by Jenny Moyer
Dram followed me to the curtain, and it cost him.
His Radband is amber.
NINETEEN
0 grams flash dust
THERE’S BEEN A shift in the air.
It’s early yet, a dawn haze lifting over the burnt sands in shimmering pinks and corals. Before I even confirm it with a glance at the indicator flag, I feel the unexpected relief of low Radlevels. I step from the tent and let the air cool my face.
“Hell is taking a break,” Dram says beside me. I touch his stubbled cheek, smiling. He smiles back, and I know we’re both enjoying the newness of this. Touching each other and having it mean something more than survival.
We dress and suit up, neither of us mentioning his amber indicator light. Instead, we hold on to the only hope we have, whispering our plans to get back to the helicopter. Our flash wand is empty, but that wreckage might hold another means of escape.
The buzzer sounds, and we head toward the turnstiles.
“We have to find the others,” I say.
Mere emerges from her tent, holding Winn’s hand. As she walks toward us, Dram suddenly stops. His gaze narrows on the people moving behind the fence. Something in the tightening of his face makes me stiffen.
“What is it?”
“Cranny,” he whispers.
Every warm place inside me dies. “It can’t be.” But of course it can. Outpost Five is just a hover ride away. The bigger question is—
“Why?”
“Seems you’re still causing trouble, Scout,” Cranny calls. “The commissary is occupied in Alara, so I’ve come on his behalf.” He steps through the fence, and Gabe shifts into view beside him, wearing a look of remorse. My heart stops.
“One of your friends talked. One of them didn’t.” He signals and a pair of guards steps forward, hauling a large body between them. The man can barely stand, and he’s bent over, his blond hair covering his face. Reeves.
“Show her,” Cranny commands. A guard grasps Reeves by the hair and lifts his head. My hands clamp over my mouth, but my horrified moan escapes.
“I made sure he’ll have bruises to match yours,” Cranny says. Even with the space between us, I feel his dark gaze fixed on me. “Search her.”
Two soldiers march toward us. These are not the guards of the outposts and cordons, but something altogether more menacing. As they near, I recognize the seal of Alara on their armbands, but their uniforms are made with fabric I’ve never seen before—a shimmery sort of material that takes on the hue of their surroundings, shifting as they move like adaptive camouflage.
“Striders,” Mere says. She pulls Winn behind her. These must be the kind of soldiers who captured her.
The Striders haul me to my feet. Their suits emit an odd hum, as if they’re alive with an energy all their own.
“Don’t touch them,” Mere whispers.
The empty flash wand lies deep in the hidden pocket of my suit. Dram leaps up and lurches for the Strider patting me down. When his hands connect with the soldier’s suit, a current jolts through him, knocking him off his feet.
Winn screams. Dram moans and drags himself to his hands and knees. The Strider reaches for him.
“Stop!” I shout.
Cranny walks toward me with an air of anticipation. It reminds me of the flash vulture bobbing up and down. He’s hungry for this moment.
“I know about the flash wand.” His head tilts and his eyes slip over my body. “And I know where it’s hidden.” He reaches for my zipper.
Dram tackles him to the sand, managing one solid hit to Cranny’s jaw before the Striders pull him off. One guard holds him while the other takes a swing at his face.
“Stop, please!” I shout. Dram grunts as the soldier punches him again, this time in the stomach. The Strider holding him moves; he’s going to clasp his electrified arm around Dram’s neck.
“No!” And then I realize something. Gabe told them our plan. They have no reason to believe we haven’t succeeded in enabling the weapon. The only ones who know it’s worthless are Dram and I. I reach for the hidden pocket.
“Keep your hands up!” the Strider commands.
I roll my eyes upward and pretend to faint. My knees hit the ground, and I tip forward. I fake unconsciousness, while my hand slips through a tear made by a beak. By the time a Strider drags me to my feet, I’ve got the flash wand in hand.
“Stand back!” I extend the cylinder. Everyone freezes. If it were full, I could blow them apart with this thing.
