[The best thing that never happened to you]

Ashanta stormed back to the little dormitory cube and Ray chased after her,
trying to reassure her or at least keep up and make sure nothing horrible
happened. Tense moments like that on the colony didn't exist, really. There
was no 'us' and 'them', really. Until now.

Ashanta paced the dormitory cube, still moving like a caged animal, Ray
watching from a safe distance through the doorway. She threw up her hands
and stormed back out.

"Where do you go to get away from _people_?" Ashanta practically snarled it.
"They're everywhere here, like big dumb beasts. I used to live in a town
this size, but at least when I wanted to leave I could take a walk outside
it!"

Ray kept her thoughts to herself. _The water dome is off limits. I shouldn't
show her that. But it's right._

She quietly spoke up. "There's a place."

Ashanta stopped her pacing for a moment, her fury gone quiet.

"The water dome is just down the tunnels from here. It's technically off
limits, so we'll have to make sure nobody's watching. Here."

Ray took the communicator off of Ashanta's belt and tossed it onto the bed
in the dormitory cube. "Leave this here. They get used to count who goes in
and out of places." She tossed her own after.

Leaving the main dome always felt forbidden, even if there was no rule
against it for colonists. It just felt dangerous, slipping down into the old
passageways, the old construction of aluminum and magnesium, shipped from
Earth in segments on the early shuttles, and painted that uniform off-white.

Ray checked to make sure they weren't followed. The last thing she needed
was one of the idiots from the meal room to catch the two of them alone, and
Ashanta outside of the main dome where she had been told on no uncertain
terms to stay.

Nobody looked, though, and they slipped into the tunnels unnoticed.

Ashanta nearly dragged Ray along, somehow managing to follow at the same
time as they moved from section to section. It felt agonizingly slow to wait
for the airtight doors behind them to close before the next section would
open, each section yielding its own slight difference in smell. Ray could
always tell how often the tunnels were used by the smell. They were
particularly stale today. She supposed nobody wanted to go to the water dome
when there were unannounced visitors to watch and heckle in the main dome.