Flashfall

by Jenny Moyer

  I walk to the door, drawing my own maps in my head. I will find Dram. And my father.

  Even if I must cross the cordons again to do it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  0 grams cirium

  I LIE IN bed, going over my half-formed plan to cross the cordons. I’d found Owen and given him the list of things I’ll need. I’d told him everything Jameson said, and he’s getting word to the others—we leave tomorrow.

  Someone taps on my door. I stare at the ceiling a moment, trying to make sense of what’s happening.

  Tap.

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I slip my knife from my mattress and jog to the door. “Who is it?”

  “Jameson sent me.”

  I slide the chair aside, and one of his guards ducks in.

  “They’re bringing the last of the Range down tonight,” he says in a rush. “We’re to begin evacuating now—guards and techs only.”

  And just like that, the clock over our sanctuary reads 0 Hours. 0 Minutes.

  “It’s worse,” he murmurs. “Cranny’s coming for you.”

  My stomach knots. “What do you mean, ‘coming for me’?”

  “An order came through from the Prime Commissary. She wants you in Alara. Jameson says, whatever you’re going to do—do it now.” His gaze flies to the window, to the dark night outside.

  I push him out the door. “Fine. Go.” I whirl from the door just as Marin vaults down from the loft, dressed and ready.

  “Tell Roran to raise the signal,” I say. “Get everyone down nine.”

  “But Cranny—”

  “I’ll meet you there. Go!”

  She darts through the door, and I scan the path. We are out of time, and it’s up to me to stall the evacuation as long as possible. I drop to my knees and pry up the floorboard, a plan forming in my mind.

  Cranny doesn’t knock. Minutes after the guard leaves, he pushes through the door. Any sooner, and I wouldn’t have finished. I slide beneath the bed, wincing as a knife handle digs into my back. I wear Dram’s shirt, and beneath it, I’m sheathed in weapons. Just in case Cranny goes after me instead of the trap I laid.

  “You’ve been summoned…,” he says, sweeping into the house. He hesitates at the loosened floorboard in the kitchen. “Pry it up,” he orders a pair of Striders. The hum of their electrified suits fills the space. Cranny wasn’t taking any chances when he came here. He obviously wasn’t expecting my compliance.

  They drag the boards away and peer down into the dark space.

  “I knew he was hiding something,” Cranny says. I imagine he’s thinking of all the times he stood over this spot scolding my father for using a light. He and a Strider climb down into the space.

  I wait for the other to follow, but instead he steps away from the hole. Toward me.

  The electric hum grows louder. I take silent breaths and watch his boots approach. My hands sweat beneath my gloves as I clasp a glass vial. My most dangerous weapon. Tiny pronged feet scratch the glass, but all I hear is the thrum of electric current.

  I have one shot to get this right.

  I lurch from beneath the bed, and the Strider catches hold of my arm.

  “Director!” he shouts.

  I search his eyes, but there’s not even a flicker of remorse. It makes what I’m about to do easier.

  “I learned something in Cordon Four,” I say. “Your gloves aren’t electrified.” I slip the vial beneath his glove and slam my boot against his wrist. Glass crunches under the suit at the same time a shock rips through my body. But it’s nothing compared to my shock collar in Cordon Two. I force myself to breathe, to focus my rioting nerves. The soldier pulls his gun and then an agonized cry rips from his mouth. His weapon clatters to the floor.

  “What’s happened?” Cranny shouts from belowground.

  The Strider tears at his clothes, stumbling around and flailing even more than Winn did when ore mites covered her. The glass cut the mite open, and all its parasites are digging into the man’s skin. I grab a chair and knock him off balance. He drops through the hole, just as the other Strider is climbing up.

  I tip my ore pouch, filled with writhing ore mites, over the side. The second Strider fires off a couple shots, and I hug the ground.

  “Don’t shoot! They’re combustible!” I shout, but I’m not sure he can hear me over his screams. I slam the floorboards into place, ripping my bolt gun from the belt I’d hidden under Dram’s shirt. I think of all the times I called “marker” and Dram answered.

