Flashfall

by Jenny Moyer

  We stand behind the fence of the cordon encampment, far away from it, but it has never been so loud inside me. I feel the shift of its vaporous, auroral bands, like a hand moving a bow across the strings of an instrument. It called to me before. Now it demands I answer back.

  Winn gasps and turns her head. Even with our new eyeshields and the clear hoods of our cirium suits, it’s hard to look at the curtain.

  I’m not sure why they gave us earpieces. Maybe they want us to feel like we actually stand a chance out here. Or maybe they want us to experience the horror of hearing each other burn up. But it’s Winn I hear in my ears, her breathing a step beyond panicked. I grasp her arms and force her head to mine.

  “I’m right here,” I tell her. The best comfort I can offer is that she won’t die alone. And she won’t die until I’ve done everything possible to get us out of this hell. At least the emberflies are gone; the red flag is nowhere in sight.

  Graham takes Winn’s hands and crouches in front of her. A hiss of pain escapes his lips as he puts weight on his injured leg. He picks up her dust bucket and wraps her gloved hand around the handle.

  “We’ve got a job to do, girlie,” he says in his gruff voice. “We’re a team—just like in the tunnels. You just step where I step, all right?” She nods, and he hands her one of the metal sifters we’ve been given. Her hand, in its too-big glove, grips the sifter tightly.

  GM487 herds us into a chute so narrow that we have to stand single file. A blast from a horn cuts through the air, making me jolt. “When you hear that sound at the start of the day,” she says, “you will gather here, at the corral.”

  So there’s a name for this towering white monstrosity, I think, tipping my head back to take it all in. White paint peels from the sides of the wide wooden beams that divide the area into a series of pens. I wonder why anyone bothered to paint it in the first place. Maybe so we could find our way back to it through land that is a palette of ash and blood and coal and rust. Embers catch on my suit and slowly burn through. I brush them off before they reach my skin.

  “This signal”—she pauses as an even louder buzzer drowns out her voice—“tells you to go through the turnstiles and proceed to your authorized mining sector. If you collect two grams of flash dust, you receive rations and rest.”

  Ahead of us, Gems push past the turnstiles. Some of them look at us, assessing, intelligent. They don’t wear eyeshields, and most have their headpieces pushed back. Men and women, mostly young, but not one of them looks like the other. I have never seen such a variety of skin tones and coloring. They are exotic and alluring—unnaturally so—but what compels me to stare after them is the one characteristic they all share. Endurance. Whatever flags are raised here, these people will not succumb easily to the flashfall.

  And now I know the feeling inside me isn’t awe. It’s resentment.

  “Orion?” Winn asks in my earpiece. I realize I’ve stopped walking. The entire group has passed me. I squeeze her hand and lead her toward the turnstile.

  My emotions tangle, fused with the same burn that drove me to climb the sign in Outpost Five. I force myself to breathe, to think hard about everything that happened after I made that reckless move. Barely an hour here, and I’m already struggling to comply.

  The director was right to warn them about me.

  “Proceed to your sector, Subpars,” the regulator says.

  “What if we collect less than two grams?” Gabe asks.

  “Then you receive neither rations nor rest.” She points to a figure on the other side of the fence. “That Conjuror has been outside the fence for two nights now. She will not survive a third.”

  The woman sifts through the ashes on her knees. Instead of hands, crude metal sifters have been fitted to the ends of her stumps. They are pronged, like oversized, curved forks, with one tine bent away from the rest in a garish representation of a thumb. Her right hand has a screen of mesh exactly like the sifters they’ve supplied us with. It looks like it belongs to part of a machine, not a person.

  “Appendages,” Gabe says. “They vary depending upon the work Congress assigns a Tempered Conjuror.”

  “That’s barbaric,” Graham grumbles.

  “They’re considered a mercy. She wouldn’t have survived out here with only stumps.”

  “You saw this in Alara?” I ask.

  Gabe shakes his head, still watching the woman. “No. This sort of Tempering is … punishment. Reserved for resistant Conjurors.”

  I look back at the woman. The resistant Conjuror.

