Flashfall

by Jenny Moyer

  “That’s not the only reason,” Reeves murmurs. “If we die out here, we’re more dust in someone’s pail.” He slips his hand beneath his headpiece to swipe the blood trickling from his nose. His skin gleams, pale as bone.

  I share a glance with Dram. Something’s wrong with Reeves. He’s sick—sick in a way that none of the rest of us are, which tells me it’s something other than the cordon.

  My stomach twists. I don’t want to put a name to it. Not yet.

  “What do you think is the other reason?” I say instead.

  “It’s a convenient way for the Congress to get rid of us.”

  “But we supply them with cirium.”

  “Which is probably why we’re still breathing.” He coughs, and I avert my eyes, half expecting him to vomit again. Dad’s voice in my head catalogs all his symptoms, so I tune it out and listen for the elements in the sand instead.

  “Wait,” I command. I stand and face the curtain, closing my eyes. “Something’s happening.” I kneel and press my palms to the ground.

  “Another storm?” Dram asks.

  “Different,” I murmur. “Hold this.” I hand him my pail and pull my gloves off.

  “Orion!”

  “Just for a second.” I set my hands on the sand and bite back a scream. Blistering welts form over my palms even as I shove them back into my gloves. But it was enough. Enough to read the elements pulsing across the cordon.

  “We need to get back.” I stand. “We have enough dust—enough for Mere and Winn, too. Let’s go—quickly.”

  “What is it?” Dram hands me my bucket and jogs at my side.

  I force my legs to go faster. “Sandstorm. Any moment now.”

  “Fire,” Dram mutters.

  “You guys head back,” Reeves says. “I’ll get Winn.” He sprints past us toward the shelter, and I stare after him.

  “He’ll make it,” Dram says. “He’s still got time.”

  So he’s drawn the same conclusion I have. And he’s not putting a name to it yet, either.

  * * *

  Flash storms hint at their approach, streaking the sky with orange virga and sending ahead warning winds of sulfur and particle dust. Cordon sandstorms rise up like a snake striking. You barely register the fangs in your skin, and you’ve got venom coursing through your body.

  We run for the corral, its white top the only indicator of sanctuary in the black sand swirling around us. It hasn’t reached us yet—but I can feel that a massive wave of sand is about to break over the cordon. If it reaches us, it will swallow us down to the bowels of this hell.

  “Almost there,” Dram huffs beside me. Gabe ran on ahead of us. He’s probably tucked safely behind the fence by now.

  I’m slowing. Even with fear propelling me forward, I don’t have the kind of stamina to maintain this speed—especially not through burning sand with the weight of a cirium suit slowing me down.

  “There!” Dram points to a heap of rubble that looks like it might have once been a bridge. “Climb!” He leaps for a twisted projection of metal and hauls himself up.

  This is like the Range. My hands slide into grooves, and my feet push off pitted cracks in the stone. Dram grasps my arm just as I reach the top.

  “Lie down!” He yanks me over the side just as the wall of sand hits.

  We flatten ourselves, facedown, our hands and feet anchored to bits of metal and concrete as the cloud of sand erupts over us. Sand fills the air, bites at us through our suits, until I feel like an ore mite’s parasites are working their way in. The air clears of sand a moment later—the length of a few held breaths.

  “Still with me, ore scout?” Dram asks, coughing like dust got through his headpiece.

  “No,” I murmur hoarsely.

  The corral buzzer sounds. Congress, calling for its collection.

  * * *

  We empty our flash dust onto the scale one at a time, adding the dust slowly, until it shows 2.0 grams. We keep all extra hidden in our pockets.

  “Deposit accepted,” a voice says through a speaker. “Proceed through the turnstile.”

  We shuffle through, toward the small tents that await us beyond the corral fence.

  “Fewer people,” Dram murmurs. He pulls off his headpiece and eyeshields.

  “Probably the sandstorm.”

  We search for Winn and Reeves, but the first few tents are filled with Gems.

  “She’s with the Conjie woman,” Reeves calls, poking his head around a tent flap. “She met us beside the deposit with extra dust for Winn. The kid took to her like she took to Roran.”

