by Jenny Moyer
My emotions are as turbulent as the storm outside. A secret room? My throat tightens. “Don’t talk like you’re not coming back.”
He cups my head. “And you will that compound to make you strong, not sick. Don’t let it be poison.”
We push through the door, and I tell myself this is not the last time I’ll see my dad. There won’t be a need to destroy whatever he’s hidden.
And I didn’t just drink something that will kill me.
I wrap Winn in a flash blanket and we run for nine. I can practically feel the radiation increasing. It’s the hint of sulfur on the wind, like a flameless breath from a dragon.
Dram and Lenore are waiting a few meters inside the tunnel.
“Where’s Roran?” Lenore asks, looking past me for the boy.
“Not with us,” I gasp.
Lenore stares at me in panic. “He was headed to your house.”
“We were at the infirmary!”
Lenore covers her mouth with her hand. We have enough memories of past storms to paint horrific images in our minds.
Dram drags his hand through his hair. “Fire.” He kicks the cave wall, and kicks it again. There is nothing we can do. Going back out now is too risky.
My heart feels like a bird trying to escape a cage. I can go back for him—Dad’s experiment is coursing through my body.
“We should get deeper,” I say. I can’t tell them what I intend to do. Dram will never let me leave.
Lenore nods and draws Winn farther along the path.
“What about Roran?” Winn cries.
Lenore murmurs something I can’t hear.
“I’m going to stay here a moment in case he comes,” I tell Dram. I can’t look him in the eye, or he’ll know I’m lying.
He hesitates. “All right. We’ll meet you down there, just before the neck.” He turns toward the path.
I count to twenty, then run, not even slowing as I near the tunnel entrance. Heat and dust blow in from the outside.
My father has never been wrong.
I take a breath and wade into the storm, fiery dust swirling around me. My brother ran from this, and I’ve seen it melt people from the inside out.
I tuck my chin to my chest, still holding my breath. Pulling my neck cloth over my nose and mouth, I take a cautious sip of air. It’s impossibly hot, like I’m sucking on a flare. Tears stream from my eyes and moisture fogs my goggles as I wrap my flash blanket around me. I imagine this is how Dram’s father felt—how anyone ever sent to mine the burnt sands feels just before dying. Only, I have an antidote. Possibly.
Clinging to that belief, I lift my face to the sky. It glows red and orange, like it’s on fire. I am still alive. I hold my hand out in front of me and watch in wonder as flaming ash swirls over it.
The scent of rain teases my nostrils, and suddenly I freeze—it’s like I’m twelve years old again, smelling the promise of the flash storm, the promise of death. Just past the reaches of Outpost Five, lines of virga appear, stretching from orange clouds to the ground, a hissing mix of rain and steam.
The ends of my hair break off. Still, I stand transfixed. I’ve never seen a storm approach. No one has seen this and lived. Part of me wants to stand here, testing the limits of Dad’s compound. The other parts of me remember the sound of Wes’s screams. I tug my flash blanket over my head. Acid rain spatters down, burning patterns into the dust. Burning everything it touches.
I run. The shape of my house shimmers beyond the waves of radiation. I pray that Roran is there, because I doubt I’ll survive another minute without shelter. I burst through the front door.
“Roran!”
“Here!” He ducks his head out from beneath my father’s bed.
“You’re not safe,” I shout. “Help me pry up these floorboards!”
He races to my side and we drop to our knees, running our hands over the cracks in the wood.
“We need to get belowground. My father says there’s a loose board concealing a hole.” I find the board and drag my glove off with my teeth so I can wedge my fingernails in the seam. “Here. Help me!” Together we pry it up. There’s just enough room for us to squeeze through. I crack a light stick and drop it down. “Jump!”
He lands easily. The space is large enough for him to stand with arms raised, and as wide as five people. I find iron handholds mounted to the side and climb down, sliding the panel back into place above us. It’s not deep enough to save someone from radiation. I shine my palm light at the underside of the floorboards. Wood. I was hoping they might be lined with cirium.
