The entirety of Dome 101’s ten thousand citizens gathered around the Deadwood square to hear Mayor Carnie inform them of their grim new circumstances.

  The emergency conference was called just before sunset. Within a couple hours, the entirety of Deadwood Square had transformed into a swelling sea of anxious and curious faces. The small stage was hastily constructed from stacked bricks and sheets of plywood. It was situated by the fountain.

  Mayor Carnie stood beneath a canopy of strung lights, his coat dusty from gathering his team of advisors and rustling together everyone under the dome. The wind tugged gently at the frayed hem of Carnie’s coat like a reminder of everything unraveling.

  “We are not what we believed,” Mayor Carnie said. The murmurs began immediately. People shifted in place. Mothers pulled their children closer. Vendors abandoned their stalls. Over the next ten minutes, Carnie laid out the revelations in unvarnished terms. They were not humans, but a species called Tinylings. They were artificially created, approximately one inch tall in relation to the greater world outside their dome habitat. The man whom they believed saved them from an outside apocalypse had indeed created them.

  Gasps rippled through the crowd. Some clutched each other for comfort. Others looked toward the sky as though seeing the dome for the very first time. One boy sobbed openly. A woman cheered. Confusion warred with wonder, fear with revelation. For every man shaking his head in disbelief, there was another who nodded quietly. “It all makes sense now.”

  Carnie ended the announcement, not with reassurances but with a challenge. “We are more than what Dr. Gerben made us to be,” he said. “What we do next determines who we become.”

  Later that night, after the square had emptied and families returned to their homes—sone angry, some awakened, most unsure—Beau, Tessa, and Carnie met again, this time under the dim yellow glow of patio lantern at Mama Viello’s, a little restaurant on the square opposite of city hall building. The familiar scent of flour and garlic gave the moment a bizarre comforting feeling.

  “I can’t stop thinking about the giant ants,” Carnie said, swirling his water glass. “If we’re really one inch tall, the ants we fought…that’s just the beginning. Outside there’s giant cockroaches.” He shuddered. “Spiders and wasps, too. What else might think of us as food?”

  “Thankfully, I found this,” Beau said. He showed Mayor Carnie the electric rifle he’d found inside Dome 4455. He discussed the details of retrieving it and told him he believed there would be other firearms or sensitive equipment inside Dome 4455.

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  “They must have found a way to override the controls on their fabricator to produce this. It looks printed. Tessa estimates the more sensitive electronics inside the weapon were added later, likely manufactured by one of their engineers. It’s very well made and effective. I’ve already killed several cockroaches with it.”

  Mayor Carnie blinked. “Can we make copies?”

  Tessa leaned closer. Her eyes narrowed. “My mother says fabricators have encryption locks. They prevent weapon fabrication on this level. We can’t bypass the encryption without root-level access. In the meantime, we’re stuck with printing more woodcutting axes. It’s the best we have at the moment.”

  “I spotted more rifles inside Dome 4455,” Beau said. “There is likely more ammunition there, too. I couldn’t retrieve them, there were too many cockroaches for me to handle alone.”

  Carnie nodded. “I’ll send a team to locate Dome 4455’s fabricator. Maybe we can pull the files from it and make our own weapons.”

  “I’ll ask my mom to help,” Tessa said. “Perhaps the files are buried on Dr. Gerben’s laptop. If so, she can find them.” She turned to Beau. “I need your help. We have to go back into the mansion and pull more data. I want you there with me.”

  Beau looked at Carnie. “If we’re going back, we’re going to need a militia. If we get swarmed by something inside the bedroom we need boots on the ground.”

  Carnie nodded slowly. “I know how dire the situation is. You’ll have them. I’d be a fool to hold you back now. Thanks to all of that food you found, our stockpiles are full once again. You both saved lives with that discovery. If you need troopers, you’ll have them.”

  Beau exhaled. “Food is just a part of it. We need weapons. If the bugs return—and they will—we’ll need more than luck to stop them.”

  Tessa hesitated. “We should send more teams out to explore the mansion and the facility at large.”

  Carnie rubbed his temple. “I don’t want to lose more people. But, if there are other domes out there—resources we can use in the mansion—we should find them.”

  “There’s a whole world out there to explore,” Beau said. “There’s no telling what else we could find to help us survive.”

  “I need to request something from you both,” Carnie said.

  “What’s that?” Beau asked.

  “We need to locate a backdoor,” said Carnie. “See if there’s a way out of Dr. Gerben’s mansion.”

  “If there is a way out of here, we’ll find it,” Tessa said. “The answer may be inside Dr. Gerben’s bedroom. We should go back and check.”

  “Yep,” Beau said. “Let’s roll.”