Sidney's Escape Read online

  Sidney’s Escape

  Allendian Post-Apocalypse Series 2

  ©Nirina Stone 2018

  Edited by Laura Kingsley

  Cover by Berka Book Designs

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis.................................................................................................................

  Dedication.............................................................................................................

  Prologue...........................................................................................................................................

  Chapter One....................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Two....................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Three................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Four..................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Five...................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Six......................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Seven................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Eight.................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Nine..................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Ten....................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Eleven...............................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twelve..............................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirteen...........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fourteen..........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifteen..............................................................................................................................

  Chapter Sixteen.............................................................................................................................

  Chapter Seventeen........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Eighteen..........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Nineteen..........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty..............................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty One.....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Two....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Three.................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Four...................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Five....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Six......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Seven.................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Eight..................................................................................................................

  Chapter Twenty Nine...................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty One.......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Two.......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Three....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Four......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Five.......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Six.........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Seven...................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Eight....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Thirty Nine......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty.................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty One........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Two........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Three.....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Four.......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Five........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Six..........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Seven....................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Eight......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Forty Nine.......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty...................................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty One................................................................................
..........................................

  Chapter Fifty Two..........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Three......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Four........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Five.........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Six............................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Seven......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Eight.......................................................................................................................

  Chapter Fifty Nine........................................................................................................................

  Chapter Sixty..................................................................................................................................

  EPILOGUE.......................................................................................................................................

  Copyright © 2018 by Nirina Stone...............................................................

  Synopsis

  SIDNEY IS READY TO embark on her next adventure: to finally travel to the Red Dome and join Allendians in their ideal civilization.

  With new friends in tow, she learns to survive on a planet not made for Allendians, trusting that they will work together to overcome any critters and dangers along the way.

  What Sidney does not know is that the most deadly foe is not the planet and its wildlife. Sometimes friends are far from allies and sometimes, families are built from the most unlikely sources.

  Dedication

  To my family, near and far. You’re always in my mind.

  Prologue

  In a two moon system, on a remote world named Allenda, lie three domes.

  The second, called the Red Dome is a vibrant metropolis of over ten thousand Allendians, living in a grid-structured smart city, already several hundred years old, still gleaming and new as the day it was built.

  Gideon works in the city, wishing more than anything to live anywhere else than here. He treks in on the eight-thirty-five train, sits in silence in his compartment with the others. Everyone’s quiet of course—it’s disrespectful on the train to be anything but—

  He closes his eyes, mentally logs into his favorite social profile and engages in dull arguments over the state of the dome with other anonybots on their way to their dull jobs in their dull side of the city.

  Ten minutes later, he logs out and follows the wave of people as they flow out of the trains, up silent escalators, and on to the shiny surface of ChemSoft’s marble floors. He’d always found the capital S with the snakes slithering up its curves a fitting representation of the company.

  Everything around Gideon is white and shiny as though polished hard against rough grating surfaces every few minutes per day. Staring up through the thick glass of the dome’s top surface, he watches a wave of red sand flow and land on it, then get blown away by gale force winds. It could be a storm; he can’t tell from here.

  All the Allendians around Gideon are dressed in whites or grays or browns—no one would dare to wear splashes of color around here.

  That would be inappropriate and frowned upon, and when things are frowned upon in the Red Dome—well who knows, because no one ever dares.

  In his thirty years on Allenda, he’s never so much as stepped to the right when he was supposed to walk on the left, just like he does today.

  He’d bump into the others if he were to walk on the right side. Sometimes he catches himself wondering just how much of a mess that would cause. He’d never resort to actually doing it himself. “Straight-laced,” his wife Terrion calls him. He’s as straight-laced as they come.

  Still, entering ChemSoft’s eight foot tall marble doors has him wondering. He knows his efficiency down to the second. He knows if he spends an extra minute washing, that’s a minute less to put on his uniform or a minute lost, then he’d be on the eight-forty train instead, and that’s a whole five minutes wasted instead of just one. The minutes would add up, and knowledge of that is enough to cause him anxiety, his palms sweat a little. He’s tempted to wipe them on his pristine white uniform. Instead, he takes out his microfiber hanky and holds it between his palms.

  He continues to walk as he does, staying on the left-side of the hall like a good little Allendian, makes eye contact with everyone on the right side, offering them the curt “G’morning” nod, not bothering to ask how they actually are. He doesn’t have time for pleasantries.

