I was at my house minding my own business. Mom was doing another one of her wild antics she liked to do occasionally even when her workload was already heavy. I bet you could guess, and you’re right; she is raising raptors. Yup, so adorable but eventually the devious trio is going to get out of hand and eat anything that moves. It’s kinda like owning three upright alligators, but these are much more intelligent and potentially blood thirsty.
As for myself, I didn’t have to worry too much since I helped feed and raise them. But something else was bothering me. My dresser where I kept my books beckoned me. I picked one of the Deen Koontz books I haven’t read yet called Under The Dome. That’s when it dawned on me; a giant dome was about to fall over all the branching streets off of Virgil. The government knew we had raptors and wanted to isolate our area so the raptors would grow up, become restless and eat everyone. They would be an unstoppable force! I had to act quickly before I got trapped. I wouldn’t have minded so much but then CJ and I would be on separate sides of the dome and that just wouldn’t do.
I prepared myself for war. I would infiltrate the government and stop this madness. After packing I ventured out on foot. Once I got to where I knew the boarder would fall, I turned around to watch with a grim face. I could very well see the faintest transparent mass in the center of our little village began to enlarge. Suddenly it shot down with a wide arc into the ground. I tried to warn those on the inside, but none would hear my plea. I turned my back on the dome and its captors, only to find myself facing three serious looking men.
“Are you the daughter of Judith Eckhardt?” my only response was a hiss, what the hell did they want? They grinned evilly. Snatching me up and put me under. All my thoughts escaped me.

Minutes, hours, days, who knows? But later, much later, I awoke to bright lights poking at me and I had to blink. I felt incredibly week and incredibly sick. A scientist came up to me and smiled with a face rife with madness, he was truly insane. Somehow the smile also conveyed a fatherliness and was quite encouraging as well as sympathizing. When he finally spoke through those gasping lips, it was so very quiet.
“Oh, my darling. You’re awake. Everything is going exactly as planned. You’re now a perfect monster my dear.” So then, I tried to stand up so I could promptly strangle him, but a sharp pain made me crumple a little bit “Very good! Very good. Yes, try to walk.
Man, I was pissed off. I’m supposed to be some sort of war machine. I looked very masculine and instead of wearing armor, armor protruded from my bones. A mask jutted from my caller bone and floated magically before my face. The sides were open and there were slots to see forward, so vision was not so limited. Coming out of my shoulders on either side was a shoulder guard that followed the length of my arm and came up above my shoulder a little bit to protect my neck. My lower half wasn’t protected nearly as much, probably to improve mobility.
In a huff I left the room in search for the bastard in charge of all this.
I came across an innocent enough looking apartment complex, but when I approached it, there were a lot of people. At the bottom of the buildings where it almost looked like a garage, the doors were wide open but made to look like jail cells. There were too many families in a place like this where there was very little room. The adults looked depressed and the children ignorant of the seriousness of the situation, though some picked up on the anxiety of the parents. I was surprised when I bumped into the gramma of the Ryder family that I knew well. She as always looked very presentable and to my shock she recognized me.
“Wow, Brianna! You’ve changed so much! I’m not sure if I like what you’re doing with yourself, but I will always love you. How are things going at the house?”
“Umm, well, a giant bubble now encapsulates the whole town-ish thing going on Gary Road so raptors may torment them all. My family should be okay, but I’m not sure about anyone else under the dome. I managed to escape but some people did experiments on me, and now I'm ready to kill someone, so it hasn’t been very good. “ she looked dumbstruck.
“Well, that sounds just lovely. I'm just glad you’re safe now. “ she gave me a big hug, but I was a lot taller than her now so it was the first awkward hug of my new life.
“Uh, thanks. Hey, what are you doing here? Is everyone here? What’s this whole deal going on here? Did you move from Johnson Ranch?” she looked very sad.
“We weren’t able to support our family on our supply of money coming in even with Joe working. We had to move here so we wouldn’t be homeless, but this might be worse than homeless, the conditions here are very strict, there’s a curfew and many families will be packed into these building once its time for the curfew. People will be caught and very roughly handled once curfew has passed. If anyone tries to escape they will be shot on sight. We have contracts to fulfill, even the children even though the workload is considerably less.” With every word she seemed to deflate and the years that had passed for her seemed to weigh her down. She suddenly looked very tired and worried. “I'm too old for this.” Then she looked up at me and cupped my face guard because she couldn’t reach my actual face “But you’re going to stop all this right? You can do it, with this you’re unstoppable, right?” I pulled away from her.
“It was nice meeting you again gramma, but I have to go. Maybe I can but right now I'm kinda pissed at how everythings going at the moment. “ she nodded, gave me another hug and we parted ways. I started heading in search for the higher up. There were stairs leading to the top stories of the nicer buildings –which all looked flat and fake by the way. All the buildings had this strange façade- which I walked up. On his way down, I passed my teacher from EVIT, Mr. Acosta. I was his favorite student, and somehow he recognized me too. He seemed pretty haggard.

“Acosta, what the hell are you doing here with the higher-ups?” I was actually quite angry with him working for these people.”
“I needed to find a job, and these were the only people who would higher someone my age.” This probably shocked me the most. He wasn’t even trying to make a difference, Acosta was just letting all this happen even though it wasn’t something he stood for, and on the contrary, did everything he always despised. If Acosta couldn’t do anything about it, then he wouldn’t be involved at all. He even said he was old and didn’t need more money. Why is here when he could be at home taking care of his wife? Unless there is no more wife to take care of.

My reunion with my teacher was bittersweet, but mostly bitter. This place was hopeless, something needed to be done and I was going to do it-
Dream Ends.
((i had this dream just before i graduated))