Flashtide

by Jenny Moyer

  Tingling pain radiates along my nerves, and I fight him, twisting in his grasp. The spike cuts deeper. Tears fill my eyes. Horror clenches my gut. It won’t be the flashtide or a termit that claims me. It might be the person I trust most in the world.

  “You were my marker,” I gasp. “In Outpost Five.” There’s a fervor in his eyes that terrifies me, so I squeeze my eyes shut and invoke the memories of the Dram I know. “You had a sister. Lenore.”

  The spike stills against my throat.

  “You wear her ashes, and your mother’s—in the pendants around your neck.”

  “Stop,” he says.

  “You like outpost ale. And mountains. You love being a Conjie, even though you’re a Subpar.”

  “Shut up!” he yells.

  “You wore a talisman in your hair, for me!” He presses the spike, and I gasp, struggling against his hold. The poison sears through me.

  Metal hinges screech, and everyone looks up at the doors opening above us. I use the distraction, leveraging my weight and slamming my head against Dram’s face. He staggers back, clutching his nose, and sinks to the ground.

  “You taught me that move, you glenting skant.” I swipe his spear off the ground, twirl it in my hand, and point it at his throat. I lean down and snatch the remaining tails from him. “This—” I hold the barbs up so everyone can see. I am shaking, the venom tripping up my nerves, but I raise my voice. “This is not an escape. The only escape is out there! If you’re going to die, do it trying to live!” I drop them. I can’t even hold my arm up anymore, but I have just enough strength to crunch them under my boot. I taste blood and swipe my hand beneath my nose. I can already feel my cheek swelling from Dram’s sloppy right hook. He rolls onto his side and spits blood onto the ground. I can’t believe we’ve done this to each other.

  “Anyone who lets this Subpar put more of this poison in his veins answers to me.” I stalk toward the woman wearing my Delver’s suit and point the spear in her face. “I’m a Delver with Fortune. Give me back my badge.” She stares at me, wide-eyed, then hurriedly lifts it over her head.

  Above us, the metal doors open, and the flashfall steals into the Tomb in shades of luminescent green. Particles slip into the air, pricking my lungs with a tease of danger.

  “Strider!” a voice shouts.

  The soldier descends into the Tomb. He wears his helmet and visor lowered, his suit charged so high it gives off a crackling sound. The Brunts step away as he nears.

  “Keep your distance, and everyone lives,” he says. “I’ve come for the Delver.”

  I know that voice. Greash.

  He stops before me, suit humming. “You’re alive.”

  “If you’re here because of my noncompliance—”

  “I’m here because I thought they might kill you.” He takes in my Brunt’s rags and bleeding face. “I see I was half right.” His head shifts to where Dram is crouched, blood dripping down his chin. “Did you see what you needed to see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you allow me to escort you back to Fortune?” he asks. “Or do we need to see how your spear holds up against my flash rifle?” I look down and see that I’m still holding it raised in a double-handed grip.

  I hand Dram’s spear to Wall Man. I don’t trust Dram not to try to stab me with it. “Give it to him when I’m gone.”

  “Whenever you’re ready, Subpar,” Greash mutters. Despite his bland tone, I can tell he’s on edge. Armed and electrified as he is, he’s still outnumbered, and these people are half mad and desperate, their bloodlust stirred by my fight with Dram.

  He directs me up the stairs, guarding my back as we wade through the Brunts. We emerge into the cordon, and the doors lower behind us. I stagger a few paces and throw up in the sand. He doesn’t say anything, but I hear him mute the charge on his suit as I wipe a shaking hand over my mouth.

  “We need to go,” he says. “We’re exposed out here.”

  I feel the particles, the mercifully low Radlevels. I’m surprised I can still feel gratitude for something like a green indicator flag.

  He hauls me to my feet, and I flinch away from his touch. An unnatural panic flutters in my chest, heavy as a body knocking me down. Greash releases me immediately. I can’t see his eyes through his face shield, but I know he’s scrutinizing my face.

  “So, I take it Dram hurt you down there.”

  “Hurt is not a big enough word,” I murmur.

  He presses a code into his screencom and guides me through the turnstile. “You shouldn’t have gone in there.”

