by Jenny Moyer
“You’ve breached Protocol,” Cranny says, his face flushing. “Be assured that I will inform the council.”
Jameson stiffens. “The council is currently occupied with the threats of two hostile city-states and a shortage of flash dust, which makes Alara’s only military advantage—flash weapons—ineffective. They are therefore having to negotiate an alliance with Ordinance that will give that government unprecedented access to our resources. At the same time, we are dealing with a Conjuror uprising in the outlier regions.” He steps toe-to-toe with Cranny. “But do please interrupt the council to inform them that a Subpar was allowed to walk inside your outpost building.”
Cranny’s mouth gapes. Jameson is back to wearing every insignia on his uniform like it was created just for him. Even the way he stands in the mansion gives the impression that it’s his and he’s simply allowing Cranny to use the space.
If I didn’t despise the Congress, I might actually like the man.
“I’ll see this Subpar out,” Jameson says, “and restore the Protocol.” He steers me down the stairs, and my heart hammers against my ribs.
He could have—should have—exposed me.
He leads me out. “Don’t ever risk that again,” he says. “I won’t be able to cover for you a second time.”
Words trip on my tongue. I’m not sure what to say.
“I assume you found what you were looking for?” he asks.
I can’t think straight, not with his piercing stare boring into me. “You’re scouting seven,” I murmur. His brows creep toward his hairline. “I found your depth gauge. And the map.”
His face doesn’t change, but for the barest tightening of his jaw. “You must not speak of it. To anyone.”
“Are you a Subpar?”
“Orion—”
“A Natural wouldn’t risk it.” My eyes drift to his dosimeter, pulsing green. “What is your interest in a closed tunnel?”
“Trust me when I tell you to leave it at that.”
“Why did you help me?”
“I couldn’t risk you being punished again.”
“You sent me to a prison cordon!”
“No. Cranston was operating under temporary authority, and he crossed a line. I’m sorry you endured that.”
“You’re sorry for it?” Suddenly, I’ve found my words, and there are too many, and none of them right for a commissary. “You’re sorry that there are cages where people are turned into flash dust?”
His face changes, as if he’s struggling to hold on to a proper commissary expression. “Yes, I’m sorry for it,” he says, his voice raw.
“What about the new cordons I saw on your screencom? Are you sorry about those, too?”
His expression hardens. “The tunnels are tapped out, Orion! Flash dust is everything to the Congress now.”
“What will happen to the people here?” I ask.
“Congress will evacuate Central and send Gems to serve as Compliance Regulators.”
His words leave me cold. “When?”
“It depends on the Radlevels. Three days at most.”
“And you won’t stop it.”
A look crosses Jameson’s face, and it’s not the commissary kind. “I’ve done what I can to stall the inevitable, but I’m one voice of five. If I protest too loudly, they will see in me things I can’t afford for them to see.”
There is so much I need to tell the others. And we have so little time. I leave, my mind a riot. I try to figure out what all the secrets mean … and why a commissary of Alara trusts me with his.
* * *
I meet Marin beside the tunnels. She takes one look at my face and curses long and low.
“My house,” I whisper. “It’s not safe to talk here.”
We run through the outpost, keeping to the less-used path beside the mill, my blood racing to keep pace with my feet. I push through the door and wedge a chair under the knob. I’ve never feared the Congress more.
“I saw Jameson’s screencom. They’re going to blow the Barrier Range and extend the cordons,” I announce.
“What about the outposts?” Marin asks.
“There won’t be any more outposts. Congress is clearing everyone from Central.”
“The Subpars,” Marin breathes. “What happens to all of us when the Range falls?”
I don’t want to be the one to tell her. I’ve witnessed it firsthand—the hell and horror of mining the burnt sands. We die. That is the real answer to her question.
“We’re not going to be here when they blow the Range,” I say instead. “I’m leading everyone out through nine.”
“Leading us where?”
“A place they’ll never look for us.”
* * *
We wake to the sound of a buzzer. It echoes through the outpost, jolting me back to a place of fire and ash.
“Orion!” Marin cries. She stayed the night in my old loft room.
“It’s all right.” I slip from bed as she clambers down the stairs. It’s really not all right.
“What is that?” She has to shout over the sound. “Is it a cordon breach?”
“We need to get down nine.” I pull on clothes with shaking hands.
She watches me, her face paling. “Orion?”
“Hurry!”
She tugs on boots just as the sound cuts off. “How do you know what that thing was?”
“It’s what they use in Cordon Four.” I grab her arm. “Let’s go.”
I’ve never seen a single Gem at Outpost Five before, but now ten of them stride from the hover, wearing identical gray and red uniforms. A mix of men and women of various ages, but they all have the same severe posture, unnatural beauty, and a restrained strength that gives the impression of a spring wound too tight.
Compliance Regulators.
We are out of time.
My gaze stretches across the path. Owen watches me through the line of Gems. He nods. We must finish today.
