Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

  Sophia finished loading her guns, then strode into another room of more boxes.

  “What about Ursula and Elliot?”

  “Not sure,” Adeline said. “This reverie is huge. Kane, if Poesy gets in—”

  “She won’t. Dean is going to stop her.”

  Kane wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

  “What’s the plot?” Adeline asked. “You always figure out the plots.”

  Kane opened the small bundle. He expected a jewel, or something precious, but instead he held a plastic disk the size of his palm, with pills in clear bubbles arranged in a ring.

  “It’s a birth control packet,” Adeline provided. “How can you not know that?”

  Kane shrugged. “Haven’t started ovulating yet.”

  Adeline rolled her eyes. “Convince her to uncuff me before I do it myself.”

  “Relax,” said Sophia as she reemerged. She swung a long cape over her shoulders. “One of your own kind can set you free after we ditch you, but mark my words: this is the freest you’re ever going to get. Enjoy it, Ms. Van Demure.”

  There was tension between Adeline and Sophia. The privileged girl paired with the renegade rebel. The bookworm in him told him that this was a relationship that would last the plot.

  Wait. For the first time, Kane perceived the blue lightning that arced between Adeline and Sophia.

  Wait.

  “You’ll fail,” Adeline said, a clever move because it launched Sophia into some much-needed monologuing.

  “Denounce me if you must.” Sophia’s cape swept her ankles as she closed in on Adeline. “But never forget that I am fighting for your freedom, Noble Girl. For everyone’s freedom. What they teach us in schools is a lie. There are centuries of history that they’ve erased. History in which women gained the right to be more than just political servants. History in which there was no Underclass and no Committee controlling everything. Don’t you see? The city of Everest is a lie. Holy Society is a lie, dreamed up by the Committee to control us. But you’re at the top, so why would you question it? I suppose obliviousness is how the elite must tolerate themselves.”

  Adeline set her jaw. Kane thought she was an expert actor in this moment. Her voice dripped with incredulity. “How can you be so sure?”

  Sophia chuckled, wagging her white-gloved fingers. “Look, and you will find. Those of us who follow the Bright Hand have been collecting artifacts for years. The heists never make the news, but I assure you our archives have been growing, and they reveal a history of glorious blasphemy.” She leaned even closer. “You think the year is 1961, don’t you? It’s not. It’s the year 2123. I know, because that”—she thrust a hand at the pill packet Kane held—“is from 2009. It’s a type of pill that stops the Mothering. Did you even know that was a choice?”

  Adeline feigned disbelief about the concept of birth control, and Sophia’s face split into a gloating grin. She snatched the pills from Kane and kept her eyes locked with Adeline’s as she stowed the artifact back in Adeline’s girdle.

  “Move it, rich bitch,” she commanded, leading them from the tower, down into the future’s city of Everest.

  • Thirty •

  PRETTY

  The city of Everest was dead.

  It was a public death that emanated from everything. Dark windows shown straight through empty buildings to the other side of the block. Vacant streets stretched, empty under fluorescent lights that collected no moths. Strangest of all, there was no trash. Life, even its litter, had been scoured away.

  Sophia demanded silence as they ran through the shadows. Kane and Adeline traded glances when they could. Mostly, they scanned for threats and kept their ears trained on the sirens, which stayed distant.

  Closer was the sound of thunder. Whatever dystopian regime kept Everest clean couldn’t tidy up its weather. As the trio traveled across a network of abandoned highways, the humid air buckled under a sudden, ferocious rain, forcing them beneath an overpass.

  “Perfect,” said Sophia, yanking down her hat. “Kane, stay here with her. I’ll go secure our transport. Wait for my signal.” Before Kane could protest, she ran into the downpour.

  Adeline stopped Kane from following.

  “Don’t. You know better.”

  Kane glared at her. “Do I?”

  “Clearly not, but let’s pretend you give a shit about my life, too, for a second.”

