Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (6 page)

“This building was owned by a company called Stem Incorporated, a genetics researching facility. They did vaccines and stuff, mostly. My father owned it. I grew up in the facilities and the scientists, engineers, and biologists in residence raised me. Since they’re all dead now, I’m the only one who knows how to keep this place afloat, and it’s the only reason all of us have lived here for so long. It’s more than just a bunch of offices.”

He waits for me to get to the point.

“Stem Incorporated is a fully self-sustaining facility. We have electricity even eight years after the collapse.”

I mean ‘apocalypse’, of course, but I hate using that term. It seems too impassable, too big. A ‘collapse’ you can recover from.

“We grow fresh food and drink fresh water. We can do all this because of the prototype of the Ecodome in the lower levels. It’s an ecosystem completely self-regulated and self-sustained, operating several miles underground. It was a novel idea a long time ago, but only on greenhouse scale. Ours, here, in the basement, was the biggest one ever until the one in the north was built. The northern one is big enough to house the entire state of Rhode Island. According to the blueprints we found, there’s no reason for it to have stopped working, even without maintenance or upkeep. It’s flawless. And it’s perfect for us. Even though we have one here, it’s failing. Turbines, coolers, generators, all dying off one after the other.” Like us. “We can’t last much longer.” It’s almost like dad’s words are coming out of my mouth.

“So what does this have to do with
me
?” E4-17 looks at me from the corner of the room. His voice, and his posture, the way he looks at us. The only time I’ve seen anything like it, some of Heydrich’s men were torturing a stray dog, kicking it against a corner. What I’m doing is about as crazy as asking that dog to do tricks afterwards.

“You,” I say, and pause, “are going to help get us in.”

Then he laughs, and my skin crawls, because it’s not a laugh because he thinks it’s funny, it’s a more manic, panicked laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “
We’re
going to help
you
.”

I feel the hot anger rising in my throat. “Let me get a couple things straight.” I take a step forward and his expression drops. “We might need your help, but you sure as hell need ours more. We’re not the ones trying to kill you. We
took care
of the other guys, if you’ve been paying attention. And this dome, as crazy as it sounds, is the only chance of any humans living on Earth
today
to survive. You included. Okay?”

E4-17 and Vinder are both staring at me, immobilized. I stand up straighter and clear my throat. “Anyway. Do you have anything to add...?” I glance over at Vin, who shuffles uncomfortably.

“Er,” he says quickly. “Nope, think that just about covers it.”

I look back to E4-17, who looks a little less like he thinks we’re going to kill him, and say, “How about you?”

[Dev]

I’m standing in a white room with no windows and only one door with two humans, things which I previously thought were horrible things that would manipulate and destroy you. And they’re asking me for help.

What the hell is going on?

I rub my eyes with one hand and say, “I can’t make a decision like that.”

Alessandra furrows her brow at me. “Why not?”

My heart aches when I think about Ashton and the others and how they’re probably wondering where I am. I almost ask, ‘Where are they?’ But my tongue holds the words back. I can’t give away something like that. I won’t give the humans leverage. So instead I say, “I just can’t.”

Alessandra sighs, her small body rising and falling with sharp movements, and she heads for the door. Vinder awkwardly follows her.

She stops by the door and looks back at me. “Come on.” Like it’s expected that I follow her.

My muscles won’t move for a second. But, well, any kind of movement is better than staying still, right? Though I can’t tell if this is progress, moving backwards, or walking straight into danger.

Vinder avoids my eyes when I pass him. He’s not so courageous when I’m not restrained. He follows a generous distance behind me.

We must be in a storage basement, boxes and broken machinery lie shoved against walls everywhere. The place looks like it’s falling apart. The basement is thin and crowded and the ceiling is bowing inward ever so slightly. There’s only room for one person to walk through it at a time. I fight off the tingling claustrophobia.

On the other side of the wall, I can see the white room through a tinted floor-to-ceiling window. They used one-way mirrors a lot at CadTech in testing observation rooms. A gun is on the counter next to it. Alessandra walks right past it like it isn’t even there. Behind me, Vinder’s hand twitches out of his pocket, hovering for a second, then he shoves it back in. Following Alessandra’s lead. She’s the one with the power here, she makes the decisions.... The gun sits on the table like an artifact on display.

It’s now or never.