  I want to shout, to rail at him. Of course, of course I know that now. But all the fight has seeped out of me. Everything I had left was used defending myself against Dram. I lurch to the side and heave again.

  “Were you hit in the head?” Greash asks. “You might have a concussion.”

  “Toxin,” I mutter. “From a cordon rat.”

  “What?” He lifts his face shield and studies my eyes.

  “Not enough to kill me,” I murmur. Blood patters on the sand at my feet, and he mutters under his breath, tearing the rags apart to see my arm wound.

  “Spear?” he asks. I can only nod. He draws a tube from one of his pockets and opens it with his teeth. “This first part burns like a skant.” He rubs the disinfectant over the gash, and I groan behind my teeth. He pushes the edges of the wound together with one hand and spreads the liquid over it. “Liquid stitches,” he says.

  “Thank you,” I murmur. “For this, and…” I glance toward the Tomb.

  “You can thank me by promising to never do that again.” We reach the door to Fortune and he waits as the tech reads my badge. “That—Brunt—isn’t Dram anymore, Orion. He’s not worth giving your life for. Not now.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “Subpars.” The door opens, but I don’t step through. “When there’s a cave-in, we don’t protect ourselves first. We brace our axes over the head of the caver next to us.” I lift my hand, try to bend my swollen, bloody knuckles. “I’ve done that since I was nine. That instinct we develop doesn’t wear out over time. It grows stronger.”

  “If that’s true, then why are you crying?”

  “I didn’t say it was easy.”

  I step inside, and the bolts slide home. The night-dim lights cast shadows over me where I shudder, safe behind Fortune’s coded entrance. I’ve never felt more exposed.

  I ache in too many places to count, though I know my senses are dulled and I’m not yet feeling the full effects of my brawl with Dram. The remnants of the venom pulse through me in a way that makes my head feel like it’s hovering above my body.

  The stink of the Tomb permeates my skin, my hair. I try to breathe past the lump in my throat. Slowly, my fingers shaking, I reach up and trace the cut on my throat.

  “You want a taste of this poison, Brunt?”

  Dram.

  “I’ll kill you!”

  He’d snarled the words, spit the threat at me like an animal. And then he’d really tried to do it.

  My throat works as I struggle to hold back tears; my shoulders shake with silent sobs. I slide down the door and fold in on myself, like I can shut out the memories of the past hours. I tear the Brunt’s rags off and sit shivering. But I can’t pull away what happened.

  I could open this door and walk toward the flash curtain, and it would all be over. The pain. The loss. A few dozen meters for the flashfall to burn away every terrible choice I’ve made. Every failure.

  Shame, swept away in ash and ember.

  It would all just fade.

  Memories from the Tomb rise up, until it’s all I see, all I hear. I press my hand to the door. A soft chime, the click of the bolt, the door opens. I stop at the threshold.

  The stories about the Marker and the Scout can’t end like this.

  Dram couldn’t shield me from the horrors of the Overburden. When the rocks fell, he wasn’t able to keep his axe braced above me
, and I feel the pain of every impact.

  But I’ve still got my axe wedged above him. I’m damaged, bleeding, but I’m not letting go.

  Whatever was taken from me down in that pit, I’m still a Subpar.

  And we fight to save the people beside us.

  TWENTY-TWO

  7.2 km from flash curtain

  I MAKE MY way to the baths through the silent compound. When I turn the taps and lift my face to the spray, there is no one to hear my deep sigh, nor the things I murmur aloud into the steam. I touch my scars, the flash bat bites on my thigh and my arm, where just months ago, down nine, Dram drew the venom from my body. My memories paint a canvas of images: his eyes, green from the effects of the venom, lips cracked, a bat jaw clamped over his arm.

  I dry off and dress in a clean Delver’s suit. I stuff a pack with rations and water and my sharpest knife. My hands still tremble, and my thoughts drag a few steps behind, but my legs are steady when I stand on the 5 etched into the floor of the Delvers’ quadrants. It’s crossed out with an X, an old caver’s mark that means “unsafe passage—do not cross.” According to Meredith, this tunnel is overrun with creatures; the outpost it once serviced is now inaccessible. I wedge my boot into the port door and force it open. It’s not the first time I’ve pushed past the Congress’s boundaries.

