by Melanie Tays
I can’t argue with that. In fact, now that I think of it, I’d still like my own things back.
Beatie doesn’t retreat when Vander approaches him and sprays a puff of fine mist into his face. Instead, he closes his eyes and inhales deeply.
We watch and wait to see what change takes place.
When Beatie opens his eyes, he’s smiling. “Thank you,” he says, his words clear. Beatie appears to have turned back at least a decade in that moment. He stands straighter, his features relax, and his eyes actually focus.
“So, why were you expecting Eason to come?” Vander demands, getting right to the point.
“It was the plan. It’s time,” he says. “Why didn’t he come?”
“Because the only plan he had was getting himself assigned to the Council,” I inform him.
“The Council,” he mutters in horror. His blue eyes widen as though I’ve just proclaimed someone dead. “That can’t be.”
“Yes, so whatever you thought Eason was going to do, guess what…it was a lie,” I say.
Beatie shakes his head, a sharp movement from side to side. “You don’t understand. If Eason has been assigned to the Council, then he’s in grave danger.”
“Why?” asks Vander.
“Because there is no Council,” Beatie says with complete certainty.
Chapter 8
Ihave to admit, those aren’t the words I expected to hear. But there’s a sincere quality to his tone that forces me to at least consider what he’s saying.
“What do you mean there’s no Council? We saw Eason assigned to the Council just two days ago,” Vander counters.
“Did you actually see the Council?” questions Beatie.
“Well, no,” Vander admits.
“Have you ever seen the Council?” he presses.
“No,” Vander and I say in unison.
In fact, at the Refinement ceremony, I had looked for them, only to discover they hadn’t bothered to come.
“That’s because it hasn’t existed for eighteen years.”
“How do you know?” I demand, unwilling to be manipulated in a twisted new way.
“Because I was the Council. I am Bretton Crandell.”
A muttered and mumbled name. Not Beatie—Bretton. Bretton Crandell—councilman, and Eason’s father.
How can he be here, in the Ash?
My emotions go to war, not knowing if I want this to be true or not. But a tiny fissure has opened up, letting me hope that Eason didn’t want to betray me—that he was telling the truth all along. And that he needs me now.
And that means Whyle needs me, too.
I shove Bretton back so he’s forced to take a seat on the nearest bed. He doesn’t protest. I peek out the window and see that most people are breaking for lunch. That’s good. It means we won’t be expected back at work for a while.
I whirl to face Bretton. “Start talking,” I order, and there can be no mistaking how close I am to the breaking point. “I swear, if you lie to me, I’ll strangle you in your sleep.”
Vander throws me a sidelong glance as though, of the two of us, I’m the unstable one. But I guess, technically, he never threatened to kill me, so maybe he’s right.
“There was...”—Bretton seems to search for a word while my patience rapidly winds down—“…a coup among the Council,” he finally says.
“A what?” I demand. “I said to say it straight.”
“A coup. It’s a takeover. There were five of us on the Council. One member, Traeger Sterling, had his own ideas about how The City should be run. He was the one who convinced us to divide The City and erect the Wall of Fire. Over my objections, he convinced the others to enact the Burning. And then he got rid of the rest of us. For eighteen years, The City has been secretly run by a single tyrant with no regard for the original mission of the Safe Domes—to ensure the safety and longevity of its inhabitants. The Safe Dome was only meant to remain in place until the outside world was safe again—a few years, maybe a decade. But Traeger Sterling has no intention of ever relinquishing his hold on The City and its citizens. Even his exiles he keeps captive here on this farm.”
It seems too preposterous to believe—too big a secret to keep for so long. How could the entire population of The City not know?
But then again, I’ve never seen the Council. Even at the Refinement—the final ceremony of the Burning—I looked for them, and they weren’t there. And Vander just admitted that, despite growing up in the Flame, he hasn’t ever seen them personally, either.
“What do you think, Vander?” I ask. “Is it possible?”
He cocks an eyebrow and shrugs. “I honestly can’t see why not. We never actually interact with the Council. All of their directives come through other people—the Enforcers, the teachers, the Burn Master—or through the intercuffs. Why couldn’t it be a single person pulling all the strings?”
“It is,” Bretton insists. “And I can guarantee he didn’t do it to make The City into some utopia. I can also guarantee that if he’s appointed Eason to the Council, it’s not because he sees such great potential in him and is looking for a successor.”
“Then why?” I ask.
“To neutralize a threat—keep him out of sight, where no one will ever discover what he knows.”
“Why not just kill him, then?” I say, bile welling up in the back of my throat at the thought of Eason’s lifeless body.
“He might, but not until he’s discovered exactly what Eason knows and whether he’s put anything into place that needs to be dealt with. Until then, he’ll do anything he can to make Eason talk.”
My knees go weak at the memory of just one way that Traeger could torture Eason. I imagine him subjected to the soul-crushing pain of the intercuff’s full force inflicted time and again. How long could anyone endure that kind of torture?
“Eason,” I whimper, cold shivers slithering up and down my spine. All the emotions I’ve felt—and fought against—the past few days are sucked into a vortex and spewed back at me—and somehow the combination of it all, mixed with this new revelation, is a recipe for just two things: terror and determination.