“H-hey, wait a second—!” Vinder’s sputtering voice, but I’m gone. The gun’s in my hands, a fork in the hallway my escape....

The grey corners all look the same. Around one, a hall full of doors, around another, the same—more storage and boxes crumbling. The doors blur past me. Every new corner could mean escape, just have to keep going, keep running down the halls—

Dead end. Blank walls face me. Alone in the tight hallway my breathing sounds like a raging windstorm.

What did you think was going to happen? You’d find the exit just like that? My grip on the gun tightens. Dammit, Dev, you impulsive son of a—

“Hey.”

I spin around and there she is at the end of the hall. I don’t let go of the gun, but I don’t point it at her, either.

“Come on,” she says, walking forward. “There’s really no time for this.”

Like hell there isn’t. The sweat rolls down my forehead. Now the gun’s pointed at her chest, at her heart, one little tug and all my problems will be gone.

She keeps walking forward steadily. “I’m trying to help you.”

Humans never helped us. They made us, exploited us, tried to kill us, dumped us, left us for dead—

Her collarbone rests on the tip of the gun. Her weight presses into it and I can feel it through the metal.

“You’re not gonna shoot me,” she says, smiling. Goddamn
smiling
. The hot anger and squirming confusion slip through my grasp, I can’t sort them out. She tilts her head slightly to the side and casts her eyes down thoughtfully. “You’ve got nothing to lose, right? Just... hear me out. Hear my pitch. After that, if you’re still convinced we’re going to betray you, then you can shoot me. Okay?”

She looks up at me and the gun shivers, but from my hands or her body I can’t tell.

Vinder finally catches up and stops at the end of the hall, eyes darting from Alessandra to me and I watch it click in his mind what’s going on.

Can one little twitch of my fingers really change so much? Will I be throwing away an opportunity or making one? My arms slacken, the gun falls to my side. I can’t tell if I’m making a smart choice or being the biggest fool.

Her smirk grows and she says, “Thanks. Let’s get going.”

She turns around, leaving me and a bewildered Vinder in her wake. He glances at me, swallows, and jogs after her down another hall. The silence in their wake is deafening.

How are you going to get out of this one, Dev...?

The double doors sit at the end of the room with a collage of warning signs posted around them. ‘Authorized Personnel Only’, ‘Danger’, ‘Warning’.

The two humans stand in front of the doors, regarding them slowly for a moment. They seem so small. Almost looks like they forgot I was here. “Is this it?”

Alessandra doesn’t turn around but says, “Yes.” Her little shoulders rise and fall in a heavy sigh. A sigh of finality. “This is what’s sitting up north, waiting for us. This is what we need your help to find.”

She pushes the doors open, they creak and sputter with rusty hinges, and a bright light fills the hall. We step inside and my eyes adjust after a moment.

5
• ecodome

[Dev]

Back at the labs, we were never allowed outside. We only knew what was out there based on flashcard illustrations. T is for tree. G is for grass. And when we did escape, after the revolt, the world had already succumbed to the droughts and bombings of war. The color green isn’t exactly prominent in my memory.

But now I’m overwhelmed by green.

It’s so much nicer looking when it’s not on a package or billboard sign. It’s alive. Actual trees with actual
leaves
flicker and dance in front of me, rustled by a soft breeze. A breeze not laden with silt and sand. The trees seem so purposeful, rising out of the soft grassy ground, holding the leaves like gentle arms. The air tastes sweet.

A huge field of tall plants surrounds me. Most of them are all the same plant, probably.... They have drooping leaves that grow out of a thick stem and flutter in the wind. Thick pods cling to the stems. I smile. So
that’s
where they were getting all the corn fuel from.

My mind buzzes. I know we were just in a metal room underground, but it’s hard to muscle past the sense of
open
and
outside
and
airy
. The air feels cool on my skin, the sun—the lights, not the sun— warm just like the real thing. I can’t remember the stale taste of the basement behind us.

“Yeah, it’s a little weird the first time,” Alessandra says behind me, smiling up at the tree in front of us with her hands in her pockets. “But you get used to it.” Vinder is standing back, watching us carefully. “You see why we need your help, now,” Alessandra continues.

I don’t want to say anything because I know it’ll come out as if I’m unhappy she showed me this. It’s amazing in here. I feel like I can finally breathe. “I can definitely see why you... want this.”

“But...?”

“But why do you need
our
help?”

