Critical Condition

Chapter 12

Max POV

I stood in the center of the church balcony with everyone around me. Gazzy was constantly looking around at the destroyed buildings and begging for me to let him go explore. But I needed him to be cautious. Both he and Nudge had seen some strange creatures, hostile ones at that, and I wanted to get a full mapped layout of this dome. So here I was, arms crossed over my chest defiantly, and glaring down the Gasman.

"No, we are not splitting up. This place is way too big, and everyone would be alone. We do this as a team." I reiterated.

"It would be faster." Iggy said, finishing up his makeshift splint on his arm. I shot him a glare as well, only realizing afterwards how pointless it was.

"But then you'd have to be with someone." Nudge provided, clearly the devil's advocate.

"I can handle myself!" Iggy said but I interrupted.

"Ig, this is an exploratory mission. We're mapping this place, and I need you to be the sentry, so to speak." I said and tried not to make it sound to harsh. It was better than 'Hey, you're blind, so you're useless in seeing the landscape.' Iggy was never useless though. He had proved himself too many times to count, and was an invaluable part of my family.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Gazzy finally couldn't contain himself anymore and jumped off the edge of the balcony. His wings glided him down safely to the roof of a crumbling building. He stood and looked up at me with a huge grin. I rolled my eyes and jumped out as well, hearing Iggy and Nudge close behind. I landed next to Gazzy and folded my wings in, keeping my eyes peeled for any unwelcome guests. So far everything was silent.

"This house is mostly intact." Gazzy said as he jumped to the ground. He began moving towards it, followed closely by Iggy.

"Nudge, come with me. The boys have this area." I said, changing my plans. So long as I was within earshot of them, they'd be fine. Nudge trotted forward, browsing the rubble around us. Broken glass crunched under my feet and the walls around us were slowly falling down. I hoped that this town was just a projection of Jeb's dome world, and not a real place he destroyed.

We walked in silence as we observed the wreckage. There were no bodies, much to my relief, but at the same time there wasn't any real sign of destruction. The buildings were falling apart, but it looked like someone had built them that way. No burn marks, splintered wood, or anything pointing to a catastrophe.

"Max." Nudge froze in front of me and began backing up, her hand pointing at the ground. "They're watching us."

"Who is?" I asked and moved around her to look. My eyes widened as I saw a small, partially covered, round dome in front of us. It was made of clear plastic or glass, I wasn't sure, and seemed to be an observatory window for the school. I could see the two whitecoats standing there, equally as surprised as us.

"Should we run?" Nudge asked nervously but I shook my head, moving towards the window. I took a rock from the ground and jumped towards the dome, striking the glass as hard as I could. The glass cracked in a spiderweb spiral for a few inches and the whitecoats jumped back in shock. One furiously began scribbling on a notepad while the other said something into a radio piece.

"Get Jeb over here now! I want to speak with him!" I yelled, making sure that they could hear me. They both hurried away down a dark tunnel under the ground. So now I knew that they were tracking our every move, probably listening in to our conversations too. But now I know that these domes led back into the school, which meant they were our only way out of this place.

By the end of our small expedition, and a lot of yelling on my part, mostly at the boys for venturing to the rest of the dome, we had our surroundings more or less figured out. Gazzy provided the details for literally the entire other half of the dome, despite my orders, but they still helped. We knew now that the dome was the ten miles Iggy had predicted. The boys had discovered numerous other glass observation domes, at least ten. There was only one small town in the entire dome, which held our vantage point of the church. Gazzy had decided to name the area Dunderville. Don't ask me why, just let the boy have his fun. The rest of the dome seemed to be mostly a scatter of trees, grassy meadows, and one large creek running through the center. We had found a lot of other creatures roaming the area, but managed to stay out of sight of them so far.