  I climb into the pod and strap in, smoothing away layers of dust. The compartment allows a Delver to sit, because it moves horizontally, farther and faster than any of the other ports. I press my Delver’s chain to a sensor, and the port hums to life. The pod lights flicker and die. I sit for a moment in the pitch-black capsule.

  What is the most important thing we bring into the caves?

  I click on my headlamp and release the lever. The pod shimmies along the shaft. It creaks and groans like it’s protesting my unsanctioned Delver run.

  And if our light fails?

  The darkest places aren’t down tunnels, or in cordons absent of moonlight and stars. They’re inside us.

  But then, so is the light.

  My decision sparks inside me, a glimmer that grows as the pod skims above the track toward Outpost Five.

  I’m not going to leave Dram in the dark.

  I refuse to leave any of them to the dark.

  * * *

  Meredith was right about the termits. Evidence of them fills the passageway. As I move along the tunnel, I watch them through my goggles, though I think the moles did more damage than anything else down here. The pod won’t make it all the way to Outpost Five—Meredith wasn’t lying about that. The moles have cut off the passage with their own conjured pathways.

  I check the map I found in the archives of the Grand Hall. I didn’t want to risk using a screencom that could be tracked by Congress. I study the tunnel markings and try to find my bearings. I’m close, but I can’t get as far as Outpost Five. There’s no getting past this barrier of rock.

  Iron rungs protrude alongside conjured steps that lead up from the tunnel. I grasp them and pull myself up through an old auger shaft. I work to turn the hatch’s rusted crank handle, pushing past my exhaustion. On the other side of this barrier lies Cordon Five.

  The glass cordon where I left my friends.

  A place of flashbursts and broken promises.

  * * *

  I move quickly, leaning forward as my feet crunch over the glass crust. A narrow trench winds through the cordon, and I stay to the side of it, my only possible refuge. The sulfur clouds thicken around me, and I tug my goggles on, tighten my neck cloth over my nose and mouth, and push through the haze.

  Lizards scurry over the scorched sand, chasing odd yellow insects and spiders. I watch them, hoping that the instincts that have preserved them will help me, too. Suddenly, they dart into crevices.

  I dive into the trench after them, grasping hold of roots and rocks as I slide down deep. The roar of the flashburst echoes around me, and I clap my hands over my ears. Stone presses my cheek where I’ve wedged myself into a cleft of rock.

  “I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive,” I shout, to cover the sounds of the burst, and to cover the fear raging within me. The heat robs me of breath, and I press into the stone, willing it to be shield enough. Sweat drips into my mouth, and I realize I’m yelling again, roaring back at the flash curtain.

  Silence. Heavy. Oppressive as the heat.

  I can hear every one of my breaths, and I count them, telling myself that I am still alive. A sudden, irrational fear of the dark seizes me. I crack a glow stick and stare at its green light. I’m so disoriented, I can’t tell which way to climb. Maybe the curtain releases something—some kind of particles—when it bursts like that. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t slept since I fled the Overburden.

  I rest my cheek against the stone and clutch my light. This will not be my tomb. I’m not surrendering to the darkness.

  “I’m alive.” I say it until it sounds like a song. I sing it to my friends the lizards, and whatever else might be hiding in the shadows. We are allies, fighting the beast that is the flash curtain.

  A spider inches toward me. Black, with bright yellow markings. Dram and I would have avoided it down the tunnels, but I can barely lift my head.

  “We are allies,” I murmur.

  I set the light stick on the stone between us and sleep.

  TWENTY-THREE

  30.2 km from flash curtain

  OUTPOST FIVE IS a husk of its former self. I walk the barren, ash-ridden patch of land, winding past scorched pathways peppered with smashed, burned-out cottages. The imprint of the lodge still marks the ground, and axes are scattered in the dirt where the Rig once housed the cavers’ gear. Timber poles poke up from the ground at odd angles, like bones picked clean. Congress destroyed the only thing standing between the outpost and the burnt sands, offering the outpost up like a sacrifice to a hungry, merciless god.