The tree casts shadows over her, light spots scanning over her face erratically. She bites her lower lip and says, “The facility in the north is protected. Not by people anymore, probably, but by machines. We could use some, well, some more combat-trained individuals.”

Oh, so that’s it. Suddenly the green feels fake and the wind feels aggressive. Alessandra is still in control.

“But,” she adds, “It’s not just that.”

I look down at her small frame and fiery eyes. She swallows and doesn’t break eye contact.

“I feel like we owe it to you.”

The words hit me like her darts—stinging, seeping cold, foreign.

She continues, “we’ve been really horrible neighbors, right? So if we’re going to trek halfway across the known universe to try and get into the other Ecodome, I think you should come with us. We could use the protection, and you could use the second chance you never got.”

I almost stumble backwards. I glance over my shoulder at her and step away. She doesn’t say anything to stop me.

They forget my hearing is better than theirs, and I hear Vinder say, “Is that okay... is he...?”

“Just let him go for now,” Alessandra says. “He should think.”

Yeah, Dev, think. The second chance we never got? It doesn’t make sense... why she wants to help us and why it makes me so
mad
. I push through rows and rows of green, and more green, and all this color, it’s almost too much. I feel like I need a patch of grey or brown just to put things on pause.

I can’t get Alessandra’s voice out of my head.
The second chance you never got.

But there’s no way she’s on our side. I scowl at the grass under my feet. It would be too easy for them to just use us. Too easy. They’d use us and throw us away like the scientists did. They threw words like
trust
around like ammunition. Just as damaging, just as cheap.

A strong gust of wind pushes the leaves above me. I glance up and see the branches are heavy with small yellow and red seeds, or fruits, dangling on long stems. I reach up and pick one. Slightly firm, shiny, fading from golden yellow to bright red-orange. I think I’ve seen something that looks like it printed on labels. I pick the stem off and pop it in my mouth.

The flavor is intense and the flesh, a perfect balance of soft and crunchy. Even if it’s a little sour, the strong flavor is new on my tongue. “Ow—” I spit out a little round seed. Little bits of the fruit still cling to it, like the seed is meant to be there. I had no idea cherries had hard centers. I try not to move my tongue too much, so the flavor lingers as long as possible.

“This cherry tree’s been here for longer than I’ve been alive,” Alessandra’s voice comes out of nowhere. I whirl around and she’s leaning against the tree in the shade, smiling. “It’s a shame it’ll die soon.”

I know what she’s doing, and it makes me a little angry, but I buy into it. “Why?”

“This Ecodome, version B eleven, is dying. Like I said. Two days ago, half of the UV-A and UV-B sunlight bulbs went out. No replacing them, either. And other machines, without maintenance, are falling apart.”

“But that won’t happen at the other one,” I say. Sounds too good to be true. Everything dies.

She nods. “Yep. My dad finished it just as the war got bad. His plan was to move everyone into it, wait out the bombing, and reform society or something. Then the virus hit and everyone killed themselves....” she looks away for a moment. “Best laid plans.”

Ashton used to collect newspapers a long time ago, he kept all the major headlines... DEPRESSION SICKNESS SPREADS, CONTAINMENT UNCERTAIN. SUICIDES RAMPANT.

“Anyway. That Ecodome was meant to run with little to no manpower. So it’s just waiting up there. Waiting for someone to go claim it.” The determination in her eyes is almost scary, like one person could not possibly contain so much energy. Like anything in her way is destined to fall.

Look at her. She’s playing you for a fool, Dev. Open your eyes. But there’s something that I can’t shake. Maybe I think she’s really telling the truth, or maybe I just want to believe. “So....”

“Yeah?” Her eyes are trained on me.

“What you said earlier. About second chances.” Can’t believe I’m about to say this. My heart is in my throat. “Did you mean it?”

She doesn’t even hesitate: “Yes.”

I take a deep breath of clean, fresh air. “Then I’m in.”

“The quicker we leave, the better,” Alessandra explains as we rush through the hallway. “I had no idea what you’d say or if my initial plan would even work, so I haven’t exactly made the preparations for the trip....”

She weaves around tight corners through the grey innards of the building. I miss the green, and the fresh air, but now that we’re back in the real world my mind goes back to old places. Back to the dusty street and the stone quarry parking lot. And the bridge.

