by Jenny Moyer
They pair off—Dodgers with the Brunts I selected. They form a ring around everyone else.
“This isn’t right,” a Dodger says. “Dodgers protect the Miners.”
“You protect them all,” Greash commands.
“We’ll load the transporters and take them out of the Overburden, into the Mod station. The Striders there will be sheltering. They won’t be expecting us. We’ll force them to take us out on a hover.”
Dust rolls in from the cordon, shielding us as we jog toward the transport conveyances that first carried us into the Overburden. All at once, we’re met with a contingent of Striders.
I raise my rifle and point it at Nills. “Stand down.”
Nills sneers at me. “You can’t shoot a Strider with a Dodger’s weapon, you stupid girl.”
A Brunt shifts his spear so that a cordon rat is positioned over Nills’s chest. My rifle emits a high-pitched tone.
“You sure?” I ask.
Nills curses. “Stand down,” he commands the Striders. They drop their weapons.
Suddenly, the air fills with a droning rumble.
“We’ve got hovers incoming!” Greash calls.
Sand lifts from the dust trail. Massive dark shapes descend through the clouds of flashfall. I have never seen so many hovers at one time.
“Holy fire,” Dram murmurs.
“We’re going to need a lot more cordon rats,” a Brunt mutters.
“I don’t think so,” I say. Dram looks at me, anxiety carving lines on his face. “Trust,” I say softly. “Your dad’s message—morior invictus.”
“Your faith in him is misplaced, Orion.”
“You held a gun to a Vestige’s head and stormed into Alara. You were surrounded by Striders, and yet you weren’t killed or captured.”
“Ordinance—”
“Ordinance doesn’t command the Striders, Dram.”
“If my father had any power at all, he would’ve—”
“He would wait,” I say urgently, “at all costs, until he knew we could win.”
Dram shakes his head. “Fire, Rye—I hope you’re right.” He lifts his rifle, and we take up positions as the hovers land.
“Trades Striders,” Greash murmurs beside me, peering through the dust. “They’re wearing the Trades on their sleeves.”
Nills dives for his rifle, emboldened by the reinforcements. Shots fire, and suddenly the Striders are up on their feet, tackling Dodgers to the sand. Through the dust and the dark, I see Nills press the muzzle of his weapon to Greash’s back.
“Hands behind your heads!” he shouts.
I’ve got the earth of the provinces in both hands, ready to make the ground crack apart and swallow Nills. Instead, I drop my rifle and kneel in the sand, directing the others to do the same. The heat of the cordon burns up through my padded armor as the Striders flank us.
My hands fist around the dirt, but I tell myself to wait. To trust.
The Trades Striders approach in a synchronized manner, oddly quiet, their armor muted. They don’t reach for their weapons.
One of them breaks rank and walks toward the Striders surrounding us. “Stand down,” he commands.
“I’m not taking orders from a tradesman!” Nills growls.
“Yes you are.” The Strider lifts his arm, and something glimmers with the blue symbols of a Codev.
“What the hell?” The Overburden Striders look down at their armor, buzzing with odd hums. A flash of blue light, and they drop—every single Strider with a weapon pointed at us.
“They’re just stunned,” the Strider says, stepping over Nills’s unconscious body.
“What was that?” Dram asks.
“A bit of tech I borrowed from Ordinance.”
“You’re a Gem?”
“No. I’m more like you. A lot like you, actually.” He lifts his face shield.
Dram lets out a shaky breath. “Dad,” he says hoarsely.
Arrun nods, swallows hard. He crosses the distance and claps his arms around Dram. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.” His words are muffled against Dram’s armor.
“Ordinance helped me in Alara,” Dram says.
“No,” Arrun says. “Sooner. Outpost Five. Before you and Len—” His voice breaks off at the mention of Dram’s sister. Lenore. Arrun was far too late to save her.
Dram hugs him tighter. “You’re here now.”
