Claimed: Faction 3: The Isa Fae Collection

by Heather Hambel Curley

  I knew she wouldn’t recognize the same, so I continued. “Pa said our family name was Richards but he wasn’t familiar with anyone by the name of Atticus. They asked again. Pa said no, he didn’t know anyone by that name, so they asked Mom.”

  “And she said no.”

  I nodded. “Then one goes out into the hallway and drags in a man, younger than Pa, but I can see they have the same gray eyes. The same wavy blonde hair, like yours. This guy says, ‘Milo, you know me. I’m your brother.’ And Pa doesn’t answer.”

  Soleil fell silent.

  “So, the one officer rips me away from Mom and picks me up, pointing at this man who has Pa’s eyes. He asks me if I know him. And, somewhere, in the depths of my mind, I can recall seeing this man before. Once, a long time prior, he’d passed along the fence near the chicken coops when I’d been hunting for eggs. He’d given me a flower and smiled, but made me promise not to tell Pa he’d stopped for a few minutes. So, of course, I don’t want Pa to know and I tell the officer, no. I don’t know him. Which was true—I didn’t. He could have been anyone, he could have been someone completely different than who I’d seen that day. But, I know. At least, I think I do. He was Pa’s brother. I know it.”

  “Pa has no brothers, only that sister who died before we were born.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but here was this man, with the same eyes and hair and cleft chin.” I swallowed hard. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to tell her any of this. It wasn’t her business. Saying it out loud didn’t change what happened. “They asked me if I was sure. And, of course I said yes. It was supposed to be a secret, after all, he’d said it that day by the chicken coop. Everyone assumes a child tells the truth, so, they took him away. We went home.”

  Soleil stared at me and, n her eyes, I could more curiosity than judgment. She pursed her lips together for a moment and then looked back at the destruction in front of us. “What do you suppose happened to him?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they killed him. Things were different then—it was before the Division, before everything really started to go to shit. People just walked around with this false sense of confidence and pride, like we were really going to push forward and make something of ourselves. Big hair, big dreams.” I shrugged. “Only it didn’t turn out that way.”

  She said, “No. But…maybe he lived. Like Grant.”

  Unlikely. I didn’t even want to be part of that conversation. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Do you think there are survivors down there? Do you think we should help?”

  “No. No, actually, I don’t.” I was tired of this shit. I hadn’t gotten laid—which was the one reason I wanted to go to Distant in the first place—and somehow, despite my luck, I’d manage to survive nuclear blast. With my sister. Miss Mary Sunshine. “I want to get the fuck out of here. And when I say that, what I mean is as far away from this pit as possible.”

  “Someone could be alive, someone might need us.” She squinted, her eyes narrowing to the point I couldn’t see the ice blue irises any more. “You’d just let them die?”

  “Do you remember the actual Division, Soleil? I mean, really remember it?” I wanted to shake sense into her, as hard as I could. She perpetually lived in a bubble of happiness, with fluffy little animals and parents who doted on her to the point that I didn’t actually exist in anyone’s mind. “New River ran red with blood. It was dripping into the grates bordering the sidewalks in town.”

  “People had a choice.”

  “No—fuck that. People weren’t given a choice; they were openly slaughtered in the streets by Regent’s Block. Maybe there was a choice at some point in time, but it was long before we had any option to choose. So, i’m choosing now.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not going down there. It’s a crater, Soleil. People were blown into oblivion. You aren’t going to find survivors.”

  She pouted.

  Maybe it worked on Pa, but not on my. She could rip her bottom lip off with a scythe and I couldn’t have cared less. “I don’t need your special powers and abilities to know, Soleil. No one could survive this; shit, we’re lucky that we made it through.”

  “I have to try. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

  “And sometimes that’s the last thing you do.”

  She jammed her hand on her hip and then, thrusting her hand in my face, flipped me the bird. Her middle finger trembled as she lifted it up, neatly tucking her other fingers down. Was this anger? Desperation?

  I almost laughed. Was that the meanest thing she could do? Give me the finger. “Well, great. You go heal the masses and I’ll stay up here and watch your back. I’ll pick off the rabble rousers and scavengers until you’re sure that everyone there has their ass wiped and are tucked into their beds. Go and be there hero. I can wait.”

  She snorted, like some kind of ringlet haired, blue-eyed bull, and flounced away from me. Her mantel of courage disintegrated almost as quickly: her foot slid out from under her on the hill and she stumbled, her arms windmilled out behind her. Somehow she kept her balance…damn it.

  I caught her eye and gave her a thumbs up. “You’re doing great, keep it up. The populace needs you.”

  “I’m still doing this, Wren. My conscious wouldn’t let me do anything else.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. She was a late in life saint or something, picking her way down a barren hillside, wobbling across scorched, shifting bark and flaking rocks. It wasn’t a mission of mercy as far as I was concerned. It was a waste of time. This was the epicenter—the bomb struck, either by chance or coincidence, the town of Vale. It was leveled. Wiped off the earth; everything was gone except for the Registration Building, home to the Contemporary Preservation Coalition, that is, until it fell. Whoever dropped the bomb on Vale did it to make a point.

