Chapters (51)
As he slammed his hand on the table, the metal groaned. Claire stared right back, and lazily spat out everything in her mouth, letting it fall into her lap. There was a roar, the entirety of her tray thrown across the room to slam against the wall. A paw wrenched her from the chair, a blanket wrapped too tight around her. Shepherd had her in his arms. The metal was thrown back, her concrete walls disappeared. They passed a fire extinguisher she had seen before, a blue door, a room full of COMmonitors, only that time there were men in the room, men in the halls—Followers saluting the giant who ignored them as he stormed past.
The sound of boots on concrete stairs, grunted orders Claire ignored, and a door opened to blasting cold. Atmosphere, fresh air... she'd seen such things lying on the floor staring through the ceiling. It was nothing special. Claire closed her eyes.
Shepherd was having none of it. Great arms shook her, jarring her body until her eyes opened. He set her down on her feet and backed away so that she had to stand on her own. Claire did, knowing something that no other man on that terrace knew. A mind could learn entirely new things almost instantly when it was utterly devoid, eyes saw minutiae that thinking minds missed. She stood on her own two feet and looked up at the snowing sky... feeling the large white flakes melt on her cheeks.
Snow that thick was a sign the Dome had been damaged, the arctic creeping in. The engineers responsible for colonial safety had failed.
Hadn't they all failed?
Seeing her stand, the beast drew a relieved breath behind her.
No one could have known what she was going to do. Not one of them could have suspected it. Under the pretense of a yawn, Claire cracked her neck, and rolled her shoulders in a way that loosened the blanket. Then, in a burst of speed, she darted like a hare and bounded over the edge of the Citadel terrace to fall into darkness before any could reach her.
The inertia of limp bodies absorbed force far differently than stiff flailing ones. Claire knew that. What she didn't know was that even high fluffy piles of snow really, really hurt when you jumped off a building to land in one.
There was a general outcry above her, but the fresh powder sucked her in, hiding her long enough to slip down an icy corridor only someone as small as an Omega could fit through. Then she did what she did best. Claire ran.
From above, it looked as if she had simply vanished. Since she was already dead inside, she may as well have.