by Jenny Moyer
In this moment, I’m glad they didn’t commission me a Dodger. I’m yearning for a weapon, so I can attack the next Strider I see.
“Move, Dodger!” Reuder commands, looking back at Dram.
But Dram holds his ground, boots planted wide against the rising cordon wind. He watches my face.
“Winn,” I say, thinking of the child we protected in the cordons. He nods, like he expected my response, and jogs away from the Dodgers, passing ahead of them toward the Brunts.
“Stay with your glenting squad!” Reuder shouts.
Dram slings his rifle over his shoulder and lifts the boy from the man’s arms. One of the man’s appendages is bent at an odd angle, into a sort of zigzag shape that looks like it could’ve been someone’s idea of a cruel joke. I see now that he’s injured—lifting the boy must’ve opened his wound.
“You can’t save them,” Reuder says. “Congress made him a Brunt!”
“Flash Congress,” Dram says. He drapes his armored vest over the child.
Reuder shakes his head. “Don’t do this, Berrends. You’re young and strong—you might actually have a chance. But not if they make you a Brunt.”
“You know who I am?”
“Everyone knows who you are. There are Striders just waiting for a chance to punish you. Don’t give them a reason.”
“Already met them,” Dram mutters.
“Maybe since you weren’t Tempered, you didn’t get a healthy dose of fear at processing,” Reuder says.
“Did you lose your humanity when you lost your hands, or just your balls?”
Reuder shakes his head. “You’ve been out here one day. Show me how brave you are after a week.”
“I never said I wasn’t scared,” Dram says.
“We don’t protect them; we protect the Miners!”
“We can do both.” Dram hoists the child onto his back.
“Are you insane?” The Dodger nearest him lurches away. “That Brunt’s tagged with a transmitter. You’ll draw the creatures right on top of us!”
Dram spears him with a look and walks a few meters away.
“You just put a target on your back,” Reuder calls, “and I’m not talking about the kid.”
* * *
They may have commissioned me a Miner, but I will always be a warrior first when it comes to Dram, and I don’t need a Dodger’s rifle to defend him.
I’ve worked my way to the front of the squad, up beside the Dodgers. Reuder glances at me and just shakes his head. I return my focus to the land and air around Dram and the unconscious child he’s shouldering. He keeps pace halfway between the Brunts and the rest of our squad, a distance deemed an acceptable risk by the others. They haven’t forgotten that Dram’s holding a tagged Brunt.
Neither have I.
I’m not the only one watching Dram’s back. Roran walks at his side in defiance of Reuder’s orders. He doesn’t lift his eyes from the ground.
We near the corral tower, and I begin to breathe easier. I push back my headpiece with a sigh. Dram and Roran have theirs off, and their conversation carries.
“You’re angry. I get that,” Dram says, slinging a look at Roran. “You want to blame Orion for this, I can’t stop you. But know that you were two glass pendants away from being one of them.” Dram thrusts his finger in the direction of the Brunts.
“Talk to me about it when they cut off your hands,” Roran says.
“You close yourself off because you’ve lost everyone. Believe me, I understand. But there is a shortage of people left in this world who care about you, Roran. Be careful who you push away.”
“You understand? You’re a Subpar—one of the fortunate ones. The Congress doesn’t Temper you!”
“You know what’s unfair?” Dram asks. “Being born in the flashfall. Wearing biotech that warns you every day that you’re in danger and not being able to do a glenting thing about it!” Dram grips Roran’s chest plate and drags him forward. “I’m dying,” he says, under his breath.
His words crash into me, hollowing my chest. I’m the one who told him about the Radbands, but I’ve never heard him say it. The simple truth I can’t bear to face.
Dram looks at me, but I don’t meet his eyes. I’m not ready to acknowledge the certainty of his words. To myself, maybe. But not to him.
He walks ahead with Roran, and I follow, close enough to hear his soft words. “I need to know you’ll look out for Orion,” he murmurs. “When I … when I can’t.” Roran looks at Dram’s Radband glowing dark orange.
