Lark Ascending

by Meagan Spooner

  “We should get back to the Hub before Caesar begins to wonder where we are.”

  “Or what we’re up to.” But it was not my brother’s fury I feared, not anymore. When I closed my eyes, it was a different rage altogether that I felt, slowly burning away my reservations, crowding in at the edges of my mind. I felt only the sea, and the spray, and the coming storm.

  CHAPTER 22

  Oren joined us for dinner, and but for the thick tension stiffening his spine, it was the closest thing to normal that I’d felt in a long time. Myrah sat with us after serving us our evening rations of mush, taking a break to eat her own dinner. My mind was still reeling from all that had happened during the day, so I was content to listen to her telling stories about the ways people tried to get around food restrictions. Even Oren seemed to be listening to her, and Kris laughed from time to time, and I felt almost normal with Nix humming lightly against my neck.

  That is, until my ear caught something unusual. “Wait—what was that, Myrah?”

  Everyone turned to look at me, as though they’d forgotten I was there. Myrah recovered first. “One of the missing people was found.”

  In the midst of everything, I’d nearly forgotten the reason Caesar gave for moving up our plans, that missing people meant potential captures and information leaks. I’d half dismissed it as a lie meant to excuse sending me off on my fool’s errand.

  “Found where? Who was it?”

  “Sorsha, one of the guards. They pulled her out of the reservoir.”

  “She was dead?” The bottom fell out of my stomach. Nix’s humming by my ear had stilled, and I knew it was listening too. If pixies had gotten inside again, undetected, there was no telling what damage they could do.

  Myrah nodded, utterly sober now that conversation had shifted. “They’re saying she drowned herself. If only she had lasted one more day, she could have seen today’s victory, and maybe that would have given her hope.”

  She went missing after Oren’s encounter with Eve, so there was no chance that she was there when we were, and we’d missed it. Still, I found myself looking across the table at Oren, who was staring hard at his food, his scowl returned.

  Kris had stopped eating and was gazing at Myrah. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said slowly. “Sorsha was fine a few days ago. No sign she was even unhappy, much less so depressed she’d want to kill herself.”

  Myrah just shrugged sadly. “You never can tell. I see it sometimes with the older people down here. Eventually they just stop eating, decide they’re done. They’re often peaceful, almost happy with their decision. You don’t know what’s going on in a person’s heart.”

  I glanced at Kris, who was still frowning. He wasn’t convinced, and neither was I. Even Nix made a disparaging sound of disbelief for my ears only. The rebels were hardly well-organized. It’d be exceedingly easy for the Institute to slip a spy into their ranks. If Sorsha had figured something out, it’d be the work of a moment to lure her away from the others and stop her from exposing the mole. Or—if that dark little tendril of thought was right—it would have been easy for my brother to kill her, turn her into a martyr for his cause.

  I wanted to find out where Sorsha’s body was now and examine it for signs that my suspicions were correct. But before I could ask, a commotion at the other end of the Hub interrupted me. A clatter of dishes shattered the general convivial atmosphere, and a ripple of gasps and confusion spread outward, consuming the cavern. Voices rose, then erupted into a chorus of coughs and, increasingly, screams. I lurched to my feet, tangled in the bench bolted to the stone, and saw that the air at the other end of the cavern seemed thicker, hazier. People were running our way, covering their faces with their shirts and their napkins.

  “Gas,” I choked, stumbling backward. Something acrid tingled in my nose, and I tried to hold my breath. Nix launched itself from my shoulder, screeching an alarm.

  Oren just stared, confused—he’d never seen such a thing before, not in the wild. But Kris reacted instantly, hauling off his torn shirt and ripping it into hand-width strips. He wound one around his face, covering his nose and mouth, then thrust the other strips at us.

  Myrah sprinted away from us and toward the food lines instead, to be lost in the panicking crowd as she worked to get her coworkers and friends to safety. Oren, catching on, fixed his own mask and then headed for the exits with me and Kris.