  And the curtain consumed it.

  Something catches my toe, and I stumble. I look down at the rough-edged metal protruding from the sand. Realization steals over me, followed by a sort of eerie reverence. I smear the dirt away with my boot, but I already know what I’m standing on. I walked beneath this sign on my way to the tunnels nearly every day of my life in this outpost.

  “We are the fortunate ones,” I murmur, staring down at the words of our Subpar motto.

  I’ve never been down the tunnels without Mom’s axe. Maybe I’m more superstitious than I ever realized, because suddenly I’m desperate to find it, wasting precious minutes searching the rubble for a piece of gear that’s just like all the rest I’m stepping over.

  Only it’s not like the rest. My axe—Mom’s axe—has a handle indented from the press of both our hands. A handle that should’ve been replaced multiple times by now, but that I held on to—literally—because it was the only way I could still feel the curve of her hand against mine. Wood groans as I ease a fallen board aside and slip inside the leaning remnants of the Rig. Hooks still line walls covered with climbing rope and harnesses, standing by for cavers who will never come. I free a headlamp and click it on, searching the shadowed husk of the building for the one thing I need.

  Part of the roof has collapsed, and steel rebar juts free like the shattered ribs of a beast. What I need is in its belly. I straddle a beam and wriggle past debris. The way the building’s shifted, the hooks hang at an angle. I grasp them like the rungs of a ladder, pulling myself to the one I want. Suddenly I see it, hanging on Dram’s hook. I exchanged it for his when I fled the outpost months ago.

  Subpars never mined the cirium that lined the basin of the Sky. Our secret memorial was the one place we refused to mine, and it’s that ore I need now to guide me to the tomb buried beneath the rubble, or the risks we’ve taken will be for nothing.

  I drop to my knees beside the rock and debris. Congress detonated flash bombs inside the Range, so that parts of it have been reduced to sand. The Sky is beneath me, somewhere in this heap of stone that once formed tunnel six. I stretch forward, bits of st
one digging into my chest. I lie prone, heart and palms pressed to the earth, willing myself to feel, to hear the song of the cirium deep inside.

  “Help me, Mom,” I whisper. I picture her telling me I did this as a child—a girl who loved the Range because I didn’t yet understand the tunnels.

  Use it to find a way out, Orion.

  I imagine the last time I went to the Sky—with Dram and Lenore and Reeves. Memories flood my mind so powerfully, I can feel the cool blue water holding me buoyant. Then Dram held me, and for the first time I knew it meant more than just a marker assisting his scout. We wrote our names on the wall, and deep inside I made a promise to every Subpar. I’ll find the way out.

  Now Len and Reeves are gone, their lives sacrificed to give us a chance. And Dram … My chest tightens so hard I can’t breathe. I shut out the image of his Radband, with its indicator the color of dried blood.

  You’re dying, Orion. All of us are.

  Clouds shift and the flashfall glares over me in shades of pink and aquamarine. It licks my skin in ripples of heat, like a carnivore testing my taste. I roll onto my back and raise my sleeve, ready to see exactly how much of me the curtain has consumed. I understand now why Dram covered his Radband. It’s terrifying, watching a color countdown to your own death.

  I just crossed the cordons for the second time in my life. There is a cost.

  Amber.

  A soft cry escapes my lips, and it sounds too loud for this deserted outpost. My indicator is the shade when yellow ends and orange begins. And the Congress manipulated our bands, so I’m really at …

  Red.

  “Flash me.” I stare at the light until my eyes sting. I can’t bear to have it attached to me—to die with this shackle, marked as the Congress’s slave. I grasp my double-bladed knife and wedge it between my skin and the band—the space created when Dad removed it. The skin is so scarred beneath, I don’t even feel the blade as I pry at the sensors connecting the biotech to my wrist. Blood streams, but the wounds are shallow—just the few places the biotech had begun to adhere. My hand shakes as I work the knife, scraping against metal and skin and whatever else was used to mark me as an outpost miner. I won’t be bound another moment by another of the Congress’s lies—a tool they used to secure our compliance.