  He walks to his office on the northwest end of ChemSoft’s fifteenth floor and prepares his mind for the work ahead. The moment his door slides shut behind him, the eight foot screen on his west wall greets him with a ‘Good Morning, Gideon’ across its face. Then it brings up his schedule, the same moment a strong jolt of caffeine fragrance hits his nose.

  Before he gets to his chair, an alarm blares from the screen. His eyes shoot up as a ribbon of red dances across the screen with the words ‘Emergency—Blue Dome—all Senior Scientists must attend Emergency Meeting in the South Hall immediately—’

  It continues to scroll, but Gideon’s already out the sliding doors, hastening his pace nearly to a run—that’s about as close as he’s ever come to publicly breaking an Allendian Law, but today, of all days, that rule would be ignored, he knows, as he watches Brosnan, a scientist his age who’d only started a month before him, run past.

  Gideon breaks into a run behind him, only stopping when he joins five other senior scientists in the South Hall. Its doors shut tight behind him as they all watch images on the screen, showing activities in the Blue Dome.

  He’s never been there—in fact, he hasn’t ever left the Red Dome but he knows that’s about to change. He has a distinct feeling everything in Allenda’s about to change.

  They watch as the Blue Dome is being quarantined, healthy people ushered out of their homes to the outer dome limits. They’ll be brought here to the Red Dome, analyzed, then they’ll be taken care of—frozen if healthy, eliminated if not. The scientists have been working on a cure for the ‘flu,’ with no luck. This serves as the only option, to preserve the lives of other Allendians.

  Gideon’s only ever of all this happening once, years before he was born, so he never expected it would return this soon.

  “The flu—” Brosnan whispers from his left. “I thought it was all taken care of before—”

  “It was,” Gideon agrees as he frowns back. “They always said there was a chance of it resurfacing. Though—this soon—”

  Then their boss, the CEO of ChemSoft, turns around to the scientists in the room. Her gold hair tops her head in a thick bun, never a strand out of place. Her dark brown eyes appraise the room as if counting attendance, though none of them would dare to be absent when being summoned. He doesn’t know what the repercussions of that would be—no one’s ever not shown up.

  Gideon had heard that she was once a resident of the Blue Dome herself, but can’t imagine how she looks and acts so perfectly like a Red-Domer if that’s the case. “We must prepare,” she says. “We are bringing out all thirty thousand Bluers in the next few days. You have your stations. You have your directives. You must not fail. For if you fail that is the end of Allenda—”

  Then she turns back to the screen as Gideon brings up his directives on his internal screen. He closes his right eye at the same moment the other scientists do.

  The directives are clear: Get himself injected. Though they have no cu
re, they can still protect themselves against getting the flu. He was already inoculated last week, but this has to be a double dose “in case,” they say. It’s always “in case.”

  Bring in a thousand Blue Domers per day, then analyze their blood thrice. Everything has to be checked thrice. Mistakes are not forgivable. He’d have them checked more, but it’s not efficient, not with all the people they need to bring in.

  If they’re healthy, they will be ushered to another part of the dome he doesn’t have access to—where they’ll be placed into cryogenics, for however long the scientists there believe is necessary. Cryo is the only option. There is no space for that many Blue Domers to live in the Red Dome, with such limited supplies. It’s a given.

  Anyone who’s unhealthy must be eliminated. On the spot. That’s not his job, luckily, but he knows he’s the Executioner anyway. That’s the Allendian way. Can’t have the flu spread out and kill any other Allendians. Else there wouldn’t be a single one of them left. The safety of the many and all that—

  So once the CEO turns again after the screen shuts off, all she needs to do is nod, and the scientists flow out of the room like they don’t want to be the last one left.

  Gideon heads down the escalator that will lead him to his assigned batches of people. They will have traveled and been processed through two other facilities before they get to him—to get whatever dirt layered on them from traveling through the Blue Dome, the hours-long travel on the red Allenda desert off before they’re analyzed for the flu. Some of the planet’s unique dust carries similar micro-ingredients to this flu they carry. So, must ensure they’re as clean as possible before he gets into their blood and see if they’re healthy or not.

  The first five Blue Domers enter his stark office, and he gets to work.

  They’re all healthy—and he finds a part of him hopeful that most of them will be, though Gideon’s nothing if not realistic.

  The thirty-second person to walk through his door is a young lady with big shiny black eyes, staring out at him from a face similar to his wife Terrion’s. She offerS him a polite Allendian smile and he smiles back. It’s rude not to.