  My mind, trying to understand, immediately went to Eve. But if she’d finally snapped and decided to kill us all, she wouldn’t do it with something so impersonal as gas. She’d walk into the center of the room and detonate, taking us all with her. Besides, I realized as we ran past a canister that opened as we passed, this is technology. Motion-sensing mechanisms. This is the Institute.

  Tamren’s entrance was blocked and the hole too small for us to pass through, so we made for the next nearest exit along with half the occupants of the sewer system. We burst into the fresh air and kept running, trying to help those who were staggering to a halt just outside to move further away. In this kind of panic, people would get trampled. I searched in the chaos for familiar faces, for Eve, for my brother, for Myrah. I saw only flashes of panicked faces, some streaming tears from reddened eyes, some retching into the sewer drains. Even Nix was nowhere to be found, lost in the confusion.

  My lungs burned, but Kris’s quick reactions had saved me from breathing in too much of the acrid gas. I tore the grimy rag from my face, gasping for breath. “How did you know?” I wheezed. The streets and buildings around us looked oddly familiar, though I couldn’t place where we were.

  Kris had his head between his knees, taking deep breaths. He lifted his head to look at me, his eyes shadowed. “Failsafe,” he managed in reply. “Something the Institute always kept in case of a breach in the Wall. It was meant for shadows.”

  My gaze swept across the ever-increasing horde of rebels outside the entrance to the sewers, the family clusters and groups of friends supporting each other as they limped away, others nursing more serious injuries incurred in the riotous panic. We’d been flushed out of hiding, like vermin.

  Maybe a hundred rebels had made it out of our entrance, including Oren, Kris, and me. There was no sign of Caesar or Eve, and no telling how many other groups had escaped through other exits. Scattered, bruised and alone, and without more than a few eating utensils and my knife for a weapon, our group was a prime target. We had to find cover.

  Before I could figure out how to rally these half-broken survivors, an earsplitting crack resounded through the darkened city streets. Half the group dropped to the ground, expecting some new horror to drop from the sky onto their heads. The crack came again, this time accompanied by the sound of distant screams. I whirled to find Kris standing white-faced behind me, which told me all I needed to know.

  The architects had found at least one other group of rebels fled from the tunnels at a different exit, and they were mowing them down. The others were slower to catch on, but as soon as one person gave a little shriek of dawning horror, the rest figured it out. In a few seconds I was going to have a full-blown panic on my hands. And there was no Eve to calm them down, no Caesar to cow them into obedience.

  “Okay!” I shouted, my voice splitting with the effort to speak despite my battered lungs. “We’ve got to find cover, now. Either they don’t know about this exit or they just haven’t gotten here yet—either way, we can’t stay here.”

  A ripple of quiet spread out from me as the gathered survivors of the attack heard me. Eager to listen to someone, anyone, who sounded like they knew what they were doing. I lifted my eyes for a moment to scan my surroundings, then abruptly realized where I was.

  I was only a few blocks from the street I grew up on. It was inside the rebel barricades now, which meant the buildings stood empty. Empty but whole—and defensible. And visible beyond the square in front of us was the apartment building I used to call home.

  “Come on,” I shouted to Kris, who was still staring in the d
irection from which we’d heard the crack; some machine tearing through a building, no doubt. “Get these people moving. We’re going to that brick building in the next block. Move!”

  I started hauling people to their feet and shoving them in the direction of the building. It took Kris a few tries, but eventually he began leading them that way. He seemed to know where he was going, and I realized he probably knew exactly where I lived. He’d known everything about me before I ever set foot inside the Institute.

  I turned, expecting to find Oren ushering people along as well. Instead he was huddled against the wall, face in his hands. My heart stuttered, sudden terror seizing my limbs. He’s hurt, was the only thought running through my head.

  I threw myself down at his side, reaching for his shoulder, but he jerked it away. “Stop it!” I cried as the crowd surged past us like a stream sliding around a boulder. “Oren, this isn’t the time for your standoffish, arrogant—”

  “Just go!” snarled Oren, shoving me roughly back.