“Will you?” Dram asks.
Roran nods.
“Then start now. You can hold on to your anger or you can hold on to someone—but not both at the same time. Not very well.”
* * *
Roran mutters beneath his breath, and I glance up toward his bunk, where he’s struggling to work a comb through his snarled hair.
“Hey.”
“Go away, Scout.”
“Will you let me help you?” He glares at me, but there are tears in his eyes. I climb to his bunk and tuck the comb into the curve of the fingerlike ends of his appendage. His right appendage is equipped with pulleys that can be adjusted to move the fingers. I tighten them until they curl around the comb, then guide it to his head. The comb falls the first two times, so on the next attempt, I use my own hand to keep it in place, and together we draw it through his hair.
It’s awkward. Me, helping an adolescent boy do something that only a child usually needs help with. And with every pass through his hair, there’s an awareness that this is at least partially my fault. But he doesn’t pull away.
After a few minutes, I wave my empty hands before him, to show him he’s doing it on his own. A look crosses his face. Not relief—the circumstances are too grim for that—more like an awareness that he can adapt, that he’s taken a step closer to being the person he was before. Still, there is one thing he can’t do.
“What about this?” I touch the talisman discarded at his side. He nods stiffly.
I lift the twig. The white flowers he conjured last have long since wilted and torn free. I twist his hair around it, the way I’ve seen Dram do.
“Is there a special way I should do this?” I’m crossing into the sacred, the rituals the Conjies do, but don’t speak of.
“We usually … conjure it … into our hair,” he says softly. It cost him something to say the word. Conjure.
I wind strands of his straight brown hair around the twig, tying them in tiny knots.
“I’m sorry about your pendants,” he says.
“You were right—I don’t need them to remember my mom and Wes. It was just … a way for me to feel that they were still close somehow. Even though they’re not.”
“We believe they are.” He looks at me, brown eyes solemn. “We are elemental, and the elements are everywhere. Matter and energy change—they don’t cease to exist.”
Now I understand the depth of his grief. He is suffering more than the loss of his limbs and his ability to conjure. In a single moment, the Congress effectively cut him off from his mother and father, and everyone who came before him. His heritage. The elemental.
“Don’t cry,” he mumbles.
I turn my head and swipe my hand across my eyes. “If there’s a way to restore you,” I whisper fiercely, “I’ll find it.”
He holds my gaze a moment, then nods. With one point of his appendage, he drags a chipped piece of cirium closer. It’s a thin shard of metal about the size of my thumbnail. It’s not like the ore I mined; this is perfectly smooth, refined. I can’t imagine how hard he hit his stump against something to break this off.
“For a talisman,” he says. “So you don’t forget your vow.”
“I’m not a Conjuror.”
“You made a promise like one.”
THIRTEEN
7.1 km from flash curtain
I STAGGER FROM the barracks and blink owlishly at the washed-out sky.
“We live another day,” Dram says. H
e shoves his face shield up on his forehead, making his brown hair stick up in spikes.
“You sound surprised,” I say, pulling my own headpiece on.
“Nah, just disappointed,” he says. “I’m exhausted. Eternal sleep would have been nice.” He grins at me, and I feel lighter somehow, even though I’m dragging beneath the weight of my gear.
I thrust my sifter through my belt. “Perhaps tomorrow.” We joke about it, because fear weighs on us more than our armor and cirium suits. When you don’t have a choice about facing death, you make it less of a reaper, more of a punch line.
A few Striders patrol the fence. They wear the seal of Alara on their sleeves like us, but their external dosimeters glow yellow, and they throw glances toward the cordon like they’re expecting the flash curtain to come creeping into the camp. Between them, a woman sags on her feet, one of her appendages dangling. I search her features to see if she’s one of the Conjies I know.
“Orion,” Dram says, his voice low, “time to quit blaming yourself for the Mods.”
I drag my attention from the woman and join the rest of our squad at the turnstile. I let go of my regret, because if I don’t get hold of my focus, I’m going to lead us somewhere that gives Dram the eternal rest he’s been craving.