  So Mere helped us, after all.

  “I can’t believe you have the strength to smile,” Dram says.

  “I can’t believe you two have the strength to stand,” Reeves adds, coughing into the dirt. Blood spatters the ash at his feet. He lifts his head and drags a hand through his hair. “Guess the sand got to me after all.” His brow furrows, and he looks down at his hand. Long strands of blond hair fill his fist. “Fire,” he whispers, meeting our eyes. “Don’t say it. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  Dram and I don’t say it. None of us want to acknowledge the horrible truth of Reeves’s radiation sickness.

  The sands didn’t get to Reeves, but the cordon shards in Outpost Five did.

  SIXTEEN

  17.6 grams flash dust

  I HAVE NEVER seen so many genetically modified humans in one place before. Well, actually, I’d never seen a single Gem before the sands, but they fill the tents here. According to Gabe, their service in the cordons is part of our alliance with Ordinance.

  The way I can identify the non-Gems is that the rest of us wear our terror like it’s part of a uniform. We all belong to the society of the soon-to-die.

  But not the Gems.

  “You resent them,” Dram says, following my gaze.

  I empty my nutri-pac into my mouth. Everyone gets purple foil here, even Winn. The Congress must want to fatten us up before we become the glittering dust beside the curtain. I crumple the packet in my fist.

  “Rye?” Dram asks. “You know they’re not here by choice, right?”

  “Don’t ask me to feel sympathy for them,” I say.

  “So they have a biological Radsuit and we don’t,” Dram says. “You want to hate them for it? Should Winn hate us for being Subpars—because we can survive exposure that she can’t?”

  I give him a dirty look. “They can actually live here.”

  “This isn’t living. Not for anyone.” Dram steps into his suit. Together, we assist Winn into hers. She hasn’t spoken since we watched Graham die yesterday. Her small body shakes as I draw her arms through the sleeves.

  “I won’t leave your side,” I tell her. I have nothing to offer but inadequate words.

  The first buzzer sounds.

  “Quick, now,” Dram says, guiding her foot into Graham’s suit. We hurry to fit it around her. I tuck her doll safely inside. Winn stares at nothing.

  Lenore would know what to do for her. The thought tears at my heart like a knife.

  “You still with us, ore scout?” Dram asks.

  I drag my thoughts to the pressing concerns of the moment—a corral and a mining sector and an impossible task in a furnace.

  “Mere,” Winn says, her face brightening.

  Mere whisks into our tent and gathers the child in her arms. “Is there a little girl somewhere under all this?” Winn smiles. “How about I carry you on my back like a monkey?” She kneels, and Winn clambers on, holding tight.

  “I’ll look after her,” Mere says to us. “Go as far as you need to.”

  My eyes lift to the little girl clinging to Mere. “Her doll’s name is Len,” I whisper.

  Mere smiles. “She told me.”

  Something heavy lifts from my shoulders. I guess Winn found her words, after all.

  Reeves waits for us with his back propped against the fence. He wears Lenore’s tie in his hair and a smirk on his face. “We need to discuss our escape plan,�
�� he says. “I feel like I’ve experienced all that Cordon Four has to offer.”

  “Agreed,” Gabe says beside him. “I’m not sure how many more sandstorms I can outrun.”

  “The flash wand is half full,” I murmur. “We need more dust.”

  The second buzzer sounds.

  “Let’s go find some,” Dram says.

  I pull my headpiece on and push through the turnstile. I am back to weighing my freedom one gram at a time.

  * * *

  Our determination evaporates over the course of the day, until it’s all we can do just to keep moving—keep breathing—out there beside the curtain. Especially Reeves. He’s fading faster than all of us. From watching the scale at night, I’ve learned what 2 grams of flash dust looks and feels like. I made certain no one was looking when I dropped it into his bucket.

  Freedom will have to wait. We’re barely mining enough to survive.

  We come back from our assigned sector covered in sand. It penetrates our suits so that the clothes beneath catch the crystalline shards. We leave them outside the tent and climb inside in our underwear. Radiation poisoning comes in many forms here, so we must avoid exposure however we can. Dram crouches to seal the tent flap. He’s not wearing a shirt.

