Flashfall

by Jenny Moyer

  “We’re nearing the perimeter,” he says.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and press my forehead against the cable.

  Please. Please. Please.

  Dram grasps my leg, like his touch is enough to sustain me through an electric force field.

  “We cleared it!” he shouts.

  My blood races like it got tripped up on the way to my heart. “They’re not raising the cable,” I shout.

  “I know. We’re going to have to jump.”

  Jump. We are several meters above the sands of Cordon One. And rising.

  “Now!”

  “But—”

  He grabs hold of my other leg and pulls. My hands slip, and we fall.

  The hover’s engines swallow the sound of my scream.

  TWENTY-TWO

  0 grams flash dust

  WE DROP INTO a graveyard. I’ve never seen one, but Dad told me once of places where people used to bury their dead. Before the curtain fell. Before Burning Days.

  A human skull rests beside my hand.

  I lie on my back, waiting for my breath to return, taking stock of my injuries. I still have skin on my skull, so I suppose I’m doing better than I could be.

  “Rye?” Dram gasps. He’s half buried in sand an arm’s length away.

  “Still here,” I croak. I have sand in my mouth. On my face. In my eyes. Maybe that’s why I can’t breathe. I slowly roll onto my stomach. “You?”

  “Alive.”

  “Good. If you ever pull me from another hover cable, I’ll kill you.”

  “Fair warning.” He groans, struggling to his feet.

  “So, Cordon One?” I ask, still hugging the ground. “What’s it like?”

  “Empty.”

  “Any cages?” I ask.

  “Nope.”

  “Crazy Conjies?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “A big sign that says ‘Welcome to the Protected City’?”

  “See for yourself.” I clasp his hand, and he drags me to my feet.

  A massive, shining silver barrier rises up out of the sand in the distance, taking the place of the flash curtain. It towers more than a hundred meters high, curving like a protective arm. The ends of the flash curtain wave, in tendrils of light and particles, stretching like fingers from Cordon Two.

  Maybe it’s the cirium shield, but Cordon One doesn’t consume its victims with fire and heat like the others. It leaves the bones to litter the ground like a monument to lost hope.

  I search the white sky, expecting flash vultures, but there’s nothing. No sound, barely any wind. This place is empty. A perfect place for a Subpar to finally let go.

  I tip my face to the ash-soaked sky. I imagine it is blue.

  “What are you doing?” Dram asks.

  “The air is stable.” I don’t know this for sure. I just don’t care anymore.

  “Let’s search the perimeter of the shield.” He starts walking toward the massive wall of cirium. “They won’t be looking for us that way.”

  “You still think there’s a way out?” I ask. He stops and turns.

  “You saw that map. Come on!”

  “Look around, Dram,” I call. “There’s no camp, no turnstiles.” I lift my empty hands. “There aren’t even collection deposits. The dead don’t turn to flash dust here.” He turns in a slow circle, his eyes scanning the distance. “It’s because we’re done. This is the last cordon.”

  “Then what is the point of bringing people here?” he asks, pointing to the remains of a former inhabitant.

  “The same as the rest,” I say. “To study us and see how long we last.” And then, as if it’s lending support to my words, a weathered sign, pitted with holes, catches my eye. I point at it and laugh. Dram walks toward it, but I can read the worn print from here.

  DANGER: FLASHTIDE

  Flashtide. The word sounds beautiful and horrifying at the same time. I glance at the bones studding the sand and settle upon horrifying.

  “What’s a flashtide?” Dram asks.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s what killed these people.”

  Dram hits the sign and curses. I hear the Really Bad Conjie Word and worse.

  He stomps back toward me. “That settles it, then. We go for the shield. It’s our only option.”

  The shield. Like we can just walk up and ask nicely for them to let a couple of rebel Subpars into the jewel. It seems all my strength drained away the moment I touched this sand. I’m as brittle as the bones at my feet.

  “I think I’ll just rest here with my new friends for a bit.” I gesture toward the skulls. Dram squints at me, and I know part of him is trying to gauge if I hit my head when we dropped here. “Have you looked at your Radband? At mine?”

