Flashtide

by Jenny Moyer

  In one of the rare moments we’re left alone, Dram shows me his new scar from the termit bite. I show him the flames I can make dance in my palms. It’s good to see him smile again.

  We spend the day talking about all the ways my abilities could’ve helped us down nine. I don’t tell him what I’ve come to believe—that without all we went through in the tunnels and cordons, I might not have discovered the fire within me. I think maybe Dad was right. What breaks us can also make us stronger.

  Finally, Jameson returns to inform us that we’re ready. Or, more accurately, that we’re out of time. He’s pensive, his demeanor gruff. “Techs have tracked an approaching solar storm. They’re concerned its effects could fry the transmitters, that we’ll lose the passage.”

  My stomach flutters like I’m falling. “I’m not ready.”

  His features tighten. I know him well enough now to recognize when he’s trying to rein in his emotions. He looks away, running his hand over the instrument panel. “You are capable of this, Orion. I wouldn’t send you if I didn’t believe that.”

  “What will happen to me when this is over? If I succeed and deliver the SAMM, am I still the Congress’s Ghost?”

  He doesn’t say anything, and I have my answer.

  “There’s nothing I can do that will result in your freedom,” he says. His stark hopelessness slams into me.

  “I can’t spend the rest of my life in the Box.”

  “I know. So when you find a way out—take it.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  7.2 km from flash curtain

  I DON’T HAVE to look very far to find my way out.

  Mom’s plan sits in a heap in the middle of my cirium prison.

  What I told Jameson was true: I can’t spend my days locked inside a cell. I didn’t escape the caves and cordons just to end up buried alive beneath them.

  Ideally, I’d complete my mission, demolish the flash curtain, save everyone I care about, and then turn my attention to my personal escape options. But there’s one factor preventing this.

  Dram sits across from me in the cell, breaking Protocol. He watches me absorb the news. He even stole it from the tech room in order to show me: a thirty-centimeter, reinforced-cirium, electrified circle of horror. My new Forger’s collar.

  They’ve modified the sensors. This one will attach and adhere with biotech, like our Radbands. If I try to remove it, it will literally be the last thing I do.

  “When?” I ask.

  “As soon as you return in the Luna.”

  Tears splash my hands, where I clutch the glenting thing.

  He pulls the tech from my grasp and sets it behind him, then he clasps my hands, right over the tears. “You have to go. Before night-dim, before flashtide.”

  “If I go now, who will deliver the SAMM?”

  “I will.”

  I’m trying so hard not to cry, but a tear plops right on the back of his hand. “You might not come back. The eludial seam—”

  “Rye.”

  I nod. Breathe. My voice shakes, but I say it anyway: “I was supposed to free everyone.”

  “So do it from the other side of the shield,” he says. “I’ll do it from here.”

  I conjure a leaf and swipe it beneath my running nose. Dram laughs.

  “There’s nothing funny about this.”

  “You just conjured a flower to wipe your snot. That is weirdly funny.” His smile slowly fades. “You have magic, Orion.” He knows these were my mom’s words to me. That day she first set my hand to a tunnel wall. He clasps the sides of my face. “You have magic. Don’t you dare let them contain it.”

  My past and all the possible outcomes of my future collide into this single moment that is just now. “I’ll go.”

  He nods, and I can tell that now he’s the one trying not to cry. “Good,” he says. “That’s good.” He presses the heel of his hand against his eye.

  “Let me know if you need me to conjure you a flower,” I murmur.

  He laughs and slings an arm around me. “Fire, I’m going to miss you.”

  “I’m not gone yet.” I grasp his head and bring it down to mine. He resists me, so I swing my leg up around him and use it to bring him closer. He sighs against my mouth, and then all at once he’s melting into me, and we are two halves of one body.

  Tears wet my cheeks, and I’m not sure if they’re mine or his. It doesn’t matter. What matters is his skin against mine and our hearts pressed together this last time. We let our bodies say the words that we can’t.

  You are mine.

  I am yours.

  Always. No—not always. Not anymore.