  At Outpost Five, men and women dressed on opposite sides of a curtain inside the Rig. Here at Cordon Four, we just tear our suits off and stagger into our tent. No one has the energy to care about privacy. We have persevered through too much to die for modesty’s sake.

  “Here.” Dram tosses me two foil packets. I’m too tired to ask who he swiped them from. I’m not sure the guards around here even care if Dram robs them blind. The curtain will take us soon enough. I tear into a packet with shaking hands. I’ve never been so hungry.

  He drops a bolt gun on our mattress and turns to take his pants off.

  “Where did you find a light bolt gun in a place with no tunnels?” I ask, ripping the second nutri-pac open.

  “It’s not a bolt gun.” Dram tosses his pants outside our flimsy shelter. He turns back and my eyes stay too long on parts of him I never see. I study the words on the packet as if I care what vitamins and nutrients it’s supplying me with.

  “You stole a weapon?” I ask. “What if the guards find out?”

  “Says the girl carrying a half-loaded flash wand.”

  I sigh and toss the empty packets on the ground.

  My eyes stray back to Dram’s chest. I long to touch him, to see if his skin feels as smooth and hard as it looks. He kneels beside me, and I make room for him on the floor pallet. He lies down, and I feel every part along his side where our bodies touch. We touched all the time in the tunnels, but this is different.

  His memorial pendants hang down his chest, green and gold. He should have a third, for his father, but Arrun Berrends was given no Burning Day. His ashes are out there somewhere, beyond the thin walls of our tent, swept along with the burning sands.

  Under the cover of our shared blanket, Dram and I examine the flash wand. Our Radbands glow, pale green and yellow.

  “We need 9.2 grams more.” He taps the indicator on the side of the reservoir. “We could go closer to the curtain—past the assigned sectors, where no one else has mined. There will be dust there.”

  “Only one of us needs to go that far,” I reply.

  I wait for him to protest. To say that I can’t take the risk and to announce he’ll be the one to fight through radiation to mine the sands we need. But he doesn’t. He just holds my gaze steady with his. I am Outpost Five’s lead ore scout. If anyone has a chance to find what we need, it’s me.

  I’ll be the one to go.

  The moment the thought settles in, a sense of peace envelops me. It’s as if my whole life has been leading to this task—a final test that will lead to freedom, one way or another. But just in case our weapon doesn’t work and we die out there, there is something I need to do at least once in this life.

  I turn toward Dram, and he reaches for me. He kisses me, and my breath catches, like I’ve got a faulty Oxinator. He smiles, and I feel it against my mouth. I don’t need breath—not for this. I throw my arms around his neck, and he makes a sound, a hum and a sigh mixed together. I lose myself to his touch, his taste. I’m floating, outside myself, like Serum 129, only I’m aware of every sensation, anchored to this moment by Dram’s touch.

  He pulls back, and I catch my breath. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” he whispers.

  My eyes widen. “But I thought—”

  “How could you not know?”

  “You and Marin…”

  His smile fades. “She and I aren’t … We don’t have that kind of…” He sighs. “We were just a distraction for each other, Orion.” He frames my face with his hands. “She isn’t the one I crawled into the tunnels each day for.”

  His words unlock something inside me. I know the cost of the tunnels. Especially for Dram, squeezing himself through the neck of nine. Not just for cirium. For me.

  This time, when we reach for each other, he angles his head. It brings us closer, closer than before. I’ve always been the one out front, leading him into the unknown—but this time I let Dram guide me.

  He captures my mouth on a breathless sigh. I’m reminded of the first time I felt his lips, when we shared a breath outside the air cave. I saved his life—right before he turned around and saved mine. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve done that over the years. Surely I can do it again come the morning.

  He pulls away to press kisses along my neck. I close my eyes and thread my fingers through his hair. “I didn’t know,” I say.

  “You were distracted by flash bats and orbies and tunnel gulls.” A soft smile lifts his lips. “We were too busy saving each other’s lives to figure out what it all meant.”