“What is this place?” Roran asks. He has his rock in his hand, and he rolls it in his palm as he looks around.
“I have no idea.” I let my gaze wander past the microscope and rudimentary lab equipment, recognizing vials of the altered cirium I drank earlier. “Roran…” I search his face for the burn and swelling of radiation sickness, and realize I’m waiting for him to vomit or complain of a headache that won’t go away.
“What is it?”
“We’re not deep enough to keep you safe.”
“What about you?”
“Subpars can endure exposure better than Naturals.” Part of that’s true. It’s why we mine the tunnels and the Naturals do not. But I would have already died without my father’s cirium mixture.
His eyes linger on my face, and I wonder what he’s hoping to see in my expression. “Can you keep a secret?” he asks.
I think of the Sky, and the map Dram stole. I think of Dad’s compound streaking through my veins. “Yes,” I whisper.
He lifts his rock. The shape has changed. Just moments ago, it fit his palm, flat and rounded. “My father told me to try. So I’ve been practicing.”
The things he’s saying make no sense … unless—
“You’re a Conjuror.”
He nods. “I can handle flash storms better than Naturals, too.”
The rock isn’t the only thing that’s changed. He speaks differently, his words layered with an accent even stronger than Gabe’s. No wonder he’s usually so quiet—his words might’ve given him away.
My mind is spinning so many directions at once. A hundred questions jump to my lips, but for now there’s only one that matters. “Can you conjure cirium?” He shakes his head, and my heart plummets. We’re going to die down here.
Roran crouches and draws his palm over the ground. “What about rock? The other cavers went belowground, right?”
“Wouldn’t you bury us alive?”
“I’ll leave space over us.”
I feel the power of the storm increasing, the same way I sense cirium. In the sparse glow of the light stick, my eyes find Roran’s. They are a warm brown, and I wonder if they are like his mom’s or dad’s. His dad who told him to practice.
“Do it.”
He tucks the stone in his pocket. It occurs to me that it’s likely the last thing his father gave him, maybe some of the last words he spoke. Practice, son. But how do you practice the impossible? It’s rare for Conjie ability to work so close to the flash curtain. But I saw what Roran did with that rock.
Roran closes his eyes and lays his hands on the earth. We wait—one moment, two. A fist squeezes my heart. I can’t watch him die the way Wes did.
The ground trembles.
“Holy fire,” I whisper. Dirt and rock twist up from the ground, arching over us, around us. Stone scrapes against stone, and I cry out. This isn’t natural. People can’t conform matter to their will. I’ve spent my life surviving the tunnels, only to end up crushed beneath rock, buried beneath my own home.
“It’s all right,” Roran says. He lifts his hands, and the rock stills.
Our breath fills the pocket of air between us. He’s encased us in rock. I feel like I’m in the neck of nine with no exit. I try to clamp down the panic knotting my stomach, but I can’t ignore the glaring certainty that if Roran dies, I am utterly trapped.
“Will this save us?” he asks.
He’s not frigh
tened by our tomb of rock. “Can you get us deeper?”
He places his palm beneath him and the ground dissolves and morphs, like he’s building sandcastles instead of altering the crust. “Hold on.”
I wedge my body onto a ledge of rock and watch the earth transform beneath me.
“Is this deep enough?” His voice doesn’t express shock or surprise, and I wonder just how often he’s seen his people perform these kinds of marvels.
I clutch a light stick and step down, tuning my senses to the curtain. It’s a distant pulse now. “Deep enough. We need to conserve our air. We don’t know how long the storm will last.” I shine the light over the rock shelter he constructed. “Does Cranny know what you are?”
“No. My parents taught me to hide so I wouldn’t be Tempered.”
“Tempered…” I remember touching Gabe’s metal hands.
“The Congress cuts off Conjies’ hands and caps the stumps with cirium.”
A chill runs up my spine. “Like Gabe?”
“He turned himself in, so they gave him hands.” He presses his palm to the ground and green shoots thrust from the dirt, twining up the rock walls, bursting with fragrant white blossoms. He laughs, a breathless kid sound full of wonder. “I can’t usually conjure this close to the flash curtain—too much cirium in the earth.”
