Chapter 5: The Drywell Dream
1135 Words
The desert wrapped around him in silence.
Faris stood there barefoot on salt-cracked ground, the sky a dull maroon bruise spread with wind. No dome, no basin, no air recirculation hum. Only him. And the sand. Endless, rising.
It hissed, like a sucked breath through gritted teeth, as it wrapped around his ankles. He tried to run, but his legs would not budge. The sand pulled—not quickly, not savagely, but slowly. As if it had waited an eternity to suck him back in.
Something glinted half-covered beside him: a wrench. Oil-slicked, thick-fingered, his father's. The same wrench they had interred with the body—or professed to have. Faris extended his hand for it, shaking, and as he brushed the steel—
—the sand rose. It broke in a wave, soundless, beautiful, fatal.
A figure coalesced from within the wave, wrapped in tattered Hydration League robes, face hidden behind gauze. Pulsating eyes like burning heat-lamps. The figure gestured.
Faris turned to track the movement—and saw the Drywell.
A chasm in the distance. A black hole with no rim, stretching wide under a cloudless sky. Something inside him howled not to move, but his legs moved him on, as his father had done before.
He stood at the rim. Peered in.
The dream always ended before he fell. Not today.
He fell.
---
Faris woke gagging on his own breath, sweat gluing his back to the cot, dome light flickering above him like a dying star. His fists bunched up reflexively—and closed around cold steel.
The wrench in his hand. The real one.
His father's.
He sat up fast, rapping his head against the bottom of the top bunk. The wrench clattered to the floor. Darim, snoring over him, did not wake.
Faris looked at the wrench. The same scratches along the jawbone. The worn leather handle coiled half-way back on itself. This was not a copy. This was his.
He hadn't seen it in decades. It had disappeared on the day of the break—when the dome alarm had howled like some injured beast, and the eastern sector of pipes had caved. When his father, Idris Malik, maintenance supervisor, had run toward the breach and never came back.
The wrench had been taken with him.
So how the hell did it end up here?
He pulled his hand back slowly, heart beating faster than the oxygen recycling system. His hands flexed around the handle, and something—some residual memory or hunch—caused his gaze to drift toward the corner of the room.
A hairline fracture along the wall panel.
He shoved the cot aside. Dust flooded in the recycled light. The panel wasn't all the way closed. He opened it up slowly.
Contents: a roll of canvas. Tools. Papers.
His father's handwriting on notes.
Hydro-main pressure unstable. Request denied—again. The League calls for public calm. Someone altered the backup flowchart.
Diagrams. Valves and tunnel sketches. Markings.
And one line, circled repeatedly until the ink spread:
"Drywells don't die. They remember."
---
The next day, Faris skipped the walk to the ration station. He hid the wrench in a satchel, put the notes in a pocket of his uniform, and proceeded to the algae basin facility.
He told them he had routine filter duty. They waved him through, unconcerned. He was just another young guardian in there performing dull wet duty.
Inside, he was greeted by the stench—brine and algae and chemical cleaner—and something else. Something frail. Like ozone or burned plastic.
The basin was drained. The drones finished their early cycle skimming. No one in the vicinity.
He moved in the direction of the back wall.
The panel.
Still present—padlocked, painted to blend with the rust-hued walls. But the paint was peeling.
Faris felt it gently. Hollow.
He took out his dad's wrench. Insert it in the panel seam.
It wouldn't open—but it responded. A click. A grind.
He moved in closer. The panel contained a hinge, hidden except from someone who knew where to press.
Faris glanced over his shoulder. Nothing.
He turned once more.
The panel groaned open.
Behind it: stairs.
Downstairs.
He stood at the door, heart thudding. This wasn't on blueprints. This wasn't standard infrastructure.
This was concealed.
He entered.
The air cooled with each step down. Dust grew heavier. Stairwell lights—soft blue bulbs—came on as he descended.
After the halfway point, he heard it.
A hum.
Low and steady. Mechanical.
Then—a voice. Distorted. Electronic.
".parameter breach.code yellow.containment priority: Vault B-6."
Faris froze.
Vault?
He raced now, after the hum. The stairs gave way to a metal corridor. League logos had faded on the wall. This building had not seen surface light in decades.
He passed through a corroded control panel, dead for years. Then—an open door.
Inside: tanks. Glass, cylindrical, sturdied. Vacant. But one still glowed softly, blue light flashing at the bottom.
He stepped inside with caution.
Inside that last tank—movement.
No. Not movement.
A reflection.
His own face, distorted.
But standing behind it—another figure. Still. Thin.
A human figure.
Faris's breath caught.
Someone was inside.
Cryo?
His fingers shook as he brushed panel controls. They glowed red—no entry. He spun back to the corridor—racing to run, to find help—
And saw the figure waiting.
Hooded. Robbed. Masked in white ceramic.
League tech—yes. Altered. Old. Hybrid.
The figure reached out its hand.
And Faris fell.
---
He didn't fall far. Just far enough for the wrench to drop, clanging.
The figure didn't stir. Didn't speak a word.
Then: a whisper.
"You shouldn't be here, Malik's son."
Faris retreated. "What is this place? Who are you?"
The figure stepped forward. The ceramic mask glared back at the bright light—smooth, expressionless, except for a blue-lit slit across the mouthpiece.
"Ask your mother," it said. "She closed the hatch first."
Faris's blood ran cold.
"What—are you saying?"
But already the figure was receding, into darkness, into dust.
---
When half an hour later Faris emerged from the basin, blinking at recycled light, the wrench still in his hand, the hatch panel had shut once again.
No sign of the passage. No sign of the tanks. No human body.
But in his pocket: his father's last page.
It held only a single sentence:
"They lied about the rupture. Ask Rahim. Ask your mother. The water was never meant to last."
And underneath:
Vault B-6. Don't drink the blue.
Faris looked up.
The League's central tower burned in the heat haze like a mirage.
His throat was dry. But he did not go to the spout.
He did not drink.
—
- Writer
