Impervious Read online

  Fran refused to answer. Pete wasn’t her type. He was a clown. Hardly the stud. Then again, if he brought back food…

  She let out a sigh.

  “One kiss.”

  Pete whooped and rolled back to where she sat. He scooted into her personal space, but Fran held up her hand.

  “First… bring me the goods.”

  He chuckled as he inched backwards. “Wolf, when you see what I bag for you, you’re going to beg for the biggest smooch ever.”

  “Great, Pete. Wow me.” She added an eye roll and waved him off. Once he slithered out of sight, Fran momentarily considered the big game in the Agora. She snorted and rolled her eyes into the darkness before waving a hand over the reader. While nibbling last bit of crust, she continued reading.

  Twenty-two years underground and I managed to persuade Marcus to head up a scouting mission. He said it was suicide. I convinced him that, with the proper outfitting and breathing apparatus, we’d have no reason to fret. He agreed. Although somewhat reluctantly.

  Only one exit portal exists and for good reason: The Psychology of Captivity. Because of our innate compulsion to escape anything our brain defines as confinement, humanity wouldn’t have been able to resist a doorway. Obviously, a mass exodus before assuring safe air quality would warrant extinction. Therefore, outside of Marcus and myself, no one knows how to get out. Does it sound heavy handed? Perhaps now it does. However, due to the catastrophic political climate of the earth at that time, anonymity was a minor demand and readily agreed to by each patron as they were blindly ushered in to their new habitat.

  I have an odd feeling about the mission. You know, like when you feel like someone is holding back info, but you can’t quite put your finger on the cause? Anyway, Ema, Second-Gen botanist, will be making the trek. Am I worried for her safety? Not really. Ema’s made up of brick and mortar. She’ll hold up just fine.

  Fran leaned against the hard, metal wall. The reader dimmed to sleep-mode as she considered the idea. An exit portal? The History of Impervious always taught that the city was sealed, soldered, and reinforced from the inside to keep citizens safe. The History of Impervious had always taught that when the Epoch arrived, the metal dome that made up their air-tight silver sky would be demolished using diamond tipped drills and high efficiency laser slicing.

  But this… This idea of a doorway leading to the open air. The concept both enlightened and frightened her, and her heart drummed with anticipation, eager to unlock more mysteries within the rest of the story. She waved an impatient hand over the reader to wake it from sleep mode. Every fiber in her body hummed as she waited for the glow to illuminate her niche.

  “Come on.” She urged the reader with a shaky hand, but it remained lifeless. She waved her hand again and waited.

  Nothing.

  Seriously? She needed a charging station… pronto. She stuffed the device down her shirt, and started toward the Agora, but soon halted.

  The Game.

  The Agora would be flanked with thousands of game-watchers. An available charging station would be next to impossible to find. Not to mention, Security Graphies would hover in every corner. Fran moved back to the niche and leaned into the pipe with a disappointed sigh. As she sat in the darkness and chewed on her lip, she considered where the portal might be located. She had branded the schematics of the entire ventilation system in her head, but she had never committed a map of the entire city to memory.

  It only made sense that the portal would be at the Surface. Armed with that theory, she eliminated floors eleven through one. Fran did some quick calculations in her head. Because the diameter of each floor measured two miles, the radius would stretch a mile. With the aid of good old Archimedes, Fran deduced that the area of the floor be as simple as Pi; 3.14 square miles.

  I’m such a geek.

  She smiled and reflected on her school days remembering the look of surprise on Professor Englehardt’s face when she garnered a perfect calculation for the Collision Impact Rate of Plasma Energy. Freddie, her annoying nemesis, had whispered “geek” from his seat behind her in class. That, of course, made her cheeks heat up, but the project had garnered her an “A.” After another rude comment from Freddie, she proceeded to tell him to knock it off or she’d use the calculation on his face. The moron must have figured she could do it, because it shut him up. Definitely wolf-in-training. Whatever.

