Author’s Note:

  This episode is published here up to the 75% mark.

  The remaining chapters—including the climax and aftermath—are available in the complete episode on Amazon.

  https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0GC95NRJC

  Thank you for reading and supporting the series.

  ###

  Beau Danning set the wire on his trap with shaking fingers. He removed his baseball cap and wiped the sweat off. The hush of the forest pressed against him. He held his breath. There was a very real chance of the worst case scenario playing out, and that meant getting caught by Mayor Carnie.

  He crouched alone beside a thorn bush, knees sunk into a patch of dew-slick moss at the edge of a foggy hollow. From his vantage, everything looked natural—towering trees, arching branches, and barked-over trails worn by game. But he and everyone else in the dome knew better. There was more out there. Somewhere up there, past the sky’s perfect gradient, past the scripted sunrise, was a ceiling emitting artificial light. Beyond that? Nobody knew. Not for sure. No one asked anymore, it was a very taboo subject most people in the dome preferred to ignore. Whatever had been outside the dome was dead and gone. The only life was inside the Paradise Dome.

  Beau wiped dew from his fingers and leaned back, eyes scanning the branches above. Nothing moved. He’d already scouted for rangers who patrolled for poachers like him, but thankfully there were none.

  As he scanned his surroundings, he heard the buzzing of wings—then a giant bug smacked him in the face.

  Whap!

  A blur of green limbs scrambled across his cheek. Beau flinched, slapped instinctively, and stumbled back as the insect clung to the rim of his hat.

  It was a mantid, the size of his hand, large enough to flash serrated forelimbs and click its alien head like it had beef with Beau.

  He growled and swatted the bug from his hat. “Really?”

  The mantid fell on the ground, squirming.

  With one quick motion, he grabbed a rock off the ground and crushed it. CRACK! The mantid twitched, then there was stillness. He tossed the rock into the forest and returned to his snare.

  Disgusting creature.

  From the underbrush—a second mantid launched at him. This one was even bigger!

  It landed on his shoulder, wings buzzing.

  He grabbed it mid-air and slammed it down onto the dirt, twice. The body spasmed, limbs curled. He wiped the bug guts off his hand onto the grass.

  He stood there, chest heaving.

  Beau spat and wiped another smear of green from his wrist. “Why are you bugs attacking me? You can’t win,” he muttered, “I’m bigger than you.”

  After the brief battle with the mantids, he returned to his trap and crouched again. No more interruptions. He needed the trap to be set perfectly if he was going to catch some fresh meat.

  Every twig that cracked and every phantom rustle in the canopy made Beau’s pulse stutter. Were there more mantids with a death wish? Regardless, he kept working. The snare had to be perfect. He reminded himself that he was not only doing this for himself, but for his grandfather Rufus. Despite Mayor Carnie’s hunting ban, Beau knew there were plenty of deer in the woods and tonight they were going to feast on some venison and not cans of potato soup for the thousandth time. He was sick of potatoes.

  Rufus always said that Beau looked older than eighteen. Beau felt older. He carried scars on his knuckles and had that coldness of discipline in his eyes. He wore his grandfather’s National Guard PT shirt that stretched over his lean but muscular frame. Wiry and watchful, he moved with a kind of intentional quiet. He moved like a boy ready to disappear at a moment’s notice, always getting caught up in some kind of trouble. Sometimes people called him strange for it. Let them. It didn’t bother him too much.

  He didn’t poach deer just for hunger. Part of it was about control. He hated food rationing and didn’t see the need. There had been a disease that killed a portion of the wildlife, but that was five years ago so Beau didn’t see the need for the ban to continue. People had to eat, and more than just canned vegetables from the pantry every year. Why couldn’t Mayor Carnie understand that? Beau wasn’t going to sit around and starve like most people in the dome were content to do. Sure, what he was doing was illegal, but that wasn’t going to stop him from catching a juicy prize.

  He jammed the last copper loop into place. A faint spark arced up the snare pole and crackled blue. Then the spark went away. He completed the whisper trap—designed to shock the deer with enough juice for an instant kill and little to no pain. After all, he didn’t want the deer to suffer. He just wanted to feed his family.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  After a couple of hours of hiding up in the tree, waiting patiently for a deer to come his way, he finally heard the rustling of leaves and soon spotted the ten point buck of his dreams. He already imagined the sizzling meat on the pan and his mouth watered. It was headed right for his trap!

  But then he heard another rustling of leaves. At first, he thought it to be a second deer. How fortunate! Beau’s heart kicked his ribs. But no, that wasn’t it, the sounds were too light. He then saw white fur and little black eyes, a creature the size of a cat. He then realized it was a possum.

