They started at the Box, which was closed at the moment—double doors of metal lying flat on the ground, covered in white paint, faded and cracked.
The day had brightened considerably, the shadows stretching in the opposite direction from what Harlow had seen yesterday.
She still hadn't spotted the sun, but it looked like it was about to pop over the eastern wall at any minute.
Raiden pointed down at the doors.
"This is the Lyft. Once a year we get someone new, like you, never fails. Once a month, we get supplies, clothes, some food. We don't need a lot—pretty much run things ourselves in the Dome."
Harlow nodded, her whole body itching with the desire to ask questions.
I need some tape to put over my mouth, she thought.
"We don't know anything about the Lyft, you understand?" Raiden continued. "Where it came from, how it gets here, who's in charge. The fuckers that sent us here didnt tell us anything.
We got all the electricity we need, grow and raise most of our food, get clothes and such. We tried to send someone back in the Lyft one time—thing wouldn't move till we took him out."
Harlow wondered what lay under the doors when the Lyft wasn't there, but held her tongue. She felt such a mixture of emotions—curiosity, frustration, wonder—all laced with the lingering horror of seeing the Seether that morning.
Raiden kept talking, never bothering to look Harlow in the eye. "The Dome is cut into four sections."
He held up his fingers as he counted off the next four words.
"Gardens, Farm, Homestead, Forest of the Dead. You got that?"
Harlow hesitated, then shook her head, confused.
Raidon's eyelids fluttered briefly as he continued; he looked like he could think of a thousand things he'd rather be doing right then, so why was he giving her the Tour and not Wren?
He pointed to the northeast bend, where the fields and fruit trees were located.
"Gardens—where we grow the crops. Water's pumped in through pipes in the ground—always has been, or we'd have starved to death a long time ago. Never rains here. Never."
He pointed to the southeast corner, at the animal pens and barn. "Farm—where we raise and slaughter animals."
He pointed at the pitiful shacks, the one they slept in was the largest and stood oit amongst the others.
"Homestead—stupid places are twice as big than when the first of us got here because we keep adding to them when they send us wood and supplies. They're not pretty, but they works. Most of the others choose to sleep outside."
Harlow felt dizzy. So many questions splintered her mind she couldn't keep them straight.
Raiden pointed to the southwest corner, the forest area fronted with several sickly trees and benches. "We call that the Forest of the Dead. Graveyard's back in that corner, in the thicker woods. Never go there alone. Ever." He cleared his throat, as if wanting to change subjects.
"You'll spend the next two weeks working one day a piece for our different job supervisors—until we know what you're best at. Farmer, Med Tech, Cleaner, Cook—something will stick, always does. Come on."
Raiden walked toward the Door located between what he'd called the Forest of the Dead and the Farm.
Harlow followed, wrinkling her nose up at the sudden smell of dirt and manure coming from the animal pens.
Graveyard? she thought. Why do they need a graveyard in a place like this. All the seethers were on the outside. That disturbed her. She came as close to interrupting Raiden, but willed her mouth shut.
Frustrated, she turned her attention to the pens in the Farm area.
Several cows nibbled and chewed at a trough full of greenish hay. Pigs lounged in a muddy pit, an occasionally flickering tail the only sign they were alive.
Another pen held sheep, and there were chicken coops and turkey cages as well. Workers bustled about the area, looking as if they'd spent their whole lives on a farm.
Why do I remember these animals? Harlow wondered.
Nothing about them seemed new or interesting—she knew what they were called, what they normally ate, what they looked like.
Why was stuff like that still lodged in her memory, but not where she'd seen animals before, or with whom? Her memory loss was baffling in its complexity.
Raiden pointed to the large barn in the back corner, its red paint long faded to a dull rust color.
"Back there's where the Butchers work. Nasty job, just nasty. If you like blood, you could be a butcher."
Harlow shook her head. Butcher didn't sound good at all.
As they kept walking, she focused her attention on the other side of the Dome, the section Raiden had called the Forest of the Dead.
The trees grew thicker and denser the farther back in the corner they went, more alive and full of leaves. Dark shadows filled the depths of the wooded area, despite the time of day.
Harlow looked up, squinting to see that the sun was finally visible, though it looked odd—more orange than it should be. It hit her that this was yet another example of the odd selective memory in her mind.
She returned her gaze to the Forest, a glowing disk still floating in her vision. Blinking to clear it away, she suddenly caught the red lights again, flickering and skittering about deep in the darkness of the woods.
What are those things? she wondered, irritated that Wren hadn't answered her earlier. The secrecy was very annoying.
