Reborn (Alpha's Claim Book 3) (21 page)

~ Coming Soon~

Chapter 1

Mid-morning sun reflected off the glass so sharply, even squinting, my eyes began to water. Gloved hands to the East Sector solar plate, I twisted in my rigging, searching out the perfect angle until light might distort and show me what I needed to see.

Right there... refraction.

Helmut flush with the damaged pane, I traced over the almost imperceptible feather-like cracks marring the clear amorphous metal.

Routine maintenance scans had misclassified why K73-2554’s solar collection was malfunctioning. It was not a wiring issue, the pane was about to shatter. Damage of this sort led to serious ruptures, evacuations of sectors, and the potential death of everyone inside.

Speaking evenly, I catalogued all I’d found to the tech team supporting my climb from safe behind the Dome’s glass. “Unit 17C to terminal. Pane K73-2554 is damaged beyond original assessment. The structure is badly cracked and will need replacing once fabrication is complete.”

There was a hiss of white noise before my tech’s radio communication came through. “
Copy, unit 17C. An urgent status notation has been logged into the repair queue. You are granted clearance to patch while we wait for fabrication
.
Manufacture posts a three hour timeline.
”

According to my oxygen reserves, that would give me just under an hour to complete install. It would be a close call, I would have to regulate my breathing, but it could be done. “Roger that. Commencing emergency repair.”

A patch on fissures like these might postpone catastrophic failure... then again it might not. Though I could not see them, someone on the inside of that reflective glass was scrambling to install metal sheet reinforcement even as I reached for the tools at my belt.

The human race had learned long ago, that risks were no longer an option. In order to survive, there had to be layers of safeguards and regulation.

Swaying from my rigging, high above the ground, I tiptoed around the damaged section’s frame. With the aid of a heat gun and strong epoxy, I did what I could to reinforce what would ultimately be a fatal crack. It was delicate work that required patience and a light touch. Too much heat, and the whole panel might shatter, too little, and the epoxy would not set. I had to account for the sun, the changing outside temperature. I had to account for that blinding glare I was trained never to turn my head from.

Grunts tasked with the dangerous job of outer Dome repair were
never
to let their eyes wander. The verdant, creeping wilderness could not be a distraction. Staring at the open skyline, the distant tips of a dead, crumbling city’s tallest structures were said to encourage mental instability. It endangered all those who relied on us inside to maintain absolute focus.

Those caught looking were grounded and banned from making
the descent
again.

Failure of so grave a nature led to social ostracizing from the very corps one had been raised with, the family one worked with. Peers would find you suspicious; friends would ask you to submit to reassignment.

Never would I risk it.

Being selected for the external repair program had already placed me in a less than favorable light amongst my peers – even if the work I did kept us all alive.

We had all heard the stories of engineering grunts who grew obsessed with what languished outside the Dome. Some even had tried to leave, or purposefully harmed the structure that protected us all. If rumors were true, there was even a growing faction of citizens who quietly questioned if the virus was really a threat.

In the five years I’d routinely made
the descent
, I’d seen things outside the Dome people inside would never lay their eyes upon. I was privy to what my colleagues considered temptation. Once a butterfly alit beside a ventilation duct I was reconstructing piece by piece. The insect had been orange, and spotted, and lightly fluttered its wings as it rested so near, my fingers could almost brush it. I wanted to watch the insect, to marvel at nature as my ancestors must have done before the plague. But it was forbidden.

Before the increase in my heart rate signaled to my tech that I might be breaking protocol, I’d shooed it away. As far as I knew, no soul in the Dome had ever known that for a matter of seconds I understood why some grunts grew obsessed with all that lay outside.

“
Unit 17C, weather forecasting warns an 18 knot gust will arrive from the east in twenty seconds
.”

“Roger.”

With trained movement, I reached to the magnetic handholds stored in the utility belt around my bio-suite. Swinging my rigging to the left, they were locked into place on an undamaged panel. By the time the wind rushed past me, I was secure, pressed to the side of the Dome, and safe.

It was the second, undeclared gust five minutes later that was my ruin.

Dangling upside-down from my harness in order to get the best angle on the last portion of my repair, I was slammed into the metal glass so hard I lost my breath. It shattered just like I reported it would, right before I felt a sudden loss of gravity.

My rigging had failed, the snake-like hiss of a cable slipping through my belay loop attachment pulley.

I didn’t have time to scream.

Plummeting head first toward the ever encroaching vegetation, my backup catch failed.

I was going to die.

Twisting in the cables as I fell, my bio-suit grew too tight. A sudden force left me in screaming pain; jerked to stillness, my arm was caught, my shoulder joint popped from its socket.

Sounds of misery gurgled in my throat, the smallest of breaths was almost impossible. My vision began to clear and I found the world was still upside down. I had fallen so far, hundreds of meters, that my dangling arm could almost touch the ivy scaling the concrete foundation of my city.

Blood rushed to my head, vision going to a pinpoint.

Amidst the crackling call of my tech for a status update, I found myself distracted. I could see them, diminutive simple flowers, my arm reaching towards their vines as if they were a rope and I might pull myself to safety.

I could smell them...

Tears gathered in the corner of my eyes, hot drips running into my hairline.

“
Unit 17C, your vitals register as erratic and your bio-suit is broadcasting damage to your helmet’s visor.”

I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t move my lips. I could not do anything but stare at the nine-petaled flower and try to breathe.

