Senna snapped the panel back onto the side of the HMD, the half-eaten plate of food her mother had brought up laying forgotten to the far side of the work bench. She turned the device over in her bare hands, running her fingers across the many surface scratches. With such a damaged exterior, it was hard to believe that it had once been an expensive top of the line piece of tech, but Senna knew better. Under the worn shell was a high-quality power cell that was recharged with a combination of kinetic energy and body heat. It had been designed in such a way that the small yet powerful device could run and recharge simply by being worn. It was a rare feat for consumer technology, even back then when the technological fields had been booming. A rare and pricey feat, which explained why someone had bothered to bring it with them to the dome, even after the wireless signals failed. When you drop that much money on an item, you don't leave it behind. It probably hadn't hit them yet that the wireless signal was never going to come back, that it wasn't some temporary interference they could overcome.
Either way, Senna was grateful. It meant the device would be easy to charge. She wrapped her hand around the heat sensor and shook it, hoping it would be enough for a test charge. She only needed to charge it enough to see if it would turn on. The clock on the wall read 9:30pm—long past the scheduled call time, but it wouldn't hurt to test it out.
After about a minute of shaking Senna pressed the power button and watched as the little green light on the side turned on. The device sprung to life with a little chime and Senna scrambled to get the device on her head. It sat over her ears and around the back of her head, over the quick braid of hair still damp from her shower. She settled the glass screen over her left eye in time to see a cartoonish start up animation of swirls that played over the real world.
Hope sprung up in her chest for the first time in what felt like years. It grew into excitement as the screen changed from swirls to words.
Device improperly shut down.
Running diagnostics.
Diagnostics 10%
20%
50%
70%
100%
Diagnostics complete.
One network found.
Connect to unnamed network?
Senna navigated the menu using a button at her temple.
>Yes
No
Connecting to unnamed network.
Connected.
She waited on the edge of her seat, though she wasn't entirely sure what to expect. The excitement bubbled in her and stretched into an eager smile across her face, but nothing happened. It was as if the screen had stopped working, leaving her to stare at the empty room around her through a sheet of glass. Maybe it was a bad connection. She might not have wired it in properly when she put the circuit board back in. She could fix that.
Before she could remove the HMD, however, she realized that there was still sound. Static, mostly, but light static at least. Still, probably not normal. She'd have to crack it back open and check all of the connections again.
"He. . . o?"
Senna stopped with her hands on the edges of the HMD. She had meant to take them off, but that didn't sound like static. That sounded like a voice.
YOU ARE READING
Sanctuary
Science FictionSanctuary. That was what the quarantine dome was supposed to be, a place of refuge from the N-Gel and the deadly Neoplague they unleashed on the world. But we aren't safe here. Senna is uprooted from her rural life in the outer dome when her mother...