  There is only now. He says my name on a breath, and I respond, kissing him, memorizing him with my touch. His hair winds through my fingers—his short Brunt hair that’s growing longer now. I won’t see it long again—the way he wore it in Outpost Five, or longer, when he adopted the free Conjies as his family.

  I will only know this Dram. Not the Dram who is finally free. If I succeed, it will be because I’m enmeshed with Congress, utterly removed from all that I once was—everyone I knew before. To save Dram, I have to give him up. I’ve known this since that day in the Sky, when I stood beside those broken axe handles and pieced together my mother’s plan.

  My life for theirs. It’s how Subpars have always served. Sacrifice is in my blood.

  But so is Dram.

  He cradles my face, and the amber glow of his Radband reflects off the wall. This is why I’m doing this, I tell myself. This light that signals the end for Dram. If I hold on to him now, it won’t be for much longer. I lose him either way.

  I draw him deeper into my arms, knowing this is it—the last time I will lose myself and find myself at the same time—in this boy who shows me the stars, even when there is only darkness. His eyes open, and I can’t look away. We kiss this way, once, twice. He tips his head, and our foreheads press together. His eyes are a storm of emotion—passion, anguish. Love.

  Before Congress sent me to Cordon Four, Dad told me to look after Dram—that he was part of what made me strong.

  Now I must let him go and be strong enough for us both.

  I love you, Dram.

  You know I love you, Orion.

  I read the truth in his eyes, the blue depths that first reminded me of safe water and, later, the sky. Then I give myself over to the places we take each other that have no names, where strength and stars are born and the Congress can never reach.

  THIRTY

  3.2 km from flash curtain

  I LIFT THE dress over my head, and the material floats down around me, delicate as a flower petal. These are clothes not made for protection from the elements—clothes created with no thought to the need to blend in to a cave or forest. I turn, and the fabric waves around my legs, a material that would be useless at soaking up blood, that would snag on cavern walls. Talons would sink right through this gown.

  “No talons in Alara,” Dram murmurs, and I realize I must’ve spoken the thought aloud. He studies me, a sadness in his eyes I can’t bear to acknowledge. He’s losing me one layer at a time, and we both know it.

  He holds his hand out for mine and works a lace glove over my fingers. My hands are a giveaway—caver’s hands, callused and scarred with bite marks.

  Dram stops. The glove hasn’t made it past my fingers.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it. “Nothing, I was just remembering that day down nine with the orbies.” The pad of his thumb brushes the back of my hand, where the glowing leeches dug past my veins. “That’s when all this started.”

  “It started long before that, Dram.” I pull the glove over my hand.

  I feel anger building inside me—anger at these people who wear protection they don’t need and style themselves after the cavers and cordon miners whose hands burn from exposure.

  This is what I’m worried most about hiding—the resentment I will have to conceal from the Naturals w
e are dying for. They tell themselves we are all victims of the same sun, but they are nothing like us. The flash curtain they know is a tamed creature, kept beyond reach with a protective shield. We know the beast it truly is, have felt its claws and known its bite.

  I haven’t set foot behind the cirium shield, but I’m already gone to Dram. I can see it in the way he holds his arms rigid at his sides, touching me only out of necessity, like now, when he adjusts my silver necklace, so the dosimeter hangs down the middle of my chest. He steps back, as if even that touch brought him too close to a creature of Alara. I’m not a Natural, but I may as well be.

  “You look like a Vestige,” he says, the Alaran term slipping like another barrier between us. “They’ll never guess. If you’re careful to speak like them and act like them—they won’t see the truth.”

  There’s no mirror, but I don’t need one to know he’s right. I have never felt less like a Subpar. The fabric hangs feather-light over my skin, but I’d feel more comfortable in my old caver’s suit, shielded within its coarse cloth and padding. For only the second time in my life, I’m wearing something for style more than functionality.

  Beneath it all, I’m still me. I have dirt from the provinces sewn into a hidden pocket of my dress, and another pocket concealing my old double-bladed knife. Either would give me away in an instant. Both remind me who I am.

