Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
Chapter 3: Learning Secrets on a Mountain
The car-sized luminescent bats didn’t seem interested in us at all; instead they swooped by us and started grabbing wargs that were hiding in the forest.
We continued to climb up the mountain, doing our best to not attract attention. By the time we reached the top, the bats had left and the sun was rising again. The top was unnaturally flat, about the size of a hockey rink, and dotted with trees that hummed with electricity.
“That’s not good. No no no, not good at all.” The voice surprised me and it took a moment for me to see the woman who was speaking. She was moving quickly and seemed to be building something out of sticks, vines, and rocks.
“What’s not good?” I asked.
She didn’t even look at me as she answered, “Our rotation is speeding up and the sun is getting closer.” She was short and rotund, with skin that was the colour of cream limestone with dark brown marbling, like she was made of the stone itself. Her hair was granite grey and her eyes were pure gold. She wore the same uniform as we did with an S on it.
“How is that possible? Shouldn’t we be feeling a change in temperature?” W asked, pushing her curly brown hair behind her ears.
“You’re right. Something is wrong. None of this makes sense. Who are all of you?” S asked.
“We have no idea. Do you have any memories of before waking up in this place?” T asked, his voice tense.
Still putting together her device, S replied with, “Nope.”
I was the first to realize what she was building. “Why are you making a trebuchet?”
“I think the sky is fake.”
T scoffed and said, “You’re planning on shooting the sky?”
“Yup!” She put the final touches on the small siege engine.
“At that size, you could get the same distance with a bow,” T replied.
She shrugged and replied, “I don’t know how to make a bow or shoot it. It was this or a cannon and I can’t find any saltpeter. Stand back.”
She picked up a large rock, the size of a basketball, and put in the sling of the weapon. Why did I know what basketball was and not where I was from? She shouldn’t have been able to pick it up; I would have assumed T would have trouble with it.
Pulling on the release, the counterweight fell and the whole thing swung. The rock flew into the air and just as it hit the apex of its arc, it hit something invisible and fell straight down.
“It’s a dome,” W said, her mouth open in awe. “Where the hell are we, Everdome?”
“No. That was too close to be one of those domes and it made a noise like metal.” I knew the distance from the ground to the top of a dome in Everdome and knew what Everdome was but not my name or home? That’s when I realized that our memories were selectively wiped to remove anything personal. I knew about Everdome because it wasn’t my place of origin, I knew about basketball and the sound of metal because it wasn’t a hint to who I was. Maybe I could use the lack of knowledge to help paint a picture of myself.
I hadn’t noticed A had left, but he ran toward us through the trees and shouted, “We’re on a space station!”
We followed him through the thick pine-like trees and when we reached a clearing on the other side we were struck by a horrifying site. We were definitely on some sort of space craft. There were four other domes like ours attached with grey metal spokes to a central city of spires that looked like different sized knitting needles tied together by metal wire. The part that sent a cold shiver down my spine was that the closest dome was cracked and parts of the habitat were being sucked out into space. I couldn’t see the other domes well enough to know if they’d met the same fate.
“There aren’t any lights,” A said. “There should be lights in the central spire and at the docking bays.”
T grunted in a concerned way, it almost reminded me of someone, before saying, “The ship must be working on emergency power.”
“Well that explains it, time to panic!” S sat down and I swear she sank a few inches into the stone.
“No panicking yet S. A mentioned docking bays. We need to get to a ship,” W said with the confidence of someone who’s been through a lot of dire situations.
“That’s all the way across the dome,” A whined, running his hands through his silver hair.
“Then I guess we should get started,” I replied as chipperly as possible.
The trek down the mountain was worse than the trek up. This side was steeper and the sun was setting every hour making it impossible to get used to the light or dark. It also felt like every step weighed different amounts and like I was constantly dizzy.
When we reached the bottom we saw the giant bats swirling around the mountain and hitting into each other. “The artificial gravity is having a hard time dealing with the stations spinning. It’s messing with our balance,“ I said, feeling confident about my deduction.
“Won’t matter in about twenty hours,’ said S. When we all stared at her she sighed and said, “We’re heading toward the sun. Didn’t I mention that earlier?”
Without speaking, we all moved toward the end of the dome, where the spoke should have an entrance. We reached it quicker than I’d expected considering how far it looked from the mountain and how every few steps we stumbled.
“Why aren’t I tired?” asked W. “I should be huffing and puffing? Are we in a simulation?”
A replied, “I think it’s the clothes. They are often used by slavers to keep the slaves fed and strong but it takes a toll and can lead to heart attacks or strokes.” He paused with wide eyes and said, “I didn’t know I knew that until you asked.”
That made sense. Something about the whole situation felt familiar and wrong at the same time. It was like having something right on the tip of my tongue.
“We’re on a slaver ship, or station, that’s drifting toward the sun, and no one remembers anything?” T asked, sounding more like he was asking for pushups.
S nodded and asked, “Is it now time for panic?”
Read Chapter 4 (April 2026)
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