  Anyone stupid enough to stay there, while those in Distant fled, never had a chance.

  We fled to Vale for protection. The promises were empty.

  I whirled around, whipping my head in one direction and then the other. I’d heard the voice as clear as if someone were standing right beside me. But I was alone.

  My head was throbbing.

  I bolted after Soleil, scampering down the hillside and taking small hops over the larger piles of dirt and charred wood. “Wait! Hey wait—you shouldn’t go alone.”

  She didn’t look at me. “Why? Because you want all the glory if we find someone?”

  “No, because it’s dumb to go into Vale alone. At least, it was when the Coalition ran it and breathing too hard could get you arrested.” I glanced at her. “And because it’s dumb to go into a situation like this by yourself. I’m not running into a burning building to save you if you do something stupid, Soleil. I’m not.”

  “Just a quick look, then we can get home.” Her cheeks reddened and, for several moments, I didn’t think she was able to speak through emotion welling up as tears in her eyes. “I still can’t feel them.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I can always feel them.”

  I picked my way down a steep section of the hill, turning my feet sideways to try and keep from tripping. “I’m sure there’s radiation out here from the blast. You know, poisoning the very ground we’re standing on for the next millennia? How does that make you feel about deciding to drop into town? Your radioactive glow can light our way.”

  “We’ll only be a few minutes. Besides, radiation doesn’t just hover in the bomb crater. The wind carries it.”

  “Yeah, well, just remember that I said this was a shitty idea.” I glanced at her. Her knees were scraped and bleeding, her dress was caked with dirt. I almost pitied her. “Do you feel the radiation? Or…sense it or whatever it is you do?”

  “The trees are gone; I hear their souls crying out. But we should be fine—for a few minutes anyway.”

  “And what if it takes more than a few minutes?”

  “Then we’ll deal.”

  Vale was looming in front of us, the R
egistration Building steaming and smoking like a pot about to bubble over. We’ll deal—bullshit I was going to deal. “Look, I’m going with you to check out whatever you’ve convinced yourself needs checked out. But I’m not subjecting myself to radiation poisoning so you can prove to someone that you’re grown up or whatever it is you’re trying to pull.”

  She stopped walking, turning so fast that her frizzy curls whipped back and bounced against her face. “I’m not trying to pull anything. I’m trying to save people. You know, what we should have done when this all started?”

  “What, the Division?” I was done pitying her already; now she was just crazy. “You want absolution because the coven told us to flee and people died? That we lived and they didn’t?”

  “We have gifts—we could have helped them.”

  I pushed past her. It was time to get this shit over with and get as far away from Vale as possible. “No, it’s the exact opposite of that, Soleil. We would have been accused of being the problem. They were hunting witches and hanging them; covens were decimated. We ran and we lived.”

  “We should have stayed and fought.”

  “Fought what? The inevitable?” I stopped walking and turned back around. “Why exactly did you come with me? You hid in my wagon—why exactly? To spy on me and Vaughn or to make sure that I was doing what Pa told me? Or was it something else?”

  “Shut up, Wren.”

  “No, I want to know. You’re the favorite child, the one Pa would cross a desert and back just to tuck you in at night. You want me to believe that you risked that—risked his temper—to keep me company on a God awful— “

  “I said shut up!” She lunged at me and clapped her hand over my mouth. I was taller than her, so she was forced to prop herself up on her tip-toes; her fingers dug into my arm as she clawed at me for support. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you hear it?”

  I stared at her.

  She pulled her hand back and held up her index finger, as if I needed reminded that she wanted me to stay quiet. “It’s coming from down there.”

  I twisted around, trying to follow her gaze. She was staring at the center of the crater, of the obliterated section of Vale that had once been the railroad complex. “What is?”

  “Voices.”

  I strained my ears to hear something—anything—that would lead me to believe this wasn’t a load of crap. The only sounds I could pick up was the faint crackle of fire and the squeal of metal upon metal as the metal structures shifted. Even if people were there, wouldn’t we be too far away to hear them? Unless they were calling to us?

  She’d started walking, her fists clenched at her sides.

  “No, hang on a minute.” I scampered down the hill after her. “Look, we need to get out of here. I don’t hear anyone, it has to be some kind of pressure release or gas leak. We need to just leave this and move on.”

  She started walking faster. “No, I heard them talking. They were talking about the two girls on the hill—they already saw us.”

  I shuddered. I didn’t like this at all, something inside of me was telling me to turn and leave Vale as fast as I could. My head was pounding, the shots of pain wrapping around my temples and exploding above my eyes. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes doing the right thing isn’t easy.”

  I shuffled after her, hesitating down the final, steepest part of the hill. She was wrong: this was almost too easy. We’d survived the initial bombing by being out of range and—somehow—made it through the second. Now we were just going to stroll on into Vale, looking for survivors who, just a few short years before, would have burned us at the stake in a modern day witch hunt?

  The rubble from the town was blasting outward, almost like it was pointing to us as we approached the furthest edge of town. This close, the destruction was more severe than it had seemed from the hillside. Buildings were flattened, concrete had crumbled into dust; it seemed like just heaps and heaps of debris were strewn as far as I could see. Shingles, shattered glass, beams of both steel and wood and, on occasion, there would be something more personal. A steering wheel. The twisted, mangled remains of a child’s bicycle.