  * * *

  There are two quadrants we Delvers are not permitted to enter. Since I already breached quadrant five, I think it’s only fitting I explore the other forbidden tunnel. Quadrant one. Designed exclusively for the council’s use.

  I’m going to ride it straight into Alara.

  “My Prime’s chain isn’t unlocking it,” Dram whispers. “I’m not sure how Meredith gets past the door.”

  “I think I know.” I lift the small chip I found tucked inside an axe handle, and step onto quadrant one. The pod door slides open. Dram smiles, and I know he feels like I do: as if we’re being helped by Subpars we never knew.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  I climb past him into the pod. We need to hurry so that Dram can get back before anyone realizes we borrowed Meredith’s ride. The pod glides through the passage, more smoothly than anything I’ve ridden before.

  “It barely feels like we’re moving,” Dram says. But we are—quickly. Too soon I’ll be on my own. “Don’t,” he says softly, watching my face. “We said our good-byes.” He tugs my Vestige robe into place. “You need to be an Alaran. Let the Subpar go for now.”

  “Never,” I whisper.

  The pod slows. An alarm sounds.

  “What’s happening?” Dram asks.

  “I don’t know—we’re not there yet! This was supposed to take us into the city—” The pod’s screencom indicates we’re beneath the perimeter, just outside the shield.

  “There must be some kind of security clearance we don’t have!” The alarm blares over our voices.

  “We can’t go back,” I say.

  “No. Come on, I have an idea.”

  We open the pod and climb out into the tunnel. It’s lit with lights I’ve never seen before. It’s too bright. I feel exposed.

  “Orion!” Dram calls. He’s climbed a ladder to another hatch, this one equipped with tech. “Hand me that chip.”

  I ascend the ladder, and as soon as I reach Dram, the tech chimes and the hatch lifts.

  “I think that tech works for Striders,” he says. “Not commissaries.”

  “So where does this lead?” I ask, following him up through the hatch.

  I freeze. The cirium shield rises up directly before us. We’ve been here before—only this time we’re not wearing camo-cloth cloaks.

  “You there!” a Strider shouts.

  “Trust me,” Dram whispers. I stare at him, trying to make sense of the determination overshadowing the stark pain in his eyes.

  I don’t answer. I don’t need to.

  “Strider!” he shouts. He grabs me and turns me, hoisting me up in front of his body like a shield. He shoves a gun to my head.

  “Take him out,” a voice commands.

  “He’s holding a girl. A Natural.”

  “Let me in, or the Vestige dies,” Dram calls. His arm tightens, and I struggle against his hold, trying to breathe. Oh, fire, Dram, what are you doing?

  “A free Conjie?” a voice asks.

  “No, a Subpar—look at his wrist.”

  The door grinds open, silver, flashing in the sunlight.

  “Let her go,” the Strider commands.

  “Let us pass,” Dram says. “I’ll release her once we’re inside.”

  “I can’t let you in. Protocol—”

  “Then she dies. Right now.” Dram cocks the hammer, and I flinch. I can feel the barrel of his gun bruising my temple. “You want to explain to the council how you lost a Vestige?”

  The Strider curses beneath his breath and motions us forward with his rifle.

  Dram pulls me through the metal passage, his arm across my chest. He lifts the gun from my temple the second we pass beyond sight of the guard. We walk through the shield our people mined and died for. It’s wide as my cottage back in Outpost Five, and lit with suspended lights, so that it feels less a tunnel and more an entryway to someplace grand. The corridor fills with the sounds of our steps and his sharp breaths. I realize I’m holding mine.

  We pass through the shield.

  Towering buildings rise toward the sky, their walls made of glass that reflects the dying light of the day in pink and golden hues. Dram and I have finally made it to the protected city.

  Weapons click all around us.

  “You made it, Rye. Your city,” Dram whispers. “Now go live for us both.” He shoves me from him, and I stagger, trying to find my footing as shots fire from every direction. My lips clamp down on a scream. I nearly shout his name. But I’m not supposed to know him.