  Fran pictured the graph in her head and decided to slice the Pi into quarter-mile square plots. Once she felt confident of the layout, she overlaid the venting schematic in her mind’s eye and visualized the two together. No doubt, she had a lot of ground to cover, but what the heck? What else did she have going on?

  Closing her eyes, she allowed her brain to focus and brand the diagram into her frontal lobe. She opened her eyes and released the memory before closing her eyes and pulling up the drawing, allowing her mind’s eye to ‘see’ it again. This time, she held the vision while tapping her finger on the metal floor.

  Open eyes, rinse, and repeat. Fran continued the training until she could ‘see’ the mission diagram with open eyes. A short while later, she scurried off to make the trek to the surface level, employing the same passage used just a few days ago when she had gone looking for Chan.

  Being that the Ranch took up most of the surface floor, it was the most logical place to start the search. However, her stomach churned with fresh memories from the last outing, and the stench of the Beast filled her senses.

  She zigzagged through the step-like concourse, stopping midway to catch her breath on the sixth floor landing. She closed her eyes for a brief reprieve, and rubbed her lids. Her eyeballs always seemed to burn or itch. Perils of a Rebel. As she luxuriated in the moment, Ted’s face blossomed in her mind and she remembered how he would make up stories for her when they were kids. On nights when she couldn’t sleep, he, being the older, smarter brother, would fashion a picture of the new earth. He’d talk of butterflies and soft green grass, and after a while, she would drift off to sleep.

  Fran snorted at the last picture of him in the gaming chamber sporting gadgetry in his shirt pockets and drooling over his idiot wife. Seriously bro? A sellout? Fran blew out a hard breath, enraged by this new version of her brother. That’s it. I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.

  Turning away from the climb, she took off through the diagonal shaft leading to his neighborhood. As she moved past the gaming chamber, the roar of Behemoth blended with the whistle of a rocket launcher. Good, Nissa was still manning the game, which meant she wouldn’t get in the way. Fran’s stomach got all tingly thinking of Behemoth, and she cursed herself for caring.

  Moving forward, she peeked into the next room. The simplicity of the décor surprised her. She thought for certain Nissa would be all sparkles and glam, but it actually looked tasteful. Did she dare say cozy?

  Ted sprawled on a lounger with a reader in his lap. He looked so comfortable. So at peace with his life. A feeling akin to homesickness wafted through her insides—warm, but painful in a longing sort of way. She watched him and let the gnawing fester. Before she knew it, memories of Mom flooded her soul—not specific outings, or even mind pictures, but recollections of happiness and joy. Feelings so deep she thought she might drown, so bright they could blind her if she looked into their center. Before she could even begin to paint them with sarcasm and darken their luminescence, a knife tore through her core. She clapped a hand over her mouth to shut out all sound, but a sob launched from her depths and shot right through her fingers.

  Tears of weakness spilled from her eyes, making her wonder how long they'd waited on the precipice. With her mind trapped in a morass of emotions, she didn't think of the danger as her brother’s name rolled off her tongue.

  “Ted.”

  Her voice came out choked and raspy, but the sound was enough. His head lifted.

  Fran brushed a hand over the light and configured her whereabouts―sixth floor, second hallway, fourth pod. The holographic key pad d
anced in front of her eyes, daring her to swipe the code.

  *6*2*4*

  The cover lifted. Ted leapt to his feet. Fran slithered through the opening. He waited three steps away. She jumped onto the epoxy coated floor. His arms opened wide. She stepped forward, and he pulled her into his embrace.

  “Wickworm.” He whispered her childhood name, and she smelled his sweet cologne. So afraid to lose the moment, she stood unmoving, eyes closed, and listened to every beat of his heart. She would have been content just to take in Ted’s essence and draw from his strength but soon felt a buzz in the air.

  Her skin prickled. A current of power flooded the room. How did security already know? Were the trendy pods equipped with 24-7, big brother surveillance?

  “Ted, I can’t stay.” She peeled herself away from her brother. The air became prickly with the static electricity that preceded the arrival of a Graphie, and Fran ticked off the twelve seconds in her brain. She moved back two steps and watched his face. It read like a story book of emotions: confusion, love, fear, and anger, all bottled up into one goofy expression.