  Dirty streams of rainwater carved their way between Adeline and Kane. This was the girl from school. The one who had everyone, teachers included, scared out of their minds. It was too much for Kane, and his anxiety flared to fury like kindling.

  “Do you always have to be such a bitch?” Kane sneered. “Like, do you get bitch royalties or something? Is your bitch-craft a tax write-off?”

  Adeline shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if you hate me. You’re going to work with us if you want to save your sister.”

  Kane laughed. “Oh, because you guys did such a great job with Helena?”

  “Winning takes teamwork, but so does failure, Kane. We failed as a team.”

  Kane laughed harder. “What team are you talking about, Adeline? The one that lied to me? Hurt me? Hid from me?”

  “Saved you!” Adeline yelled back. “Salvaged you! Protected you! And here we are again, in another fucking nightmare. For you. For her. And you’re still acting like a child.”

  Adeline stalked off through the rain. Kane groaned, his exhaustion dousing his smoldering grudge. Before, when they had summoned the doors, he had felt that elusive comradery with the Others. Adeline had inspired it, again. They could have left him to save Sophia alone, but they were all here. Except Dean. Kane had done a good job driving him off, already. He couldn’t afford to do the same to Adeline. He knew she was right.

  Kane found her huddled against a cracked pillar, soaking wet. Seeing him, she wiped at her cheeks and started pulling sections of her hair into a side braid.

  “I’m sorry,” Kane offered. She ignored it.

  Kane tried again. “Don’t worry, you still look pretty.”

  Adeline’s laugh was frosty “That’s what you think I care about? Looking pretty? Spare me, Kane, seriously. Pretty is the last thing I care about, but you wouldn’t know that, would you? No, because you’re too busy reducing everything I’ve done this past month to pettiness and spite. Fuck pretty.”

  Kane’s mouth fell open.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “When you first recruited me to the Others, Elliot and Ursula still thought I was this superficial queen bee, and it took months of backbreaking work on my part to undo that impression, to prove that I was, in fact, a person with real thoughts and real feelings and—heaven forbid—substance. But I never had to prove that shit to you, Kane, because you used to know what it was like to be misunderstood by everyone, avoided and discarded for the way you look or act.”

  Kane’s knees were weak. Here it was again: the feelings people had for the person he used to be, bruised with loss and turned to anger with who he was now. Kane yearned to fold right then and there, to give up, but Adeline was still speaking.

  “You think just because you’ve faced trauma you’re excused from treating people with compassion? You think just because your sister is in trouble, you get to opt out of being a leader? Well, Kane, guess what. I’ve got sisters, too, and they might be next. We all stand to lose people if we don’t stop Poesy.”

  She took a long breath. Adeline’s next words were smaller. “And I care about Sophia, too.”

  The rain softened, and all Kane could hear was the breath they shared.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I keep forgetting that you don’t know me anymore, either.”

  “It’s okay,” said Kane.

  “It’s not. I can do better. We can all do better.”

  Kane nodded. He felt real tears join
the water dripping down his face. “I’m afraid of failing again,” he said.

  Adeline stepped toward Kane. “Then we won’t fail,” she said. “We’ll be better than we were.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kane said. “For all the blame.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  When Sophia’s headlights found them, Adeline and Kane were holding hands. They broke apart quickly as Sophia rolled up atop some sort of hovering motorcycle that looked like a Jet Ski. Another bobbed behind her.

  She was in a hurry now.

  “Rain’s clearing up. They’re here. We’ve got to boogie,” she said to Kane.

  “Wait! What about me?” Adeline whined. It was very convincing.

  Sophia slid from her hovercycle. “What about you?”

  “I’ve seen too much,” Adeline said. “They’ll hurt me.”

  “If you know they’ll hurt you for seeing,” Sophia said, “then you already know the fragility of the lie they’ve trapped you in. It’s too late for you, no matter what. You’re already waking to the truth.”

  Adeline set her jaw. The perfect impression of a brat.

  “Or,” Sophia whispered, circling Adeline, “perhaps you wake yourself up in time to save yourself.”

