It was light out of the blackness, a thing of rusted metal sheeting and scavenged glass, glinting faint in the miserly bioluminescent light that seemed to filter through the algae clinging to its sides. A wafer-thin bubble of air in the middle of this impossible terrain.
Bullet saw movement within through the transparent walls. Human movement, the shadows intent and purposeful.
A settlement. Living here, in Province 472's water block.
He swam for it, aching muscles, suffocating lungs crying out for air that didn't taste of chemicals and bitterness.
The dome itself was a patchwork solution of scrounged material—unmatched metal plates, uneven thickness glass panels, all bound together by what seemed to be sheer force of will and jury-rigged welds. The seams sagged under the pressure of the fluid, and Bullet even could hear the screech of wracked metal through the water.
Tubes pulsed faintly along the dome's exterior, containing tapped energy. Algae dripped in thick masses from the glass, their bioluminescence illuminating all around in shifting shades of green.
Harvesting vent whirred quietly beside what looked to be a primary entry, cleaning the fluid into air that could be breathed. Its metal was pitted and dented, clearly repaired dozens of times.
Bullet shattered the surface tension of water at the dome entrance and was staggering suddenly into air—real air, not filtered through a mask. Water flowed off his cloak and created a puddle. Blood from his many wounds combined with water, creating little red puddles on the metal floor.
He tore off the mask, panting. The air was musty, heavy with rust and salt odors, but it was air. It burned his throat after the conditioned air of the suit, but it was actual.
Inside, the dome was divided into multiple chambers. He saw a communal hall, a tech bay where equipment lay scattered around, what looked like a vent room where machinery clattered and whirred.
Residents moved stealthily about—exchanging algae cakes, hands speckled green from the food. Thin, but alive, eyes hollower than any he'd witnessed in Province 618. The same hollow-eyed look he'd observed in those survivors.
A single guard stood guard beside a shattered window, spear poised ready, eyes scanning the water beyond the glass. Others worked at repairing conduits, hands flashing, voices hushed and vigilant.
Five citizens glared in his direction, their scars glowing under the bioluminescent light that leaked from behind the algae-covered glass of the dome.
A gray man stepped up to lead. A burn scar on his neck rose up to his jawline, and his eyes held a weight Bullet recognized immediately—a weight of failures, of lost lives.
They'd called him Ember.
"Who are you?" Ember inquired, his tone gentle but cautionary, the burn scar standing out on his white face in the greenish light. "Coming out of the block like that. Few make it this far without a very good reason."
Bullet wiped the liquid from his face with the back of his hand. His scar throbbed. Blood trickled down his arm from where the creature had slashed him.
"They call me Bullet," he said to her, placing his hand on the round scar above his chest. The cloak weighed heavy on his shoulders, soaking water with blood on the ground.
"Because of this mark. I don't know who I am. I'm just being pulled by something. It's pulling me down through the block."
A woman appeared to stand with Ember. She had a frayed scarf wrapped around her throat, and there was wariness in her gaze but warmth, as well. They called her Thread.
"No memories? No past?" Thread spoke softly and compassionately. "That's how most of us started down here. Awakened with no idea, and trying to build a life in this dome." She smiled slightly. "You're not alone there, at least."
"Where are we?" asked Bullet. The tug had let up slightly, as if allowing him permission to slack off, but it never completely disappeared. The whine of the dome was gentle, almost like that mechanical whine he'd heard out in the desert, but not so threatening, softer.
"This is Province 472," Ember declared, sweeping her arm around the walls which groaned overhead, the broken glass, the jury-rigged patches holding it together. "The water block. We built this dome of trash we foraged from Province 837—rock lands beyond the block. There's anarchy and blood. So we hid here, breathed, scavenged what we could and moved on."
His voice was full of guilt, heavy and welcome. His eyes were the same Bullet had discovered in Shard's—command's weight, lost lives, second chances that are not enough.
