Dome Chapter 13
The Escape
Winsor’s fingers wiggle, his arm jolts.
“N,” he groans.
His body begins to contort as he stirs.
“N! No!”
The cell’s lights illuminate, filling it with the same sterile white of the Dome.
Gasping for air, his body jolts forward. The blinding white light fills his eyes. Blurry-eyed, he struggles out of the bed, half-blind, as the shapes around him begin to take form.
A heavy weight on his left arm drags Winsor to the floor.
The now brightly lit cell was even more disorienting in the light. To the naked eye, the room seems like an empty white purgatory. Infinity all around, and yet in reality, there’s nearly enough room to lift your arm.
A stiff metal bed frame with a thin white mattress to Winsor’s right and a toilet just above his head.
Where am I?
Trying to lift himself up, his left arm skids across the ground. His cheek smacks the cold white cement floor. Pulling himself up with his right arm, he looks at his left.
His eyes widen, then his mouth.
From armpit to his fingertips, his whole left arm is encased in a long black metal horn.
Air sucks into his stomach before he releases a long, bellowing scream.
“What’s going on in there?”
Just enough sanity left in Winsor’s brain to recognize the sound of a human voice. He stops to listen.
“Knock that rucks off!” the gruffy disembodied voice calls out.
A Citizen, or so it seems.
He sighs at the first sound of normalcy.
“Hello?” Winsor calls back.
A grimy laugh cackles from above Winsor’s head.
“Finally, some company,” the voice chuckles. “Let’s hope you’re not an idiot.”
Leaning on the bed, Winsor pulls himself up. The horn is a great weight on his shoulder, but with a little shifting of his hips, he finds he can balance himself.
He notices the small rivets in the horn's design; it seems as though it could bend with some effort, however, flexing his arm yields nothing. Trying to bend it with his right does nothing else either.
Turning his attention back to the room, he looks for signs of anything beyond the bed and toilet that can give him some sense of where he is or how to get out.
Nothing but white stares back at him.
“How do I get out of here?” he calls out to the seemingly all-knowing voice.
“You don’t,” the voice, like an old oil stain—slimy but stern. “I designed this place myself. It’s impossible.”
‘Designed this place myself?’
That can’t be correct.
“But didn’t Mother imagine us?”
A black cackle echoes in Winsor’s cell loud enough to make him cringe a little.
“You think anyone with an imagination would make something this boring?”
An unconscious snort escapes Winsor’s nose. Finally, someone who sees what he always has, “I thought the same thing.”
“I like you, kid. Eternity could be worse.”
Winsor places his right hand on the wall. The small grains of texture drag against his skin as he searches for something that he can use.
Nothing.
There must be some kind of opening; how else did he get in?
“Trying to figure this place out?” the voice asks with a tinge of pride.
“If I got in, there has to be a way to get out.”
The voice suddenly seems much closer now, “Oh—we got ourselves a thinker. The truth is, you can’t leave the way you came in. The door is modular and can open from any angle to keep prisoners from predicting anything.”
“But there has to be some kind of opening somewhere.”
“You won’t find it on the wall. Behind it is a complex interlocking system that aligns the wall panels to within 100 micrometers. Making the seams literally microscopic.”
“How can we hear each other?”
“Smart and persistent, if you can solve this, maybe there’s some hope for us after all. Take a look around.”
Following the echo, Winsor looks up to see a vent in the ceiling.
Reaching his hand out less to grab it and more to measure how high it is, he can estimate that it must be approximately another full length of his body.
He leaps, not that it would do anything, but something in his legs told him to at least give it a try. The result is exactly as one would suspect.
“I designed it to be out of reach,” the voice echoes. “Seems I built my own coffin,” his voice musing irony more than mourning.
Exhausted of ideas but not willing to give up, Winsor sits on the bed.
So, this is what it means to be terminated. Subjected to a smaller dome than the one before. His lips vibrate as he blows a harsh stream of air out of his mouth.
What happened to N-85?
The last he could remember, she was being dragged to the window, but before he could see what happened next, a flash of light, and now he’s here.
“What’s your name, kid?” the voice asks.
Name?
Kid?
Who is this strange voice?
“‘Name?’ “ Winsor repeats, looking for clarification.
“Oh boy! She worked a number on you kids. How do you identify yourself?”
“My identifier is X-13.”
“‘Identifier!?’ “ the voice repeats. “‘X-13?’ What has she done to you all?”
“Who?”
“Can you remember any other way you identify yourself?”
“I mean, I prefer Winsor.”
“Winsor…” the voice trails. “Where did you hear that?”
The golden woman in Winsor’s dreams comes to mind. Thinking deeply enough, she was the only person who had ever said that word. However, there is something to this voice that tells him not to disclose the woman to him.
“It sounds good,” Winsor replies.
“Hmm—” the voice hummed through the vent. “I’m Hugo,” he responds after a moment, “Teacher of the Forbidden Knowledge of Technology.”
“And they said Winsor was weird,” Winsor mumbles.
A squeak in the mattress awakens his mind. Moving his hips on the mattress, he notices a slight springiness to it.
“I was the teacher of the Old Ways in Dento,” Hugo opines.
Winsor stands on his bed, bracing his legs.
“I taught Terra the forbidden knowledge of technology,” a self-pitying cry in Hugo’s voice.
Winsor bends his legs low.
