by Jenny Moyer
I flatten my body to the ground as the gulls attack, holding back my scream as they hammer with their beaks and gouge me with talons. I kick and swing my axe, but I’m flailing, as desperate and helpless as those poor creatures covered in orbies.
I light a flare and yank the tube from my Oxinator. A sound explodes from my mouth, a yell of despair and triumph. The gulls are strong, but not as powerful as me. Holding the tube toward them, I crank the Oxinator all the way and hold the burning flare in front of it. Flames burst in a whoosh that blows me backward.
I realize I’m screaming along with the gulls. The scent of their scorched feathers and bodies fills the cavern. The flare burns down, and I drop it. It’s so quiet, I hear the hiss of the air filtering through the Oxinator. I turn off the tank and fall to my knees. Soot streaks my face, running into my eyes with the sweat and tears.
I killed them all. I can’t look, but I don’t need to. I can hear the crackle of fires burning down, the hiss and pop of burning gulls’ flesh, the high-pitched scream of orbies, the stench of death.
I lie in the burned-out nest until I find the strength to push myself to my feet and shoot a light bolt into the ground. Yellow light illuminates the wall. Breath saws from my lungs as I chisel the line of cirium from one end of the wall to the other. My hands slip inside my gloves, where blisters have formed and broken, and blood mixes with my sweat.
The first time I descended three, I had to hold Graham’s hand because the dark was like a living, seething creature. It had swallowed Mom, it would surely come for me. Then I felt the pain of striking an axe against stone, and feeling that resistance travel up my skinny arms—but I had to keep swinging Mom’s axe.
Graham said, “Don’t think about how it hurts; just think about seeing the sky again soon. How the air’s gonna feel on your face.”
I let his words roll over me now, imagining him here beside me, holding back the darkness, reminding me to look up. I will not let Congress destroy me.
I am going to see the sky.
By the time I stumble from nine’s entrance, I’m hunched over, barely able to walk. My gloves are ripped to shreds and I feel like I’ve been in a battle, but the hidden pouches tucked against my skin are bursting with cirium. More than I’ve ever brought up at one time.
If Congress wants to murder us, I’m going to make them work for it.
* * *
Dad treats my wounds by the light of a glow stick as I piece together the story of the gulls’ nest and how I survived it.
He dabs my cuts with alcohol, not saying much. Then he transfers his attention to the ore I brought up, pounding it into dust and adding it to the mixture simmering on a burner.
“Did I get enough?” I ask.
“Yes,” he murmurs, “but it takes time to extract the cirium from the ore and transfer the elements. I need time to get the compound right.”
I can’t think about everything I went through not being enough. I can’t think about Dram and I not having a chance at surviving the burnt sands. So I take up a mortar and pestle in my bandaged hands and grind the cirium ore to powder. I have to believe we have a chance. Even if it is a small one.
* * *
I wake disoriented and roll over in my bed. When did I fall asleep?
“Will it work?” a hushed voice asks.
I peer into the kitchen, where Lenore Berrends is hovering at Dad’s shoulder.
“Orion survived exposure during the flash storm,” Dad answers. “But there’s not enough. I need more time.”
Lenore lets out a shaky breath and twists her green memorial pendant around and around, staring at the cirium liquefying above a burner. “She didn’t die right away…” Her voice is even softer than before.
“Who?” Dad asks.
“Ferrin.” She says my mother’s name on an exhale, like it was pulled from her chest.
I’m awake immediately, crawling off my bed and edging toward the end of the loft.
“They were all gone so fast,” she murmurs. “The team … my mother. The rocks just … but Ferrin—she had her axe … w-wedged above me—” Her voice breaks, and her breath hitches. “She said, ‘Take my axe to Orion.’”
I press my face into my hands. I never knew this—had no idea Mom was still breathing after the cave-in.
That her last word was my name.
Lenore takes a breath, then another. She stands up taller, like invisible hands are lifting her. “I crawled out of seven on my hands and knees, dragging her axe and mine,” she whispers. “The entire time, I promised myself that I would grow up to be as brave as Orion’s mom.”
