Chapter 18 – The Dome
In the same six-seat transport they had travelled in to the Hole, they were flying. John sat at the window across from Vincent and Jessica, and three others – two men and one woman, none of whom Vincent had seen before – filled the remaining seats. It had been several minutes since Goodwin’s fiery speech in the tunnels, but their faces remained red, their hearts beating just a little faster than normal.
“Do we have a plan?” asked Jessica. Out of them all, she seemed to have recovered the most fully. She was looking at John. He was one of Goodwin’s captains.
“We do,” said John. “This isn’t on impulse. Goodwin knew they would be worked up after his speech. They always are. He never planned to attack in the morning.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” asked Vincent. “Are we bombing them?”
John shook his head. “The factory is too valuable to damage,” he said. “We’ll go in on foot. Take the place by force.”
Vincent glanced at the three others with them in the pod. None of them were armed. “Will we be given weapons?” he asked.
“Some will,” said John. “But most won’t need them. The factory isn’t heavily armed once we get inside. It’s getting in that required planning.”
“Is that our job?” asked Jessica.
“Goodwin’s,” said John. “His officers have been watching the patterns of the place for weeks. Every night, the dome receives a truckload of supplies. Goodwin will be on that truck with the rest of his officers, and once they’re in, they can open the gate for the rest of us.”
Vincent looked out the window at the fleet of transports flying close by, all tightly packed together, all very close to the ground. “How will they do that?” he asked.
“Leave that to them,” said John. “Our job is to secure the facility once a path has been cleared for entry. Afterward, we can begin assembling our force for the Seclusion raid.”
“So we aren’t going back to the tunnels?” asked Jessica, sounding hopeful.
“Not right away,” said John. “We’ll have to move quickly once we take the factory. Word will reach Newsight whether we want it to or not, and our window to attack the Seclusion will be slim. We can’t afford a return trip.”
Vincent nodded. He was sure he didn’t understand the larger plan at play, but he did understand the nearness of their return to the Seclusion. This return, though, no longer seemed so important to him. After all, there was no one there waiting for him.
John didn’t explain any more of the plan, and Vincent and Jessica didn’t ask any more questions. The three others with them seemed already to know, or simply not to care.
After several minutes, the transport began to slow, in time with its counterparts alongside, ahead, and behind. In the distance, through the front window, Vincent could see an enormous lump rising up out of the darkness, a blemish on an otherwise smooth, barren plain, lit with sterling white light from the base upward.
“The factory dome is straight ahead,” said John. He was looking out the window, with an attached pair of glass-ended tubes held up to his eyes. “Goodwin and his team are already in place.” He lowered the thing he was holding, then handed it to Vincent. “Have a look.” He motioned to the window. Hesitant, Vincent lifted the device up to his eyes as John had done, and he peered through the glass. As soon as he did so, the dome ahead grew 10 times larger, magnified. Taking a second to regain his bearings, Vincent detected movement at the dome’s base. At the front gate – what appeared to be the only entrance – was a large, box-shaped truck the size of Tom’s bus. In the light, Vincent could see uniform-clad men walking up to it.
“Let me see,” said Jessica.
John took the device from Vincent’s hands, and the dome returned to normal size. “Everyone can look,” said John. He handed the things to Jessica. “But stay ready. We’ll be inside soon.”
Jessica lifted the device to her own eyes, apparently settling on the same scene Vincent had. “They’re talking to the driver,” she said. “They’re…they’re waving him in.”
John’s eyes were out of focus. He was staring at a patch of ground between Vincent’s feet.
“It looks like the gate is opening,” said Jessica. “The truck is driving through. But…it’s closing. The gate is closing after it.” She dropped the device from her eyes and turned to John. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“For now,” said John. His eyes had returned to normal. “Goodwin is inside. All we have to do is wait for his signal.”
Nodding, and this time without the aid of the magnifying tubes, Jessica turned back to the dome. Vincent followed suit. Even from a distance, he could tell the thing was giant. The school dome from the Seclusion would have fit inside several times over.
“Get ready,” said John. His eyes were absent again. “They’re on their way to the gate.”
The woman and two men next to them writhed in their seats. Vincent felt himself growing restless as well. As if from a switch, the energy that had filled him during Goodwin’s speech in the cavern began to fill him once again, just trickling now, but with a force of an entire current behind it, waiting.