“And how does she repay me?”
Winsor jumps.
“Imprisons me for a minor disagreement.”
Winsor lands on the ground with an audible gasp, the wind knocked out of his stomach.
“You tried jumping off the bed?” Hugo asks.
A groaning, “Yeah,” from Winsor.
Hugo clucks a paternal “tsk,” “Sorry, son, you’re not getting out.”
Turning his head, Winsor notices something under the bed. Getting up, he rips the mattress off the frame to reveal horizontal slats on the bed frame. Grabbing the frame of the bed, he lifts it up against the wall.
The extra weight from the horn drags Winsor as he climbs up the slats. Sweat slides down his face as he forces himself up the bed frame.
“This horn thing, your idea, too?” he asks Hugo.
“What are you talking about?” Indignation poisons his tone.
The vent stares down at Winsor, who now sits on top of the bed frame, just out of reach. With just a leap, he could reach it, but then what? There’s still the issue of the vent cover itself.
His fingers tap on the horn, feeling the ridged metallic texture. Perhaps the horn could pierce it.
Let’s give it a try.
Focused, he aims for the vent and, leaping off the bed, stabs the vent with the horn. It breaks through, and instead of falling, he finds himself hanging from the vent, suspended above the floor.
“Winsor?” Hugo’s voice echoes from above; he can feel the vibration of Hugo’s voice against the horn.
A laugh bellows from Winsor before the vent snaps off, and he falls to the ground.
Lifting the horn up, he sees that the tip of the horn has split in half and grown sharp claws. They snap back together, forming the tip of the horn again.
Hugo sits on this bed, his head leaning towards the air vent. His beady little brown eyes squint as he focuses his ear, waiting for any new sounds. A short, little man, his face covered in bushy white hair, with a small empty spot on the very top of his head.
The sound of metal bending groans through the cell. His eyes shift following the sound.
This is a turn of events. I knew we could have done more with them, but Terra—she just didn’t have faith.
A thunderous crash echoes through the cell. The sound of metal twisting and falling over itself.
Hugo waits for the echo to clear.
“You ok, Winsor?”
Another crash, and Hugo ducks just in time to avoid being hit by his own vent cover.
Two big eyes peek out from the vent as Winsor pops his head down.
Hugo’s beady eyes bulge almost as big as his as he stares at Winsor in amazement.
“You did it—” bumbles out of his mouth.
Winsor reaches his arms out, and for the first time, Hugo sees it. A long, black, shiny horn, like someone stuck a thorn through Winsor’s shoulder.
“What happened to you?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Winsor waves him over.
Hugo looks at the black metal spike and considers whether to touch it. He would have an easier time reaching it than Winsor’s free hand, but this thing fell outside the peripheries of his knowledge.
“Come on,” Winsor calls.
Hugo takes a deep breath and grabs onto the spike, his eyes closed tight.
Winsor pulls, and Hugo finds himself sitting on the sloping roof of “his cell overlooking a dark, empty room.
As his eyes adjust, he can make out that they are in the North West Bubble.
A shadowy black dome ceiling, less finished than the rest of the Dome, but Terra and he understood that the purpose of this dome was to encase the prison, and materials were best spent reinforcing the City Bubble.
Long slivers of light from outside peek through, illuminating enough to see hundreds of dirt-covered cylinder prisons standing in perfect rows. Rounded tunnels connect the cells into an intricate spider-web formation.
“What did she put you in here for?” Hugo asks Winsor.
“I have a brain virus called ‘creativity.’”
Hugo’s face turns red. A huff of air puffs through his nostrils, “Creativity, a brain virus! That damn waif would say something that stupid.”
“It’s not?”
Hugo slides down his prison cell and lands in a thick cloud of dust.
Winsor coughs, but Hugo’s indignation keeps his nose from noticing the dirt sucking in.
“I can’t wait to give that stuck-up witch a piece of my mind.”
Winsor stares at the dwarf of a man; no one in the Dome is as short as him, and yet his presence fills the entire empty space.
Hugo turns to Winsor, “You coming?”
Winsor looks back out at the labyrinth of prison cells.
N-85.
“You can go ahead. There’s someone I have to find.”
Hugo scoffs, “We’re the only ones here.”
The statement stuns Winsor. He looks out at all the prisons. That can’t be.
“Then why are there so many cells?”
Hugo shrugs, “We figured we might need a few cells as you kids got older. Congratulations, Winsor, you’re the first child to be sent to prison. Of course, it would be because of creativity. Terra knew how dangerous it would be.”
Winsor slides down the cell and lands in a clump of dirt.
“Then where would N-85 be?”
“A friend of yours?”
Friend? Another word Winsor had never heard before.
“I don’t know—” the thought of N-85 squeezed his heart, he put his hand to his chest, “N is like no one else.”
Hugo purses his lips, “I see—you weren’t just creative. You’re a full-on romantic.”
“‘Romantic?’”
Hugo’s eyes widen, his mouth itching a smile before he bellows a hearty laugh.
Winsor stares at the strange creature.
“Terra must have really hated you!” his laughter begins to look painful. “Oh, kid, we’re going to have a good time together.” Sniffing, he recovers his composure. “Alright, follow me, and we’ll find your girlfriend.”
There’s that word again, friend, but with an adjoining strange word too, girl.
“What’s a “‘girl-friend?’”