Refraction

by Naomi Hughes

  I stare grimly at the fog. I can smell it from here: something acrid and chemical on the breeze, almost like ozone. It makes me nervous to be this close to it. Not because it’s dangerous. The fog itself is harmless.

  It’s what’s in the fog that fuels my nightmares.

  A woman’s voice cuts through the crowd’s nervous chatter. “No one wanted today to happen,” she says, and everyone falls immediately silent.

  Hate shoots through me like adrenaline, mingling with the dread in my gut until it forms something leaden and horrible. I trace the voice to its source. Blond hair tightly pulled back, eyes a blue so dark they’re almost violet. She’s wearing a crisp white blouse and a holstered gun. Her gaze sweeps the crowd like a scythe. Everyone freezes in place instantly.

  My hands curl into fists. I’ve only seen her a few times and always at as much of a distance as I can manage, but I recognize Mayor Ackermann’s voice from the radio broadcasts. There’s a transmitter here today too—a chestlike box sitting at her feet, looking harmless with its rows of switches and dials, sending out her voice to the city she protects. City Hall keeps some working radios scattered across the island at well-guarded spots so everyone can have the chance to hear her warnings.

  I search behind her for the person on the receiving end of today’s punishment. There’s a row of cops at her back, guns in their hands or tucked into their waistbands. Only about half of them wear uniforms. The police department must’ve finally run out of stock, which is no surprise with the way they’ve been recruiting. Too bad they haven’t run out of weapons, too. I scan over the row, looking for whoever they’re guarding.

  I find him kneeling at the bridge’s entrance, hands zip-tied behind his back, his skin gray and pulled taut over his cheekbones like he’s already a corpse. Sam Garcia. I know him by reputation only. He is—was—the island’s only other remaining dealer.

  There can’t be but a handful of ’em left now, that guy had said a minute ago. He was wrong. There isn’t a handful of us. There’s just me and Sam. As soon as the boy on that bridge meets his fate, I will be the only dealer on Cisco Island. Which means the shadowseekers—the rumored unit of special-ops officers who’ve hunted down all the other dealers—will have exactly one target left.

  Me.

  “But this is the message we must send to anyone who would endanger our city,” the mayor continues. Her voice arcs over the crowd like lightning looking for something to burn.

  Fear is roaring through my blood. I pity Sam, but I’m terrified for myself. After this, every shadowseeker, every beat cop, and every random self-righteous islander with a score to settle—which is most of them—will have all of their attention squarely focused on catching me. I’ve gotten as far as I have by lying low, by staying as far down the mayor’s suspect list as possible. But how long will it take them to find me now that they have no one else to hunt?

  “Sam Garcia’s dealings have cost lives,” the mayor goes on. Behind her, Sam is shuddering, hunched over on himself like he’s trying not to scream.

  They always scream. Whether it’s a few steps into the fog or halfway across the bridge, they always scream.

  “It’s justice that it now costs his own.”

  Sometimes, days after an exile, the body will wash back up on shore. Mauled, gnawed till it’s barely recognizable. That’ll be Sam soon. And after that, me.

  “Sam Garcia,” Mayor Ackermann says, turning to look at him. He stays bowed over, shoulders straining with his hands tied behind him. “You are hereby exiled from Cisco Island. If you attempt to return, you will be shot.”

  He finally raises his head. “How about we just cut out the middleman and you shoot me now,” he says. The words are meant to sound cocky, but they quaver too much and his voice cracks at the end. He genuinely wants her to kill him rather than face exile. I can’t blame him.

  The mayor’s mouth tightens. “I can’t allow that.” I listen for any hint of sympathy, of humanity, but all I hear is iron.

  She nods at the row of officers. Two of them grab Sam by the arms and start hauling him toward the fog. His eyes are wild. He’s thinking about taking a run at the cops and forcing them to shoot him or going just a few feet into the fog and then jumping off the bridge and trying to swim back.

  There’s a chance Sam could escape, I tell myself. There’s a chance I might be able to escape, when it’s me up there.