  I fell hard against the curb, bruising my tailbone badly enough to bring tears to my eyes. Fury swept over me. “Of all the times to throw a tantrum!” I shouted at him. “Grow up! There are more important things going on than you and me and whatever Eve did to you. Get up! I need you.”

  I reached for him one more time, grabbing a handful of his sleeve and pulling him around to face me. This time he spun, with another snarl; and I saw his eyes. They were shifting as I watched, visible even in the low light. The pale blue that I’d come to know so well was fading, flickering as though it were a drowning flame. Drowning in white.

  The sudden movement had loosened the strip of shirt hiding the lower half of his face, and as he panted for breath, the force of his breathing made it fall. As I watched, the faintest tracery of gray flushed his face. The darkness flickered through his skin like a drop of ink in water. “Go,” Oren repeated, gasping through gritted teeth. “Need. Time.”

  What I was seeing was impossible. He’d never been half changed before. It was always either Oren or the shadow. The two were irrevocably split, and the change was like the flick of a magical switch. But the barrier between his two halves was gone—and the shadow was winning.

  I reached out to touch his face, willing all the magic in my reserves to flow out into him. But nothing happened. No tingle of transfer, no steadying of his shaking body. My magic did nothing. I could no longer keep him human.

  I felt a hand wrap around my arm, but I couldn’t look away from Oren’s face, watching him struggle against the shadow consuming him. No wonder he’d been hiding from me. Something was wrong. So wrong he didn’t think he could come to me. He backed away, trying to put more distance between us.

  I tried to follow, but the hands dragged me away, a voice screaming in my ear that we had to move, now. Kris’s voice. Kris’s hands. I struggled, clawed at his skin, kicked out with my feet in an attempt to make him let me go. I forgot the war, forgot Eve, forgot the dozens of rebels fleeing for my old home. I had to reach Oren before he ran from me again.

  Kris lifted me off my feet, dragging me away, still shouting in my ear.

  My voice, hoarse from screaming at him, gave out. For a moment everything stilled, my eyes meeting Oren’s. “Fight it,” I whispered. And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 23

  Kris stopped just inside the door of my apartment building, long enough to press me back against the wall. “Snap out of it, Lark.” His face was close to mine, and I saw that somewhere in the panic he’d cut his face, and a line of blood traced his cheekbone. “We need you.”

  “Did you see Oren?” I gasped, staring at that line of crimson, my vision blurring. “Something’s wrong. I have to find out—”

  “No, you have to calm these people down. Stay with me. This is why I brought you here.”

  I swallowed, blinking and trying to focus on Kris’s face. “I know. I know—I’m sorry.” I lifted a hand, shoving my hair back from my forehead and straightening. As soon as he saw I was standing on my own power, Kris leaned back, letting go of me.

  Injured first. I bullied the people nearest me into helping to set up a makeshift infirmary in the first-floor apartments, then directed a handful of others to spread out and start searching the other rooms for supplies that the rebel raiders might have overlooked at first glance. Slowly, with each new set of orders, the group of refugees began transforming into something a little more organized. And I calmed too, working to put Oren’s face, and the disfiguring flashes of shadow, out of my head.

  It was late into the night before anyone was able to sleep. But gradually the need for action slowed, and more and more people began to drift off into uneasy sleep. I sat with Kris until he, too, fell asleep. We’d barricaded the entrances as best we could, posted sentries at every window on the third floor, laid out every weapon and tool we could find within easy reach in case of an attack in the night. There was nothing left to do, and yet I couldn’t sleep. Oren was gone, and so was Nix, and the world felt too empty without them.

  Something made me get to my feet, careful not to wake Kris at my side, and head for the staircase. My family’s apartment was on the eighth floor, only a few stories below the roof. I hesitated just outside the door, not certain if I wanted to go inside. The last time I’d been here, my brother betrayed me to the people who wanted to enslave me.

