by Jenny Moyer
Naturals wear pretty reminders that they are safe—while Subpars wear tech that displays the depth of their radiation sickness. None of what I’m feeling shows on my face. I know it’s true because the woman smiles serenely at me, and my lips part in a matching smile.
“Lovely day,” she says.
My teeth are gritted, so I just nod in response. Then I angle my chin so light winks off my hair adornment and stroll past her through the open door.
* * *
There’s a spot of blood on my dress. Dram’s blood. I cover it with my hand and make my way to the council’s chambers. My mind is a tangle of thoughts—most of them clouded with grief.
How could he do this?
The thought simmers, and I clamp onto it, like the anger is a lifeline, pulling me from the sorrow I’m drowning in. We had a plan. He lied to me, put into motion plans of his own, at a cost he knew I would never agree to.
Dram sacrificed his life to protect me, but I can’t stay here.
Not at the expense of everyone living beyond the shield. If the SAMM isn’t delivered in time to the eludial seam, the flash curtain will continue to expand, and with Dram gone—
I’m the only one who can do it.
“Miss?” A woman is staring at me with wide eyes. “Your glove is on fire.”
I gasp and pat the smoldering cloth.
“That’s a sure way for them to take your hands, Conjuror,” she whispers.
My delicate glove is scorched where I conjured fire. I’ve been here less than a day, and already I’m giving myself away.
“Here.” She pulls off her gloves and shoves them into my hands. “Whoever you are, you need these more than I do.”
“You’re not afraid of me?” I ask.
“Should I be?”
In her response I see what it feels like to have grown up here. Protected. She has only ever known control, order, and security. Like the Tempered Conjie on the street, she doesn’t wear the innate fear, the readiness to fight like all of us beyond the shield. She knows there’s a flash curtain, but she’s not felt it scorch her skin or watched it turn someone she loved to dust.
“Thank you.” I hand her back the gloves. “But I actually need you to turn me in.” The girl’s eyes widen. “Inform the Prime Commissary that Orion Denman is here and that I’m conjuring in the lobby.”
* * *
They question me for days.
At first, they’re gentle about it. I stick as closely to the truth as possible when I tell them why Dram and I tried to escape into Alara. I assume they have tech that can determine if I’m lying, so I weave a tale about a girl who is terrified of the Box.
After this, they employ tactics less kind to get at the truth. I don’t have to convince them of my story after that. I simply let them see my terror. In the times I’m present—in mind and body—I convince them of our mutual need. With Dram gone—
* * *
I lose myself when they speak his name—fire, if I even think it—but I must. I am the only other person trained to deploy the SAMM. With solar storms approaching, there isn’t time to properly train another Delver—not one who could find her way to the seam.
I swim up through pain and make them believe that my resentment is not for them, but the flash curtain. They test me with equipment designed for Naturals, but I am not natural. Like any creature of the flashfall, I adapt.
I tell them that I don’t hate the Congress—only the flashfall.
And they believe me.
THIRTY-TWO
0.23 km from flash curtain
THE CURTAIN IS so loud that from this far beneath the earth, it sounds like groaning. Or maybe that’s the Luna, the strain on its aluminum and rivets as it carries me closer. I pull sound cancellation devices over my earpieces and watch the meters tick off on the instrument panel. Almost there.
“Approaching curtain threshold,” a voice says in my earpiece. “Shields in place in five … four … three…” Cirium panels descend over the viewing window, obscuring the caverns blurring past outside my craft. Cabin lights illuminate, flickering with those in the cockpit.
A warning suddenly flashes from one of the gauges, one that monitors the energy spikes in the curtain. Not now. Please, not now.
“Detecting particle interference,” a voice crackles in my earpiece. The stall warning goes off, a droning sound that spikes fear into my blood. The ship wobbles, and I stare at the controls, waiting for the remote pilot to do something.
“Central Command!” I move my mouthpiece closer. “I could use some help here!”