  Sweat streaks the soot and blood on her face. Her pail lies on its side as she struggles to transfer the flash dust. She lifts her head as we pass, looking us over intently. The lower half of her face is covered with her neck cloth, but I’m struck with a sense of recognition. Brown eyes.

  Roran has this woman’s eyes. She’s alive. My people are survivors.

  I step closer, my heart galloping, wanting to be right—needing to be certain. Her skin is like his—a few shades darker than mine. She wears her dark hair pulled back, but it’s a match for his. She focuses once more on her task, and it’s then—the way her brows draw together—that I know it’s her. Roran makes the same expression when he alters the rock in his hand.

  My fingers twist around the fence. “Mere?” I shout. She doesn’t look at me so I rattle the fence. “Mere!”

  “What are you doing?” Dram asks. We’ve reached a metal turnstile, and he pushes through.

  It’s my turn. A line of people waits behind me. The Conjie woman’s looking at me now, and I rip my hand from my pocket and press it to the fence. Roran’s flower is tucked against my palm.

  Her eyes widen. She pushes herself to her feet.

  “Proceed through the turnstile, Subpar,” calls GM487. I step through backward, my gaze riveted on the woman running toward me. The metal bars click around me as I press through.

  “Return to your sector, Conjuror,” a guard shouts.

  Mere crashes against the fence just as I pass through the corral. I push my hands through the rusted wire and clasp her wrists just above her appendages.

  “Roran?” she asks. Even her voice is a match for his, with the lyrical accent he works desperately to hide.

  “He’s safe.” I slip the blossom inside her sleeve. A body shoves me from behind, and I stumble forward.

  “Subpar, proceed!” GM487 commands again.

  “I’ll help you!” I shout, keeping Mere in my sights as I walk. She clasps Roran’s flower to her chest.

  “I’ll help you, Subpar!” A smile breaks over her face. “What’s your name?”

  I feel myself smiling back. Something about this woman makes me feel invincible. “Orion!” I call. The throng of miners pushes me farther into the cordon, but she grabs her pail and runs to keep pace with me.

  “A good name,” she says. “A warrior’s name.”

  For the first time, my name is not a joke. This woman has seen the stars. “A hunter’s name,” I say.

  Dram threads his way past the people stepping around me. “Let’s go, hunter,” he says. “You’ve got two grams of flash dust to find, plus extra for your new friend.”

  “She’s Roran’s mother,” I say, following him into the swirling winds.

  “So I gathered.” He studies me through his eyeshields. “What did you give her?”

  “Hope,” I whisper.

  I clutch my pail and wade into the flaming debris the curtain spits toward us. I found Roran’s mother in a place filled with death and fear and fire.

  Maybe I am the hunter my mother named me for. Perhaps I’ll find the flash dust we need to survive the night.

  Hope.

  The word whirls through me, elusive, burning, and powerful.

  * * *

  We are going to die.

  Beneath the cirium suit, my body shakes like I’ve climbed too high, too fast. I plunge my sifter into the sand again and again, but come up with nothing except scorched ground. I rake my hand th
rough the burnt sands, and it feels like I’m holding my palm over flame.

  “Let me sift,” Gabe says. “Nothing can hurt these hands.” He cups his cirium fingers around a handful of sand. “You just tell me where.”

  I wish I could. Flash dust is different from cirium. The conditions of Cordon Four don’t help in sorting it out, either. All I want to do is burrow under the ground.

  The winds kicked up an hour ago. I’m not sure what normal is around here, but this feels a lot like a flash storm. My Subpar senses are screaming at me.

  “Never thought I’d miss nine,” Dram says.

  “Never thought I’d miss Outpost Five.”

  We stand like a couple of hands clasped in prayer, Winn tucked between us. Her skin is blistering beneath her suit.

  “There’s nothing here,” Graham says. He lies on his side in the black and red sand, sifting sand into his pail. His left leg is swollen twice its normal size. Apparently, the parasites inside his knee have no more love for Cordon Four than we do. “You need to go farther,” he says.