  “Then we should make up for lost time.” I let my hands wander the hard planes of his chest, the way I’ve been wanting to, and he takes my hands in his.

  “We have all the time in the world,” he whispers.

  His hands caress my back, slip down to my waist. My palms find the dip and swell of his muscles as he leans over me. We take our time learning each other like there’s no hurry, like his words are true.

  Like this moment isn’t our last.

  SEVENTEEN

  19.2 grams flash dust

  I TUG ON my cirium suit and decide that today is the last day I will contemplate my imminent death. By tonight, I will either already be through with it, or I’ll be starting a brand-new life beyond the flashfall, far from the sands, far from Outpost Five.

  This, I tell myself, is what I should focus on. But the places beyond the flash curtain are hazy, imaginary places in my mind, pieced together by the random bits of information I have about the protected city. I can’t make sense of half the things Gabe tells me, and even then, I’m pretty sure he’s only given me part of the picture.

  I press my hand against the weapon hidden in my pocket, the flash wand I’m risking my life to fill.

  “Just nine grams more,” Dram murmurs. He checks my suit, as he’s done nearly every day for the past five years. It hits me that this is the last time. I’m wearing pieces of cirium we ripped off the sides of a shelter, and he tightens the straps holding them secure beneath my suit.

  “This is going to be heavy,” he murmurs, lifting my cirium-lined arm.

  I nod. Better exhausted than dead. We’ve done what we can to give me a fighting chance. When he’s done, I check his suit, ignoring my shaking hands and the feeling that I need a pail to throw up in.

  “Are you ready?” he asks.

  I open my mouth, but words fail me. He slides aside my trembling fingers and pulls the final wrapped vial from my suit. He twists the stopper, and I drink down the last of my father’s theory—the barrier that may or may not be enough to protect me from the full impact of the flash curtain. I drop the vial and crunch it under my boot, pulverizing the bits of glass. I don’t want any part of this traced back to Dad.
r />   “In case I didn’t make it clear last night,” Dram murmurs. “I love you, Orion Denman.”

  I can’t get words past my tight throat. But Dram and I have never needed words to say the important things. His lips find mine in a way that feels familiar now, and I share a breath with him one last time.

  * * *

  The buzzer sounds. Dram and the others pass through the turnstiles and walk our ordered route. I sprint past them. I need to go much, much farther.

  Gems throw me curious looks from the other side of the chute. No one is ever eager to head out—especially not Subpars. I force myself to slow. My mission is pointless if I draw too much attention to myself.

  Wes’s memorial pendant slides against my chest. I wear it now, beside my mother’s, and the cool yellow glass presses my skin, just above my heart.

  “You with me today, Wes?” I murmur. I feel him somehow, a soft warmth like how I imagine sunlight feels. As I run, I shut out the glowing orange haze, the dark places of perpetual night, and let my mind go to the past, to the memories I’ve kept buried. There was a song I used to sing to Wes. At the end, I’d lift him up and tickle his tummy, and he would gasp, “Again, again!”And I would do it until my arms ached.

  A flash vulture eyes me from a pile of rubble. Its dark wings extend, and it begins its dance of anticipation. I wish I had Dram’s light gun. I’d shoot a red bolt straight through its head. Instead, I grip the shard of cirium that I formed into a knife and sprint forward. My breath seizes in my chest as I dart past it. The vulture screeches, and I see the shadow of movement out the corner of my eye. It circles above me, swooping through the flaming dust, its leathery wings adapted to the harsh environment like it was born for it. I suppose it was.

  My steps slow as an idea forms in my mind. I stop and look up. The vulture cries above me, a hoarse shout of triumph. Its bones protrude, pushing against the black skin as if they might poke through. It’s starving. The curtain takes everything for itself, not leaving enough for its children. It drops to the flaming dust three meters away. I need it to come closer.

  “Hungry?” I call. It tilts its head, like conversation with its prey is unfamiliar. I push the layers of my left sleeve up, exposing the underside of my forearm. The top is plated with a narrow strip of cirium. I drag my makeshift knife along my skin, shallow, but enough to give the sight and scent of blood. I step toward the vulture, extending my arm.