“Auxiliary power commencing in five … four…” The cockpit plunges into darkness. I hold my breath as the craft whines, as if it’s struggling to catch its breath. It slows, banging into cavern walls like a bird with one wing. It nicks a wall of rock, jolting me off my feet. I grasp the console, holding tight as the craft spins awkwardly off its axis.
“Central!” I shout.
No response. Just the grinding of steel on stone as the Luna careens to a stop.
The craft is suddenly too quiet, and in the silence, I’m made aware of exactly where I am. I feel bared to the elements, the meters of rock my only shield from the radioactive particles crashing down overhead. The curtain presses on me, its energy pulsing inside my chest like a second heart. I don’t need my gauges to tell me how close I am. With shaking fingers, I tug free my sound cancellation earpieces. I try to hear the curtain’s song, but it sounds like screaming.
Maybe it knows it’s about to die.
I have to hurry. The release point lies half a kilometer from here. The caving suit they created for me will protect me long enough to get the SAMM into place. I’ll have to do this like a Delver.
I slide along the wall, following the hum of cirium in the fabric of my suit. My hand glides over dents in the aluminum where rock nearly penetrated the fuselage. A sinking sensation settles in the pit of my stomach. This really is going to be a one-way trip. I stumble against the tube of glass housing my gear. My fingers slip over the locking mechanism, and the door opens with a hiss. Cirium hums its melody as I drag the suit free. It has its own power cell, and I engage the perimeter lights.
It reminds me of the spacesuits I saw pictures of in Alara. Only this is more compact, with built-in armor, and it’s black, silver, and gray—the shades of cavern shadows that I insisted upon. I lift myself into the suit and seal it at my wrists and neck. It’s warm inside the suit, and I engage the auto-adjusting body coolant and the air intake, but what I need most right now is contact with Congress.
They designed my headpiece with a screen that shows text in case I can’t hear anything more than the curtain. It’s compact, with a 360-degree viewing shield, so I won’t have any blind spots. I settle it over my head and lock it into place. The silence is a welcome relief. I activate the screencom.
“Congress? Can you hear me?”
“Luna—” The garbled voice cuts out.
“You’re not transmitting,” I say. “Too much interference. Auxiliary systems failed. I’m ditching the Luna and delivering the SAMM manually.” I can’t understand the response. The words that scroll across my screen don’t make sense either.
Something stirs in the darkness, and I look past the jumbled words on my visor. I lift my palm light, and a shape moves just beyond the glow.
“Who’s there?”
A friend
The words display on my screen.
“I came alone!”
You’re not alone
My heart thunders in my chest as I peer through the dark cabin. This isn’t possible. I would have known if someone had slipped onto this craft with me. “I told the Congress I don’t need a Delver.”
Not a Delver
I stare at the words. Whoever this is, he’s using a private comlink. Congress isn’t hearing any of this.
“If not a Delver, then what?” I whisper the words, but I know they’re coming up on his screencom. I search the darkness for the glow that wil
l give him away.
If you’re going to find your way back, you need a marker
The words stop me cold. There’s no sound but the flash curtain, but I swear I heard Dram’s voice in that com. I scan the cabin, turning in a slow circle, breathless. Hope is a flower, blooming in my chest, poison if I’m wrong.
“There are no markers anymore,” I whisper.
Right behind you, ore scout
The lights flicker, the auxiliary power struggling to find life. In the flashes of light, I catch glimpses of his face. The visor of his helmet is clear, so nothing blocks the blue eyes I thought I’d never see again this side of life. The Luna shifts, and we both stagger. Dram catches my arm, but I feel like I’m falling still.
“I watched you die.” My words flicker across his screencom.
He shakes his head. “You saw Striders shoot me.” He removes his helmet, and I stare numbly as he unfastens mine.
The curtain screams inside my head.