  I swallowed hard. People died here. Even after the Division, Vale had a decent sized population—many of them children and families of displaced capital workers. Now they were all gone.

  “Do you see that?” Soleil headed further into the wreckage, her index finger stretched out to point at something. Over here, hurry.”

  “This is a bad idea.” I trudged behind her. I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, looking for some kind of weapon I could use in a pinch. There was nothing. All the rocks and debris were too small or too corroded to be of any use.

  “Why? What’s so bad about trying to help people?”

  “I-I don’t know.” I shrugged and then said, “I can’t explain it, it’s just something I feel.”

  “That you feel?” She snorted with laughter. “Please, Wren, that’s not your gift. You can move things with your mind and with your hand. We don’t have anything to worry about, since you can just shove everything out of our way.”

  I wanted to slap her. “That’s not how this works.”

  But she was ignoring me. Her attention was focused on four concrete steps, still erect in an ocean of rubble and chaos. She pointed at the top of the stairs. “What is that?”

  I leaned closer to get a better look. In all honesty, what was there looked like a shadow. It was dark and seemed to hover over the stairs, kind of like it was shimmering in mid-movement. But, that was ridiculous. It wasn’t moving.

  I glanced up at the sky. The sun was partially covered over with clouds and a haze no doubt caused by the explosion—but it was in front of me, unobstructed and visible to me. From the front.

  My shadow should have flowed behind me, not in front of me.

  I looked back at the stairs. The shadow was clearly in a pattern on the stairs: two long appendages leading up to the trunk. “Shit. Shit, I know what this is.”

  Soleil swallowed hard. Something in her eyes had changed, almost like realization finally set in in the space between her ears. “What is it?”

  “It’s an atomic shadow.” I dropped my voice low and took several, shuffling steps backwards. “I learned about it in history class: a person is standing there when the bomb hits. Their body is vaporized but for that instant, it blocks the thermal radiation. Everything around it gets bleached out, but where that person or animal or object was—that shield from the rays—is left untouched. It’s like taking a picture off a wall where it’s hung for a hundred years. The wallpaper beneath the still bright, but around the frame it has faded.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath and looked past my sister. The shadows were everywhere. Another form higher up on the steps, an outline of man wearing a derby hat imprinted on a crumbling brick wall. Why were these people even here? The first bomb had gone off, what, less than an hour ago. Why didn’t they leave?

  “Wren.” Soleil clamped her mouth shut almost as soon as she spoke, her jaw twitching under the pressure. After a moment, she said, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive. It works like sunscreen: block your skin, no burn. Leave it unblocked, you risk burns and cancer and all that shit. You can tell they’re people, I mean, look at this one.” I turned back to point at the derby topped shadow.

  It was gone.

  I skittered to the side, craning my neck to get a better view of the wall. It was impossible—I’d seen it. It was there, the outline of a broad shouldered man in a derby, he’d been there. He’d died there: his atomic shadow was on that wall. Shadows of the dead don’t move.

  But this one did.

  I snapped back to yell at my sister—to tell her we needed to get as far away from here as possible—and my eyes focused on the stairs. There was the broad shoulders, the narrow waist; the derby hat on his head. Somehow, he’d moved from the wall to the stairs.

  My mind couldn’t accept it. I jerked
around, scanning the brick wall and looking from one side of the street to the other. There was no one there, no one who could cast a shadow and lead it from wall to step.

  I grabbed Soleil by the arm, digging my fingertips into her flesh. “Can you feel them?”

  “Who?”

  “Anyone. Alive, dead; are there people left in Vale?”

  Her face filled with panic. It was in the widening of her eyes, of the severe arch in her eyebrow and a quiver in her lower lip. “I can feel them all.”

  “How many?” I kept my eyes locked on the shadow. “Are they headed this way?”

  “They’re all here.” She clutched at my arm, grabbing at me like she was rooting herself to life itself. “They’re all still here.”

  Shit.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.” I started walking backwards, pulling her with me. “I don’t care where we end up, Soleil, but we need to be as far away from Vale as we can. Go. Now.”

  She didn’t respond. I could hear her muttering, her eyelids fluttered as she started rambling off some kind of protection spell. All around us, the shadows were drifting in and out of focus, almost like they hadn’t quite figured out how to wholly materialize. It reminded me of lightening in the distance: brilliant at first, but rapidly fading into a memory.

  I latched on to Soleil’s arm and jerked her off the narrow side street. We needed open space. The hillside we’d slid down loomed ahead of us and, if we could just stay on track, we could make it. We had to make it.

  My sister started slowing down.

  “No, Soliel,” I pulled on her harder, “no, kiddo, we have to keep going. We have to get out of here.”

  Her eyes widened, her skin paling to an almost ashen color. “They’re here.”

  “I know, you said. They’re all still here.”

  She stopped. Just like that, stopped; her feet practically taking root in the ground. “Pa and Mom. They’re here.”