Chapter Two
Lilith’s POV
Without warning, someone tossed out a small box. It landed right in front of me.
“This is what you treasure so much?” He raised an eyebrow and crushed the box beneath his foot. “Let’s see what’s so special inside.”
A silver ring rolled out of the wreckage, its band bent out of shape.
“Pathetic.” He nudged it contemptuously with the toe of his shoe, then ground it down again. “Lowborn trash and their precious little rituals.”
That was the ring Elias had given me.
“Don’t touch it!”
I sprang off the floor and threw myself at him. Locking both arms around his jaw, I wrenched his head to the side and sank my teeth into his neck.
“Ah!” Screaming, he toppled backward, arms and legs flailing. “What the fuck—how do you know how to do that?”
I didn’t know.
All I knew was that I wanted to kill him. Anyone who touched something Elias had given me would die.
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Kessler shrieked. “Dane, stop rolling around with that lowborn filth! She’ll be thrown out of the Dome tonight anyway. She’ll die out there soon enough!”
Thrown out meant death?
What was outside?
I felt the man beneath me gathering his strength to throw me off. Before he could roll over, I released him and leaped away. I dug the ring out of the dust on the carpet and closed my fist around it, then straightened and met Mrs. Kessler’s gaze.
“I’ll get you the money tonight. But if you ever bring him here again, I’ll bite you too.”
Her face darkened instantly. She patted Dane, who was clutching his neck, and lowered her voice as she passed me.
“Things like you are nothing but a waste of space.”
I rose without a word, indifferent to her spite, went back inside, and slammed the door.
The silver ring in my palm was misshapen. I wiped the dust from it and tried to slide it onto my ring finger.
It wouldn’t fit.
I pushed again, but it caught on my knuckle.
A voice sighed inside my head.
Stop. You’ll break it.
I didn’t stop. Bracing the ring with my other hand, I forced it down. The metal tore my skin, and blood welled from the cut, making the band slide a little more easily. It scraped across the wound and finally lodged at the base of my finger.
There.
The instant the ring settled into place, a sentence rang through my mind with perfect clarity.
“Never more than a week, Lily.”
But I couldn’t remember why he had said it.
I wasn’t even sure when he had said it.
The device with the shattered screen on my wrist suddenly beeped and lit up.
I stared at it for two seconds, then copied what the old woman had done and tapped it.
A translucent screen flashed into existence and hovered in front of me. A line of text appeared:
Free-movement authorization suspended due to overdue debt.
What the hell was this now?
I knew every word, but together they made no sense. Free movement? I didn’t even know what lay beyond this door. What freedom was there to talk about?
I extended one finger and prodded the message.
The screen trembled. The line shrank and retreated into the upper-right corner, while a mass of new information appeared beneath it:
Account balance: 67 credits
Air quota fee: 1,180 overdue
Water fee: 640 overdue
Dome maintenance fee: 2,380 overdue
Total debt: 4,200 credits
Oh, for the Moon’s sake. Another forty-two hundred?
And what was an air quota fee?
I remembered the old woman saying that credits were what allowed us to keep breathing beneath the Dome.
Had she meant that literally?
I reached for the words Air quota fee, wanting to find out what they meant. The moment my fingertip approached, the numbers jumped aside. I tried again, and they dodged me once more.
I fought with the screen for ages without managing to press a single thing.
“How the hell does this thing work?” I muttered through gritted teeth.
“Hello,” a woman’s voice suddenly said from my wrist. “How may I assist you?”
I nearly flung my arm away in fright.
After staring at my wrist for several seconds, I spoke cautiously. “You... can talk?”
“Hello. How may I assist you?”
Fine. Apparently that was all it could say.
I swallowed. “What are you?”
“I am your personal terminal, responsible for identity verification, account settlement, communications, and navigation services,” she—or rather, it—replied.
A personal terminal.
So this watch-like object was identification and a wallet, and it could talk?
“What’s an air quota fee?” I asked.
“All air within the Dome is centrally filtered and allocated per capita. The air quota fee covers the filtered air you consume through daily respiration.”
My mouth fell open and stayed that way.
Breathing cost money.
And I already owed eleven hundred and eighty credits for it.
“What about the Dome maintenance fee?”
“The cost required to maintain the Dome barrier is divided among residents according to tier,” it answered.
I looked around the windowless room.
I owed money for air, money for water, and money for some barrier I had never even seen.
It was too absurd. So absurd that I didn’t even know whom to be angry with.
“Then who am I?” I asked.
“Identity information: Lilith Vayne. Tier Five. Unawakened. Registered residence: Building K, Unit 1409. Registration status: Warning.”
It seemed to know more about me than I did.
“What does Tier Five mean?”
The screen expanded at once, filling with text about the third clause of some classification ordinance, conditional residency rights, and quota reduction coefficients. By the third line, my vision was swimming and my head had begun to ache.
I shut it off.
Better to search the room for other clues first.
I made a circuit of the room.
The coffee machine was the first thing to catch my attention. It was strange to find one in such a run-down place. I pressed the switch twice, but nothing happened. It was probably broken.
As soon as I set it down, the terminal on my wrist scanned it on its own and displayed a short line of text.
Estimated recycling value: 41 credits
I paused, then aimed my wrist at the pair of boots.
Estimated recycling value: 88 credits
The kettle was worth twelve. One coat, thirty.
I scanned everything one by one. Even if I sold every item in the room and added the sixty-seven credits in the account, I could barely scrape together three hundred.
The debt was eighty-four hundred.
I rubbed my face as my headache worsened.
“Moon Goddess...”
There was nothing in this room except poverty. No clues at all.
How had we ended up living in a place like this? Elias was so particular that he even arranged his books by color.
I lifted my wrist. “How do I earn money?”
“Searching for positions available to Tier Five applicants.”
Two large tabs appeared on the screen: Employment Center and Cleanup Center.
The listing under the Cleanup Center read:
Same-day payment. Hazard-duty compensation starting at 1,000 credits per assignment.
One thousand!
My heart beat faster. I tapped the listing, and a long string of comments appeared beneath it.
“Don’t go. Seriously, don’t.”
“My cousin went there and never came back. It’s been three days, and the company can’t even produce his body!”
“The Employment Center pays less, but at least it’s safe! Don’t convince yourself you’ll be the lucky one and sign up with the Cleanup Center. Chances are you won’t come back.”
Wouldn’t come back?
Wasn’t a cleanup center just a place for dealing with garbage? Why would anyone die collecting trash?
I scrolled through several more pages. Every comment said more or less the same thing. I turned off the screen and put on my coat.
I would go to the Employment Center first.
I didn’t want to die yet. At least, not before I found Elias.
Outside was much brighter than I had expected. The main road was wide enough for five cars to travel side by side, and its surface gleamed with cleanliness. Neat rows of trees lined both sides, their leaves an almost unnatural shade of green.
Far, far overhead stretched a layer of pale golden light. Like an enormous bowl turned upside down, it covered the entire sky.
That had to be the Dome.
So we lived inside a bowl.
I had barely reached the intersection when my face struck something.
It was hard and cold. The air before me rippled pale blue and pushed me back a step.
Puzzled, I reached out to touch it.
There was nothing there.
Yet my hand couldn’t pass through. The spot beneath my palm tingled as though I were pressing it against a sheet of frozen glass.
“Woof! Woof!”
Two sharp barks sounded behind me.