  Down to nine seconds. A tingling sensation rippled down her spine.

  Five seconds. She reached for the opening, scrambled up the wall, slithered into the awaiting cavity, and waved a hand over the sensor.

  *6*2*4*

  The venting slid shut, and Fran watched as a holograph pixelated. The Graphie flashed red into Ted’s iris and then meandered to the corners of the room. Ted stood in the center of his pod with a confused, tortured expression.

  After seeming satisfied with the situation, the shimmering holograph abated, but Fran remained for an extra moment to watch her brother and his funny look.

  Chapter Seven

  Why did I do that? Fran cursed her actions and caterpillared backwards. Chan always warned against this careless type of action. How had he phrased it? Something on the order of “Be vigilant, Wolf. The old Fran is still alive in there somewhere.”

  She continued to chide herself all the way back to the zigzagged venting and for the entire next floor of her ascent. By the time she climbed up to floor four, however, her brain had quieted. She refocused on the upward movement and her original task. Near the surface, the smell of the Beast entered the shaft, and panic prickled her senses. Irritated with another wave of weak emotions, she pressed harder into the side of the flue, jamming her toes into the notched footholds. An itchy sweat accumulated on her scalp and spread down the back of her neck as her legs hummed from the exertion.

  At last, she flopped, belly-first, onto the final landing and took a moment to rest before reaching through the grating to apply the code. The covering slid open. She crawled out, stretched her back, and resisted the urge to sneak over to Chan’s old room. She scanned up and down the hallways hoping to see something that would offer a clue. She snorted. What did she expect? A lit-up sign that said “Open Air” with a thick arrow to point the way?

  As Fran contemplated which direction to go, she wondered how she would recognize the portal. Would it look like any other door―a sleek slider with a sensor panel to the left? Maybe it would be an enormous wheel made of steel that she’d have to crank to release the hatch. It might even resemble the pictures she’d seen of old fashioned doorways with a shiny, rounded knob at the height of her belly-button.

  She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes until the plotting map blossomed into focus, and then hurried to the first room along the hallway.

  Point A. Identical to Chan’s. Single bed with tight corners, old fashioned computer, and haze-gray locker standing open, devoid of contents. Fran examined the ceiling, scanned the walls, moved the locker out of the way, and then checked under the bed. No trap doors. She rapped her knuckles up and down the wall and listened for any sign of hollowness. Nothing.

  She moved on to the next room—Point B. Similar to Point A. When she opened the steel locker, however, a few heavily-stained, wrap-around smocks hung on the hooks. Fran recoiled from the sour smell, and moved across the room to check for any sounds of a hollow opening. As she stood with her ear to the wall, angry voices erupted in the hallway.

  “I’m not doing diaper duty this time. I did it last time.”

  A brief pause followed. A second voice chimed in.

  “Hey, how many accidents has the idiot logged this week?”

  “I’ve recorded four, maybe five,” the first guy responded.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You know what that means?”

  The first guy let out a whoop. “End of the line, buddy!”

  Fran winced at the careless laughter that came from the two.

  “Yep. So long sucker.”

  “Come on; let’s get our drink on with Freddie.”

  Fran tiptoed to the doorway, peeked around the frame, and spied the backs of two uniformed guys as they moved away. They walked with the swagger of youth, in no big hurry to complete their job. In the middle of the hallway the deserted Post-Primer remained forgotten in his chair.

  On a shiver, Fran approached the chair. Stale air surrounded the Post-Primer and she cupped hand to cover her mouth and nose and then looked into the face of the… Man? Woman?

  Those being cared for at the Ranch wore similar smock-like tops and wrap around pants, dotted with chunks of gloppy porridge. Sharp shoulders, elbows, and knobby knuckles jutted out at odd angles as if they might burst through the confines of paper-thin skin. Eyes reflected yellow where the white should have been, and a murky gray-blue through the center. They seemed to lock on to Fran, with a silent plea for help. The Post-Primer lifted a gnarled hand and drew pasty lips apart, just as a new set of voice bellowed from around a far corner.