She watches the elements shift inside the beaker, but I think part of her is seeing the collapsed cavern down seven. “How much time do you need?”
“A day,” Dad answers. “But we have only hours.”
“We don’t stand a chance in the cordon.”
Dad sighs and drags his hand through his hair. “I’m doing everything I can.”
“I know,” she says. “Now I must do the same.”
He studies her face. Even from where I’m watching, I can see the resolve in her expression. She’s transforming before us, like the cirium; only something in her voice tells me she’s even stronger.
“What can you possibly do?” Dad asks.
Lenore smiles, even as tears glimmer in her eyes. “Give you a day.”
THIRTEEN
429.21 grams cirium
I’M NOT THE one to finally destroy the sign above the tunnels. Lenore took her axe to it sometime in the night. But her last act of defiance was going down six without her team, or any protective gear.
Lenore gave us a day. Her Burning Day.
Dram’s door creaks when I push through, the way it has since I was a child. As I walk inside, I have this weird thought that Lenore will never hear that sound again. Dram sits hunched in the corner, weeping. I kneel and wrap my arms around him, trying to take some of his pain into myself. But I know I can’t. Instead I press a vial into his hand.
He looks up with bleary red eyes. “Will it even work?”
“Dad says it’ll either help us or kill us quick,” I murmur.
He lifts the vial in a solemn toast and upends it in one toss of his head. I drink mine in two gulps, and it burns—like Lenore Berrends will burn this afternoon.
I weave my fingers with Dram’s and lie down beside him. I squeeze my eyes shut, but it does nothing to hold in the tears. I find myself making more promises to Dram’s dead family.
I won’t let him burn.
* * *
As the only surviving member of his family, Dram is the one to set fire to Lenore’s funeral pyre. He lowers the torch, and I clutch my mother’s remembrance pendant. Mom always wanted to see the sky—the real one—so Dad had her ashes preserved in blue glass.
I’ve told Dad that I want mine saved in clear glass, so he can see my death unobscured, a clear reminder of what the Congress took from us. But I’m not going to a place where they preserve a person’s memory.
I don’t wear Wes’s ashes. His small yellow pendant sits in my drawer, tucked inside one of Mom’s old shirts. His death is too painful to bear remembering, so Dad and I don’t speak of him. Not since Dad held a torch to that tiny pyre and blue flame took his round cheeks so, so fast.
My hand cramps, and I realize I’m gripping my knife. Graham slips his arm around my shoulders.
“Now’s not the time, girlie,” he whispers, helping me sheathe the blade.
“It’s almost done,” Dad murmurs, walking up beside me. “The other batch of liquid cirium.” His gaze slides over the crowd. Everyone’s watching the glassblower. “We may only have this moment. You and Dram need to drink the solution again before you enter the sands.”
My eyes mist with tears, and I tell myself it is the smoke blowing into them. “Dad—” My throat constricts. I can’t get the words out, and there is so much I want to say.
His eyes fill, and he stares into mine. “They always undere
stimate your strength,” he whispers. “Find a way to escape or survive. And when you do…” He looks over to where Dram stands watching the flames. “You bring that boy with you. He is part of what makes you strong.” The tears slip down his cheeks.
I touch his face a last time. “So are you,” I whisper.
* * *
When the hover comes for us, guards parade us from the Rig like a ritual sacrifice. We’re wearing our cavers’ suits, as if they will offer enough protection where we are going. Mine has a foreign lump that bumps my thigh when I walk. Dad sewed the remaining vials of liquid cirium into my suit.
I feel naked without my axe and knives. Where we’re heading, neither is necessary. Tunnel nine is a playground compared to the burnt sands of Cordon Four.
The caving roster hangs beside the lodge, but for the first time in years, my name is not on it. It’s at the top of the new list marked CORDON FOUR, and there are six others beneath it: Dram, Ennis, Graham, Reeves, Gabe, and Winn. Lenore’s name has been crossed out.