* * *
The Trades Striders load everyone onto the hovers with brutal efficiency. The sooner they deposit everyone in the mountain provinces, the sooner they can cross the curtain and back up the other half of their force, already infiltrating the cordons of Westfall.
As the first hovers lift, Arrun explains how, with the support of Ordinance leaders, Jameson approached the council with the truth of the flashtide and the dangers of mining the eludial seam. Operations in the Overburden have been suspended, and the Prime Commissary and Meredith stripped of their positions. The Congress of Natural Humanity is in a strategically organized state of chaos, and Jameson’s at the helm.
“However, this—what we’re doing now—is a rogue operation,” Arrun says. “Unofficially sanctioned. The Congress would never agree to simply liberate everyone in the cordons.” He smiles. “But we’ve got at least an hour before they figure out we borrowed a few hovers and some of their Striders.”
“What about the cure?” I ask. “Serum 1?”
“We took everything the Prime had in Central. It’s enough to treat everyone here.”
“What about the Westfall Subpars and Conjies?”
“Enough for some. Not all. It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s all we have—” His brows pinch together. “Where are you going? This is the last hover. I need to get you and Dram out of here.”
“I can get into Fortune. I know where they keep the serum.”
“The Commissary barricaded herself in there. She’s got a handful of techs and Striders who refused Jameson’s orders to leave.”
“I can avoid them. We need the serum.”
“Jameson can get it later—”
“There won’t be ‘later’!” I whirl to face him. “The device that Dram detonated in the seam knocked out every high-frequency transmitter beneath the surface. The creatures down there can conjure. They’ll erode the structural support. I’m sure they’ve already begun to.”
Arrun sighs and looks back at the waiting craft. “Jameson can only stall the council for so long. I’ll send the hover on, and come with you—”
“I’ll stay with you,” Greash says, striding up. “You’ll need a pilot. I can manage one of the Skimmers. I’ll help you get out with the cure.”
“I’m staying too,” GM16 says.
“Go with the hover,” I tell Arrun. “Get everyone free. When you do, I’ll have more Serum 1 waiting.”
“Dram?” Arrun asks.
“I’m staying to watch her back,” Dram says. “This is what we do.”
“So I’ve heard,” Arrun says.
“When I see you again”—Dram lifts his arm, where his Codev glows—“will you show me how to zap Striders with this thing?”
Arrun grins. “I’ll show you more than that.”
* * *
The hover lifts as we reach Fortune, shredding the clouds of flashfall above us. It rumbles off into the night. The Overburden is eerily still.
“You didn’t have to stay,” I say, looking at GM16.
She smiles. “You’re my squad leader.”
“You’re an Unaccounted now,” I tell her. “You should be running as far from here as possible.”
“I’ll take my chances at your side.”
I sudden thought occurs to me, and I turn to face Dram. “How much do you owe them?” I ask. “Ordinance.”
He looks away. “We need to get the Serum 1 and get out of here.” He jogs toward Fortune, and I follow, right on his heels.
“Dram Berrends.”
“Orion—”
“How much is that Codev costing you
?”
“They require my service.”
“Everything we’ve done to get free, and then you go and—”
“I would’ve died without their intervention!”
“How many years?”
“Rye—”
“HOW MANY?”
“ALL OF THEM!”
I stare, openmouthed, trying to breathe past my shock.
“They gave me the years I would’ve lost,” Dram says. “A trade.”
“You traded one form of slavery for another!”
“I don’t see it that way.”
I slide into the ground, into the dirt hole I conjured up through Fortune’s ventilation system. Dram crouches beside me.
“I get it, you know,” he says. “You use anger like armor. I’m fine with that—rage at me if you have to—but I’m not letting you go back in there alone.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I growl. “I can’t bring up all the serum by myself.” I give him a hard look. “GM16 told me that her blood repels the rodents. Does yours?”
“Yes.”
“Fire,” I grumble. “Then step in my steps. Closely.”
I lower myself into the hole, and Dram follows.