“How do we get back into The City?” I say, eyes fixed on Bretton.
“If I could, don’t you think I would have done it ages ago?” he asks, defeated. “The gateway is completely sealed to us from this side. And bringing down the barrier field is a complicated thing. It requires a signal from the inside and the outside—both set to the same frequency. When they meet, the field will be deactivated. That was done for the protection of both the people inside and outside the Safe Domes. When the signal came from the outside, it would mean that it was safe to emerge, but if anything had gone wrong inside the Safe Dome—such as the outbreak of a new disease—then the signal would not be returned, and the barrier would remain in place to act as a quarantine.”
“And has the signal come?” I ask.
“We don’t know. Traeger was convinced that we couldn’t trust any communication from the outside. He said that desperate people would say and do anything to get The City’s resources. He dismantled the receiver and cut off all communication with the outside.”
“And you just went along with that?” Vander accuses him. “Blazes! The Council is worse than I thought.”
“I didn’t go along with it,” Bretton insists. “I did everything I could to fight every single move Traeger made. But at first, I was alone in opposing him. Soon, he had The City’s main computer system under his sole control. That was his particular area of expertise. By the time the others realized something was wrong, there wasn’t much we could do. I’m sure you’re familiar with the intercuffs.”
We both nod. I’m very aware of how that little black wristband can be used to inflict pain so intense, you feel as though reality is comprised of nothing but pain. I can understand how it can control someone. But I have also withstood its torture—kept Eason’s secret in the face of the worst it could inflict.
“But you had an in
tercuff key. Why not just take it off?” I ask, confused. Eason said the intercuff key was a gift, and it only makes sense that it came from his father.
“All the Council members were fitted with two intercuffs—one on each wrist. If you removed one, the other would be activated. It was meant to ensure we couldn’t abuse our power. But it made it impossible to resist the one person who had taken all the power,” he explains.
“So you turned The City over to a tyrant just to avoid some pain?” I accuse him. “Why didn’t you fight for…for us?”
“It wasn’t that simple,” he says, imploring me to understand. “It wasn’t just me I had to think about. It was Gina and Eason. If Traeger thought I was trying to undermine him, he would have taken it out on them. Eason was just a baby at the time.”
I can understand the drive to protect the precious few that you love, so I keep listening.
“I did the best I could. When I saw that things were going to end…badly for me, I sent Gina and Eason to the Smoke, where they would be safe, away from the intercuffs and Traeger’s watchful eye.”
That explains why Eason grew up in the Smoke with only his mother, despite being the son of a councilman.
“I sent them with all the information I could get about how to reconstruct the receiver. It would have to be activated in the Council Building, which meant that Eason would have to get to the Flame—to pass the Burning himself when he was old enough.”
“He did,” I say.
He nods. “I heard he became the Burn Master. Likely Traeger put him there to keep an eye on him. But still, he must have grown into an impressive young man.”
I realize that Bretton hasn’t seen his son since he was a baby. I nod. “Impressive,” I mutter, and flush with embarrassment when Vander makes a quiet gagging noise in my direction.
“When I heard from some of the newest arrivals that he had returned to the Burning, I knew he must be looking for a way out,” Bretton says. “It wasn’t easy to figure all this out, not when I was under the effects of the haze.”
“Mind Mist,” I mutter.
“What?”
“That’s what we call it—the Mind Mist. Unless there’s some other name for it,” I add, not wanting to be too presumptuous.
He shrugs. “That’s as good a name as any. It’s not something we’re supposed to know about, and definitely not something we talk about, so there’s no official name for it.”
“Why did it seem to affect you so much more than the others?” I ask. “I mean, you’re basically a different person sitting here. Your speech was almost incomprehensible, and you could barely get words out at all.” I remember how much effort it had been for him to just ask me that first question: Where is he? And then he couldn’t utter any further explanation.
“That was a special treatment—an extra, targeted dose that specifically affected my ability to focus on anything related to The City, the Council, or my family. I guess Traeger thought I knew too much, and had already proven that I wasn’t likely to cooperate. Plus, the more I’ve tried to fight it all these years, the more it seemed to fight back.”
“How many people know all of this?” Vander asks.
“Not many. You saw how impossible it was for me to talk about it before you gave me the antidote.”
There are about a million questions I want to ask, but I can feel the time slipping away, and so I settle on the one that seems the most pressing if we’re going to work out some kind of plan to complete Eason’s mission. “What’s really out there, beyond The City and the farm?”
He shrugs. “I honestly don’t know.”
“But you think we should deactivate the Safe Dome if we can?” I ask.
He sighs. “We’ve been safe here, all these years. And I think few threats could possibly be greater than leaving the fate of The City in the hands of Traeger Sterling,” he says with a sigh. “But we also have to be prepared. He won’t give up without a fight. He isn’t rational. He kept talking about what the embers told him.”
“The embers?” I ask.