  He stiffens. “So you’re just giving up? After everything we’ve gone through—”

  I press my hand over my mouth and turn away. I can’t stand for him to see me break apart. But my Radband is yellow as a caver’s suit, and his is like the tip of a flame. Dark amber. I don’t have magic, like Mom once told me. I’m just a girl who was reckless and naive, and now people I loved are dead.

  Dram turns back to the cirium shield. I watch him run toward the barrier, like it’s got the answers he needs.

  I drop down onto the smooth white ash. It snowed once at Outpost Five, when I was little and Mom was still alive. We took Wes outside so he could feel it—before Dad told us it wasn’t safe.

  I spread my arms wide and push them through the ash of Cordon One, the way I wanted to that day at Outpost Five. The snow that day seemed like a promise from the sky. I am here, just past what you can see. Reach for me.

  My life has been one long empty promise.

  Dram shouts, and my eyes shoot open. Flash vultures circle above me—two of them.

  “Flash me,” I curse. Cordon One will not take me this way. I lunge to my feet. Dram sprints toward me, shouting at the vultures, waving his arms.

  A dark shape dives for me. My hand flies to my arm sheath, but I used all my blades escaping the dusters, and I stand defenseless. It slams into me, knocking me to the ground, talons raking the front of my suit. I lurch away from its beak.

  Dram shouts my name. He sounds terrified. Two more vultures land beside me. Someone in Alara is probably observing this moment, and I wonder if they feel sympathetic to our plight. Or ashamed. If they feel anything at all.

  We’re Subpars, after all.

  Rage wells inside me.

  I drive my hands toward the creature’s face. Its snapping beak opens, and I shove my gloved hands straight in, grasping either end of it and tugging it wide—wider than it should go. The bird struggles; its leathery wings slap my face as it tries to free itself.

  It’s making strange, desperate cries, which echo mine. I roar, rising up and snapping my arms wide. The creature’s jaw cracks apart. It flops and flutters, and I shove it off me. Another vulture seizes it, tearing into it. I roll to my feet and run.

  Toward Dram.

  He stands a few meters away. Somehow he drew the other vultures away from me, and two of them circle above his head. One bobs up and down just in front of him. Blood drips from Dram’s arm where he cut himself open.

  “No!” I search the ground for a weapon, anything that might help. I grab a leg bone. It’s splintered on one end.

  I hold it like a spear and run toward the hopping, dancing vulture that’s got the scent of Dram’s blood. It doesn’t seem to notice my approach, or maybe it just doesn’t consider me a threat. I jam the bone straight through its body. It caws and writhes, and I lift it high, waving it toward the other vultures, whose beady eyes fasten on new prey. They’re hungry for flesh. Any flesh. I toss the skewered vulture to the ground, and they descend. Dram and I back away and run. I shut out the sounds of their zealous feasting, the delighted caws of the living vultures and the violent death of the other.

  We stop to catch our breath. Dram pulls me into his arms, so tight I can barely breathe. He draws his sleeve back down over his arm wi
thout letting go of me. He is courageous, my Dram, but never reckless. Not unless it concerns me.

  We stand beside the cirium shield, so close I imagine I feel the hum of its metallic pulse. It’s made of the ore I was taught to chase. I know its call like it knows mine. If this wall of cirium has secrets to tell, I will hear them.

  I pull off my glove and set my hand on the smooth barrier. It is warm, not cool like other metal. I close my eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Dram asks.

  “Listening.”

  “There’s no sound.”

  But there is. The cirium shield emits a low hum, an echo of its mother, the flash curtain.

  I helped put this barrier here—me and Dram and Graham and Mom and countless Subpars before us. I look down. If Subpars had ever tried to get past it, they would never have gone over. They would have gone under. That is what we do best.

  “There’s a tunnel,” I whisper. I drop to my knees and feel under the layers of fine white sand and ash. I can feel it inside myself—a break in the cirium’s song.