Dram’s gaze collides with mine. He shoves the other Strider off him and moves to my side.
“Throw down your weapons,” I say. “I want passage through the flash curtain.”
Dram retrieves their guns, slinging one across his chest and aiming another at the guard who hit him. He wipes the blood from his nose and grins. It shouldn’t be this easy.
“Where do you think you’re going to go?” Cranny asks.
“To Alara,” I say. Dram tucks a gun into my waistband. I’m not sure I’d even know how to use it.
Cranny gives me a pitying smile. “Are you sure?”
“You’re going to take us there. Right now.”
His smile widens. “No, I’m not.”
My heart knocks against my ribs. This is it. He’s calling my bluff. But now Dram and I are holding loaded weapons. Would I actually shoot these people to get free? I glance at Dram. Blood seeps from his nose, and one of his eyes is swelling. My gaze slips to the green and gold pendants around his neck.
Yes. I would.
“The place you’re thinking of doesn’t exist,” Cranny says. “Not as you imagine it. The protected city is a myth told to Subpars to keep them doing what is needed.”
His words burn into me like flash dust.
“And what is needed of Subpars?” I make myself vulnerable with the question, but I need to know.
“Test subjects,” he says. “The cordons and outposts are controlled environments for series after series of radiation testing. But more than that, the Congress needs cirium and flash dust.”
Dram catches my arm, wrapping his hand around mine on the trigger. I am falling. My world is crashing around me, sweeping me away like ash in a flash storm. I am nothing. I belong only to the barren sands of ash and flame, or buried beneath the earth. The sign was a lie. Subpars never leave the outposts. Only for the cordons. We are not the fortunate ones. We are monkeys in cages, like Dad said.
I was never meant to see the sky.
“The world on the other side of the shield won’t offer you refuge,” Cranny says.
Dram aims his pistol at Cranny. “Stop. Talking.”
My fingers caress the trigger of the flash wand. I wish it was loaded. I want to unleash its fury on Cranny and all of Congress and obliterate their control. Maybe I am a revolutionary. Someone needs to be.
“You’re lying,” I say.
“Ask your friend Gabe. The people there want you here as much as the Congress.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“The shield isn’t just there to protect people from the flash curtain. It keeps everyone in their proper places.”
Dram’s finger squeezes the trigger. “Good-bye, Director.”
All at once, red lights flicker over Dram and me. “What is that?”
“Marksmen,” Cranny says. “With their guns trained on your heads.”
I whirl, my gaze sweeping the top of the corral. A line of Striders hold rifles pointed at us.
“Your first mistake is thinking I brought only two Striders with me to confront a girl who single-handedly began a rebellion in Outpost Five,” Cranny says. “Your second was thinking I don’t know what an empty flash wand looks like.” He clamps my wrist and pulls the wand from my hand.
Dram holds his gun trained on Cranny.
“Drop the weapon, Dram,” Cranny commands. “You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”
“But I’ll take you with me,” Dram says.
“And then they’ll
shoot her,” Cranny says, sliding his gaze to me.
Dram swears beneath his breath and lowers his pistol. A Strider disarms him and twists his hands behind his back.
“Load them into the hover,” Cranny says. “Deposit them in Cordon Two.”
The Strider hesitates. “Sir, those weren’t the commissary’s orders.”
“Director,” GM487 says, striding forward, “Commissary Jameson ordered these Subpars returned to Outpost Five for questioning. He contacted me via com.”
“That was before they attacked the Congress’s soldiers and pointed weapons in my face,” Cranny says. He crosses his arms, self-assured in a way I’ve never seen him. “I’m within my rights. You know the parameters for cordon law. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She sighs, and I know we’re in trouble. Gabe tipped them off about the flash wand, but Cranny bided his time, worked over Reeves, and staged this perfectly. He knew we’d resist, that we’d fight back. He was counting on it.