  I turn my back. I stumble into the darkness, hurrying away before the screaming can start.

  I know now why Elliott wanted me to see this. It’s a warning: I’m next. Soon the shadowseekers will find the proof they need to incriminate me. And when they do, it’ll be me hog-tied in front of the fog, me asking to be shot.

  Me facing the Beings.

  I’ll never get to Ty. All my hard work, my months of careful dealing, all for nothing. I’ve spent nearly a year saving up ration coupons for bribes and hunting for ways to get safely off the island, to an airport, to the London university where Ty is stranded. I heard rumors that the mayor had a helicopter, that there was a chance it could fly above the fog. I searched for its pilot. I thought I was getting close—just a few more weeks of deals, of chasing down leads—but there’s no way I’ll make any progress before I get arrested now.

  I could hide out in my loft. Stick to the tunnels, never do another deal, use the ration coupons I have stockpiled to survive for a while longer.

  But if I give up now, I’ll never see Ty again.

  I stop in the middle of the tunnel, a grim desperation stealing over me. I will not let this happen. I will not be arrested and exiled, with no supplies and no pilot, forced to face the Beings in the fog while my big brother, who has watched over me my whole life, is stuck half a world away.

  I have one other option. Before, it was too much of a risk. Now, Elliott has made sure I understand that it’s my last chance.

  I check my watch. I’ve got maybe six hours till sunset.

  Plenty of time to make some preparations.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I ARRIVE AT THE BOARDWALK TEN MINUTES LATE BY design. The sun is half set already, peeking through the brewing storm clouds, painting the fog-drowned horizon in pinks and oranges. I nod in satisfaction when I see the proof of my lateness and then search for a way to waste a few more minutes.

  This place is all rotting wood and sagging buildings, complete with a rusted-out Ferris wheel at the far end. Closer to me are a few decrepit game booths. I pick one that has a back wall strung with dartboards and spend a leisurely minute plucking out all the darts before I pace back to the front of the booth and start throwing them.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. I don’t pay any attention to whether or not I hit the targets. This isn’t for fun; this is a power play, making Elliott wait and wonder while I dawdle. He gained the upper hand during our earlier meeting. I’ve got to put him in his place fast if I want this deal to go my way now. I need to remind him that I’ve got just as much leverage as he does—after all, he might be my best shot at getting out of this hellhole, but I’m the only person left who’s still selling what he wants to buy.

  My body tenses when I remember Sam being hauled toward the fog. That won’t be me. I can’t let it be me. Thwack. I throw the next dart so hard that the tip snaps off, the shaft clattering to the boardwalk below.

  I take a deep breath, trying to center myself. I can’t walk into this deal scared or it’ll go south fast. I glance at the sun again to check its position—two-thirds of the way down now—and then wince. One of the massive, distant chunks of reflective metal in the Shatter Ring is catching the light just right to blind me. I narrow my eyes to slits, let myself glare at the ring. A sluggish sort of hatred stirs beneath my nervousness. These chunks of metal are what separated me from my brother. They’re what caused the deadly fog that now covers the entire world—with the exceptions of London, Singapore, and for some unknown reason, one tiny island off the coast of Florida. Also known as … us.

  No one knows exactly
what happened during the event we now call the Fracture. The only thing we do know is that one random Tuesday in July of last year, a giant reflective oval appeared in the sky like a second moon. Aliens was everyone’s first guess. And when we—or rather, the people in charge of the missile silos on the mainland—started shooting at it, we knew our guess was right.

  But it wasn’t a ship the aliens had sent us. It was a weapon.

  When the missiles hit it, it broke apart into a thousand massive pieces. Those pieces formed the Shatter Ring. And then they ended life as we’d known it.

  We call it the Fracture because a lot of things broke that day, thirteen months and some-odd days ago. The world was one of them.

  I throw another dart, actually bothering to aim it this time, and hit square on the smallest bull’s-eye. I feel better now, more focused. Anger is always better than fear.