I pluck one of the blooms and press my fingers to the satin-smooth petals. “Then I’d say your practicing paid off.”
His smile dims, and he stares into the middle distance, the rock turning over and over in his hand once more. I don’t ask what happened to his father. I don’t need to.
“You did something amazing,” I say. “And your parents are a part of it, because they’re a part of you.” When I made lead ore scout, I wanted so badly to share it with Mom. I climbed the Range and told her all about it, a girl having a one-sided conversation with the wind. I like to think that somehow she heard, that part of her is still with me.
I tuck the flower in my pocket so I will have a reminder of this, the day a boy moved the earth to save me. “Why weren’t you Tempered, Roran?”
“Because I’m really good at keeping secrets,” he says. “So is my mom. Her name’s Mere.” His face is turned from me, but I don’t need to see it to read the pain in his words. “They didn’t give her hands.”
“Where is she now?” I ask.
His gaze hardens. “Cordon Four.”
The burnt sands. I try to imagine a woman mining flash dust with only cirium stumps for hands. “I’m sorry.”
“She’s alive,” he says, as if my words suggested otherwise. “My people are survivors.”
My gaze slips over the sanctuary he carved from the earth. “Yes, you are.”
And so are mine. I cling to that hope as we measure out breaths beneath the stone and wait for the storm to pass.
* * *
The destruction is less than the cordon breach. Dad managed to get most people out of the lodge, which is fortunate, because it will need to be built a third time. His underground den of secrets will also need repair.
I find him in the infirmary, pulling a sheet over a woman’s head. I recognize her from the Rig. Blood seeps through the sheet touching her nose and mouth.
“How many?” I ask.
“All of tunnel one’s team,” he says. “I couldn’t get them to leave the lodge.”
I look past him to the rows of beds, some with aides soothing the cavers still conscious.
“I lost two more to the ore mites sometime during the storm,” he says. “The parasites got into their bloodstreams.”
I try to imagine which death is worse.
His gaze focuses on me. “You’re still standing. The cirium compound must not be entirely toxic.” He’s apparently not forgiven me for taking his experiment into my own hands.
“Dad.” I lean close and whisper. “I walked through the storm to save Roran.” I set his hand on the pulse in my wrist. “I’m not sick. Whatever you made protected me long enough to find shelter.”
He clasps my head and studies me. Then he checks my Radband. Green. “This changes everything. I might be able to give you a chance out in the cordon.” He steers me from the infirmary. “We need to get to my lab.”
“About the lab…” My words trail off as I notice the crowd gathered in front of the lodge. Guards are hanging a new sign from the damaged eaves.
“A cordon list,” Dad says, peering above the heads of other cavers. “Your name’s at the top, with Dram’s beside tunnel nine—” He breaks off.
“What?” Dread crawls through me.
“They added Lenore. Tunnel six.”
No. This can’t be. I push past the others and stare numbly at the sign, at Dram’s sister added to the death list. Then I see the final name, just beneath it.
Tunnel one’s team was decimated in the flash storm. Its two remaining cavers succumbed to the ore mites. That leaves only Winn.
They would send a child to the burnt sands. How could Congress require this of Outpost Five? Winn’s not even a Subpar.
I stare at my name at the top of the list. I’ve led them to this.
I will find a way to lead them back out.
TWELVE
429.21 grams cirium
MOONLIGHT FILTERS PAST the flashfall and gilds tunnel nine in silver light, making it look less ominous than it is.
I’ve never gone down by myself. Life here presents many dangers, but none of them threaten disaster quite like caving alone. Nine is bad enough with Dram at my back. He will never forgive me for doing this.
If I don’t do it, I will never forgive myself.
I slip inside and turn on my headlamp and palm lights. The risks I take now are all my own, and it makes me bold. I practically throw myself down the tunnel neck, pushing and pulling my body through the tight space, praying my pick doesn’t catch.