I cry out, but I can’t hear myself. The sounds of the flash curtain are like fingers raking across my mind. Dram grips my arm and shoves a bit of biotech behind my ear. A pinch of pain, but I am numb, and the curtain is all I feel, its voice filling every part of me until I explode—
Silence.
My eyes fly to Dram’s worried gaze. He did something. The device he inserted shut out the curtain somehow. I taste blood on the back of my tongue. He grips my face in his hands and wipes my tears with his thumbs. Not tears. Blood. I can see it on his fingers, even though his suit is black like mine.
He touches the device behind my ear. “This will block the sounds of the curtain. It transmits only the frequency of my voice.”
I try to make sense of what he’s telling me, but his fingers brush the side of my face, and I can’t think at all. I’m suddenly a creature of sensation. Touch. Sight—though I’m still doubting what I see. And now I hear …
Dram’s voice, calling to me. Not on a screen, not in my memories, but right …
Here.
“Rye? You all right—”
I crush him to me. His arms steal around me, and a sound escapes him—like he was stuck too long underwater and just came up for air. His lips move beside my ear as he murmurs my name in a choked voice.
“Orion.”
The way he says it is like no one else. He knows what it means to me—a girl named for some of the brightest stars, who lived in a place of only ash and embers. Even when I earned the title scout and the cavers stopped laughing about my name, he called me Rye—to remind me of who I really was. To remind me there was more beyond the flashfall. I never thought I’d hear my name like that again.
“I don’t understand,” I murmur. “There were Striders surrounding you. I heard the shots.”
“Only one of them actually shot me. A … friend intervened while they were transporting my body.”
“A friend.” The word sticks on my tongue like a sour taste. He doesn’t offer further explanation, and I sense an edge to his emotions, like he’s holding them in check as much as his body.
“We need to move.” He glances to the right of his visor, and I know he’s reading something—time, or depth gauges, maybe. Or communication from a friend. “It’s not particle interference,” he says. “I jammed the coms myself. They can’t know I’m here.”
Apprehension tingles along my nerves. “Why are you here?”
“For the mission—the real one.” He hoists a pack over his shoulders and fastens it across his chest. “I’m going to destroy access to the eludial seam.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “What happened in Alara?”
“Ordinance … recruited me.”
Ordinance. My mind spins through the implications.
Something nags at me, like a hand tapping my shoulder. I look closer at Dram. He’s different, and it’s not just his allegiance that’s changed.
“Your Radband’s gone.”
He lifts his sleeve, past the place where the tech’s been removed, and I gasp. It’s not a stretch of scarred skin like mine, but smooth, with the brand of a Codev glowing beneath it. Numbers and symbols, the luminous blue of safe cavern water. But he is not safe.
I recognize the symbol pulsing from his arm. Vigil. They’ve made Dram deadly.
“Glenting hell!” I lurch back, an instinctive reflex at the sight of that symbol. “How?” I ask, staring, as if my eyes will give me some explanation.
“I don’t even understand it myself,” he says. “Ordinance tech is…”
Gems are engineered from conception with biologically predetermined features and characteristics, and genetically synthesized resistance. Dram is not a true Gem. But Ordinance has modified him like one. A million questions jump to mind, but only one matters now.
“Why are you here?”
“To save you.” Something in the way he says it—like there’s a message in his words I’m not getting. It’s how Gems speak, like their thoughts are beyond ours. I shiver. I didn’t feel truly alone until this moment. I step back, feeling my way through the fractured darkness with caver’s instincts.
“You jammed my coms. You did something to the auxiliary power.” He doesn’t respond. I back away, bumping into things. I have never been afraid of Dram Berrends, but this isn’t the same boy I grew up with at Outpost Five. “Fire, Dram, why are you really here?”
“To stop you.” There’s no hidden meaning in his words this time. He walks toward me, this Dram who is not Dram. He was always graceful in the way he moved, but his stride now is efficient. Predatory.
“What did they do to you?”
“Set me free.”