  A hand reaches through my line of vision and plucks the last dart from my hand. “Still playing games you can’t win?” asks Elliott’s voice. Having expected him to try to catch me off-guard again, I don’t startle this time, and when I turn to look at him I smile at the annoyance in his eyes. Point, me.

  “Who said I can’t win?” I reply easily. “In fact, I think I’ve done well enough to earn a prize.”

  Moldy teddy bears and holey tourist-tastic T-shirts dangle from lines strung across the booth’s ceiling. I sort through them until I come upon a small stuffed fox that looks only a little bedraggled. I grimace at the selection—foxes creep me out, with their too-canny eyes and their sharp little noses—but I stick it in my pocket anyway for the sake of irritating Elliott.

  “You’re late,” he says. The annoyance in his eyes filters through to his voice. My smile grows and sharpens.

  “I’m a busy guy,” I tell him. “I just inherited all Sam Garcia’s clients, after all.”

  It’s not exactly true—many of Sam’s buyers, and likely my own, too, will go to ground after today—but the comment hits its mark. Elliott turns without a word and strides across the boardwalk. “Are we doing this or what?” he demands over his shoulder.

  I stroll after him, wearing a casual mask to hide the uncertainty that tumbles through my stomach at his words. Part of me still worries he might be inclined to rat me out afterward, but I’ve taken what precautions I can, and this deal is a gamble I have to make. It makes me feel only a little better to know that ratting me out would be as dangerous for him as for me. The mayor strictly enforces her zero-tolerance policy for anyone caught participating in deals like this, which means snitches are as likely to face exile as us dealers.

  “Depends on what information you’ve got to trade,” I reply.

  He stops in front of a building—an arcade, judging by the tattered sign—and pulls its glass door open. He looks at me over his shoulder. “I know where the helicopter is and who pilots it,” he answers. My heart does an elated somersault, and I do my best not to let it show on my face as he continues. “It’s leaving tonight to see if they can find any salvageable supplies to bring back from the mainland; rations are getting low, and the mayor is desperate enough to finally authorize the use of fuel. I can get you a gun, can tell you where the chopper will leave from. You can stow away. Hijack it once it lifts off.”

  I follow him into the arcade, feeling like I’m in a dream. This is perfect. Almost too perfect. I stop in the doorway and glance inside—ancient claw games covered in grime, retro-cool dance games with their screens busted through. The air is stale. Dust motes hang suspended in the slanting beams of fading sunlight like flies stuck in honey. This place doesn’t look like a trap, and Elliott doesn’t seem to fit the profile of a snitch, but still …

  “How did you know about my brother?” I ask, lingering in the doorway. A few people know I’m interested in finding the helicopter and its pilot, but I haven’t told anyone the reason why. I prefer to keep people at a distance. Especially clients, and especially this jackass. It makes me more than a little nervous to know he knows so much about my personal life.

  I thought I had my anxiety under control, but with that one worried thought, it starts to snowball. This whole meeting could go wrong in so many ways. There’s a slideshow of horrific outcomes marching through my head right now, one after the other, ranging from the possible to the wildly unlikely: we could get caught, shot, exiled. The helicopter could be a lie, a trap. The entire rotted boardwalk could collapse beneath our feet right now and drown us in the ocean.

  The anxiety gains strength. A compulsion rears its head: I want to tap this door frame to keep myself safe while I’m inside the arcade. Three times on the left, five on the right, at exactly shoulder height. Three and five are good numbers. One is okay too, but it won’t keep me as safe as three and five would.

  I go still, catching the train of thought, concerned that it took me a second to recognize it and that it came so quickly on the heels of my lock-checking compulsion earlier today. I worked so hard to get through therapy last year, before I moved to Cisco Island, before the Fracture happened. I went to war with my obsessive-compulsive disorder and I won. What does it mean that some of my old compulsions are flaring up again?

  Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m fine; I know that tapping this doorway wouldn’t actually keep me any safer, that it’s magical thinking, that my OCD is lying to me as always. I wait for the urge to pass. After a moment—a few beats too long—it finally does. I try to exult in the victory but can’t quite banish my creeping worry.

