Gods Under The Dome

3.1

《The Collective》

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We stop in front of a door, plain, painted wood. Nothing reinforced. It must be one of the residential suites, available to staffers needing on-site living quarters. Lab technicians whose work runs past the normal tram hours to take them back into the city, Doctors who are forced to stay because their Liar that day hadn't been cooperating. I'd heard rumors from the lower-levels, the Archivists, Net Techs, and Cleaners, that a lot of times these rooms were used for seedy business transactions.

Coupled Doctors brought out-of-town Owls for extramarital affairs. Liars too, they'd said, had been brought here, to iron out the details of a deal between themselves and a whitecoat. There wasn't a lot we couldn't get if we asked, but things like cigarettes, Surge, alcohol, things that could harm our bodies or each other's bodies, spoil our minds, were considered contraband. Marava's nails, filed to such points, could be used for gouging eyeballs. She should have never been allowed them in the first place.

There's a passing desire to ask her if this was where she'd been taken to broken her deal, and if the kinks got ironed out best on your back or your knees, but in my periphery, I catch a glimpse of Rima, nose red, cheeks bloated, eyes bulging. I swallow back the words. Callousness, especially toward Marava, had its place, just not in light of everything that just happened.

Someone knocks, plows a fist into the door, the hinges quaver. There's shuffling coming from the other side, the bristle, and clank of metal. The door slinks open, and a face, pale and pointed, sticks out through the sliver of an opening. The woman removes her mask and takes a deep inhale of breath. The man's beady little eyes flit from her to Nol, to the rest of us.

He gasps and makes to slam the door on us, but the woman seemed to have gauged his reaction before he'd acted, and wedges a foot in the gap. "Snitch," she says. She smiles, though her eyes remain hard, alert. The man she calls Snitch bristles, his shifty gaze, once again drifting to us.

He shakes his head. "No, no. Oh hell no, Della. No fucking way." He kicks at Della's boot, trying to dislodge it so he can slam the door in her face. She slams a hand against the door. Snitch jumps, his graying hair falling in front of his eyes. "No," he says again. "It was just supposed to be Nol." His head continues to shake, and if no one stops him, I think there's a good chance it'll pop free and roll down his shoulders. And even then, I don't think that'd be enough to get him to stop rambling.

He blinks, squeezes his eyelids together, runs a fat hand over his eyes, blinks again. He looks up at us and squeals. "Christ No! No. No. No..." Sweat treks over his long forehead and collects at his chin, before dripping onto the front of his Facility mandated powder blue button-up, the FUA's crest, embroidered on a pocket, housing a few pens with chewed up caps, and his ID badge.

Christian Fenderson, clearance-level three. A whitecoat, someone who brings us that day's meals, bathes us, escorts us from one room to the next. I've never seen him before. Must be new. "The deal was for Nol. Nol only..."

"Nol's made a new deal," she flashes Snitch a grin, which is more predatory than kind, teeth bared. If she grew fur and got on all fours, she'd look like a lioness readying to pounce. Snitch shakes his head and fumbles around in his lab coat's pocket.

Della goes for her thigh holster and shoves the barrel of the pistol into Snitch's cheek. "-hat -re -u -oing?"

"Drop it," Della says, nodding to his hand. Trembling, Snitch does as he's told. A cigarette and match clatter to the floor. Della sighs. "Sorry about that, Snitch," she lowers the gun, so it's pointed at Snitch's crotch. "I'm a little trigger happy these days," her thumb cocks back the hammer.