  I fire a bolt into the panel. It glows red. Danger. Do not cross. I load another and aim it over the other board. A bolt slams through the wood, anchoring it to the floor.

  Now Cranny is screaming like the Striders. My breath saws from my chest. This is like the gulls’ nest. I am the source of their suffering.

  But all I have to do is think of the cordons and what they are preparing to unleash over all of us. Someone fires off a shot.

  They won’t suffer long.

  I grab my satchel and run for the door. I’m ten meters out when I hear the explosion. The ground shudders, but I hang on to my balance and look back. A bullet struck an ore mite. My house sits silent and unimposing, like nothing’s changed. The underground lab must have contained the blast.

  A hover lands beside the lodge. Striders pour out of it, and Jameson stands in the midst of them.

  “Find the director!” he orders. He catches sight of me and looks away. He knows Cranny was heading to my house. “Check the mill first.”

  The mill. I almost laugh. Cranny would never have gone there, but the troops jog away obediently—to the building farthest from the tunnels.

  They won’t leave without him, and they’re not going to find him anytime soon. I’ve bought us a little more time before they bring down the final stretch of the Barrier Range. Before they destroy our only hope of breaking free.

  Jameson grabs hold of a passing guard. “Call it off!”

  “Sir, the flash charges are activated remotely by techs in the city—”

  “Tell them I’m ordering them to cease. The director is missing. We cannot evacuate without him.”

  Another tech runs up, one hand over his earpiece. “Communications are down. We’re getting too much interference from the flashfall.”

  Jameson curses. Striders run past me, and I hug the shadows, grateful for once that this is a place without stars and moonlight. I sprint for the Rig, where my mother’s axe hangs beside Dram’s. I’m bringing them both.

  As I pass Central, I catch a glimpse of white flowers dotting a sprawling vine. Roran’s signal.

  It’s time to head down the tunnels one last time.

  THIRTY

  0 grams cirium

  I SLIP INSIDE nine. Twenty headlamps turn and pierce me with their glare. I squint against the light.

  “They’re bringing down the Range,” I call. We don’t have earpieces or transmitters—nothing that techs could use to track us. “If we don’t go now, it’ll be too late.”

  “Here.” Owen hands me a metal spring clamp the size of my hand. “I swiped it from the supplies building. Is that what you needed?”

  I open the metal jaws and clamp it to my belt. “Perfect. Guard the entrance.” I jog to the front of the group, searching faces, counting heads. “We’re missing tunnel five’s team.”

  “Changed their minds,” a man says. I don’t know his name, but I recognize him as one of the replacement people Congress sent us. A Natural. “Said nine’s a death trap—they’ll take their chances in the outpost.”

  Five’s team is about to redefine its understanding of death trap.

  I peer past the headlamps, looking for wiry red hair. The lodge mistress is missing. “Where’s Anna?” I find Marin’s face. Her eyes tear.

  “She wants to stay,” she says.

  “And Barro?” I search the group again, hoping to see the glassblower’s knowing brown eyes.

  “He said to give you this,” Roland says. He lifts a narr
ow rod of metal as long as my body, a piece of rubble I found in the Range. “He attached the copper wire at the top like you asked. And he got you the water, too.” Roland reveals the bottle strapped in his belt. “I’ll carry them for you.”

  “He’s not coming?”

  Roland shakes his head. “He said he’s needed here.”

  “Fine.” I switch on my lights, pretending my heart doesn’t ache for the people we’re leaving behind.

  “What if they tell Cranny?” he asks.

  “No one’s telling Cranny anything,” I murmur.

  “But they’ll know we’re down nine—”

  “We’re not going down nine.” I take Roran by the shoulders and steer him in front of me. “You’re lead scout now. Time to show us what you’ve been working on.”

  “This way.” He flashes his palm lights, illuminating a hidden tunnel of rock and sparkling crystal that looks like something from a fairy tale.

  “What is this?” Marin asks.

  “A path across the tunnels,” I answer. “There’s a way out through four.”

  Owen beams like a proud father. “Show ’em what you did with the sulfates, kid.”