  Dram kneels beside me. He grabs a piece of bone and starts digging. I grab his wrist. “Wait.” I squint at the silver wall. It reflects the white light of the sky so brightly it’s hard to look at. My eyes start to water. “I thought I saw something.”

  “A door?” Dram asks dryly.

  I smile. “No. I thought I saw something etched into the cirium. Like writing.”

  “Fire,” Dram whispers. We both see it at the same time. A short distance to our left, scratches mar the smooth surface of the metal.

  I crawl toward the line of words painstakingly carved at the base of the shield. We kneel side by side, reading the message. The sign. One that only Subpars would truly understand.

  WE ARE THE FORTUNATE ONES.

  Tears blur my vision, but they don’t keep me from seeing the symbol carved beneath the words: a caver’s mark of parallel lines. The way out.

  Dram scoops away layers of sand. “Too bad whoever did this couldn’t leave us a light bolt to mark the entrance.”

  “Maybe he did,” I say, lifting an object in my hand. It’s tethered to the ground with a shard of bone. Before I wipe the dust away, I know what it is. A caver’s memorial pendant.

  “Holy fire.” Dram smooths his fingers along the green glass that matches the one he wears. And the one Lenore wore.

  We know who carved the words.

  Dram’s father.

  TWENTY-THREE

  0 grams flash dust

  ARRUN BERRENDS DID not die at Cordon Four. He survived the burnt sands and whatever else the Congress put him through. He made it at least this far, maybe farther.

  Dram and I work our pieces of bone into the earth, neither of us speaking. Sweat drips from our foreheads, spattering the white ash like tears.

  Someone used everything the Congress turned us into to mine the most important thing of all. A way out.

  I look at the bleached skeletons beside the shield with growing respect. If there’s a tunnel to the other side, it would have taken more than one person to dig it—more than one life given so that future Subpars could be free. Us.

  We are so close.

  I dig into the ground with renewed vigor.

  “What if someone’s watching?” Dram asks.

  “They would already have stopped us.” I’ve struck something hard. I drop my bone and push my hands into the dirt. “Something’s here.”

  “A cover,” Dram says. “Like the one used over tunnel one.” He crouches and blows the dust away, revealing a mat of woven cloth and bone.

  I wedge my shard of bone beneath and pry it up. We peer down the dark hole.

  “Well, ore scout,” Dram says, “you ready to lead us down one last tunnel?”

  I can’t speak past the emotion clogging my throat, but Dram reads the answer in my eyes. I flip onto my stomach and stretch my legs down the hole, finding bits of bone wedged into the earth for hand- and footholds.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Dram says.

  “No.” I look up at him. “I need to see what’s at the bottom first.”

  Concern knits his brow, but he nods.

  I grip the shards of bone, descending slowly, and darkness closes around me. After a few minutes, I can see only a pinprick of light at the tunnel’s mouth. When I hit bottom, I blow out a breath and push my hands along the space, hoping for a widening, another stretch carved into the earth beneath the cirium shield.

  “Found it!” I shout. Dram immediately starts descending.

  I stretch my hands into the tube of space and push forward, thankful for once for my glowing yellow Radband indicator. “Here we go, bone tunnel.”

  “Is that what we’re calling this one?” Dram says behind me. He must have dropped halfway down.

  “Seems right.” I stretch my senses, inhaling the musty air.

  “How about, the tunnel to end all tunnels?”

  My breath grows shallow as the tunnel evens out. The walls close tighter around us than they did on the descent. “You will be pleased to know that this is just like the neck of nine,” I say. “Except a little less wide.”

  “Excellent,” Dram mutters.

  “And I have almost no light, so I have no idea how far this goes, or what’s ahead of us.”

  “Perfect. I’ll let you know if anything comes up behind us.”

  “A sound plan,” I murmur. Even without my earpiece, I hear the panic tightening his throat. We can’t be sure anyone actually finished digging this tunnel. The only thing I’m sure of is that Subpars died in the effort. A tunnel this long—dug with only hands and bone—would have taken years. I reach out before me, half expecting to touch a decomposing body at any moment.