I sigh, loud enough that Dram turns to look at me.
“This is all temporary, Rye,” he says.
“Yes, because we’re likely to die at any moment,” I mutter.
He grins. We left Outpost Five, but we haven’t lost our Subpar humor.
* * *
We’ve been gone half the day, and stand regrouping after a flash vulture attack, when Reuder stops to pull some sort of viewing device from his pack. He holds it to his face shield and peers out over the cordon.
“Strays,” he calls. “Fifty meters, southwest. A pack.”
Our squad moves into defensive positions as three of the creatures approach.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Cordon dogs,” Reuder says. “The Congress trained dogs to scent flash dust, and these are the ones that survived and adapted. But they’re feral. Deadly.” He lifts his weapon.
“Wait,” Dram commands, sighting down his rifle. He stares down the nearest dog, finger hovering over the trigger. The stray—a wiry, short-haired thing, more bone than beast, maintains its distance, trotting back and forth, close enough for me to count its ribs.
“Shoot it!” Reuder growls.
Dram lowers his rifle and hands it to me. “Keep it in your sights, Rye.” He stoops and grabs a flash vulture carcass, holding it out to his side, knife tucked in his other hand.
“You’re insane, Berrends!” Reuder calls.
“So you’ve said.” He walks toward the dog, slowly, broken vulture carcass held like a flag of surrender. The dog bares its teeth, growls low and deep. Dram says something to it. I’m too far to hear him, but I have no problem hearing the stray’s snarling response. I’ve got the thing’s head in my crosshairs, fingertip brushing the trigger. Dram, you are insane, I think.
He slowly lowers his feathered offering to the ground and backs away, eyes trained on the snarling dog. One step, two … the dog follows, like he’s through playing and ready to show Dram he prefers the taste of human.
I take a focused breath, ready to exhale and squeeze the trigger. Another dog whines.
Four steps, five … Dram’s within reach. The dog lowers its head and sniffs the carcass. It occurs to me that it’s likely never tasted flash vulture. Looking at it more closely, I’m guessing it eats mostly scrub brush, or maybe cordon rats—though it’s probably in as much danger from those as we are.
The dog seizes the carcass, all the while locking gazes with Dram. They’re still having a conversation—one with their bodies this time. The dog turns and lopes back to its comrades, black feathers poking from its jaws. Dram turns, grinning like he’s had two mugs of outpost ale.
“Well, that’s glenting brilliant,” Reuder grumbles. “Now they’ll never leave us alone.”
“That’s the idea,” Dram answers. He gathers two more vulture bodies and hangs them so they dangle from his belt. “What do you think they’ve been eating out here? Scrub brush? They know how to kill the damned rats.” He takes his gun from me and loops it over his shoulder. “We need them.”
“We cut the wings off first,” I say, hiding my smile as I stoop to retrieve a carcass.
“What for?” Kara asks.
“Armor,” I say, sawing the cartilage with my blade.
“Fire,” Reuder curses. “You’re both glenting mad.”
* * *
The dogs make another appearance less than an hour later, keeping their distance so we just see them loping along behind us. There are five now. Apparently, Dram’s new friend invited a couple more to the flash vulture party.
Reuder looks back and curses. I’ve decided that for every five words, Reuder uses an equal number of curses. Or maybe Dram and I just bring that out in him.
The lead dog—Dram has taken to calling him Soma—breaks from the pack, treading steadily closer as the cordon winds rise and the whitish light yields to gray.
“I’ll catch up,” Dram announces. He pulls a—wingless—carcass from his belt and turns toward Soma. I can’t catch the words he calls to the dog, but whatever he says brings the animal loping. It’s hesitant, long legs crossing forward and back, forward and back, each time a little closer. Dram holds his ground, arms relaxed at his side.
Soma—I still think of it as Stray Vicious Dog—snarls and snaps its jaws. Reuder lifts his rifle. I’m wishing Dram had his knife in his free hand. The dog lowers its head, and its lips peel back, showing its teeth. Dram waits. Stray Vicious Dog whines suddenly, and it sounds like a question.
