Sanctuary

Chapter Sixteen - Senna

Senna wasn't entirely sure where she was going, but she knew that if she traveled in one direction long enough she'd eventually hit the edge of the inner dome. She didn't have a plan. Her only overwhelmed and terrified thought had been to flee, with no instruction on where to. Maybe she should go back to the Rim, back to Wrench. They could run away and be outlaws together, but where would that leave her mother? Stuck in the Presidential Tower with a cold-hearted killer that she clearly didn't love?

The HMD chimed, a soft yet high pitched sound with an artificial echo.

"Answer?" Senna tried, not willing to pull her bike over so she could fiddle with the buttons. Surprisingly, the voice command worked well enough and the call clicked through.

"Hello?" Sera's timid voice nearly whispered over the speaker.

"Sera! Sera, are you okay?"

"I'm worried. Something is wrong."

"Yeah, I think so too. Do you know a man named Zed?"

Sera didn't respond.

"Sera?" Senna tried, worried that she had lost signal again.

"I'm afraid. You have to come save me, please." Her voice wavered like she was crying.

"I can't. I can't leave the dome. I'm not trained to do that. It's too dangerous."

"Please. . ."

It was insane. Senna knew that well enough. Her father had died out there and he had been specially trained with years of experience. What chance did she have? Of course she had memorized every page of her father's manuals, pouring over all the notes he had scrawled in the margins as the only thing she had left from him aside from his genes, but that was nothing compared to real training. She had never seen the hazmat suits in person.

But if she didn't save that poor scared little girl, who would?

"I. . . I can try," Senna responded hesitantly.

"Thank you. Thank you. I'll show you the way. Please hurry, everyone is moving so fast now. They're angry, I think. Or scared. I'm scared."

It wasn't an easy decision, but Senna faced it with less dread than the idea of going back to Zed or school. She'd rather risk the outside world in a hazmat suit doing the right thing than risk the chance of getting milk dumped on her again. Maybe that was idiotic, but her father had worked outside for years before his suit had failed. So the chances of one of the suits failing on her first trip out had to be pretty low, right? Well, as long as she put it on right. And didn't wipe out on her bike and rip something.

The screen of the HMD shifted, calculating the route before casting a blue line onto the ground. Well, it cast it onto the screen, which made it look like it was on the ground. An arrow pulsed down the length of the line, vanishing off into the distance to give her direction. She moved her bike until the front wheel was centered on the line.

She had her destination.

-

Senna was nearing the gates, the support beams of the inner dome towering over her like whole buildings tilting in on themselves, when she heard Sera's voice again.

"You're getting a call."

Senna wondered if Sera had been there the whole time, but didn't ask.

"Can you send it through?"

There was a click before a different voice nearly shouted through the speaker.

"Senna!? In the name of Health... Senna, are you okay!?"

"Wrench?" Senna asked back, though she wasn't sure who else she had been expecting. Wrench was the only other person with a wireless device in the entirety of the Rim. Well, that she knew about, at least. She was getting increasingly less sure of things as time went on. "I'm fine. Mostly. I think. I mean. I'm kind of... Well, I'm running away. I guess. I didn't know what to do! The call disconnected and I thought maybe something had happened to you and Zed reacted weird when I tried to see if Sera was maybe still on the call and he really scared me so I ran away!"