“There are penalties for noncompliance,” Cranny says. He slides a hard look at the Strider who questioned him. “I want these Subpars fitted with collars and prepped for Cordon Two.”
Collars? My wide eyes find Dram’s.
The Strider presses his lips together, stares hard at Cranny, then nods.
Cranny turns to us. “I’m afraid you’ll find Cordon Two less hospitable than this place, but then, it is a prison cordon.”
“Wait,” I say. “I found something. Something you’ll be interested in.”
“What is it?”
I try to imagine how much I have to bargain with. “Let Winn and this woman go to Outpost Five.” I know how he views them—a weak child and a crippled woman.
He points to Reeves. “Do you see that? I would enjoy doing that to you. It wouldn’t take me five minutes to find out what you know.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But then you’d have to stay in Cordon Four long enough for it to burn holes in your uniform.” My eyes flick to his dosimeter, which is spiking into the orange levels.
His mouth tightens, and he motions to a pair of Striders. “Take the child and the Conjuror to Outpost Five. Have them escorted to tunnel four.”
Forfeit. My heart sinks. They won’t survive, not without Lenore sneaking them supplies. Mere doesn’t even have hands, and Winn is too young to defend herself. Dram nudges my foot, and I look up. Mere is working to hide her smile. I have given her what she’s not dared to hope for—a chance to see her son again.
Roran. Of course. He will help them.
The Strider grips my arm and tows me aboard the hover. Another prods Dram on behind me.
Cranny sits across from us in the hold. “Tell me what you found.”
“It’s east of the corral, in an unassigned sector,” I begin. A pang of regret lodges in my chest. I’m giving up my fellow rebels. Though they are long dead, they sheltered us, and they might’ve served as a beacon for future Subpars. “There’s a downed helicopter filled with weapons and supplies…”
Cranny’s gaze narrows as I describe the contents of the craft. A tech comes to take our blood. She pushes up my sleeve, her gloved hands moving my improvised cirium armor aside as if it might bite.
Her hands shake, and her dosimeter chirps a warning. She’s probably thinking about the radiation seeping into her body. I wonder what would make a Natural choose to serve out here. Maybe she didn’t choose. Perhaps she’s more like me than I realize.
I watch my blood drain into her vial. Behind her, Dram eyes her med bag as if judging how much he can get away with stealing. Striders line the wall behind him. I stare at him, silently pleading for caution. These are not the guards of Outpost Five.
“Tell me again about the serums,” Cranny says.
I bite my lip. I hate giving away our secrets, but this is the currency I traded.
“Serum 854,” I murmur. “For treating flash fever.”
Cranny smirks. “Now you’re making things up. There’s no such treatment.”
“Yes, there is.” My gaze shifts to the tech setting my blood carefully into a padded slot.
“I took it,” Dram says, extending his arm. “I’m sure the techs will see it in whatever the hell it is you do with our blood.”
“What else did you find?” Cranny asks.
“That’s everything,” I say. Not everything. But it’s enough to convince him—more than enough to satisfy my half of our bargain. “The buzzer sounded, and we had to get back to the corral. There wasn’t time to search it all.” I bookend my lie with a bit of truth.
Dram meets my eyes over the top of the tech’s head. I didn’t tell Cranny about the map we saw. The one with Xs and coordinates, and the handwritten caver’s mark over Cordon One.
The marker that shows a way out.
“Very well.” Cranny stands and signals the soldiers. “Get them secured in a cell and deposit them in Cordon Two.”
The Strider nods.
“Oh—and give him Serum 61.” He nods toward Reeves. “I want him conscious when he sees the cordon.” Cranny hesitates beside me. “It didn’t have to end this way, you know. All your fighting. What did it gain you?” He shakes his head. “Such a waste.” He strides from the hold. The door seals shut behind him.
A tear tracks down my cheek. I’m surprised I can muster the energy to feel regret. “I’m sorry, Dram.” The engines roar to life, and the bench trembles beneath me.