“You’re halfway through,” I say aloud. “Get the ore, get it to Dad.” I say the words over and over, imagining the path I’m going to take, mapping my steps in my head. I have to be faster than I’ve ever been before.
I crawl along on my hands and knees, pushing myself up as the headspace grows, so that I’m running before I can even stand fully. At the mouth of the passage I veer left instead of right. Red light bolts illuminate the ground as I jog past, my axe raised in front of me. I follow them like signposts:
Caution. Danger. Keep Out.
I listen for the drip of water that tells me this is the one I need. I break a light stick and toss it on the floor of a vast cavern. An orbie pool glows orange in the center. I open a tarred pouch and dip it into the pool, careful not to get any water on my gloves. When it’s full, I seal the pouch and hang it from my belt, turning back to the tunnels.
Dram’s bolts are activated by motion sensors, and they come to life one after another until I’ve reached the place where they intersect. It might as well be a locked door. These are marks we do not cross. But there is cirium here.
I step past, my heart racing, my senses on high alert for sounds or movement.
I’m inside a gulls’ nest.
Mother flash gulls leave their nests to hunt, leaving the males and younglings behind to roost amongst the eggs. Females are larger than their male counterparts, with enormous hooked beaks. I have seen them crack open a person’s head like a nut, but their real power is in their talons, which are nearly the size of my hand—another genetic anomaly courtesy of the flash curtain. The feathers on their wings are sharp too, each one edged like a blade.
I know they will come for me. In the glow of the red bolts, I take aim and swing my axe as hard as I can. The sharp ping of metal on stone reverberates around me as I swing again and again. Bits of rock and crude ore crumble at my feet. Half of me is absorbed in my task; the other is poised for attack, waiting. I wear my hair tucked up inside my skullcap. It’s what tunnel gulls go for first, before they make a meal of you. Human hair makes great gull nests.
I hammer at the rock as if I’m trapped
and this is my only way out. Fear makes my palms sweat inside my gloves, and I grip the handle tighter, telling myself I am prepared for what’s coming. Even now, I feel Dad’s compound strengthening me, buffering me against the effects of exposure. I pull off my glove and study my blistered palm. Normally at this depth, cavern particles would sting my skin.
I have to tell him. If I live through this, I have to tell him how powerful his compound is.
At my back, the male gulls call to their mates. Mew, mew, keow! Others stretch wide their bills and fill the cavern with their warnings. Ha-ha-ha-ha!
A female responds from far off. Another calls, closer. Their shrill cries echo, so that I can’t tell what direction they’re coming from. I drop to my knees and sift through the rock, stuffing ore in my pouch with shaking hands. My knives and axe won’t be enough against a nest of gulls. I wear Dram’s light gun strapped to my side and both our bolt guns. Everything is loaded and ready. I stand and face the nest.
It stretches all the way to the tunnel wall. Dozens of eggs sit in rows, like crops awaiting harvest. I recognize the scalps and hair of my team. Even knowing this, I struggle with what I’m about to do. The roosting gulls watch me, their beady eyes following my every movement. They will not leave their perches. Their body warmth is the only thing preserving their young from the particle dust and cold of the cavern.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. They watch me unhook the pouch of orbie water from my belt as they hunker over their eggs, cooing worried lullabies to their young. Tears sting my eyes as I unseal the pouch and aim it at the nesting gulls. I wish this could be a fast and painless death, but it won’t be.
I squeeze the pouch. Water shoots out, and the gulls scream. Orbies cover their white and gray down. The gulls flap furiously, but the orbies hold fast. They do not fly. They will not leave their young. Eggs crack open as the orbies dig and devour. The gulls screech. I’ve never heard them make this terrible sound before. I put my hands over my ears, but their cries pierce me to the core until I drop to my knees, desperate for their suffering to end.
I know it’s not over yet—I still have so far to go tonight. The hunting mothers return. One of them swoops at me, and I lurch away from her beak. The others fly to the dying fathers and young. Their screeching cries echo in pain. I can’t bear it another moment.