  “We’re not leaving you,” I say for the third time.

  “Shouting the words doesn’t make them right, girlie,” he says, cursing and tossing his pail aside. “Dram, I expect you to heed me, boyo. You know what’s right.”

  Winn cries out. Her whimpering’s been a constant sound, like the wind, but this cry is new. I grip her headpiece and turn her so I can see her face. A blood vessel’s broken in her eye.

  I pull her doll from her pouch and tuck it in her hand. “She’s scared, Winn. You need to tell her that everything’s going to be okay.” Before we left Outpost Five, I took Winn’s yellow dress and cut it down to fit her doll. I’m not sure how long it will survive the flaming ash of the cordon.

  “Don’t be afraid. I’m here,” she croons to the doll, smoothing gloved hands over it like it’s got flowing curls instead of frayed climbing rope for hair.

  “What’s her name?” I ask.

  “Len,” she whispers.

  Len. Lenore. Tears burn the back of my throat. “That’s a good name.” My eyes meet Dram’s.

  Reeves jogs toward us. “I found a shelter! It’s about half a kilometer east.”

  Shelter! My gaze shifts to Graham. Half a kilometer might as well be ten kilometers. He can’t even walk ten steps.

  “Time for you kids to get going,” he says.

  Reeves hands me his pail, then stoops and lifts Graham, who hits him in the arm. “Put me down. Run with the others to safety.”

  “I can run and carry you,” Reeves says.

  “You’re as stubborn as Scout,” Graham mutters.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Reeves says.

  Dram lifts Winn in his arms, and Gabe and I follow.

  * * *

  The cirium shelter is the size of an air cave. There is no chance we will all fit.

  “Get inside!” Dram shoves me in behind Winn.

  “Not without you!” I yank him inside, and we squeeze into a corner.

  Wind howls past the entrance, and burning cinders pelt Graham and Reeves.

  “Get them in!” Gabe shouts. He’s hanging halfway out himself.

  “Put Winn on my shoulders,” Dram says, and he stoops as I boost Winn up. She clambers onto his shoulders, hunching her back to avoid the roof.

  Graham pushes Reeves into the gap. “Away from the door, boyo,” he says gruffly. He grunts as a gust of burning dust slams him so hard he stumbles from the entrance.

  “Graham!” Gabe catches his arm, hauls him back.

  “Put me on your shoulders, Reeves!” I cry.

  “Ceiling’s too low,” Dram says softly. His gaze is fixed on Graham.

  “What are you doing?” Gabe demands. Graham’s pulling off his suit.

  “Give this to the little mite,” Graham gasps. “Another layer to keep her safe.”

  “Graham.” My soft cry penetrates the eerie stillness of the shelter. Out in the cauldron, his eyes meet mine—the man who taught me to raise an axe and fight my way out of despair, out of fear. As I watch him drag his suit off and push it into Gabe’s outstretched metal hands, I realize he’s still teaching me.

  “Don’t cry for me, girlie,” he says. “I’m going to see the sky today.” He drags his mouthpiece off. Chunks of crystallized particles pelt him like hail.

  “Close your eyes, Winn,” I say. But I don’t. I can give Graham this much. I will watch the sacrifice he makes for us.

  “Let me go!” he shouts to Gabe. Wind gusts, taking his hair and eyebrows; his skin pits with holes.

  Gabe releases him. Wind sucks Graham away from the entrance, turning him on one foot like a zealous dance partner.

  “Graham!” I shout, as if I can heal him with my voice. He finds my eyes across the blowing cinders. His stream with blood.

  “You’ve done your mom proud,” he shouts. “Both of you.” Then he hobbles backward into swirling debris.

  The shelter is silent but for the radiation winds whining beyond the entrance and Winn’s sobs.

  “We’re getting out of here.” Dram pulls a metal tube from his pocket.

  The weapon hasn’t discharged, but as Dram holds up a flash wand, I feel a concussive blast rip through my shock.

  “Holy fire,” Reeves says. “How the hell did you steal one of those?”