"Hide from what?" Bullet rose and backed away from the fluid, tiny beasts crawling behind the glass, metal spines glinting, algae pulsating with that odd green light.
A rough voice cut in from across the room. "From worse things than those little creatures out there."
Bullet wheeled to find a woman, death pale and almost ghostly in the strange light, regarding him with eyes that shone as bright as blades. She was standing beside what appeared to be the vent room, one hand lying loosely beside a knife at her belt.
She called herself Veil.
"You live on this block, you don't rock the boat," Veil continued, her voice as sharp as her eyes. "Drifters like you—strangers coming in off the land —you got trouble in you."
Bullet stiffened, his scar aching. The epithet was an old one. Maul had used the same word in Province 618.
"I'm not looking for trouble," he warned. "Just passing through. Following this pull. That's all I've got."
---
Within the tech bay, a man with a face wired through with glass—Glint was his name—was showing a young man how to wire in a piece of glass as a conduit. Sparks flew between the connections, radiating in the dimness.
"You've got to pass it on like this," Glint was teaching, voice steady and calm, hands sure though they were burned. "Steady and slow. That's what keeps the air moving. One broken connection, and we're all sucking in liquid."
The younger man—Flicker, strain radiating about him, burns marring his hands—nodded gravely, eyes tracing each movement as Spark used to trace wires back in Province 618.
Bullet tightened his whittled shard in his pocket, its pulse paralleling the one of his scar. A secret about this world, about the pull, about all that he couldn't remember.
Shame churned in his chest. Cowboy's death. Rivet's fall. Shard's camp, left empty out there in the desert for what lay ahead.
---Ember pulled Bullet away from the others, his burn scar cast in the bioluminescent glow.
"I enticed people once," Ember murmured, his eyes lost in the distance. "Thought I was bringing them to safety, a new home. Lost most of them to atrocities of the block—things worse than those tiny spine-fish you found out there." He paused, his jaw moving. "This dome is my second chance. A second chance to do right by the people who are counting on me."
His eyes fixed on Bullet's, and the resemblance was clear. Shard's shame. Ember's shame. Commanders haunted by the ghosts of people they were unable to save.
"Whatever it is driving you—that draw you're chasing—do not let it devour you alive," Ember continued. "I've seen it happen. People become eaten up by the things they cannot let go of. They step into the liquid and they do not come back."
The sign on Bullet's heart beat, and Ember's words rested upon him like pebbles in water without a bottom.
Thread approached them then, her hands moving to weave what looked like a net out of fibers of algae. Her scarf was torn down the center across her shoulders.
"I wanted a true sea," she sighed, and her voice was heavy with a melancholy that antedated age. "Not this odd block we are wedged in. A true ocean, with waves and tides and horizons." She smiled faintly. "Now I spin nets to feed us, to keep this business going. It's small enough, but it is something."
Her touch on his arm was light, but it evoked the same feeling of guilt. Leaving Spark to her fate. Leaving Shard. Leaving behind those who'd helped him when they'd had no reason to.
Veil moved closer then, knife flashing at her side. "Strangers have broken domes before," she snarled, voice stone-hard with menace. "Loosing trouble that drowns us all. I can taste it on you, drifter. You're going to cost us."
Bullet tensed his muscles, scar beating hot. "I'm not here to stay," he said stiffly. "I'm not here for trouble. I'm just passing through. Let it go."
But even as he was talking, he wondered if she was right. Was trouble his constant shadow? Cowboy had passed on. Rivet had passed on. How many more were going to pass on because he'd touched their lives?
Ember led him to the community hall, and in the center was a smoothed-over stone—nothing really different from Province 618's community stone, except it was full of markings, different stories carved into it.
"We leave our mark here," Ember said, offering one of the tools for Bullet to carry. "Our reasons for existing. Be with us, even for a moment."
One by one, the citizens moved forward to leave their signatures, their portions of significance in this underwater prison.
Ember made a slash, thick and bold. "I led men through fire," he breathed. "Earned these scars keeping them from harm. Now I keep this dome whole, as well as I can."