  I imagine that Dram is having similar thoughts. I can hear each one of his staccato breaths. If we hit a wall or even an obstacle like a body, we are stuck. It would be nearly impossible to work our way back out of this tube of earth.

  “I have flash dust in my pocket,” I say. “Not much, but enough to flame up. Do you have anything we could use for flint?” My breath gasps from my lungs as I propel myself forward, stretching my hands into utter darkness, praying, praying they don’t hit a wall.

  “Um…” Dram follows so close, I feel his hands brush my feet. “Bone—would that work? Wait—the zipper on my suit. Maybe if we wrap the dust in a bit of cloth and…”

  He continues, but I’m only half listening. I’ve given him something else to focus on, a problem he can actually try to solve. Meanwhile, my scout’s senses are picking up a change in the air.

  “We’ve cleared the cirium barrier,” I say. The tunnel is so close to my face I taste the dirt when I talk.

  Dirt.

  “Dram, there’s soil. Actual real dirt with nutrients in it.” I can’t hide my excitement—and my relief. This earth is something other than what we mined at Outpost Five, and nothing like the radioactive sands of the cordons.

  My hand hits a wall of dirt. At first, I don’t understand. My emotions swing wildly from hope to despair.

  “Why did you stop?” Dram’s voice is small, like he’s preparing himself for my answer.

  I push both hands in front of me. My nails gouge the earth, searching for a turn or crevice I can’t see with my eyes.

  “Rye?” The panic rises in Dram’s tone.

  “Breathe with me, okay?” I drag in a shaky breath, and Dram follows. We exhale slowly. I hear Graham’s voice in my head. You’ve got a job to do, girlie.

  Inhale.

  I’m so scared we’re trapped I can’t move I can’t move!

  Step in my steps.

  Exhale.

  “Dram, push backward. I’m going to feel around and see if I missed a turn.” I know I didn’t miss a turn.

  He’s still frozen in place. “Dram?”

  “Can’t breathe,” he bites out. “Can’t. Do this.”

  “Here we go,” I say, as if I’m Jameson and there’s no arguing with my orders. “Together. Pushing
back.” I lever myself on my arms and slide backward, my feet pushing into Dram’s face. “Go, caver. Right now.”

  He eases backward.

  I try to remember what Dad said about Dram’s condition. His fear of tight spaces is fed by the terror of having no control. I need to give him a sense of control.

  “Dram?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re leading us out of here. I can’t see when you move, so every time you push back, I want you to say ‘marker.’”

  “Marker.” He shoves his body back.

  “Mark.” I push mine into the space he freed up.

  “Marker,” he says, sliding farther.

  “Mark.”

  We’re going to make it. I shut out every thought but the call of his voice and my response.

  “Wait.” I sense something. A subtle shift in the air. A thought hits me, and I reach up. The space is wider above our heads. Not enough to sit up, or even crawl, but high enough that I didn’t notice the extra space initially. With my heart in my throat, I kneel and then slowly stand. A tunnel of earth surrounds me, the width of a man’s body.

  “Dram.” I reach up, digging my hands into the walls of the tunnel, searching for handholds. This is not rock, like the walls of nine. I can’t wedge my fingers in cracks of stone. “Dram!” There is nothing to climb, but he can lift me.

  “You found an opening?” He slides into my legs. “Oh, fire, you’re standing!”

  “There’s only room for one at a time,” I answer. “I’m going to wedge myself up here until you can stand beneath me.”

  “Like the air cave in nine,” he says.

  “Yes.” I tuck my knees to my chest and hold myself in the tube above him. He raises his hands and slowly stands. He forms a ledge with his hands, and I place my feet on them.

  “Ready?” he asks. And I know he’s not just talking about lifting me, but everything that comes after. If the tunnel ends now, we’ll have to face whatever life we have left digging with bones in the dark to escape the flashtide. And if it doesn’t end …

  Am I ready for the world that lies beyond Cordon One? For all I know, there are guards with guns waiting to apprehend us.

  For all I know, there’s nobody, and we are going to stare up at the sky and see what freedom looks like.