C James - Dome Six

He’d been so careful, but shit still happened.

His ride to the city was demolished but his instinct to go to Julia and Noviah was strong. He must’ve telegraphed his move to Tosh because she almost disarmed him. Almost. The list of Dome citizens who had been shot with a neuro was pretty short, yet three Yamamuras were now on it. Guess he could add his own name to that list.

Part of him hoped the approaching aircraft were there for him. Surely, they would’ve known what happened to the train. Maybe, just maybe, they’d come to extract him. Somehow, he doubted it.

Could he have been more careful? Probably. Getting so close to Elle was a tactical error. He’d underestimated her. She obviously had a sense that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be during the Exchanger failure and perhaps even pieced together what he’d done. When she caught him trying to erase Tosh, that would’ve been the last straw for her. He’d crossed a line. He didn’t share Keane’s proclivities, but in the end, he wasn’t any better a man.

He relished Hideki’s pain during the interrogation, but now that he’d been hit himself, he understood. The only pain he really knew was loneliness and regret. This shit was made to do one thing: Stop you in your tracks and make you beg for mercy. How many false confessions had been extracted by his predecessors in this way?

And what did Hideki mean, exactly, by the red Macros? What could that idiot possibly know that Luther didn’t?

By the time he even reached the tracks that bent back toward the distant city, he could barely move. So, when Hideki came rushing up behind him and wrapped up his legs, he toppled hard to the ground.

On the ground, Luther’s size advantage did him little good. The pain was already sapping the strength from his muscles, so Hideki easily yanked the neurogun from his fingers. He feebly tried to keep it pointed away from him, but Hideki kept squeezing the trigger over and over. Luther couldn’t tell whether anything was hitting him or not. A moment later, it was empty. Hideki flung it away and he heard it land in the tall grass nearby.

“Where’s the antidote?!” Hideki demanded, fistfuls of Luther’s blue shirt in his bony hands.

The antidote! With the last of his strength, he brought his knee up into Hideki’s ribs. When he pulled back, Luther wedged his foot under his shoulder and shoved him back, sending him tumbling onto the ground.

He rolled onto his knees and fished the little autoinjector out of his shirt pocket, then jabbed it into his neck. Almost instantly the fire in his body began to cool. Above him was the open sky, dotted with stars and the fierce white circle of the moon — the same light that shone down on Julia and Noviah.

If the Burn was ever real — and at this point, he couldn’t even be sure of that — then it had not advanced this far. The air was cool, bordering on cold. The land was fertile and lush, not the wind-scoured desert they all believed it to be. Insects chirped. A flock of birds lit from one of the tall trees and fled west, terrified by the roar of the approaching aircraft.

If the immediate surroundings weren’t a wasteland, then neither was Pacifica. In all likelihood, the mysterious voice in the Nexus was a real person and he was their unwitting ally in some broader plan. If they’d lied about that, then they almost certainly were lying about his family.

But he had to try, for there was nothing left to want.

Three aircraft came in hot but pulled up at the last moment, continuing in a low circle overhead. As the pain eased, some of his strength returned. He ran as fast as his searing muscles would allow, which still wasn’t very fast, but Hideki was no longer giving chase. He began down the empty tracks toward the faint outline of the city at the edge of the horizon. It seemed to stretch from the northwest to the southeast.

The first sensation he felt was a sudden urge to vomit. Two steps later, the several thousand red Macros he didn’t know were inside him finally lost the Dome’s signal. The resulting electronic pulse felt like bombs exploding inside every cell at once. His vision went instantly black and he fell so quickly to the ground that it felt like it reached up and pulled him down. The next heartbeat was his last. The antidote had eased the pain just enough for him to feel it all. It didn’t take two seconds.

The last thought that went through Downing’s head was the depth of his failure. All he’d done, all the pain and anguish he’d caused, was in service to this one desire that may not even be true. If Julia was alive, he’d never see her. If he really had a daughter, she’d never know him. Neither would ever realize how close he came.

Maybe that was for the best.

Hideki was so fixated on Downing’s antidote that he didn’t even notice the foot planted in his chest. The guy was more flexible than he gave him credit for. A moment later he was flying back and rolling in the grass while Downing clambered to his feet in a clumsy sprint.

His instinct was to follow, but he’d come as far as he dared from the Dome. Hopefully Tosh and the others were far away already. His choice was to chase Downing and die or get back inside and… and what? Tell everyone it was safe outside but that they couldn’t get too far away? What good would that do? He was supposed to be dead.

In the end, he did neither. The circling aircraft touched down between him and the tunnel opening, their jet wash pinning the long grass to the earth. He turned away just in time to see Downing crumple to the ground. That meant the Dome’s signal was only good for maybe 150 meters. The device he left with Owen would be something well south of that — probably no more than 50.

He couldn’t chase Downing, couldn’t follow the others, and couldn’t return to the Dome. So he stayed put.

After a few minutes, the engines on the big, dark-colored craft shut down and he turned back toward them. Now he was just curious to see who — or what — came out.

He didn’t have to wait long. A burly man in paramilitary garb stepped out of the middle craft, flanked by two soldiers with angry-looking rifles. He removed his helmet from his bald head and tossed it back inside, then strode purposefully toward him. Hideki held his ground.

As they neared, the armed men trained their rifles on him. He instinctively raised his arms. One of them looked down at a display on his arm and said something to the one in charge. He nodded and came to a stop within two meters of Hideki, then looked him up and down. He had tightly cropped dark hair and squinty black eyes that bored a hole right through him. A patch in the middle of his chest said ARAMOR. The Cytocorp logo was emblazoned on his shoulder as well as the sides and wings of all three aircraft.

One of the armed men held up a glowing display on their arm and showed it to Aramor. He took a moment to read it then looked up at Dek.

“Hideki Yamamura. The infamous saboteur of Dome Six.”

“And you are?”

In lieu of an answer, he said, “How are you still alive?”

Dek shrugged. “I guess it wasn’t my time.”

Aramor looked past him to the demolished exit and the overturned train. “You and your friends made quite a mess.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Aramor smirked and said, “Where are the others?”

“It’s just me and him,” he said, nodding toward Downing’s body. “Guess he didn’t know about the signal.”

Aramor glanced at Downing and nodded toward one of the other soldiers who now flanked him. The soldier went to verify Downing’s condition. One of the others whispered something in Aramor’s ear.

“Our manifest indicated eight missing CHITs. A lie’s no way to start a relationship.”