“Roran’s going to see his mother again, because of you.” He stretches across the darkness and grasps my hand. “Winn is going to live, because of you. You just played Cranny like a fiddle. He has no idea of the trouble he’s got headed his way. Mere is more than she seems.”
His words wash over me like a benediction. I have not wasted my life.
I imagine Roran’s face when he sees his mother emerge from the hover. She will smile at him, and in her eyes he will glimpse the steel and fire inside. The determination the Congress failed to temper.
Outpost Five will have its uprising, after all.
TWENTY
0 grams flash dust
THEY’VE PUT US in a cage.
We are well and truly the monkeys Dad warned me about. Only, I don’t think they’re letting us out for a night of music and dancing.
Not if the collar around my neck is any indicator.
It’s white, like the rest of my strange, skintight suit. The Strider who took my old clothes told me the Congress is testing these. They want to see how long they help us withstand the elements.
“This is a nice touch,” Reeves says, holding up his wrist. Part of the fabric is cut away to reveal our Radbands. “Nice to have that visual confirmation that you’re dying.”
My heart twists. His band turns another shade closer to red each day. All our bands are shifting.
We dangle from a tow cable, six meters beneath the hover, exposed to everything the cordons have to offer. Even now, as we approach the prison cordon, I feel the winds intensify. Over the hum of the hover’s engines, I sense the thrum of the flash curtain. We are getting close.
I reach toward the bars.
“Wait.” Reeves sits up. “I don’t think you should—”
My collar chimes loudly, and a jolt of energy shoots through me. I cry out, but the sound is muffled through my clenched lips.
“Rye!” Dram catches me as I collapse in his arms, shaking, my muscles pulsing.
“Don’t. Touch. The bars,” I gasp.
Reeves swears with words I’ve never heard before. He tears at his collar like it’s a tunnel gull with talons clamped around his neck.
“How bad was the shock?” he asks me.
“Bad enough.” It’s still a struggle to form words.
He grabs hold of the bars.
“Reeves!” Dram shoves him, but it’s the electric current of the cage that finally sends Reeves flying back.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dram shouts.
Reeves flops on the floor, his hair standing on end.
I�
��m still shaky, but I seem to have command of my muscles again. I crouch beside Reeves and hold his panicked, wide-eyed gaze. “Your breath will return—it just knocked the wind out of you.”
“Holy fire,” Dram murmurs. He stands at the bars, staring out over the sands.
I turn and look—and all the air leaves my body.
So this is Cordon Two.
Cages like ours move across the ground, held on giant cirium arms. They move forward and away from the flash curtain, as if guided by an unseen hand. It’s a technological marvel, and I have a vague memory of Dad telling me about places where Congress tests machines within the flashfall. I touch my collar and look down at my suit with new eyes. This cordon is more than prison and punishment. It’s a site for some of our city-state’s most important experiments.
The ground is a desolate wasteland, but it looks nothing like Cordon Four. The sands are white, as if the curtain has leeched all nutrients from the earth here. And no clouds block the curtain, so it is bright, with all its colors refracting over the cages and arms and sand.
There are no indicator flags, and we don’t wear headpieces. Either they don’t care what happens to us, or they’re not concerned about the particles in the air here. The hover lowers, and as we dangle closer to the ground, I get a view of tall poles—four of them—each topped with a light that emits a crackling electronic pulse. Glimmering clouds shift around the lights, and I squint, trying to guess what these contraptions do.
“Emberflies,” Dram murmurs. “They draw the emberflies.”
I throw my hands up over my nose and mouth, reacting instinctively to the memory of Ennis and what just one of those things did to him. But none of the insects strays toward our cage. They swarm the tops of the poles, hungry for whatever the towers are transmitting. We lower farther.
I stand, bracing myself against Dram’s side, and peer into the other cells as we pass. The people inside don’t even look at us.
“Are those people sleeping?” I point to a cage where two bodies lie collapsed. One of them has his arms thrust through the bars. Even from here I can hear the man’s collar beeping.