile? They have vast deserts, don't they? But do they have people living in communities inside domes? On the edges of a landscape so perilous to cross.

With no hope of sustaining crops or animals? It doesn't sound real, doesn't feel real.

"It's an illusion," she throws out the challenge with little certainty.

"This is fake. This window isn't real, it's a screen." He mutters something under his breath. It is a sound of annoyance, but his face betrays no emotion. There is less than an arm's distance between them. His breath, she realises, is warm on her face. She watches as a rainbow oil sheen passes over his deep indigo eyes; she cannot find the edges of contact lenses. A shiver runs up her spine. He moves quickly. His hands reaching not for her but for the levers on the door.

He makes the same up-over-down movement creating a single black bar. With one hand on the bar, he grabs hold of her upper arm with the other. It is a careful but firm grip, his hand easily clasping securely despite the bulkiness of her jumper and his coat.

"I will only open the door briefly. Just long enough for you to be convinced that what you see out there is real. Don't try anything stupid. This is dangerous for both of us." The meaning of his words is just sinking in as he pulls the door open. The wind rushes into the room and immediately tries to push her out into the storm. His grip tightens, keeping her pinned by his side.

The arm she raises to shield her face is caught by the wind and pulled into the doorway; it flutters in the air as if she is waving an enthusiastic greeting to someone outside. The landscape is as she viewed it through the porthole and one hundred times worse. Without the grime on the window the jaggedness of the rocks is sharper; the colours are deader, less hospitable, browns and greys. The dark depths of the canyon yawn open before her, the blackness seeming to pull at her as much as the wind.

She has a clearer view of the adjacent dome, can almost see to its central crown. A tornado is forming above it, its width widening with every twist. Its length is about to touchdown on the patchwork mesh when a honeycomb of blue glistens over the surface of the dome. It ignites a flash of white at the tornado's tip. With a loud crack the tornado splits. A smaller twister spins off over the canyon, a second bulges below the cloud layer before mushrooming and disappearing into the swirl of grey.

The wind intensifies as if enraged by the loss of the tornado. She feels her body lifting, trying to take flight into the storm. Draig pushes her into the wall as his shoulder slams hard into the door. The clunk-whoop of its closure is loud in the sudden silence. As she draws in new breath from the stilled air of the room, an acid burn rises in the back of her throat and stings at her eyes.

"Rinse and spit," he says hoarsely, pouring water at her open mouth. Icy coldness flows over her chin and down her neck running quickly to her breasts, but enough of the water is diverted into her mouth for her to swirl and douse the fire now burning between her tonsils. As she works the water around her mouth a wave splashes across her face.

"Clean the dust away, it will help your eyes." She spits to what she hopes is empty ground as she works her hands free from the sleeves of the coat to wipe at her face. As her vision clears, she sees he is doing the same. Drips cling to his eyelashes and in the hairs of his stubble. A redness has appeared in his eyes. He holds out an open flask to her. She takes it and repeats the process, offering it back to him as she turns to spit a second time.

"Well?" he asks, a gravelly thickness to his voice, "What do you believe now?"

"I-" she croaks. What can she say? What she saw. What she heard. What she felt and tasted. It was real. Was she that unworldly to have never heard of such a place on earth? Such a place on planet Earth, her mind prompts her. This is not planet Earth.

"I-" she tries again, "but it can't be-""DRAIG!" Wyndeer bellows as he steps into the cube. She jumps. Her back slides a retreat from him, tracking along the wall. She finds herself nestled into the corner. Draig takes his time returning the flask to a pocket before turning to face Wyndeer.

"When Joss said you were opening the exit I thought I had misheard." Wyndeer's voice has barely lowered in volume.

"But then you refused my connection." He stops in the centre of the cube. Whilst the room could easily fit twenty people, his presence seems to fill it. Another form fills the inner doorway. Crathsun steps into the room. He has a hastily wrapped bandage around his head, a wad of fabric is fixed against the back of his skull, red bleeds into the corners of the material. Unlike Wyndeer, Crathsun's attention is not on Draig, it is on Cara.

"If we expect her to stop running, she needs to understand there is nowhere to run to." Draig stands between her and Wyndeer, hands tense by his side.

"Her running will no longer be a concern," Wyndeer says coldly.

"She is going to be sedated until I hand her over on the Wixam." Tremors pass over her skin. Had any part of her been warm her blood would have run cold. She watches Draig's shoulders stiffen.

"That's not protocol," he says.

"Any threat can be countered with reasonable measures, including sedation."

"She's not a threat," Draig scoffs, "Crathsun's capable of fulfilling his duties." Despite the mention of his name Crathsun's stare does not waver. Cara presses herself further into the corner.

"Not just Crathsun. Joss reported that she was resisting. And looking at her foot, she appears to be a threat to herself. That is a clear pattern."

"Joss was-""Draig!" Wyndeer cuts him off with unmistakable authority, "I'm the up-rank. Or should I get your contract voided for trying to aid her escape?" Draig's face is in profile to her. She can't read his expression, but she can see a vein in his neck pulsing at the same rate as her heartbeat.

"Of course, Orange," he announces in an unexpected placatory tone.

"I will do it,""Unnecessary-""I will do it," Draig cuts Wyndeer off. The anger flashing in Wyndeer's eyes does not silence Draig.

"It will save Vheece an argument with Argatta, and you an explanation to Vheece." She holds her breath as the two men remain locked in a stare. Just as her lungs begin to burn Wyndeer sneers and flicks a dismissive hand, "Do it." Draig reaches into a pocket on his chest, fingering a small white tube into his palm. As he closes the gap to her, he blocks her view of Wyndeer and Crathsun. His face replaces her view of the room, blurred as tears well in her eyes.

"Please," she whispers to him, "don't do this."

"You're going to be ok. I won't let them hurt you."

"Is it?" she is trying and failing to gulp back the tears streaming down her face, "Are you sure? Are you sure this is real?"

"It's real."