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open. The lock had been broken by rebels raiding the place for supplies. Inside it was dark, the only light coming from the faint violet glow of the Wall outside the windows. The place had been ransacked; that much I had expected. The couch was torn to shreds, salvaged for its upholstery and padding. The kitchen cupboards were bare, the sink dismantled for its piping. The floor was littered with scraps of fabric and metal, whatever was too small to be useful in the nest the rebels were building under the city. Somewhere down there was the faded floral fabric that used to cover the couch where I used to sleep. Useless now, gone forever in the gas-filled maze that was, no doubt, being crawled over by hundreds of pixies, searching for and counting the bodies.

  I tried to imagine my mother here, her horror at the state of our home; I tried to imagine my father coming home after a ten-hour shift at the plant, dropping heavily into the now-broken chair in the kitchen. But their faces were blurry in my memory, slipping away from me like the remnants of a dream. It’s better they go on thinking you’re dead. Caesar’s words, however, were as clear as fire, burning the backs of my eyes.

  I knelt next to the couch, by the chest that had once held my meager possessions. The latch was broken, and it was empty, but the rest of it was intact. I lifted the lid, adjusting it in the dim glow from the windows until I could see the inscription carved there.

  Don’t panic. The words had been left there by my brother Basil, long before he left in search of the Iron Wood. When I was young I’d had the tendency to shut down in the tight spaces we explored underneath the city, feeling like the world was crushing in on me. He would keep telling me that it was panic itself that made me clumsy and weak; that if I just ignored the fear, I’d be strong like him.

  Now, I traced my fingers over the etching, vision blurring until I could no longer read the words. I couldn’t even wish my brother were here the way I used to. Not now that I knew he was only human, only fallible like the rest of us.

  I drew in a shaky breath, tracing over the words—Don’t panic—and closed my burning eyes. Oren was gone. Gone. I had no way to find him now, no connection with the shadow inside him. The thing I’d once hated, the feel of that black void inside him, was gone. And I felt its loss, his loss, like a missing limb. I should feel him at my side, always, and now there was nothing there but the ache.

  I grabbed at the edge of the trunk, slumping until I could rest my forehead against the wood, a sob tearing its way free of my body. There was no one here to see me cry, only the memories of my family, the remnants of our home. For just a moment, I could let myself drown.

  An
d then I felt it.

  A surge of magic fluttered fitfully against my mind, familiar in its burning intensity. I refocused my attention—it was coming from above me. The surge came again, and this time I reached up with my own awareness, trying to touch that surge. It responded to my touch—then latched on with the strength of a drowning woman.

  Eve cried, Help me.

  I lurched to my feet, sprinting from my apartment and making for the staircase leading upward to the ninth floor; then the tenth; and then the roof. I burst out, expecting to see Eve being held by the architects’ machines, convinced they’d found us and her. But instead I ran headlong into Caesar, colliding with his broad back and falling back with a gasp.

  Caesar staggered back with a grunt, but I had no time for him. My eyes were on Eve, who was crouched in the center of the roof. In the darkness she shone, and she lifted her glowing head to fix her eyes on me.

  “You did this!” I screamed at her, voice breaking. The sounds of machines marching through the city streets drifted across the night. They were no longer punctuated by screams; the pocket of escaping rebels they’d found had been neutralized. Captured, dead, or lying wounded in the street. “They’re attacking us openly now because of what you did. You and your plan, you’re the one who’s—”

  Eve gave a stuttering laugh, and my vision clouded with white-hot rage. I started toward her but felt a strong hand grab my arm and jerk me back. “Lark, stop—something’s wrong.”

  Panting for breath through my fury, I pulled blindly, trying to free my grip. But Caesar held fast, and just as I considered blasting him back with magic, I realized that something was wrong. The magic I felt all around leaped and sparked like a wildfire, unstable and hot and fueling my rage. I blinked back tears and tried to focus on Eve, who was glowing like a tiny sun.

  Flares of visible magic arced around her, flashing like lightning strikes. The violet Wall overhead roiled and surged like a storm cloud, responding to her power. My fury vanished, dread taking its place instantly.