Grounded | The Trapped Trilogy

Two

Two

Soon, all of Erit's team is at work reprogramming the nanobots inside the Domespeople's heads.

"It should be ready, ready to go in about a day," He says to me, pushing his glasses up on one pair of his nose-nostrils.

"A day? One day? Erit, we only have two of those. If it doesn't work, we're out of time and we're out of soldiers."

"I'm sorry, sorry, Miss..." He says, cringing a little. "It will work though. All of my calculations, my calculations are correct and-"

"Just get it done as fast as you can, and don't forget to reconstruct them so that the humans can breathe in our atmosphere," I spit. "I'm going to go inside of the Domes to make sure it all works out. If they don't go into soldier mode in twenty-four hours, you're the first one to die."

He gulps, and I walk off, proud of my threat.

o0o0o

I check to make sure everything is in order before I head down to the Outer Dome.

This better freaking work. If it doesn't, it's my butt on the line for having the idea, and I don't like having my butt on the line. It's rather uncomfortable.

I step onto the metal between the Ring and the Dome and start to circle the Dome. There's a shiny part on the wall. I place my hand up against it, and a feminine voice comes from the panels in front of me.

"Identify yourself."

"My name is Sier Revethos. Second-in-command."

The wall peels itself back, making a loud slurping sound. I step through into the trees lining the inside of the Dome. It repeats the disgusting sound as it closes, and I sprint to the closest Dome. It feels so good to run.

I place my hand on the outer wall of the Dome and state my information again. It opens up and I step through, watching as it closes.

"Hm," I say, noticing one of the panels is out and is letting light in from the outer Dome. "That's a problem."

I turn back around and work my way through the trees. Finally, I reach the street where people are walking, and I press the button on the panel in the small of my back, turning on the human hologram.

When did I realize that was there?

I shake my head. I've got to stop asking questions.

I look up to see Mechaneers working overtime on the panels that make up the sky lid. I heard what happened here over the past few months. Humans are idiots. Of course, it was fun watching them turn against each other and studying them. By studying them, we were able to create serums and environments that would help control them. Once we got it perfect though, the humans would be allowed to live with us once again. The fear of them taking over and squashing the Rethurp race out was at high risk when we created the Domes. We did what was necessary. If we hadn't, then the Ring would have been destroyed.

Course, it was fun ruling over the pests too.

But the serums and environments we had weren't perfect yet. It's taken generations just to get where we are, and I'm pretty proud of our race. Well, the race that I'm now a part of. Humans are overrated and flimsy. And gullible.

Gag.

I remember when I was human. I was trained as a Doctor and became a Government Official Doctor. I started working on medicines for multiple things, and serums that no one was supposed to know about. That means I was pretty high in rank. When I turned thirty... Thirty? I don't look thirty, or any older than thirty...