“Report, Brenya!
”

Hearing my name, the break in protocol, startled me out of waning consciousness.

One croak, the sound of labored breath, that’s all I could offer.

It was as my tech had claimed. More than my body had been damaged, a massive chunk had been knocked from my visor. I had been exposed to open air. I could smell the world, the dirt, my sweat. I could even smell my blood where it trickled from my cheek and into my eye.

“Brenya... you know procedure.”
There was a hedging desperation my tech tried and failed to keep out of his voice.
“Without a status report, you’ll be cut from the rigging. I need you to talk to me.”

I’d miss you too, George...

My stomach rolled and unconsciousness won out.

#

It was dark by the time my swollen eyelids blinked apart. Body rocking in the breeze as if I were a spider at the bottom of its silk, I hung limp. I couldn’t see from my right eye, it was too gooey with blood, but if I squinted, I could just make out shapes in the moonlight.

Warm air brushed my cheek.

For the first time in my life I recognized what real weather felt like. It was humid, and soft, and I could even taste it when I swallowed around a fat tongue.

Teeth chattering despite the heat, I got one word past the pressure on my throat. “George...?”

Nothing.

Sweat was in my hair, dripping up my temples. “Thiiis is...  this issss Unit 17C. I require assistance.” I tried to move my fingers, to see if I might upset my balance and turn my body right-side up. “I’m caught in the rigging and I can’t move my left arm.”

It was a different voice that cracked through the static. “You suit shows an increase in your body temperature. Exposure to outside contaminants must be considered.”

The red consumption?

No...

I’d slipped midday. That infamous disease killed in a matter of hours. It was night now, if I’d been exposed to Red Consumption, I’d already be dead.

Another, blessedly familiar voice interjected. “
Sir, her temps were up prior to the climb. Unit 17C is documented as running hot
.”

Oversight would never believe I was uninfected if my every breath continued to rattle. I had to get myself stable if I wanted to survive. I had to prove I was viable, that I could still serve.

My shoulder ached, I could feel how swollen it was, but in a very unnerving way it didn’t
hurt
. With a left arm that would be useless and a right arm caught to my chest, only my legs might set me free. Straightening them was harder than I expected. First my right leg wrapped around the traitorous cable, left leg pushing off from Bernard Dome’s foundation.

I unrolled so fast I was in a scramble to find a grip before I fell to my death. Bloated fingers caught air, tore at my suite, and finally,
finally
, my glove found the friction of a sliding rope. Where the strength came from, I could not tell you, but I found myself holding on with one hand so close to the ground, my boots could feel the spongy give of the white flowered ivy’s leaves.

The sound of my own heavy breathing echoed through my earpiece, a strained grunt all I could offer the team listening in on the other end. Feet to the wall, I began to climb, one handed, until I found a way to loop my only lifeline back through my harness.

Arm burning, panting in huge gulps of tainted air, I let go. The moment I sat back safely in the harness the strangest thought crossed my mind.

It was jasmine... the white flowers were jasmine.

I’d never smelled anything so beautiful.

“I have reattached and will proceed to the nearest decontamination hatch. Please advise.”

No response crackled in my ear.

Over the next several hours, no one helped me scale the Dome - though I made continuous status reports as I crept up the side like a bug.

Oversight was watching. George was silent.

When I finally crested the nearest hatch, I was left waiting for those inside to decide if I might live or die. I was exhausted, and Oversight’s accusation was true: I did not feel well.

My left arm hung throbbing at my side and required immediate medical attention. I was thirsty, so very thirsty that my tongue stung even worse that the crusted gash on my cheek.

They left me there until sunrise. Dozing against the hatch, I felt it give, scrambling to my feet as best I could. The mechanized door opened, the first of five decontamination chambers waiting for me.

Had my uniform not been damaged, all I would be required to do was stand on the mark, arms raised and legs spread. Fire would blast the outside of my biosuit, heating me to the point my skin would almost blister underneath. Unfortunately, with my suit damaged and my helmet’s visor in shambles, incineration decontamination would kill me.

The room’s COM boomed, “
Unit 17C, you are to remove your bio-suite and place it on the mark for incineration
.”

Fumbling with the catches and clasps, leaning against the wall because my legs shook, I pulled off the broken helmet and tossed it where it would be burned to ash. Gloves, boots, the suit, every stitch of my protection I peeled from clammy skin, hissing when my damaged arm refused to budge from where it had swelled in the sleeve.

Tears running down my face, I had to force my arm free, praying to the gods my screams would stay locked behind my lips.

When it was done, I stood in only my sweat soaked underclothes, and the hatch to the world with white scented flowers hermetically sealed. In the next few moments, I would find whether or not this was to be my crematorium.

A click made me jump, set my already racing heart into my throat. The room’s only other door, the door that would lead to my potential salvation, swung inward.

The chamber beyond was lit, and there were crates stacked right in the center of the space. While I had been waiting outside, a cot had been set up for me, emergency rations left in a bin.

Once I was sealed in, I was not allowed to leave the cramped room. I did not have a toilet, though when the bio-suit protected scientists charged with observing me came to administer a daily barrage of tests, they took my full bucket and brought me a fresh one.

Beyond the point of embarrassment, I let them poke and prod, take samples and scrapings. If they told me to spit, I spit. If I was ordered to take off my clothing, I stripped at once.