* * *
I sit atop the Barrier Range. It’s dying. I feel it in the shifting stone beneath me, and I see its lifeblood poured out in the distance, like a beast with part of its spine carved out. Sometime during the night, Congress began blowing apart the mountains to the north of us. There is no longer any barrier shielding Outpost Four from its cordon. I hope that Dram is right and the other outposts are empty—that we are the only Subpars left. If not, we will be soon as the rest of the Range is brought down. And then we will be nothing at all.
The Congress must have its flash dust.
Roran sits at my side. I don’t have to explain what I see. He knows enough to put the pieces together—maybe even more than me.
“Alara’s at war,” I tell him. “Flash weapons are the only thing giving us the advantage.”
“You think that makes it right?”
“No. It just makes them desperate.” I look out over Cordon Five. It’s the day’s end, and the flashfall reflects off the glass cordon in shades of pink and gold.
Trepidation tingles along my nerves. It’s a closed cordon for a reason. What if there are creatures there I’ve never encountered? What if there are emberflies? I remind myself that I’ve survived emberflies. And worse. Cordon Five’s our best option.
Our only option.
“Have you been practicing?” I ask. It’s why we’re up here. A final test.
“Yes.” He twirls an object in his palm and tosses it to me.
I catch it—round and red, it’s some sort of fruit. My eyes fly to his, and he shrugs like it’s no big deal that he can make food from outpost dirt.
He laughs at my expression. “It’s called an apple, Subpar.”
“It’s magic, Roran.”
He rolls his eyes. “It’s the curtain in my blood, is what it is.” His expression darkens. “I can’t manage the water, though—not this close to the curtain.”
My nerves tighten. Water is crucial to my plan. Unless he can conjure water, we won’t survive in Cordon Five. I have a sudden memory of K
ing in Cordon Two, making water from a bead of my sweat. I tell Roran about it.
“Scammer’s tricks.” He waves his hand in dismissal. “He just multiplied the matter. What you saw was him drinking a lot of sweat.” He scoops up a handful of rocks. Maybe because I’m focused on his hands, l feel the shift of energy, the elements in the stone pulsing. Then, abruptly, it stops, like a snuffed flame. He curses and flings them to the ground.
“Wait,” I say, placing the apple in his palm. “Use this. Make water from this.”
“I can’t—”
“You can,” I say urgently. The light is fading. Guards will begin making rounds soon. My pulse feels like a clock, ticking down the minutes. “You made this. It is yours to alter.” Because the alternative is that we all survive off of apple juice, and I’m not enough like Dad to know if that will actually work.
He exhales, holding the fruit with just the tips of his fingers. I feel a charge in the air, like I’m standing beside an electric fence. Roran’s breath stutters, and he closes his eyes. I stare at the apple, willing it to change, wondering if he can feel its elemental makeup alter. All at once, the apple collapses in on itself with a soft crunch and burst of juice. Then it dissolves into water, clear and filling his hands to overflowing. He laughs, a pure sound of shock and delight.
“Not sweat,” he says, grinning.
I throw my arms around him. “Magic,” I whisper fiercely. A hundred things could still go wrong, but this one crucial part of our escape is going to work. We can survive in Cordon Five.
If I can just get us there.
TWENTY-EIGHT
0 grams cirium
THEY WATCH ME. Guards follow at a distance as I duck into Dram’s house. I set a chair to the door just as two shadows pass the window. I take Dram’s spare shirt from its peg and pull it on, then snatch his blanket off the bed.
The door bangs against the chair.
“Scout,” a man calls through the door, “come with us, please.”
I slide the chair aside and open the door. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
His gaze skips over me, and I see that these are the commissary’s guards, the ones who carry flash weapons. “The commissary wants to speak with you,” he says.
“Fine.” I ignore the fear racing through my veins.
His gaze slips to the blanket. “You cannot appropriate provisions from other houses.”
“But—”
“There are penalties.”
“I’ll switch it with mine,” I say. “Please.”
He nods, and I wrap it around me as we walk, hoping he doesn’t notice the extra shirt I appropriated too.
“It’s past curfew,” the guard says.
The reply that jumps to mind will only get me in deeper trouble, so I press my lips together. The guards lead me toward Central. I must have done something worse than break curfew.
They lead me through the back gate. I have never seen guards slip behind the mansion like this. We push through the tangles of ivy, and I watch them exchange a furtive glance.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Shhh!” The guard ushers me up the stairwell. The other darts ahead and checks the hallway.
“You’re breaking Protocol,” I murmur. The guard scowls at me. I open my mouth to say more, but he shoots me a warning look.
“We’re on your side,” he hisses.
The idea renders me speechless. I let him tow me down the hall and into a room, where Jameson stands leaning against his desk.
“Commissary,” I say.
“Hello, Orion.”
I can’t make sense of the transformation in him. Gone is the austere representative of the Congress. He wears the same uniform and his chain of office, but his face is the one that told me he was sorry there are cages in Cordon Two.
“Things are not as they seem,” he says.
My hands fist in Dram’s blanket. I’ve got my knife in my boot, but I feel defenseless in this place.
“When you collected four hundred grams of cirium, you presented the Congress with a situation it’s never had before.”
“The sign says—”
“The sign,” he says ruefully. He looks at me like I’m a child asking if the moon is made of cheese. “Have you ever heard the saying ‘To get a horse to move, use a carrot and a stick’?”