“You’re different.”
“And you’re blind, Orion. You don’t see what’s really going on. Mining eludial soil is what’s causing the flashfall to worsen. We have to stop the delving. Permanently.”
“You can’t stop me.”
A pained look crosses his face. “I already did.” I touch the place where the biotech earpiece pricked me. I felt the stab of it inserting, but in the pain of the flash curtain tearing through my senses, I didn’t register the additional prick of a needle. Even through my glove I feel the swollen skin at the side of my neck. The place where Dram stuck me with … my thoughts turn inside my head, like flurries of snowflakes in a gust of wind. Where he must’ve … I stagger against the console, suddenly exhausted. What was I doing?
“Serum 5,” Dram says, his voice echoing strangely. “Conjie inhibitor. Your dad’s creation.”
Dad. Dram. Betraying me. My legs forget what they’re for, and Dram catches me, easing me to the floor of the ship. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“You won’t…” My words stick inside my mouth, and I work to push them past my lips. “Make it … without me…”
“This is the only way.” He pulls a space blanket from a pocket of his suit and covers me, then goes through every one of my pockets, removing the dirt and seeds I’d stored there. “I’m sorry, Orion.”
My name again, only this time, the sound of it is all wrong. My eyelids refuse to stay open, and part of me is wondering why I even care. I should just sleep. Another part of me is screaming that I have to stay awake. There is something … something I need to remember …
Dram says something else, but it sounds like I’m hearing him from underwater. He touches my face, but I can barely see him through the slits of my eyelids that are heavy as rocks. Lights flicker as I watch him climb out the hatch, and I sink deeper, down, down.
Water cradles me. I’m floating, weightless in the Sky. I stare up toward the cavern walls, where chalk circles glimmer like stars above me. Mom. Her name, her chalk circle. She is safe.
You’re not safe!
My brow crinkles. That other voice intrudes … but I’m happy here, floating—
Orion!
My name is the stars, and I am floating with them, far beyond this—
Ship. Crashed. The Luna!
The water pulls me down, but
I can breathe underwater. I am a creature of the cavern, resting along the cirium basin. But something’s missing. Dram should be here.
Dram. Betrayer! He left me here to float away—took everything that would let me conjure.
I force my eyelids open, but I still see the Sky. There is something—
Conjure!
No, I’m a creature that sleeps at the bottom of safe cavern water—
Conjure!
I can’t conjure anything. Dad drugged me, and Dram took the earth of the provinces—
No.
My hands fist, and my eyes open wide, seeing the damaged cabin. Dram didn’t take everything.
He didn’t know about the dirt in my gloves.
* * *
He left the medkit. It rests against my thigh in the large pouch on my left leg. I can only seem to hold one thought at a time, so after I grasp this realization, I set it aside for another.
I can’t lift my arms.
Whatever serum Dad made, it relies on knocking me out hard. I have no idea what adrenaline will do to me now, but I have to try. And fast. Some part of my mind is awake, but it’s losing the battle to the rest of my head that feels like it’s being stuffed with gauze.
My hands. I just need one to move. I concentrate, pushing every last fragment of energy into the fingers of my right hand. The pouch of dirt and seeds rests against my palm, ready to be broken open. A thin barrier of cloth rests between me and freedom.
Oblivion beckons. Meds pulse through my body, weighing down my veins, my bones. I’m so, so tired. I’ll just rest a moment …
Orion.
Mom’s voice. Or the way I remember her voice. It’s been so long.
I’m here.
She hands me her axe. The handle’s cracked, but she’s smiling. Why does her broken axe make her happy?
Use it to get free.
She said that to me. I was just eight. She’s saying it now. Her voice fills the cabin, and I feel the wood handle crack beneath my fingers. Bloody fingers. Conjie blood. Subpar blood. I’m back in Outpost Five, shattering my Radband with Mom’s broken axe. I slam it into the ground, and dirt explodes beneath my fingers.