Stolen (Alpha's Claim 4)

“I have reattached and will proceed to the nearest decontamination hatch. Please advise.”

No response crackled in her ear.

Over the next several hours, no assistance arrived to help Brenya scale the Dome—though she made continuous status reports while creeping up the side like a bug.

Oversight was watching. George was silent.

When she finally crested the nearest hatch, she was left waiting for those inside to decide if she might live or die. Brenya was exhausted, and Oversight’s accusation was true: she did not feel well.

Her left arm hung throbbing at her side and required immediate medical attention. She was thirsty, so very thirsty that her tongue stung even worse than the crusted gash on her cheek.

They left Brenya waiting until sunrise. Dozing against the hatch, she felt it give, scuttling to her feet before she might fall. The mechanized door opened, the first of five decontamination chambers waiting.

Had her uniform not been damaged, all she would be required to do was stand on the mark, arms raised and legs spread. Fire would blast the outside of the bio-suit, heating her to the point skin would almost blister underneath. Unfortunately, with her suit damaged and the helmet’s visor in shambles, incineration decontamination would equal death.

The room’s COM boomed, “Unit 17C, you are to remove your bio-suit and place it on the mark for incineration.”

Fumbling with the catches and clasps, leaning against the wall because her legs shook, she pulled off the broken helmet and tossed it where it would be burned to ash. Gloves, boots, the suit, every stitch of her protection was peeled from clammy skin, the female hissing when her swollen shoulder refused to budge from within its sleeve.

Tears running down a bloody face, she had to force her arm free, praying to the gods muffled screams would stay locked behind tight lips.

When it was done, she stood in sweat soaked underclothes, and the hatch to the world with white, scented flowers hermetically sealed. In the next few moments, Brenya would discover whether or not this was to be her crematorium.

A click made her jump, set her already racing heart into her throat. The room’s only other door, the door that would lead to potential salvation, swung inward.

The chamber beyond was lit, and there were crates stacked right in the center of the space. While she had been waiting outside, a cot had been set up, emergency rations left in a bin.

Dashing forward, she entered decontamination room two.

Once sealed in, she was not allowed to leave the cramped space. Only basics were left to see to her body’s needs. When the bio-suit protected scientists charged with observing the specimen came to administer a daily barrage of tests, they took her full bucket and brought a fresh one.

Beyond the point of embarrassment, she let them poke and prod, take samples and scrapings. If they told her to spit, she spit. If she was ordered to take off her clothing, she stripped at once.

She ate from the supply crate’s rations and drank stale water from emergency pouches older than she was.

She had always been obedient, just as she had always been a dedicated hard worker. Like the other Betas in her unit, Brenya Perin of Palo Corps, was fiercely loyal to Bernard Dome’s combined effort of survival and prosperity.

From the best she could reason without a watch or window, quarantine extended over two weeks—most of that time spent alone with nothing to do, no one to talk to. The only reason she knew freedom had been earned, was a slight shift in routine—the medic who’d set her shoulder the first day, who’d given her a sling to wear over dirty underclothes, had returned.

After a thorough exam, he offered a fresh jumpsuit.

He then instructed Unit 17C to vacate the decontamination chambers and rejoin her people. Pride made her smile under the stitches in her cheek. Pulling her suit zipper up under her chin, eager to go home, she smoothed her tangled bob of lank hair, careful of her damaged arm, and walked, surrounded by bio-suit clad scientists, out to greet waiting friends.

Clearing the final room, she found no joyous party—not even George, the tech Brenya had worked with for five years.

It was not until she returned to her bunk at Palo Corps barracks that word she’d been grounded until further notice arrived. The women she had known since birth, the ones she had been raised with, educated with—the ones she’d played with and thought of as sisters—all one-hundred who shared the room kept their distance.

Brenya had never willingly looked at the horizon. She had not studied the shapes of leaves or how the wind moved the trees. It didn’t matter. Unit 17C was counted as one of the tainted.

That first night, she cried in her bunk, wishing she had never seen the white flowers or smelled jasmine on the wind.