“Hey.” It’s like stepping off a steep edge to initiate conversation. My voice makes her stop like she’s on a track, mechanized— we all stop what we’re doing, me and Alessandra and Vinder, and it sends a wave of nausea over me because when we act in unison, it reminds me of Ashton and the others. It’s wrong.

“There’s somewhere I need to go first.”

Alessandra squints at me. What could I
possibly
have to do, she’s probably thinking. I clench my eager fists.

“My friends are....” But my heart sinks before I can finish. Too late. She already knew there was more of us, anyway.

“What?”

“Where are they?” The dangerous question feels like venom.

Alessandra looks me in the eye and says, “I don’t know. You were our only target.”

Target. My stomach turns. But at least that means everyone else is at the bridge. Should be at the bridge. “How long have I been... here?”

Alessandra glances at her watch, a gaudy silver thing, and says, “Twelve hours, almost on the dot.”

“You were
really
out,” Vinder offers, cutting himself short.

Then they
are
at the bridge. Okay. I can work with this. Cain is a huge stickler for punctuality, he’ll stick to the schedule, they’ll be there....

“I need to find them. Before I do anything else.”

Alessandra doesn’t miss a beat. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”

I nearly choke.

“Yeah. So I can meet your friends.” She smiles at me as if my friends are just dying to meet her.

“They’ll tear you apart.”

“They won’t listen to you? Even if you explain what’s going on?”

Turning back time and refusing her offer sounds pretty good right about now. I can’t formulate a good enough reply.... What am I supposed to say to that...? “You think they’d just—”

“Aless,” Vinder whispers. “Not sure that’s a great idea.”

“Look,” she seems ready to unload on Vinder, but after a quick sideways glance at me, she pulls him aside around a corner and starts violently whispering at him instead. As if I can’t hear them.

“He’s right, though,” Vinder says. “One of them tied up and tranquilized is one thing, Aless—”

“Give me some credit, Vin. You know I know them better than that.”

“Yeah but you’ll be alone, in the middle of nowhere, unarmed—”

“Who’s to say I’ll be unarmed?”

“I don’t care, man, it just seems like a bad idea!”

That’s enough.

“You remember that man you took back to your base coming back from the city? Might’ve been a month ago. Broken ribs, maybe an arm.”

They peek their heads around the corner slowly, surprised I could hear their whole conversation. They emerge resignedly.

“Yeah,” Vinder says. “His ribs were like gravel.” He swallows. “He died.”

Alessandra side-eyes him in a quick glare.

“That was Ashton. Self-defense, and that was a
weak
kick, for him.” That human had rounded the corner behind us and was half a second away from shooting us— Ashton had spun around and the force of his heel against the man’s rib cage threw the human to the ground.

The silence in the hallway is heavy until Alessandra cuts through it. “Look, I understand what you’re getting at, but if you want this plan of ours to work, you have
got
to trust me. I have way too much on the line to not see things through myself.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “If you get killed, it is not my fault.” Hell, I’m only just now getting over the random impulses to
injure
her.

Vinder stretches his mouth into a grimace and half-throws his arms up in resignation. He probably can’t believe Alessandra’s got herself into such a predicament. But it also seems like she does this kind of stuff a lot by how quickly he’s giving in.

“I’m going to pack my things,” Alessandra says. “Yours are sitting on that counter over there.”

She gestures with jerky movements to my pack, sitting lonely on the counter near the one-way mirror by the white room. I snatch it up and put it on. Feels the same weight. They didn’t take any of the food out of it.

I may have bought myself some time with this ‘deal’ I have worked out with Alessandra. But there’s something lurking under those mismatched eyes and reckless temper. I don’t know if I’m planning on ditching her as soon as we get out of this place, or if I’m actually going along with her scheme. Both seem likely. I can’t think about it without that hot, angry feeling rising in me. I don’t know myself at all. And what are the others going to think...? Hi, here’s one of our sworn enemies, want to trek halfway across the state to an uncertain goal where it’s very likely we’ll get backstabbed? I sigh.

“You doin’ okay?” Alessandra asks, probably in an effort to sound more sympathetic.

“Of course he isn’t, he’s still recovering from all those downers,” Vinder says, smiling.

Yeah, that’s it alright. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

“Well, you can just.... hang out here for a second, and I’ll be right back,” Alessandra says distractedly, sliding past piles of things and on her way to... wherever.

She leaves me and Vinder standing in the dark hallway.