Dram drops the carcass. He doesn’t back away.
Soma barks. Whines. Steps forward. Again.
And Dram calls him that name again and again. I recognize it as a Conjie word, but I don’t know what it means.
“Brave,” Reuder says, like he’s reading my mind. “It means ‘brave one.’” And I know, now, where I’ve heard it. In the lines outside the processing tents, as women held hands for the last time. And before that, when children hunkered in burning particle snow to evade pulse trackers.
Soma. My eyes fill with unexpected tears. Dram and his Conjie heart.
The buzzer sounds. The dogs whip their heads up, and Soma snatches the bird and lopes away. Dram jogs to catch up to us, and he reminds me of that dog, wiry and strong, exhausted but unbroken. Brave.
“Soma,” I say, when he’s worked his way to the edge of my group. “I like it.”
Dram smiles. “Wait till those glenting rats come at us,” he says. “Then you’re going to love it.”
FOURTEEN
7.2 km from flash curtain
CONGRESS NAMED THIS the pricking tent, as if we need a reminder of what happens here. We line up according to commissioning status and await our reward for the day’s work.
One cc of Dad’s cure. Enough to protect us for one day. I watch the needles plunging into arms and go through every new curse word I learned from Reuder. Dram and I nearly died to get this to our people, but not like this. Never like this. The cure for radiation poisoning was supposed to set everyone free, not act as grease for the Congress’s flash dust machine.
I study the squad groupings, thinking how clever the Congress was to alienate us from one another by infusing this system of hierarchy. Delvers at the top—I’m still uncertain what they do, as we only ever see them here—then Miners, Dodgers, and Brunts way down at the bottom. Even I have started to view Brunts as expendable—horrifying as it is—but five days collecting their remains has proven it so. The thought wedges in my chest, and I’m glad—glad I can still feel something, even if it’s shame. I make myself look at each one of their faces, and remind myself they are human beings with the same desperate hopes I have.
Before I fully realize it, I’ve stepped out of line, the Miners around me
shooting me curious glances. I walk past the Dodgers, to the first Brunt in line. The Brunt, a man with hair just turning to gray, blinks at me like I’m an apparition. I wonder how long it’s been since someone looked in his eyes.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
He hesitates, darting a glance at the Striders. “Michael.”
“I’m Orion.”
“I know who you are, Subpar.” He peels back the frayed hem of his sleeve. An indicator flashes burnt-orange.
A Radband. “You were a caver?”
“Outpost Four.” He turns his wrist, and I see something etched into the black biotech of his band. Two slanting lines. My breath catches. “Not much you can do for us from back here,” he says softly, tugging his sleeve back down. His gaze shifts to something over my shoulder. “Better return to your squad now, Scout.”
I hear the Strider approach behind me, armor buzzing. I let my gaze slide past Michael to the other Brunts trying to stay on their feet.
“Did you forget your place, Miner?” the Strider calls. A woman’s voice. I turn with surprise. I didn’t know the Congress commissioned female Striders.
“I know my place,” I answer, too loudly. The ghost of a smile twitches Michael’s lips. I meet the Strider’s eyes, but my words are for him. “I know my place.”
* * *
There is something off about one of the Miners in my squad. My scout senses break past my exhaustion, nagging at me like a child tugging on my sleeve. She’s not a Conjuror, or I’d sense the cirium in her Tempered limbs. No Radband pushes up the sleeve over her left wrist, so she’s not a Subpar. A Natural wouldn’t survive these Radlevels without a headpiece—and she rarely wears hers.
Reuder assigned us as partners, and we’re on our knees, sifting the sand, wedged close together with Dram and the other Dodgers forming a defensive ring around us. I sit back on my heels, studying her as she drags her sifter through the sand.
“It’s usually best to ask,” she says. “Otherwise, you’re only guessing at answers.”
“What?” I ask.
She pulls back her sleeve. Blue symbols and numbers glow beneath the skin on the inside of her forearm. A Gem.