  Adeline followed Sophia with just her eyes. The next words barely fit between the two girls.

  “How do I wake up?” asked Adeline.

  “You pay attention,” Sophia said.

  “Pay attention to what?” asked Adeline.

  “You pay attention to what you know, not what they say.”

  “I know…” Adeline faltered. She wasn’t acting now. Her eyes were trapped by Sophia’s imploring stare. Her lips pinched, pulled, frowned.

  Had Sophia made Adeline…bashful?

  An aircraft swooped down from the night sky, then another, their lights finding the trio quickly.

  As the spotlights tore open the dark, they found Adeline pressed to Sophia, their lips locked. There was a force to the kiss that magnetized Sophia and sent gleeful static through the reverie’s fabric. Kane gasped. Actually gasped.

  Adeline broke off the kiss, saying, “Now you have to take me. If you leave me, you kill me.”

  Sophia uncuffed Adeline. “Then you’d better keep up. Both of you, get ready.”

  Kane took one hovercycle, and Adeline slid on the back of Sophia’s. They maneuvered to face the ship that had just landed. From its hull slid a ramp, and out poured soldiers sporting large guns. Then came the music. A soaring string overture Kane recognized from his mom’s record collection of girl group music from the fifties.

  Kane didn’t know how to drive a hovercycle, but he thought it might begin with the big green button in the shape of an arrow. His hand hovered over it, ready.

  The soldiers fanned out, keeping in time with the beat. One opened an umbrella for their leader, who stepped down the ramp daintily. She was a woman in a tweed suit, the narrow skirt allowing her only small steps. She was perhaps in her sixties and immaculately composed. Her femininity cost her no authority, and it was clear she scared Sophia.

  “Miss Smithe,” Sophia whispered, her eyes locking with the woman’s white glare.

  Kane realized this was a projection of Sophia’s real-life nemesis: Headmistress Smithe of Pemberton’s School for Girls, a beacon of antiquated thinking according to Sophia. The reverie began to make sense.

  “That’s right,” said Miss Smithe silkily. “The Bright Hand has plagued my Committee long enough with your juvenile pilfering. I thought I would personally attend your capture.”

  Sophia stood in the seat of her hovercycle. “The rebellion will never die! History can never die!”

  “Tsk tsk,” said Miss Smithe. “A little girl, playing at archivist, but if she had any talent for history she would recognize the erroneous ways of the world she wishes to resurrect. The truly liberal are the truly misguided, for there is no bastion in a world without Holy Society. You know this. You’ve heard of the Doom that lays beyond Everest’s lights. It is the Doom that we, the Committee, hold at bay so that all citizens may thrive.”

  “You’re wrong,” Sophia screamed. “Everest isn’t a bastion. It’s a prison! I’ve been beyond the lights. I’ve seen—”

  “Enough!” said Miss Smithe sharply. “Miss Buffy Crawford, please step forward and arrest this radical at once.”

  The soldiers shifted as a cluster of girls marched from the aircraft. They were dressed in brightly colored bouffant dresses that matched the satin scarves adorning their pinned-up hair. They all wore large, bug-eyed glasses. They didn’t walk so much as they swayed through the rain, their pastel umbrellas breaking apart to reveal their centerpiece: Ursula, mobbed in pink, her height identifying her immediately.

  “Read them their arrest bill,” ordered Smithe.

  Ursula clearly didn’t know where to get this bill, so she very confidently put out her hand in the hopes that someone would hand it to her. Very politely, one of the other girls reached into Ursula’s own purse and took out a tablet, turned it on, and put it in Ursula’s hand.

  “If we make it out of this, we need to make Ursula take an improv class,” Adeline whispered to Kane.

  Ursula shouted into the rainy yard. “It is with our most profound regret that we, The Rectification Committee of Our Lady Miss Smithe, Obedient of Holy Society, leader of…”

  While Ursula read, Kane watched Sophia pull her revolver from her back holster. “Stay out of the rain,” she whispered.