  I’m not supposed to love him.

  I sprint forward, not looking back. I swallow my tears before they give me away.

  Go live for us both.

  The gunfire ceases, and a silence more terrifying than anything I’ve ever known replaces the shouts. I look back—and have to clamp my teeth into my lip to hold back my cry. Dram lies in a crumpled heap, unmoving. The ring of Striders closes around him. One of them looks in my direction and I turn, slipping past a crowd of onlookers. I run blindly forward, a foreign pathway beneath my feet, toward a park with a stream, reflecting the sunlight like diamonds. I’m finally here—I made it to Alara.

  And Dram is dead.

  They can’t see me crying. Act like a Natural, Orion! No one can know who I really am. What I really am. Or he will have died for nothing. My pace slows, and I force myself to breathe around the sobs squeezing my chest.

  “Miss?” a man asks. “Are you all right?”

  “I was frightened by the disturbance,” I say, waving my gloved hand toward the place where Dram took the Congress’s bullets.

  “Ah, it’s rare to witness such an intrusion. It’s charmed you weren’t hurt.”

  My eyes fly to his. Charmed. A Conjie word. He reaches up to adjust his hat, and his cirium wrist peeks out from the edge of his sleeve. So he’s a Conjuror—was, anyway. But not the kind I am.

  “Excuse me,” I murmur. I touch my cheek with shaking fingers, the Alaran custom I practiced with Dram.

  Dram.

  I have to get away from here before I’m recognized as the girl the rebel brought through the shield. The man touches his fingertips to his cheek, watching me with concern.

  I turn and walk as quickly as I dare toward the one thing I recognize. A building I’ve seen once before when Dram stole a cordon guard’s screencom and showed me Alara. My instincts tell me to burrow deep belowground and hide. Instead, I walk the path alongside a shallow canal, toward the building no Westfall Subpar has ever been.

  Central Tower. The heart of Congress.

  * * *

  I bury my grief.

  Years down the
tunnels developed my miner’s ability to compartmentalize things like pain and fear—to push them away in order to complete the necessary tasks—so I do the same now. I yield control to this part of myself, and it is brutal, tamping down every thought of—

  Stop.

  I will not think that name. I cannot remember—

  Stopstopstopstopstop!

  I have a job to do.

  And then.

  Then.

  My heart twists; I feel it, like a fissure opening inside my chest.

  Don’t think about him!

  I close my eyes and imagine my heart hardening, freezing into ice, ice filling me up until every thought and feeling and ache is frozen so that I can’t even sense them. Until a time—later—when I’ll let it thaw. And I will feel it all.

  For now, I continue to conjure inside myself, and it is rock layered over with ice. I give free rein to the analytical parts of my mind, sorting through the ramifications, making course corrections to plans that must now change.

  * * *

  This world is made up of boxes.

  Sometimes it’s the beautiful ones you must work hardest to escape.

  I walk Alara’s pathways, and no one seems to notice the Vestige girl staring at everything with wide eyes. For the first time, I breathe air that is free.

  But it’s not free. Not when it was gained through blood and ashes. Not free—because it costs more pieces of my soul the longer I inhale. Guilt has a weight, heavier than my pickaxe after hours down nine. Heavier than cordon shards.

  I would trade all this air for life back in the boxes. The ones all Subpars are born into, on the other side of the shield. In the flashfall.

  I would trade this heavy, blood-bought air for the walls that hemmed me in all my life. Then maybe—this time—I could figure out how to take them all down. Every dividing line. Every boundary.

  I didn’t know then that escaping the boxes wasn’t the point. Destroying them was.

  Because a captive world can only be broken apart one way.

  From the inside.

  THIRTY-ONE

  61.6 km from flash curtain

  I WATCH PEOPLE enter and exit the building until I know how to mimic their confidence, the ease with which they stride through doors that have never been closed to them. The woman in front of me tilts her head so that sunlight glints off the delicate metal links woven over her hair. I suppress the urge to snatch them off and shove my Radband scar in her face.