  Roran sets a flame to the rock. Patches of sulfate ignite like the flaming shard of a cordon breach, the metal ions illuminating the tunnel.

  “It’ll burn and light up—just long enough for us to pass by,” he says.

  “He made this with … an axe?” Roland asks.

  “I’ve got movement,” Owen calls from his post beside the entrance.

  “Everyone in!” I call. The cavers file past me into Roran’s tunnel.

  “They’re coming—two squads of Striders!” Owen runs toward us.

  “Seal it off, Roran,” I say.

  Roran grips the cavern walls, eyes wide. “They’ll know my secret—”

  “Do it!”

  The Striders lift their guns. Rock scrapes over stone with a sound like screaming. The bullets ricochet.

  “Conjuror!” a Strider shouts.

  Roran shuts his eyes, and the entrance to nine pushes together, weaving the earth like the strands of a rope.

  Our team stares at him with wide eyes. Most of them have never seen a Conjie in action.

  “He’s conjured a path across the tunnels,” I say. “A way to escape through four.” Further explanations will have to wait.

  “Get inside!” The muffled shout reaches us from the other side.

  It makes me smile. Good luck breaking through this rock without any cavers. I glance at the two ore carts full of provisions I’ve been stowing.

  “Grab as many nutri-pacs and serums as you can. Put them in your pouches, your suit—every space you’ve got.”

  They dive into the supplies while a huge blast rocks the entrance. Bits of rock and dirt pelt us.

  “Helmets on. Let’s go!” I guide Roran to the front of our group. “We’re going to have to run it.”

  Roran sets a flare to the wall. Color bursts across the stone, spreading like a contained fire. The tunnel glows in muted shades of red and blue and gold.

  “Step in my steps,” he says. Then he turns and runs, the last lead scout of Outpost Five.

  * * *

  We’re crossing tunnel six when the first explosion hits. I trip and slam against the ground.

  “Everyone okay?” I call. I’m at the back of our group, rounding up stragglers, pushing anyone not going fast enough.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Rita Calder cries. She’s the one I’ve been pushing most.

  I tug her to her feet. “Come on, we have to keep going.”

  “It’s too late,” she says, sobbing. “They’re just going to blow us up.”

  “Don’t say that.” I pull harder, but the woman won’t budge. She digs her hands into my suit. I look past the others and meet Owen’s eyes. “Go on,” I mouth.

  His brows lower, and he strides through the group to where I strain against Rita’s bulk.

  “Look here, woman,” he says. “You can stay right here and whine all you want. You want to quit? Fine.” He pulls her hands off me. “But you’re not taking Scout with you.”

  He guides me to the front. “Your place is up here,” he says gruffly. “The rest of you—keep up or let the tunnel have you.”

  I press forward with Roran, but keep looking over my shoulder. The stragglers are getting farther and farther behind.

  “You can’t do their running for them,” Owen says, huffing at my side. This pace is strenuous, even for a veteran caver like him.

  There’s a shift in the cirium. I feel it, like a tap on the shoulder. The Range is crumbling.

  “Axes up!” I shout. The cavers lift their axes above the heads of the people in front of them. They watch me, wide-eyed, waiting.

  Rita’s not at the back. Neither is the Natural whose name I don’t know.

  “Stay with Owen.” I lower my axe and tuck Roran in front of the other caver.

  “Scout,” Owen says, his tone conveying more than his words.

  “I’m going after—” Five steps forward, the explosion rocks me back. Axes arch above my head, the cavers protecting me. Stone rains down, but the tunnel holds. Roran and Owen have done their work well.

  A woman screams.

  “Rita!” I push past the line of cavers. The Natural shouts, his voice too distant to hear clearly. “I’m coming!”

  “Scout!” Owen shouts. “We have to keep moving!”

  “You go!” I call. I can just make out the Natural. He shouts again. What is he saying?

  “Scout!” Roran’s voice. He must sense the change in the earth, too.

  A deep rumble lifts from beneath us. I close my eyes, waiting for the tunnel to collapse around me, to enfold me in a tomb of rock.