* * *
I can barely manage the pack digging into my shoulders. I like to think I am strong, but as we leave the infirmary storage, winding our way up through Fortune’s air shafts, my arms begin to numb and my spine convinces me it has all the strength of a toddler.
“It’s the particles,” Dram calls. “From the eludial seam. Your body’s still recovering from exposure.”
I roll my eyes. Dram keeps sharing these new tidbits of knowledge he gained through … whatever devil’s bargain he’s made with Ordinance. I have twice considered dropping the Dram of All Knowledge down this last, longest ventilation shaft. But he’s hauling two packs filled with Serum 1. I’ll have to keep him around for now.
“Still mad at me, aren’t you?” he calls.
I grumble something about idiot choices, and push my body up.
We’ve rigged a system of pulleys with my conjured vines, with loops for our hands and feet that enable us to propel ourselves upward. It’s similar to what we used to do with ropes and ascenders in tunnel nine.
“We’ll still be free of this,” he says, levering his weight over the final ledge after me. “It just might not look the way we imagined.”
“Will it look more like a glowing blue symbol for Vigil?” I frown at him over my shoulder and lumber toward the air intake fan.
“I can help people.”
I shove my pack into the hole I conjured and push it forward. “You’ll have to hunt people—people like GM16. She’s an Unaccounted now, Dram. And so is Aisla.”
“Ordinance offered me an alternative,” Dram says, his voice muffled by dirt. We pull ourselves free and shake off.
“What are you saying?” I ask. “An alternative to what?”
“To Alara.”
“I don’t want to live in the protected city.”
“I mean all of Alara. The city-state.” He slides his two packs onto his back. “You could come with me, Orion,” he says, his voice filled with urgency. “To places they don’t have maps for—”
“Don’t move!” Greash shouts. He’s standing beside GM16 a dozen meters away in a ring of lit flares. “They’re coming up through the ground. The ones that conjure!”
I look down. A ring forms around Dram and me—the creatures tunneling up through the ground avoid us, repelled by whatever Dram’s modified biology emits.
“Transmitters!” I pull two of the devices from my pockets. “I grabbed these from the infirmary. They were still working!” I activate one of them, and the ground clears.
“Hurry!” Greash calls. “They’re changing the surface. I’m afraid we’ll lose the Skimmer before we get her off the ground.”
I toss him the other device, and we all run for the craft. They reach the Skimmer and clamber in. I’m struggling with the pack, suddenly wishing Reuder had made me carry twice as many rocks into the cordon. My legs fold beneath me, and I hit the sand.
“I’ve got it,” Dram says, loping back to my side. He hefts my pack, clasping it to his chest. I push myself up and race after him.
Engines whine, and my heart pounds with sudden exhilaration. Almost there. Almost free. Dram and I will get this serum to our people, and then—then—talk about places without maps. He loads the packs into the Skimmer and leaps into the hold.
“Come on!” he shouts.
I climb into the Skimmer and collapse into a seat.
“I’m taking us up!” Greash calls. The door seals shut, and the Skimmer lifts. We rise above the cordon, and my gaze settles on the packs of Serum 1. More than enough. For everyone.
“Where are we headed?” Greash asks.
“To the outposts,” I answer, my gaze sliding to Dram’s. “One last time.”
THIRTY-FIVE
35.6 km from flash curtain
THEY SECURE A boat for us.
Well, not a boat. A floating structure, half organic, half Ordinance tech, that will traverse the ocean on its own photosynthetic power. This biostructure is the first of its kind, designed to navigate seas altered by flash curtains.
We call it the Outlier, naming it for its crew, people set apart from others. Also for its mission to assist others like us—those on the fringes of fragile societies, trying to survive this world and shape it into something better.
Our first encounter will be aiding the miners on SeaPod One, an aquatic mining outpost. The council received a distress call from its techs shortly before they lost communication. Cirium, Jameson explained, is still the best shield we have against flash curtains, and our people aren’t the only ones who figured that out.