We’re going to die, but our names will live on as cautionary tales to future Subpars. I was right about Winn’s age. She’s eight. It’s posted beside her name. Mine says sixteen; beside Dram’s, eighteen. Graham is seventy-one. For some reason, the ages unnerve me even more than the names. Like the Congress is making a point that no one—child or elder—is beyond the reach of corrective action.
Dram walks beside me, a shadow of his former self. His hollowed cheeks show that he’s not been eating even our meager rations.
“I’ve dreamed of leaving this place my entire life,” I murmur. “This was never how I imagined feeling.”
He takes my hand in his. Without the barrier of gloves, I feel the warmth of his skin, the gentle scrape of his calluses against mine. I steal a glance at Reeves and see the warrior he’s kept concealed, the one who ate tunnel gulls and strung the skulls from his belt. He wears his caver’s suit knotted around his waist. His chest is bare, showing all of Outpost Five the scars of being forfeit, along with Foss’s black memorial pendant, and one other beside it. Lenore’s.
“Duck your head,” a guard says as we climb into the craft. I slip onto a narrow bench beside Dram, holding tight to his hand.
The engine rumbles, and the door seals shut. The hover lifts, but there are no windows, no last glimpses of Outpost Five.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“We have nothing left to lose,” Dram says. It’s the most I’ve heard him say in two days.
But as his arms steal around me, and I press my cheek above his heart, I know that he is wrong.
There is still so much to lose.
FOURTEEN
0 grams flash dust
THE AIR GROWS increasingly turbulent, and we bounce around on our seats pretending we’re not feeling the heat seeping through the cirium-reinforced walls. The running lights flicker, and the hold plunges into darkness as the craft drops like a stone.
“Dram?”
“Right here.” He finds my hand in the dark and squeezes.
“The flash curtain affects navigation systems,” Gabe says. “We must be descending into the cordon.”
The lights return just as we slam into a cushion of air. Winn bounces off the bench, and I catch her arm. She’s crying.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say.
Dram gives me a look. We are unlikely to survive the day.
The loading door opens with a hiss. Needles of fear prick my heart. Humid air blows into the cabin, carrying with it a stench like charred wood.
A beautiful woman steps aboard. “You are at Cordon Four,” she says, her eyes skimming over us. “I am GM487. Follow me, please.”
GM487. A genetically modified human. We call them Gems, though I’ve never seen one before today. I stagger across the hold, craning my neck for another glimpse of her. They come from Ordinance, the only city-state we share an alliance with. Alara focuses its efforts on building physical shields against the curtain, while Ordinance works to develop genetic ones. I try to remember what Dad told me about them. Altered postconception, during the embryonic stage, in ways that mimic the genetic coding of Subpars and Conjurors. But it’s risky; the manipulations destroy more embryos than they alter.
The woman—her insignia says COMPLIANCE REGULATOR—examines our Radbands as we line up beside the door. The inside of her forearm is illuminated beneath the skin with glowing blue symbols I don’t recognize. I suppose it’s the designation Ordinance assigned her. A Codev, I think they call it.
“Orion,” she says, glancing at my sleeve, at the lead ore scout patch I wear with less pride than I used to. “Your director warned me about you. Can I expect your compliance?”
I hesitate long enough that Dram kicks my foot. “Yes,” I say. She doesn’t know about the vials of Dad’s compound hidden inside my suit. Whatever else Cranny warned her about, it wasn’t that. She looks past me at Dram, and something in her composed expression distorts, like the wood around a screw turned too far. He carries his father’s features—the eyes, the jaw, even his hair is like Arrun’s was when he was sent here. It’s possible she knew him. It’s possible she said the same thing to him that she said to me.
Your director warned me about you. Can I expect your compliance? If we comply, do we quietly sicken and die, or are things here better than we’ve been told?
I have my arms around Winn, so I notice when the Gem skips her without checking for a Radband. I suppose she’s been warned about her, too. The Natural girl who doesn’t stand a chance.
“Follow me,” the Gem says. “You must be properly equipped before you mine the sands.” Her condition gives me hope. She is more healthy looking than anyone in Outpost Five.