I shake my head.
“At Outpost Five, they didn’t even use a carrot—just the promise of one.” A ghost of a smile crosses his lips. “And then you actually mined four hundred grams.”
“But we can earn passage—”
He shakes his head. “Congress needs you here. Their tech can’t do what you can do. Subpars are still the only ones who can find and mine cirium, and the ore you mine has a greater purpose than insulating a single city against a flash curtain.”
“The Tempered Conjurors—”
“Yes.” His face darkens. Shifting, changing, too quick for me to follow. “It’s also the commodity we trade to other city-states, the means through which we maintain alliances that are the only thing keeping our enemies from overtaking us. But the tunnels are depleted, and Congress needs flash dust to power its weapons even more than it needs cirium.”
Questions riot in my mind, but there’s one thought that rises to the forefront. “If there are no Subpars in Alara, then where is Dram? Cranny said—”
“Cranny lied.” A pitying look shutters his gaze. “Dram’s in Cordon Three.”
A guard clamps his hand over my mouth. I’m yelling, thrashing. I’m going to tear Cranny apart like the vulture he is.
“Calm down and listen to me,” Jameson says. “Cordon Three isn’t like the others. It’s an agricultural test site. Or was—the things they were able to sustain are poisonous and uncontained. The project was abandoned years ago, but there’s an underground compound there supplied with rations. It’s where I had your father taken also. I had planned to keep him and Dram there until I could get them into Alara.”
“So they’re safe—”
“They’re missing, Orion. Two days ago, Congress began blowing the Range. When the charges detonated, it cut power to a portion of the fence between Cordon Two and Cordon Three. Prisoners escaped. I haven’t had contact with your father or Dram since.”
Prisoners. All I can think of is King and his crew. My blood is suddenly ice, and if I move, I might shatter.
Jameson opens a panel in the wall and lifts out a case with four vials of distilled cirium. Dad’s compound. “Your father trusted me with this. It’s all he was able to make, apart from the vial he took to Cordon Three.” He hands it to me. “You’ll need every one of them to help you survive out there.”
My hand tightens around the case. Out there. Surely he doesn’t mean …
“I need you to find them,” Jameson says. “You’re the best scout I know.”
“Me? You’re a commissary—”
“Congress follows every transmission I make, every hover flight. If I do anything more to assist your father and Dram, I will be caught. If they discover who I really am, more lives than mine will be affected.” He glances at his guards, then back to me. “You won’t be alone. I have friends working out their own plans to get into Cordon Three.”
I try to make sense of what he’s telling me. “Friends?”
“You aren’t the only one who resists—not everyone agrees with the Congress of Natural Humanity.”
“Why are you helping us?”
“Because I need your father. If he can develop an antidote to radiation sickness, we can free all the Subpars.”
“You have Serum 854.”
“It’s considered a danger to Alara.” He taps his fingers on his desk, like he’s debating how many of his cards to lay on the table. “Only the Prime Commissary has access to it now.”
“She should give it to everyone in the flashfall! It could help people!”
“It would make them a threat to the Congress,” Jameson says. “If Subpars and Conjies have a
treatment for flash fever, what stops them from revolting in the cordons?” He shakes his head. “What we need is a cure, Orion. Serum 854 treats only the symptoms of flash fever. It doesn’t shield a person from radiation sickness. Your father believes it could be one component of a cure.”
I take a shaky breath. It’s like my lungs are already rationing my air, preparing me for the cordons. I pull Dram’s blanket tighter around me, a shield over my secret. I have two vials of Serum 854, taken from the helicopter in Cordon Four. When Dram and I recovered from flash fever, I knew the potential of the treatment. So I hid them in my bra, one of the only articles of clothing the Striders didn’t take when they clothed me for Cordon Two.
I should probably come up with a better hiding place.
“You represent the Congress,” I say, my gaze shifting to Jameson’s chain of office.
“Only so much as it allows me to aid a greater cause.”
“You’re not working with Cranny?”
“I’m no more with Cranny than you are.”
I try to select a single thought from the jumble tangling through my mind.
“Your questions will have to wait,” Jameson says. “We’ve risked too much time as it is.”
“What do I do?”
“I’m afraid I have to leave that up to you. They’re watching me. The actions I’ve taken to protect you in the cordons and bring you back have made me suspect. These guards are with me.” He points to the men who brought me here. “Don’t trust anyone else. I cannot be seen speaking to you again. If you must relay a message, do it through one of these men.”
“I’m just a girl—”
“Orion.” He smiles, a full-bodied, genuine twist of his lips that lights his eyes. “You are the only person who’s crossed the cordons and lived to tell about it. Orion. The Hunter. The Scout who can find anything.”
Chills tingle along my spine. I tuck the vials inside my pocket, feeling the weight of too much responsibility. “But I—”
“You’ll find a way,” Jameson says.
My eyes stray to the maps on his wall. The one marked TUNNEL NINE is gone. A question forms on my lips, but he stares at me—hard—like he’s saying things with just his eyes. I glance at the guards he trusts. But doesn’t trust enough.