  “Don’t move—!” Beau said, as if the possum might understand him and turn around. But it didn’t understand and kept waddling along the forest floor.

  The possum’s foot caught the snare.

  The trap sparked.

  There was a flash and a sharp pop. The possum seized up. Its legs buckled beneath it. Its mouth opened, but no sound came. It hit the ground hard. Its limbs twitched and smoldered with electrical surge, the current of the main power line. Oh God, it smelled so bad.

  “No—no, no, no—” Beau stumbled out of the tree. He fell knees first skidding beside the smoldering possum. The trap was still active, feeding electric current into the dead possum.

  Beau slammed the kill switch off. The acrid scent of burned meat and scorched fur drifted into his nostrils.

  Why didn’t he just try fishing at Beaver Lake? Why did he have to try something so asinine?

  The possum stopped twitching. A trail of smoke rose from its smoldering body.

  The light above, emanating from the dome’s ceiling, faded rapidly as if three hours passed in a matter of seconds.

  That was weird.

  The sky flickered.

  Then, the light in the sky dome shut off completely and cast the dome in darkness even though it was about twelve o’clock noon. The golden glow that wrapped their world each morning disappeared, leaving the dome cold and quiet and hollow.

  Something was very wrong. Then, he realized something. He had connected his trap to the main power lines running under the earth. It was the only way he could power his trap so far out from the city. He had to use the dome’s power. That was a massive mistake. He had just tripped the dome breakers and turned off the artificial sun. Please, oh please, let the sun come back on. Dear God, please.

  Moments later, the sun flickered back to life. The clouds formed again.

  Then, there was the sound of a crash like two cars colliding together.

  BOOM.

  Something shrieked in the forest. It was something mechanical and unplaceable and incredibly loud. Beau looked up just in time to see the clouds above him split open revealing more darkness.

  And then, something huge fell through the gap and into the dome.

  The object trailed sparks and debris from the broken sky panels. It was way bigger than a car and it plummeted fast. It was falling right on top of him! He sprinted as fast as he could and dived into the dirt.

  THWAM!

  The impact of the gigantic metal object collided with the forest like a bomb. The ground jumped beneath him. A wave of heat surged up his spine. Leaves burst into the air. Moss tore like cloth. He curled himself around a tree and prayed he would survive.

  When the dust finally thinned, he peeled himself off the tree and looked up at the object which had crashed through the dome. It formed a tear which stretched from way high up on the dome wall all the way down to the ground. It was like someone stuck a giant knife into the dome and cut a gash all the way down it. The torn flaps of the dome waved and the pixels there flashed from their natural boundary colors to black.

  The object that had fallen, which was lodged in the dirt, was an incredibly huge steel helmet like the one a medieval knight would have worn. It was absolutely massive. It must have been fifty feet tall. He had never been to New York City, but it must have been the same size as the head on the Statue of Liberty. The helmet had done considerable damage to that part of the dome, but the helmet itself was undamaged. Was all of this just a bad dream? Surely he couldn’t be looking at a gargantuan medieval helmet. Was this part of a twisted nightmare? Was he suddenly living in a myth?

  Silence snaked around the surrounding forest.

  Beau breathed in the forest air. Wait. He suddenly remembered something. They had watched Dr. Gerben’s video so many times. How could he have forgotten? The other side of the dome was filled with extremely toxic green gas which killed all living things on the outside. That’s why it was so important to remain inside the dome. If there was ever a break in the dome’s wall, the green gas would flood inside and kill everybody. That’s why you never messed with the perimeter, never even got close enough to touch it or risk breaking it. Now there was a giant gash in the dome, exposing the outside world. And yet, Beau didn’t feel his throat burning. His skin wasn’t melting. And yet, the giant knight’s helmet was still there and he was still alive. There was no green toxic gas spilling through the gap. There was only silence. He didn’t understand.

  Sirens howled from the direction of the village of Deadwood. It was distant, but growing louder by the second. The emergency vehicles were still miles away, but Beau’s heart raced. Emergency lights blinked across the tree canopies. If they arrived and found his trap they would trace the incident back to him.

  Beau knelt beside his failed trap that may have just cost the lives of everyone inside the dome. What could he do? He lifted himself up and ran back to his truck. He couldn’t stay there. If they found him, they would punish him. He had to run.

  After arriving back at his truck, he jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and drove full speed down the winding dirt path. The tires kicked up rocks as he sped toward the fracture, toward the end of his known world. If he was going to be caught and punished, he would at least know the truth of what lay beyond the dome.

  He raced toward the rift, determined to discover the truth of their existence.