I step off the hover, and my heart plummets.
“We’re in hell,” Dram mutters.
This is worse—so much worse than I imagined. Black smoke billows from burning heaps of rubble. It’s impossible to tell the time of day—the daylight’s blocked by low-hanging clouds that drift in a listless red haze. Bits of ash and cinder float through the air like flaming butterflies. A glowing orange piece lands on Winn’s head, and I pinch it out with my fingers.
We wind past rows of small tents, their canvas A-frames flapping like warning flags. Our guide shows us a collection of sparse buildings: privies, a bathhouse with a collapsed wall and rusty water spigots, a ration station, guardhouse, and infirmary.
I try to decide what Dad would call these living conditions. His term “archaic” is too charming for this bleak existence. I look over the space and settle on “barely habitable.”
Beside the guardhouse three massive flags beat the air: one with the seal of Alara, a black flag with a red stripe signifying the cordon, and an indicator flag. Yellow with two orange stripes. Congress and its love for indicators—as if the flashfall doesn’t already shout, Danger! Keep Away!
Our Gem leader doesn’t take note of the flags. Her eyes follow the swirling dance of tiny insects as they whirl above us in the thick red haze. Their bodies glimmer.
She turns toward the nearest guard. “Emberflies! Raise the alert!” The guard, a male Gem with a glowing blue Codev on his arm, hauls on the ropes of a fourth flagpole. Within seconds, a solid red flag rises above the others.
“Cover your noses and mouths,” the Gem commands. “The haze has brought them low, and they fill the air—like spores from a plant.”
I whirl to yank Winn’s neck cloth over her face, my gaze darting to the creatures I had mistaken for sparks of ember.
Emberflies.
On our Radbands, a red indicator is the final warning, the step before death. I tighten my neck cloth and watch the red flag, thinking that the flashfall is different here, more than air and elements. It is alive.
Ahead of us, Ennis stumbles. He hunches forward, trying to drag in a breath, and coughs, his eyes wide and tearing.
“Ennis?” Dram takes his arm. “What happened?”
Ennis flails his arms, gasping.
GM487 strides toward him. “Your comrade inhaled an emberfly.”
“How do you inhale an insect?” Graham says.
“They attach to particles in the air. I warned you—”
“How do we help him?” Dram demands. He struggles to support Ennis as he thrashes, his eyes wild and bulging.
I slip his other arm over my shoulders. “He needs an Oxinator!”
The Gem shakes her head. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done. I suggest you don’t watch.”
I stare at the Gem, openmouthed. I had forgotten to fear the beautiful things. I’ve barely processed the thought before I’ve got GM487 up against a wall, my fists clenched in her pristine gray and red uniform. “Help him!”
“Orion!” Dram hisses.
The woman’s gaze lowers to where Ennis kicks and sputters on the ground, white foam dribbling down his chin. “There is no help for him.” She pulls free from my grasp and straightens her jacket. “You will learn this quickly.” She turns and strides toward a massive fence. “Leave the body.”
I don’t recognize the sounds coming out of my mouth—like a sob that twists into the snarls of a wounded animal. Dram catches me, and my feet come off the ground as he locks his arms around me.
“Ennis!” I cry.
“He’s already gone,” Graham murmurs.
He is worse than gone. As we watch, Ennis’s body swells as if he’s being pumped with a bellows. Blood seeps from his unseeing eyes. Embers continue to swirl past us.
“Protect yourselves,” Reeves says, pulling his neck cloth up over his nose and mouth.
I cover my face as we head toward the glowing bit of horizon that is brighter than all the rest.
The flash curtain.
* * *
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t compare it to the real sky, or a sunrise or sunset, but the flash curtain drapes across the horizon with all the colors I’ve been told about. It shimmers in waves of luminescent brilliance, a terrifying, radioactive rainbow. It’s endlessly shifting and changing, as if it’s trying to contain its own energy. The particles shift on wind currents like luminous clouds that hug the burnt sands and stretch upward for kilometers in a massive wall.