Raiden stopped walking, and Harlow was surprised to see they'd reached the South Bend; an exit towered above them.
The thick slabs of gray stone were cracked and covered in ivy, as ancient as anything Harlow could imagine.
She craned her neck to see the top of the walls far above; her mind spun with the odd sensation that she was looking down, not up.
She staggered back a step, awed once again by the structure of her new home, then finally returned his attention to Raiden, who had his back to the exit.
"Out there's the Maze." Raide jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, then paused.
Harlow stared in that direction, through the gap in the walls that served as an exit from the Dome. The corridors out there looked much the same as the ones she'd seen from the window by the East Door early that morning. This thought gave her a chill, made her wonder if a Seether might come charging toward them at any minute.
She took a step backward before realizing what she was doing. Calm down, she chided herself, embarrassed.
Raiden continued. "Two years, I've been here. Noone has been here longer. The few before me are already dead." Harlow felt her eyes widen, her heart quicken.
"Two years we've tried to solve this thing, no luck. The walls move out there at night move, change direction, never the same as the day before. Mappin' it out isn't easy." He nodded toward the concrete-blocked building into which the Searchers had disappeared the night before.
Another stab of pain sliced through Harlow's head—there were too many things to compute at once. They'd been here two years? The walls moved out in the Maze? How many had died? She stepped forward, wanting to see the Maze for herself, as if the answers were printed on the walls out there.
Raiden held out a hand and to Harlows suprie grabbed her by the arm pulling her against his hard chest. The closeness and his touch sent tingles scattering all over her body.
"Never go out there, Harlow" his breath was warm as he whispered in her ear.
Harlow had to suppress her pride. "Why not?"
"You think I sent Wren to you before the wake-up just for the hell of it?
One Rule, the only one you'll never be forgiven for breaking. Nobody— I mean nobody— is allowed in the Maze except the Searchers. Especially you.
Harlow nodded, grumbling inside, sure that Raiden was exaggerating. Hoping that he was. Either way, if dhe'd had any doubt about what she'd told him the night before, it had now completely vanished.
She wanted to be a Searcher. She would be a Searcher. Deep inside she knew she had to go out there, into the Maze. Despite everything she'd learned and witnessed firsthand, it called to her as much as hunger or thirst.
A movement up on the left wall of the South Door caught her attention.
Startled, she reacted quickly, looking just in time to see a flash of silver. A patch of ivy shook as the thing disappeared into it.
Raiden let her go as and she pointed up at the wall. "What was that?" she asked before she could be shut down again.
Raiden didn't bother looking. "No questions until the end, Harlow. How many times do I have to tell you?" He paused, then let out a sigh.
"Roamers—it's how they watch us. You better not—"
He was cut off by a booming, ringing alarm that sounded from all directions. Harlow clamped her hands to her ears, looking around as the siren blared, her heart about to thump its way out of her chest. But when she focused back on Raiden, she stopped.
Raiden wasn't acting scared—he appeared … confused. Surprised. The alarm clanged through the air.
"What's going on?" Harlow asked. Relief flooded her chest that her tour guide and roomate didn't seem to think the world was about to end—but even so, Harlow was getting tired of being hit by waves of panic.
"That's weird" was all Raiden said as he scanned the Dome, squinting.
Harlow noticed people in the farming pens glancing around, apparently just as confused. One shouted to Raiden, a short, skinny guy drenched in mud.
"What's up with that?" the guy asked, looking to Harlow for some reason.
"I don't know," Raiden murmured back in a distant voice.
But Harlow couldn't stand it anymore. "Raiden! What's going on?"
"The Lyft, Harlow!" was all Raiden said before he set off for the middle of the Dome at a brisk pace that almost looked to Harlow like panic.
"What about it?" Harlow demanded, hurrying to catch up. Talk to me! she wanted to scream at him.
But Raiden didn't answer or slow down, and as they got closer to the lyft Harlow could see that dozens of others were running around the courtyard.
She spotted Pratt and called to him, trying to suppress her rising fear, telling herself things would be okay, that there had to be a reasonable explanation.
"Pratt, what's going on!" she yelled.
Pratt glanced over at her, then nodded and walked over, strangely calm in the middle of the
chaos. He swatted Harlow on the back.
"Means a someone new is comin' up in the Lyft." He paused as if expecting Harlow to be impressed. "Right now."
"So?" As Harlow looked more closely at Pratt, she realized that what she'd mistaken for calm was actually disbelief—maybe even excitement.
"So?" Pratt replied, his jaw dropping slightly.
"Harlow, we've never had two new people show up in the same year, much less two days in a row."
And with that, he ran off toward the Homestead.