  “Come on, Bullwinkle. Let’s get this job done so we can head out for the day.”

  Fran took one last look at the boney face, mouthed the word 'sorry,' dove into the nearest room, and lingered just the inside the threshold.

  “Where do they take them anyway? Ya know, after we drop them off?” This guard sounded just a little younger than the first.

  “Who knows? Who cares? I’m figuring an incinerator of some kind. Less mess that way.”

  Fran grabbed her stomach. Don’t go there, Wolf. Stay above it.

  As much as she wanted to find the portal, an even greater need to depart from the lair of the Beast pervaded every living cell in her body. Fran waited for the sounds of the guards to retreat before slinking back to the venting. Within a few short hours, she had learned about an exit in this buried city, shared a mini-reunion with her brother, and stared into the murky-blue eyes of a resident who warred with the Beast. All she wanted to do now was chow down and sleep.

  However, when she remembered her promise to Pete, a new burden weighed her down. She wouldn’t call Pete’s kisses awful. His lips felt soft and warm, and his breath tasted like sweet cinnamon candies on their last encounter. However, if the scenario played out anything like the last time, the kiss would give him false hope, and a hovering, love-sick Pete-shadow would annoy her for the next several days.

  She zigzagged down the chute and then paused on the sixth floor platform to give her shaky legs a moment of rest. As she rested, she peered over to the diagonal leading to the second hallway of the sixth floor.

  No. Don’t you dare, Wolf.

  Too late. She scurried toward Ted’s place. Just a peek.

  She moved past the quiet gaming chamber without even glancing inside knowing the match would be over by now. As she continued to crawl, her knee bumped into something.

  What the…?

  As soon as Fran reached down, she felt an aluminum meal carton. A heavy, warm, aluminum meal carton. She ripped off the top and hot steam, laden with the savory aroma of burgers and fries, wafted across greedy nostrils. Her stomach ripped a ferocious roar while a shiver raced through her body. Salivary glands lubricated her mouth, and her taste buds quivered at the delicious prospect. Fran couldn’t help but laugh at her physical response as she shoved a fistful of fries into her awaiting
chops. Crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside, salted just right, and hot enough to sear her tongue. She forsook all social graces in the dark tunnel, and before swallowing the first mouthful, she attempted to cram in more. She lifted the burger from its aluminum nest. Hot juices drenched the bottom bun and transformed it into a soupy sponge. With the fries squirreled into a fold in her cheek, Fran chomped off a bite so large it hung half out of her mouth as she chewed its meaty goodness. Was that cheddar? Yes it was. And ketchup. And mustard. And pickles! Fran ate and ate until she couldn’t eat any more.

  One burger, hundreds of fries, and a chocolate chip cookie later, she lay on her back and rubbed her swollen abdomen, stretched beyond its norm. After a few minutes of enjoying the most satisfying pain she could remember, Fran rolled over onto her belly and let out a whopping belch before pushing up onto hands and knees. She shuffled backwards with awkward movements and inched past the gaming chamber. As she glanced into the confines, she found herself face-to-face with her brother. His cheek pressed against the mesh, and with the weave imprinted, he bore the essence of Pete.

  “Did you enjoy dinner?”

  Fran cleared her throat. “Mm hm. Thank you.”

  “Are you ever going to come home?”

  Fran froze and her heart ticked off the seconds of silence. She wanted more than anything to be a family. She missed him more than she cared to admit. But he had deserted her. He had run off with Nissa, leaving no room for a little sister. She continued to back away with no answer for her brother.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time Fran made it back to her niche, she had digested enough of the food to feel comfortable again. She trekked blindly, but with ease, until she tumbled headlong into a body.

  “Who…?” she whooshed out.

  “Wha?” A familiar voice replied as warm hands steadied her.

  “Pete?”

  “Hey Wolf! You’re back.” Fran could hear a smile in his voice.

  She fumbled around for her old Light Genie and soon a soft glow illuminated Pete’s sleepy face complete with a cocky grin in the center.