  You’ve got a job to do, girlie.

  It’s like Graham’s with me, reminding me that I promised these people a way out.

  I turn my back on Rita and the Natural. I slam my bolt gun in my belt and run toward the others. Dust and debris roar toward us, shooting through the tunnel like water bursting down a pipe.

  “Oxinators!” I shout. “Get your masks on!”

  Roran stands in the path.

  A woman shouts from behind me, her voice distant, followed by another.

  “Seal it off!” I tell Roran. “Now. Before it hits us.”

  I brace myself behind him, strapping his Oxinator over his nose and mouth as he faces down the rage of the tunnels with his hands pressed to the earth.

  “But those people—”

  “No time. Do it!”

  Crystals shoot from the walls of the tunnel, splintering the rock in massive bursts. Gnarled roots buffet our bodies as they erupt from the earth in tangles of limbs and leaves.

  Roran’s efforts are extraordinary. But this is not shield enough.

  “Roran!” Mineral dust explodes over us like the winds preceding a storm. I cough, choking on dust as I drag on my Oxinator.

  A cascade of rock pours down the tunnel, illuminated in the still-burning glow of metal ions. Our deaths will be beautiful and swift.

  “AUGH!” Roran yells. Rock slams together an arm’s reach away. The tunnel shudders, and I shelter him with my axe and my body. His wall holds. White blossoms float down like snow.

  “We’re going to make it.” I will myself to believe it, so he will too. “We’re almost there.”

  “That woman—” A sob tears from his chest. “She’s dead. And those others—”

  “We have to keep going.” The stone beneath us trembles.

  “I killed them!”

  “No.” I force him to meet my eyes. “The Congress killed them. You are giving the rest of us a chance to live.”

  I catch one of the blossoms clouding the air and tuck it into his fist. “Your mother is waiting for us, Roran. Winn is waiting for us.” I turn him toward his path. “Run!”

  * * *

  Cordon Five. The east end of the flash curtain. An unpredictable, shifting tail of radiation
that emits flash bursts, which turn the sands to glass. No one mines here, not even the Gems. It is a closed cordon, and the Congress has no use for such a place.

  It is a perfect place to hide.

  Glass crunches beneath my boot.

  “Careful, Orion,” Mere says.

  The curtain shimmers in the distance, beyond clouds of flashfall. I feel it pulsing—its energy erratic, like a moth trapped behind glass. I drag off my Oxinator and inhale. No particles scrape my lungs. It’s as if the curtain is holding its breath—saving it for something worse.

  “It’s safe to breathe,” I announce. I help Winn with her Oxinator, and she latches onto my hand as soon as I’m done. She’s been beside me like a shadow since we met them in four. She tugs her doll free.

  “She’s safe,” I tell her. You’re safe. I don’t say the words, but I know she reads it in my eyes.

  Marin runs her hand over a patch of crystallized sand. “This entire cordon is like a memorial pendant—ash and glass.”

  “Can they see us from Outpost Five?” Mere asks.

  “No,” I say. “It’s nearly impossible to see past the sulfur clouds.”

  “They aren’t looking,” Marin says. “Nothing can survive out here.”

  “You might be surprised,” I murmur.

  “Do you think they’ll come after us?”

  “No. They think we died when they blew the Range.”

  “So we’re free,” Owen says.

  “Free in a cordon made of glass,” Marin says.

  “Free in a closed cordon with an Untempered Conjuror,” Mere says, her eyes glowing. “Roran will help us survive.”

  “Down here,” he calls, waving us over. Exhausted as he is, he’s managed to conjure steps into the side of a deep trench. I smile grimly. His instincts are as strong as mine. The only true refuge here is belowground.

  A small hand squeezes mine. I crouch down in front of Winn. “It’s just a place to stay safe when the curtain sends out flash bursts.” I look at the Subpars. “When the Radlevels are high. You’ll sense it before it happens.” The day of the cordon breach seems like a lifetime ago, but I remember how I felt up on the Range with Dram just before it happened—like an instrument being tuned.