THE TIME DOME
Part Four
The woman with tousled hair and a voluptuous figure turned around—it was JOJO. She saw Marcus, paused in surprise, then burst out laughing. "Ha ha, Marcus? What a coincidence! Come join us—"
Marcus's heart sank. He yanked JOJO out of the crowd and slapped her hard across the face. "What are you doing!"
JOJO touched her cheek and laughed recklessly. "Doing what? Marcus, don't you know what the world has become?"
"I know—that's why I came to find you! I've found a way out. I'm taking you and Lily away from here!"
"Leave here? Ha ha ha..." JOJO laughed wildly, without restraint. "Can you even leave? We're locked under this dome! And why would you want to? Everything here is inexhaustible—food, wine, even life! We can do whatever we want, no constraints at all. Can you find a happier place than this? This is paradise!"
Marcus shook his head. "No, JOJO—you've gone mad."
"I haven't gone mad—you just haven't adapted to this world yet." JOJO grabbed a bottle from the ground and chugged the entire contents. She wiped her mouth and smiled sweetly. "I've had enough fun for today, and it's almost time anyway. I'm going home." With that, she walked to the edge of the rooftop and, without hesitation, leaped off.
Marcus ran to the edge and looked down. From high above, JOJO's body hit the ground with a dull thud, like a sack of flour.
"No!" He howled, clutching his head in agony, then slowly crumpled to the ground. The coupling couples behind him continued their carnal oblivion, entirely indifferent.
"To hell with your paradise!" Marcus screamed in despair. Then he, too, jumped. The wind roared past his ears, and three seconds later, he struck the ground like a missile, instantly losing consciousness.
***
4:50 AM.
Marcus woke as usual. He stood at the window, gazing at the silent dome, and after a moment of stillness, he made his decision and ran toward the Municipal People's Hospital.
When he burst into the obstetrics department, Helen was still helping the agonized woman through labor. Without a word of explanation, he grabbed Helen's hand and pulled her toward the exit.
"Marcus, what are you doing?"
"I'm getting you and Lily out of here!"
"What?" Helen was startled. "You found a way out?"
"Let's try. It's better than sitting here waiting to die." Marcus turned his head and looked at her meaningfully. "Helen—you don't want to stay here too, do you?"
"No, what I mean is—" Helen turned and pointed at the laboring woman. "If you really have a way out, take her with you too."
"You're crazy!" Marcus exclaimed. "Look at what's happening right now!"
"If you leave her here, she'll suffer like this every single day—have you thought about that?"
"Your hospital is full of patients—can you save them all?"
Helen was quiet for a moment, then said: "Marcus, if I just walk away, I'll never be at peace for the rest of my life."
Marcus sighed and finally yielded. He pushed the woman in a wheelchair, found an ambulance at the hospital, and had Helen go pick up their daughter from school. Once they'd all gathered, they drove northwest across Luo City.
Helen, tending to the laboring woman, asked: "Do you really have a way out?"
Marcus gripped the steering wheel, swerving through the maddened traffic. "I have a way! You'll see when we get there... Shit—hold on tight!"
Along the way, the ambulance took multiple hits. Both side mirrors and the windshield were smashed away, one tire went flat, and by the time they reached their destination, the vehicle was practically totaled. The sky had grown dark. At the dome's northwestern edge lay a stretch of barren grassland and scrub. They had to abandon the car and proceed on foot. Marcus supported the pregnant woman, Helen held their daughter's hand, and the four of them stumbled through the rough terrain.
Helen looked around. "Isn't this the nuclear power plant that hasn't been finished yet?"
"That's right—the unfinished nuclear power plant. But the main structure is already complete." Following the facility's layout map, they reached the plant's core—the underground reactor level. After opening the heavy lead-sealed valve, a long subterranean corridor stretched before them.
The four of them stepped into the corridor. The silence was terrifying, broken only by the woman's faint moans and the soft buzzing of the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Lily pressed closer to Marcus and whispered: "Daddy, I'm scared..."
"Don't be scared, I'm here." Marcus patted his daughter's head.
After some distance, the corridor widened, revealing massive pipes and equipment. Marcus found a room marked "Emergency Isolation Chamber" and led them inside. He located three radiation suits and helped each of them put one on.
When it came to his own turn, he didn't move.
Helen realized immediately and cried out: "Marcus, what are you going to do?"
Marcus only smiled. "The dome extends underground right through the nuclear plant, near the reactor core. In a moment, I'll go to the reactor control room—there's a terminal computer with the master controls... You stay here. After you hear a violent explosion, wait a few minutes for the temperature to drop, then come out and keep running down this corridor—"
Before he could finish, Helen seized his arm. "Marcus—we agreed we'd leave together! You're going to abandon us?"
Marcus smiled bitterly. "The time dome is made of a bio-material—ultra-dense atomic structure or something—anyway, even missiles can't destroy it. The only thing that can is the energy from a nuclear explosion. It will blow a gap in the time dome. But even then, the opening won't last long—it'll seal quickly. So once the temperature drops, you have to get out right away."
"No—if we leave, we leave together, Marcus!" Helen clutched his hand fiercely. Lily grabbed him too, crying: "Daddy, don't leave me..."
"Be good." Marcus patted Lily's head, then looked at Helen. A thousand words seemed to rise within him, but none could find voice. At last he said only: "Take care of our daughter."
Through the visor of her radiation suit, Marcus saw tears streaming down Helen's face. He had never realized before how heart-wrenchingly beautiful his wife could be. Helen choked back a sob and nodded. "We'll wait for you outside. No matter how long—you must come find us."
Marcus said nothing more. He only nodded, as though sealing a covenant with his wife. Then he turned and walked away, slowly closing the heavy door of the emergency isolation chamber from the outside.
He silently lit a cigarette, walked into the reactor control room, started the terminal computer, and—following the instructions Night Blade had given him—typed in a sequence of command codes. As his finger pressed the Enter key, he whispered a prayer.
A moment later, a blinding flash erupted, and a searing wave of heat surged forth, tearing him into fragments in an instant.
***
4:50 AM. Marcus woke up in bed.
The first thing he did was rush to the Municipal People's Hospital and charge into the obstetrics delivery room. Only after taking in the scene did he finally exhale a long, deep breath of relief.
In the delivery room, both the woman who had been suffering through difficult labor and the baby were gone—vanished without a trace.
He confirmed one thing that Night Blade had told him: anyone or anything that left the time dome would not reappear inside it.
That meant his wife, his daughter, and that stranger of a mother—all of them were outside the dome now.
He stepped outside and looked up at the massive dome that blotted out the sky, and in his heart, he fixed on the sole purpose of his existence: no matter how many times he failed, he would find a way out and reunite with the people he loved.