  Ursula moved on to the charges. “I, Miss Buffy Crawford, hereby charge you with acts of blasphemy against Holy Society, the endangerment of a Noble, and the possession of an artifact contrabanded under penalty of Corporeal Refinement.”

  Sophia pulled the trigger, cutting the air with an electric screech as lightning arced from the barrel. It webbed through raindrops and sunk into the puddles. The soaked soldiers seized, their weapons firing in their hands as they fell. Some of the girls fell, too, leaving Ursula exposed.

  “Eat shit, socialite!” Sophia cried, cocking the revolver and firing again.

  Ursula was forced to block with a shield, but she must have been holding back, for the shot carried her right off her feet and into the hull of the aircraft, lurching the upbeat music. Ursula fell to the soaked pavement, groaning. Sophia aimed again.

  Kane punched the green button, lurching in front of Sophia.

  “Leave her!” he cried. Ursula wouldn’t fight. He couldn’t let his best friend die so that his sister could live. “We need to go. Now!”

  Sophia holstered the gun, annoyance cutting her voice.

  “To the Doom we go, then,” she said, and they rocketed away from the skipping music.

  • Thirty-One •

  THE DOOM

  Kane shot after Sophia and Adeline, pushing his cycle to top speed as they plunged into the milky glow of a desolate downtown. Fumes from the cycle filled his nose, and the engine screamed with throaty solidity, almost covering the sound of the aircraft flying over them. They sped from the main road onto narrow side streets, swinging out onto a boulevard split by a placid channel. Kane slid over the water, cutting a wide wake as they shot beneath bridges.

  “The lights are up ahead!” Sophia called over the splashing. “Get ready!”

  They pulled up from the channel and broke through the city’s edge, hitting a cobbled plaza slowly being reclaimed by wild grasses. The plaza melted into a field overgrown with weeds, which led to an abrupt and impenetrably dark forest. So tall and so thick were the trees that the forest seemed to lean over the plaza, held up by only a belt of blue and red lights. The lights formed a perimeter around the city they’d just escaped. These must be the protective “lights” of Everest.

  “These won’t work outside Everest’s perimeter,” Sophia said, halting her hovercycle and dismounting. As she helped Adeline, she explaine
d, “But the citizens won’t follow. They’re too scared of the Doom, and crossing the lights means death.” Kane slid from his cycle and walked beneath the lights, staring into their alternating colors. He wondered if the Doom took inspiration from the forest that surrounded the Cobalt Complex, and if the protective lights were meant to be the colors of sirens. Then the lights blackened as something cold stabbed through Kane’s spine.

  Sophia stepped over where Kane fell, her revolver pointed directly at his heart, another bolt of lightning ready in the barrel. Kane’s mind buzzed with the aftershock, barely registering that his sister had just shot him.

  “And I’m afraid you can’t follow, either. A quarter charge should keep you grounded long enough for Smithe to find you, brother,” Sophia said down the line of the gun. “Or should I say, betrayer.”

  Kane blinked, speechless. He couldn’t feel his hands or feet. He could barely feel Sophia’s grip on his collar as she hoisted him up. Her eyes were full of pain, but there was no conflict; in this world, she believed Kane had betrayed her.

  “That’s right, I’ve been tracking you,” she said. “I know you’ve hidden things from me. I know every other word from you is a lie, every explanation an excuse. I defended you to the other leaders. I’ve protected you ever since we joined the revolution. And you repay me by smuggling our secrets to the Committee? I should have done this long ago.”

  “I’m not—” Kane squeezed out what little protest he could. “Sophia, please.” He found Adeline a few steps away, watching the scene unfold with rigid concentration.

  “Search him,” Sophia commanded, keeping the gun trained on Kane as Adeline knelt tentatively besides him. The sounds of the airships were getting closer.

  Kane tried to focus on his next move, but all he could think about was how every move he had made in real life had turned him into a villain, a betrayer, in Sophia’s mind. The heartbreak was enough to stand him up, but Adeline forced him down.