Jameson replaced the Prime Commissary and has begun to reshape the Congress of Natural Humanity in ways that protect the futures of all Alara’s people, Natural and otherwise. The agreements he reached with the leaders of Ordinance will help ensure a partnership between our city-states.
I hug Mere, and her new commissary’s chain presses against me. “Go shake things up,” I say.
She smiles. “I never stopped.”
Winn clasps her arms around my waist. “Bring Roran back safe,” she says. I brush my hand over her long black hair.
“I promise.”
“Conjie promise or Subpar promise?” she asks.
“Both.” I lift my hair and show her the shell talisman conjured into my hair.
“The outboard vessels are in place around the Outlier,” Bade says, lifting his gaze from a screencom. “They’re ready to depart.”
“And the Subpars from Outpost Five?” I ask.
Bade checks his screencom. “Owen, Roland, and Marin. All confirmed.”
I smile, imagining my friends seeing the ocean for the first time. “Before we go, there’s one last thing I need to do.”
* * *
Greash opens the shield door nearest Cordon One and I step through, into white sand. I wear a Dodger’s suit, and over it a Strider’s electrified armor.
Serum 1 doesn’t protect us from everything.
The flash curtain shimmers in the distance, a luminescent wall, the end of it dissipating in waving tendrils of energy. I jog toward it.
As I near the curtain, something moves beneath the sand. I adjust a sensor on my armor, and a transmitter pulses out a frequency I can’t hear, modified from the devices Delvers used down the tunnels. I told Jameson that I had a theory. If I’m right, this will repel cordon rats as well as moles. One last suit to test for the Congress.
But that’s not really why I’m out here.
The screencom on my wrist chimes a warning. I’ve reached the edge of the Exclusion Zone. Every step past this point exposes me to the flashfall.
I stand at the invisible boundary line, one that used to signify freedom and safety on one side, danger and oppression on the other. Now, all Subpars and Conjurors have Serum 1 and protection
from the curtain’s particles. They can live within the flashfall without sickening from exposure. Or they can choose to leave. Freedom and safety.
On both sides.
“We did it, Mom,” I whisper. We broke apart the box the Congress had us contained in. Whatever stories Alarans choose to tell in the Honor Hall, I know the truth.
I step past the boundary. One last time, I tell myself.
Violet auroras fade to blue and collide with garnet ripples, shimmering above the sand. I close my eyes as I walk, not to shield my eyes—I’m wearing eyeshields beneath my Strider helmet—but to better hear it, the call I have known and answered all my life. No one would understand the ache rising in my chest. Not even Dram.
The flashfall dances over me. I turn beneath it, stretching my hands upward. Energy swirls around me, in me, a part of me. It has taken so much, but it also made me who I am. Something like loss hollows my gut. I feel as if I’m leaving Mom and Wes behind, and Graham and Lenore, and all the Subpars I’ve loved and lost here. All of my memories are tied to the curtain. The flashfall has touched every one of my days, and leaving it behind feels like leaving them behind.
Good-bye.
I will make new memories in places they have never been a part of. It aches to breathe, and for once, it has nothing to do with the flashfall.
“Quite a view,” a voice says in my helmet. “Now that it’s not cooking our insides.” I turn to see Dram walking toward me in a matching suit and armor. I leave the heaviness of the curtain and join him where he stands, halfway to the shield.
“Electrified armor,” he murmurs, glancing down at his suit. “Is it strange that I actually want a vulture to attack me?”
I grin behind my face shield.
“I stole something for you,” he announces, reaching into his pocket. “Well, stole something back for you.” He holds up my memorial pendants. The ones I traded to save Roran.
My breath catches. I can’t speak as Dram clasps them around my neck. The glass pendants hang down my chest, right where they belong above my heart.
“What did you fill them with?” Dram asks.
“The earth of the provinces,” I say.
“Can you mute your armor so I don’t kill myself when I hug you?” Dram asks.
“Strider armor works on a repulsive charge. We can’t shock each other.”