Thread traced a curve, her movements gentle. "I made nets, stories, families—in another life, I suppose. Now I weave so we eat, so we can be whole."
Glint cut a jagged line, exact despite the tremor in his burned hands. "I think I built machines once. Lost someone to the block, to my own shortcomings. Now I teach, so others build. So we survive."
Veil's mark was weak, barely visible. "I delved deep," she said, voice flat. "Gathered what other people couldn't reach. Was betrayed once. Won't be again." Her eyes shifted to Bullet, the accusation plain.
Flicker drew a small, careful symbol. "I wish to make something," he said, voice young and excited. "Like Glint. Something that will make this dome better. Something that will last."
It was now Bullet's turn.
His scar burned as he stretched out his hand for the instrument, the burden of responsibility weighing him down. What was he to tell them? What mark was he to leave when he didn't even know who he was?
"I don't know who I am," he said finally, his voice burning. "I don't know what I've done or where I've been. All I have is this pull, taking me somewhere I don't know."
Veil snorted, distaste on her bony face. But Thread's hand on his arm was warm, urging him on.
"That's enough for now," Thread breathed. "It's a start."
---
The earthquake hit suddenly, without warning.
There was a crack in the dome, and water was rushing in—a cold stream that grew into a torrent as a glass panel shattered. Air whooshed out, precious air lost to the liquid outside.
Cries of desperate creatures filled the air. The vent groaned, machinery straining, algae flooding into the filters faster than they could drain it out.
"The vent is going to collapse!" Ember yelled over the tumult. "Glint! Veil! To it, now!"
Bullet instinctively produced his pipe as the creatures pushed through the hole—those same small, glassy creatures with metal spines, but now aggressive, drawn to the commotion and fresh air.
Their backs glistened as they rushed down the gap. Their shriek echoed off the dome, aching Bullet's teeth.
He swung the pipe, smashing bodies, spines scraping up his arms as he strained. Red blood welled from fresh cuts. His scar flared with each impact.
Glint labored manically on the filters, fingers trembling as he moved with a precision ease, with sparks showering from his fingers as he rehooked cut-through conduits. Veil hovered above the breach, keeping liquid flow in check somehow, her motions economical and controlled.
"This is all your fault, drifter!" Veil shouted as she shouldered past Bullet, eyes burning with anger and fear. "Strangers always bring death!"
Ember's spear wavered, cracking the spine of a beast with a wet crunch. The vent groaned back into operation slowly, the horde retreating as the breach was sealed off and the filters cleared.
The dome was returned to stability, but its weakness was now glaring and apparent. One crack. One failure. And they'd all be inundated in the fluid deep.
Guilt rose in Bullet's chest—Cowboy, Rivet, and now him. Did he really bear death with him wherever he went?
Later, in the tech bay, Bullet studied his etched shard in the conduits' dim light. It vibrated in rhythm with his scar, that circle bisected by a broken line. A mystery he couldn't solve.
Thread approached, extending something—a small knife, its hilt laboriously wrapped in braided algae thread.
"Take this, here," she said, her eyes heavy with understanding. "For whatever's calling you out there." She paused. "The block's alive, you understand. The animals, the trembling—it senses. But why track that pull when you can stay here? We could use someone like you."
Bullet's throat hurt as he spoke. "I don't have a better answer," he said, his hand clamped on Spark's shard in the other pocket, Patch's cloak weighing on his shoulders. "The pull is all I've got to go on. It's the only truth I have."
They dined on dried root that night—leathery and salty, barely palatable but sustaining. The people of the location fixed his cloak, sewing with yarn from algae to tighten the leather, mend the tears.
Bullet dined, knowing even as he ate that he could not stay. Ember's will. Thread's acceptance. Veil's suspicion. It was all a price he would not pay, as were all the others.
The tug gnawed in his chest, a reminder that relaxation was always fleeting.
It's time to move ahead. Always ahead.