  Elliott is peering at me from across the room. He’s said something, but I was too absorbed in my brief battle with the compulsion to hear it. I try to play it off with a grin and a shrug, as if pretending not to hear him is another power play of mine. “Sorry, got distracted. Say that again?”

  It works. He bites back a frown but repeats himself. “I said, I did my homework. After I tracked down enough rumors and confirmed you were a dealer, I talked to some people who knew your aunt. One of them mentioned that two boys came here last year to live with her and that the other one left again after just a few weeks.”

  Ah. That makes sense. Ty did stay for a while after he moved me here, in preparation for what was supposed to be his year of studying botany abroad.

  Elliott is watching me carefully. His old veneer of cool satisfaction has replaced his annoyance. Whatever he says next, it’ll be another attempt to throw me off-balance.

  He proves me right. “They also told me that you haven’t been back to your aunt’s place, or to her grave, since she died,” he says. “Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You don’t strike me as the sentimental sort.”

  I don’t bother responding to that. He’s chosen the wrong tack; I barely knew Aunt Irene. She died of a wound that went septic hardly a month after the Fracture.

  But he’s not done. “Which was why I was so surprised when my guess about you wanting to get to your brother now turned out to be right. It seems pretty sentimental to me, trying to get across the world through the fog to someone who might not still be around.”

  “Don’t talk about him like he’s dead,” I snap, suddenly sick of the back-and-forth. Knowing only one way to shut him up, I take off my hat, tear the brim’s seam, and pull out the thing that’s been hidden there all day.

  It’s a mirror. Tiny, backed with thin brown plastic, the hinges at the bottom broken from where it used to sit atop a makeup compact. Its reflective surface is covered with beige masking tape.

  Elliott’s eyes land on the mirror. He pales. I smile, feeling more than a little vicious. I don’t think he’s weak for being afraid of what I’m holding—everyone’s scared of it, including me—but I’m happy to finally come out on top of this conversation.

  Mirrors have been deadly for over a year now. Ever since the Fracture, looking at your own reflection has become an exercise in suicide. It took everyone a few days to figure it out at first, to start smashing their mirrors into powder or tossing them into the sea, but by then it was too late for the rest of
the world.

  Looking into a mirror creates the fog. In the fog lurk the Beings. Beings shred people, and often anything else they touch as well, to pieces. This is a chain of events that is particularly unfortunate when you have a giant ring of immense mirror shards orbiting over your head. No one is sure why the Shatter Ring didn’t do to us what it did to the rest of the world. But although we may have been spared instant annihilation, we’re still cut off from everything, and the mirrors we have down here on the ground are still plenty dangerous. Especially with more and more materials being added to the Reflectivity Index every day. The aliens—whoever they are, whatever they want—must be ramping up their attacks, because with every month that passes, stuff that is less and less reflective starts suddenly producing fog. Like glasses, for example. Which is fine with me. More goods to sell.

  But sometimes, when I’m smuggling a load of newly too-reflective goods out through the tunnels beneath City Hall, I can’t help but wonder how far it will end up going. When will soap bubbles be too reflective? When will everyone be required to get rid of their window glass? I think one day the ocean itself will be too still, reflect too much of the sky, and then it will be the end of us all.

  I pull a little handheld machine, a lux meter, out of my pocket. It looks a bit like a Geiger counter, except it’s for measuring light instead of radiation. It’s the best way to check a mirror’s reflectivity without actually looking at it. “Should we test it?” I ask Elliott, my voice savagely glib. “Just so you can make sure you’re getting a quality product.” I rip the masking tape off the mirror’s surface before he can answer.

  Something unravels in my gut. I steel myself against the too-familiar feeling: like there’s a string tied to the mirror and the other end is wrapped around one of my ribs, a small, vulnerable, free-floating one. The sensation is weird and queasy-making, and it’s been happening every time a mirror is uncovered nearby lately. Which is extra inconvenient for someone who makes a living the way I do. I haven’t been sure what to make of it—some sort of physiological reaction to the danger, probably—so I mostly just try to ignore it.