“Yes. He seemed to believe that fire was giving him instructions. It was the ‘embers’ that told him to build the Wall of Fire and to get rid of the rest of the Council. He acted as though he didn’t want to, but he didn’t have a choice. He’s completely insane,” Bretton explains.
“Great! So what are we supposed to do?” Vander huffs.
“I think before we do anything, we need to think about getting the farm under our control so we have people and resources on our side when it comes to a fight,” Bretton says, and there’s an odd excitement building in his voice—veiled, but definitely there.
His words hit me like several separate gusts of frigid air. The idea that we may be walking into a fight is terrifying. Can we really hope to defeat Traeger if he has the Enforcers and control of the intercuffs on his side? But even scarier to me is the idea of waiting to make our move—leaving Whyle and Eason’s lives to hang in the balance.
A sickening sensation tugs at me from the pit of my stomach. Something still doesn’t feel right about all of this. And even if everything Bretton claims is true, that doesn’t help us actually deactivate the Safe Dome or get back into The City.
A thought occurs to me—a possible crack in his narrative. “You said deactivating the barrier field takes a signal from inside and outside,” I confirm. Bretton nods. “So if Eason constructed a new receiver, then why would he need to leave The City at all? If it’s safe to leave, won’t the people out here send a signal soon enough, and things can progress as they were originally intended?”
“It’s too late for that. Eason has no way of knowing what the original signal frequency was. He had to set up a receiver and transmitter inside The City, and then send a matching signal from the outside himself.”
“We have to figure out how to complete his plan,” says Vander. “There isn’t much time.”
I know he’s right. For Whyle. For Eason. For everyone. Time is the weapon of the enemy.
“Did Eason give you the transmitter?” Bretton asks, hopeful.
If Eason gave me the means to complete his mission, I know where I’ll find it—in the hidden compartment of his box. But I’m not ready to reveal this in front of Bretton. Even though he clearly knows a lot, I don’t entirely trust him.
I wash everything except regret from my face and shake my head. “No, the only thing we have is that little canister with the antidote.”
I see Vander peering at me from the corner of his eyes. He knows about the box. Even if he doesn’t know about the secret compartment, he knows I’m not being entirely candid, but he doesn’t betray my deception.
Bretton’s brow furrows. “Are you sure?”
I frown and nod. “He expected to be sent here with me, so he must have had it in his own bag.”
Bretton appears deep in thought. “Did he say anything about it? Maybe if we knew the frequency, we could find a way to construct a transmitter of our own. Or we can leave and find help, find someone else capable of transmitting the correct signal.”
“He didn’t say anything about it, at least, not that I can remember. I’ll think about it and let you know if anything comes back to me,” I assure him.
“This is vitally important,” Bretton says.
“People are leaving the dining hall,” Vander reports, peering out the window. “We’d better wrap this up for now.”
Bretton looks like he wants to say more, but we can all see the people meandering around outside now. He gets to his feet, but before he leaves, he turns to me. “How’s Gina?” he asks.
It takes me a minute to figure out who he’s talking about, but then I remember Gina was the name of his wife—Eason’s mom.
“She’s good,” I say. “She missed Eason a lot when he left, but she’s strong. She’s one of the only people I know who really cares about people—everyone, not just her family.”
He smiles and sighs deeply. I can’t imagine what all this time has been like for him,
but maybe under the effects of the Mind Mist, it’s all felt mostly like a dream. I can hope so, at least. But based on the way he’s tried so hard to hold on—the way he’s been looking for Eason, and missing Gina—I imagine it’s been more like a nightmare he couldn’t wake from.
Bretton ambles awkwardly out into the yard—putting on a convincing façade that nothing has changed. Watching him, I see the feeble man who followed me yesterday, not the confident and clear-eyed man who just turned my whole world upside-down—again.
Chapter 9
Vander and I steer clear of each other for the rest of the afternoon to avoid any possible suspicion. I fill the horse stalls with fresh hay while Vander finds something to do with the pigs. The whole time, I’m searching for an opportunity to sneak away to the Supply Barn. Even though I know Fox, who is in charge there, I can’t just ask him about it. If Bretton—or anyone—is watching us, I don’t want them to know what I’m looking for. Fox certainly can’t be trusted to keep my secret. No, I’ll have to wait until everyone is distracted, which means dinnertime.
“Do you want to learn to ride a horse?” Cresta asks.
Her enthusiasm is hard to resist, despite the fact that mounting one of these massive creatures seems terrifying. Ty’s story of being thrown from one still rings in my ears. I remind myself that I’m not supposed to be capable of feeling fear or agitation. Besides, I need something to distract me for the rest of the afternoon.
“Sure. Just as long as it’s not Ronny,” I reply.
She laughs. “Don’t worry. I’ll put you on Petal. She’s as gentle as they come.”
She leads me over to the last stall and brings me face to face with a cream-colored horse who whinnies and nestles her head against my cheek. I smile and pat her mane, which seems to be what she was hoping for.
“See, she likes you,” Cresta encourages me.
She shows me how to mount her. Petal holds still while I climb up, making it easy. Cresta climbs onto the back of a larger, black-and-white horse named Wrigley. She demonstrates how to hold on and what to do with my feet.