  “I didn’t. Graham found it.” He turns the cylinder in his palm. The metal’s scraped, like it’s already been used in battle.

  “It’s empty,” Gabe says.

  “Not for long.”

  Gabe shakes his head. “We can’t get close enough to the curtain to collect enough dust.”

  “We don’t need to.” Dram’s gaze slips outside the shelter, to where Graham stood just moments ago.

  My gaze skips from Dram to Reeves to Gabe, trying to make sense of their hesitation. They seem to be seeing something I’m not.

  “Orion…” Dram looks at me, his blue eyes haunted. “You don’t know what the flash dust is, do you?”

  “The flash curtain burns up the sand…”

  “Not the sand, Rye.” He looks pained, like he has to draw venom from my arm and he knows he’s going to have to hurt me to save me.

  I look out at the place where Graham stood. Now that the winds have died, I can see the sand more clearly. Flash dust sparkles where the storm swept over him.

  The realization slams into me. “Oh, fire,” I whisper. The dust. The flash dust.

  It’s what remains after the curtain consumes a person.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I murmur.

  “Just breathe.” He tries to give me space, but there is none. Gabe stares at the ground. Reeves’s eyes bounce away from mine. They knew. How ironic that everyone knew but the ore scout. No wonder I couldn’t find the element.

  Another thought hits me, and it’s so terrible I can barely breathe. “When did he give you that flash wand?”

  “At Outpost Five,” Dram says. “He found it the day they created nine. He’s been holding on to it a long time.”

  Cranny thinks I have something of his. Graham’s words the night the director withheld the treatment for his leg.

  “He planned to die.”

  “He didn’t know how or when,” Dram says. “He just told me to be ready.”

  I take the wand. The metallic canister slides across my palm, lighter than a memorial pendant. I hand it to Gabe.

  “Sift the sand beside the shelter. Pour the flash dust into this.” My voice is shaky as a frayed rope. Gabe crouches and reaches his cirium hands outside.

  The Congress forces Subpars to mine the dust that powers their weapons—to be the ammunition in their weapons. They don’t expect us to figure out how to turn it back on them.

  But the caver who endured ore mites and cordon winds knew we’d find a way.

  Ah, Graham. One last lesson.

  FIFTEEN

  14.6 grams flash dust

  THE STORM LASTS less than an hour. We leave Winn in the shelt
er and press closer to the curtain. I’ve given up hope, so I let my anger fuel me instead. I’m determined Graham won’t have died in vain. The shift in attitude affects my focus, and soon I’m picking up traces of flash dust like they’re calling my name.

  I’m lead ore scout once more.

  Gabe’s cirium hands strain the burnt sands faster and with more success than our thick gloves and sifters, but our pails slowly begin to fill. I lead us to a deposit and then we all drop down and mine the Congress’s precious element.

  “How long have you known?” I ask Dram. I can still hardly believe it. I never dreamed our government was this depraved. Or this desperate.

  He doesn’t answer right away, but taps his sifter into his pail. Finally, he meets my eyes, his own red-rimmed. I feel a punch of guilt. If possible, he loved Graham even more than I did. At least I still had Dad after Mom and Wes died. Dram has lost everyone close to him. Everyone but me.

  “Graham told me,” he says. “When he gave me the flash wand. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “How is it even possible? They’re just human bodies.”

  “They’re not just human bodies,” he counters. “Everything is altered by the flashfall—transformed by elements we still don’t understand—and then the curtain alters them again when…” He trails off, and I have a vivid memory of Graham spinning on one foot before the flashfall swallowed him beside our shelter.

  “Think of how the curtain affects living things,” Gabe says. “It infuses everything with a bit of its substance. It doesn’t incinerate its own elements, so it’s left behind as flash dust.

  “And in terms of it being ammunition?” He sifts the dust through his metal fingers. “We’re talking about traces of the flash curtain—unexpended energy.”

  I still see Graham telling me my mother would be proud.

  “Why don’t they just have machines do this?” I grumble, my hands burning as I sift the particles into my pail.

  “Machines malfunction this close to the curtain,” Gabe answers.