Gods Under The Dome

10.1

《No Second-Guessing》

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When I roll over, I find my arm no longer drapes over a curled, snoring Lilly. Beside the cot that's not comfortable for one person let alone two, a mini holo-player eye blinks awake and sends an arrangement of numbers zooming into the air. Incandescent blue zeros paired with a single six convey the time. 0600 hours. At least four hours too early for me to even consider being awake.

The numbers fall away, like plummeting stars, disappearing before reaching the table's scuffed top. Then, an FUA dove flies high, its beak upturned, its body lean, long, majestic, before it erupts in red flames. Rise and shine. Breakfast's been served. The words scroll across the air, as the bird's ashes fall like burning snow, fading, much like the time had, well before the table.

"What five-star treatment," I mock, as I throw my legs over the side of the bed, momentarily forgetting my sprained ankle. As I stand, I put too much pressure on the injury and I yelp as my leg gives out, tossing me back onto the cot.

Clutching the edge of the table, and rattling the holographic eye so that the words begin to flicker out, I get myself upright, careful how I distribute my body weight.

It takes me longer than I'm willing to admit making my way up the single flight of stairs. About halfway up, out of breath and glistening from sweat like a roasted ham, I decided the steps had to have been constructed on Della's orders for my punishment only.

In the lounge, small fold-out tables and metal chairs take up space where plush chaises and roped-off sections would have been if the place remained a purveyor of virtual debauchery.

A group of Titavs in grungy streetwear sit stretched out in a corner of the room, trays of still steaming food set on their laps. Most of them look in their mid-twenties, though there are three, one of them the shaved head girl from last night - Ellie -  who look no older than sixteen. My chest tightens and I let my gaze drift away from them, and toward a corner table at the opposite end of the room occupied by Marava, Quint, and Sin.

An empty chair on Quint's right beckons to me, and, trying to hobble as little as possible, I manage to make way over and plop down in it. The cool, hard metal is equally as uncomfortable as the thin, lumpy cot and paper-thin blanket we'd been saddled with last night.

Quint shifts beside me, his hands clenching his chair's sides, his shoulders so tense they almost reside in his ears. Beside him, and undeterred by Quint's obvious displeasure, Marava delicately dips a tarnished spoon into a tray of congealed brown sauce and lifts it to his mouth.

The corners of Quint's lips twitch before he parts them. Marava smiles and shoves the spoon inside. He grimaces and lurches forward, hands slapping the table, but then he regains himself, manages to swallow, and readies himself to the next helping Marava's already gathering on the spoon. 

If only he'd taken the initiative like the rest of us and had told Marava to shut up when she'd first opened her mouth, he wouldn't be in this predicament - Marava tangled around him like an unwanted flesh-sweater doing a better job than the Facility's feeding chair of forcing slop down his throat. Out of my periphery, I notice several members of the Collective eyeing the pair and trading shared snickers.

As Marava makes to wipe Quint's mouth with bit a of paper towel, he bats her hand away, and twists to face me, hid shoulder blocking Marava from sight. "How'd you sleep?" he says. His voice exudes the exhaust Marava's behavior is levying on him.

"Well," I say. "As much as Rima looks like a delicate faerie, her snores are grotesque. Things of nightmares."

Quint raises a brow. "You let her sleep with you?"