“Almost,” said John, his eyes still unfocused. “Almost…”
There was silence in the pod. The others had shifted forward to the front of their seats…
“Now.”
The pod shot forward, throwing Vincent back against the wall. The men next to John caught themselves on the glass just before they went hurtling into the woman across from them. Not one of the three flinched – they seemed gripped with the same, grim concentration as Vincent.
“Give me the binoculars,” said John. Without waiting, he took the set of tubes from Jessica’s hand. He twisted in his seat to see the dome, now racing toward them at breakneck speed. “It’s opening,” he said, excitement beginning to enter his voice. “We’re going in.”
As John lowered the binoculars, Vincent could already see the entrance opening up to receive them. The transport careened toward it at a pace faster than Vincent thought possible, still in perfect form with the others around it.
“Prepare to de-board,” said John. He pulled an L-shaped piece of metal from inside his jacket, the same shape Vincent had stared down the barrel of in the Hole.
The thought of the Hole called back to him the image of the body strewn garage, the sheet metal houses peppered with small round holes the same as the bodies, the blood and dust on the cement.
His face began to tingle with heat. He felt the trickle begin to grow, gushing now, filling him, heating his whole body and clenching his hands into fists.
“Slowing!” John shouted, even though the pod was mostly silent. He seemed ready to throw himself out the window just to get there faster.
The dome was racing toward them less rapidly now, but it was larger than ever. Untarnished all the way around, it reflected in the fluorescent beams of the lights below, the perfect, detestable hue of Newsight.
“Go!”
John shouted as soon as the pod touched the ground. He sprang from his seat, and Vincent was up with him, out of the pod, running, the crowd of others at his shoulders, the same crowd from the cavern, more inflamed than ever as they sprinted for the entrance. Vincent lost track of Jessica in the mob when they funneled inside, pushing and shoving at each other to get in. Then they were through. On white tile, they ran. On open ground lined with wire-topped fences, along gray stone buildings with steel vents and smokestacks, they ran. Vincent let himself be washed onward by the wave, feeling for a fraction of a second he was back in the working sector of Hux, in the industrial part, swimming through smog. He was swept forward by the pounding legs around him to the first of the dome’s fenced-in buildings. He was sprinting at gray-clad men on the shop floor, tearing at their clothes, dragging them across the tile. Somewhere behind him, he heard a loud popping sound. Some of the red-faced men and women around him were carrying the L-shaped strips of metal that John had carried. Vincent needed
only his hands. They were clubs now, swinging at every patch of gray cloth they could find, urged on by a wild, insatiable current that had been only a trickle back in the transport. He was still running, swinging, clawing as he went, when the men and women in gray started to flee. He narrowed his gaze, still fogged and blurred, on the woman closest. Her stride was laden with a slight limp, almost comical the way her left side drooped and dragged in vain effort to keep up with her right. Vincent tore after her, spurred faster by the geyser of hot energy gushing inside him. He spun the woman around. He raised his fist. He flexed his chest with his knuckles pulled tight–
He stopped where he was. The blur in his vision had cleared just enough to see the woman up close. Her gray Privacy Officer jumpsuit was unmistakable, but so too was her wide, heart-shaped face. Vincent had seen that face before, had talked to it. It wasn’t a gray blur like the rest. It was real, here, and afraid.
Vincent dropped his hand to his side, and the woman took off running once again. He started back the way he had come, his fists still clenched, his vision fading in and out of focus. He staggered through the mauling herd still in pursuit of their ashen gray prize, until he was to the wall, then to a door. He pushed inside and closed it behind him, bolting the lock. With the screams outside now muffled, he could hear the rasp of his own breaths, heavy and strained. He began to shake as he crossed over to the sink. His eyes were lined and red, wet not with tears but with something else. The rims of his Lenses had grown darker than normal. They seemed to throb in the light, in time with his pulse, the beat of which refused to slow.
Vincent leaned forward at the waist, bracing his weight on the sink, gripping its sides with white knuckles. He wanted to go back out. He wanted to swing madly at everything that moved, to hunt the gray-clad men with the rest, to find his revenge for the stayers who lived in the Hole. The desire was overpowering, irrational with the force it urged him out the door, almost irresistible. But then he thought of the woman’s face, the face he had seen before. With its image seared into his mind, and with his fingers still curled to the bone around the sink, Vincent stayed where he was, blood still beating through him like a drum, face still ablaze, and he listened to the screams.