by Jenny Moyer
Marin looks away, but not before I see her swipe at tears. At least you’ll be alive, I want to tell her. But this is no real life.
I’ve led my friends to a cordon that looks like a blend of all our memorial pendants. But I will leave them with more than ashes.
“Winn?” I ask. She looks at me, her dark eyes wide. I brush my hand over her straight black hair, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Have you seen the stars?”
“Yes,” she says. Her fingers twist in her doll’s rope hair. “I know how to find the North Star and the Big Dipper.”
“That’s good.” I smile, even as my throat tightens. “Tell the Subpars what they look like,” I say. “So they’ll know them when they see them.”
Owen watches me intently. “You making some kind of promise, Scout?”
“I hope so.”
He nods, like he’s not surprised the Scout is off to hunt another passage. One that might lead everyone to a true sky.
“I have to go,” I announce.
“Aren’t you staying with us?” Marin asks.
“No.” I check my pendants, tucked safe inside my shirt. The only piece of Outpost Five I’m bringing with me.
“Why not? You’re finally free.”
I suddenly remember Reeves, before he made himself dust.
I don’t think I’m the only one of us who loves like that.
“I need to find Dram.”
“But we need you,” Roland says.
“No,” I look at our little band of rebels with a small smile. “You really don’t. But Dram does. And I need him.” Roran tows himself up out of the trench, and I stare at the hole in the ground. My fear shifts to conviction. “This isn’t really freedom,” I say. “I’m going after something more—for everyone.”
“Where are you going?” This from Roran, who holds himself rigid, his rock clamped in his fist.
“Cordon Three.” I touch his shoulder. “My dad’s out there, too, and there’s something I need to give him.”
He nods, then looks away. Mere steps forward and puts an arm around his shoulder. There is so much I want to say, but my throat is tight and I’m out of time.
“You have the map I gave you?” She nods. “I’m not sure what my mother was scouting. Maybe an old passage to Alara. She ran into barriers that were impassable, but with Roran’s abilities…” I shrug. “It’s unstable, but it might be your best chance if you have to leave the cordon.” I spent hours beneath the bed, copying the map Mom had died making.
Mere pulls me close, and I swallow hard.
“You have a warrior’s name,” she whispers fiercely.
“I have a hunter’s name.”
“You’re both.” Her arms tighten around me, and the vials I’m carrying press against my chest, where they’re hidden above my heart. I’m hunting for more than Dram and my father.
I’m scouting a way out of the flashfall—for all of us.
I carry the elements close—possible makings for a cure too dangerous to tell anyone about. My father could do something with these. Maybe something that sets everyone free.
An antidote for radiation sickness would limit Congress’s power. Their so-called protection would be meaningless. How could they force compliance from Subpars and Conjies if we could survive without them? And without us, they have no way to acquire flash dust.
Dram and I didn’t just mine cirium from that cavern.
We discovered the elements for a cure.
THIRTY-ONE
6.0 milliliters Cirium 2
4.0 milliliters Serum 854
I DON’T HAVE a name for the altered cirium. I will leave that to the techs to determine. For now, I’ve nicknamed the liquid I carry Cirium 2, and I’ve got three vials left in the case Jameson gave me, strapped carefully beneath my Oxinator. I wear full caving gear, down to the knives sheathed on my arms. I’ve never cared more about my safety.
Too much is at stake for me to succumb to something like mineral burn, so I’ve robbed the infirmary. In the chaos of the evacuation, not a single guard noticed. I wear enough serum strapped to my legs to get me through the cordons. Nutri-pacs line the inside of my suit, enough for five days. If it takes me any longer to find Dram and Dad, I’ll be dead anyway.
Soot coats my boots as I wade through sand and ash toward the electrified fence that divides Cordon Five from Cordon Four. A buzzer sounds in the distance. My heart clenches, and I stare in the direction of Outpost Five. I can’t see it from here, but I imagine freshly painted corral towers looming in place of the Range, and my fellow Subpars forced into the burnt sands—Marin’s mother, tunnel five’s fearful team, and the millworkers who’ve never mined, ever. And Barro.
The metal girder he prepared for me cuts into my gloves as I thrust it into the ground beside the fence. I hammer the top of the stake with the flat of my axe, pouring my fear and frustration into every strike.
The metal spring clamp slips in my hands as I attach it to the end of the copper wire. Adrenaline roars through my body like I’ve already been shocked.
The second buzzer sounds. Soon, my friends and neighbors will wade into the horrors of Cordon Four.
If I’m going to help them, I must survive.
With shaking hands, I pour the bottle of water around the base of the stake and grip the spring clamp. Please, let this work. The fence hums in a way that reminds me of Strider suits and Sanctuary’s walls. Deadly. Daring me to try.
I close my eyes and picture Dram’s face and Dad pulling me into his arms. I picture myself handing him the secret I carry.
The pulsing cable third from the bottom. Eye level. I squeeze open the jaws of the clamp and release it onto the wire. An explosion of sparks showers over my arm. I gasp and jump back. The hum ceases.
With my heart hammering, I crawl between the dead wires of the fence, every muscle trembling.
Still with me, ore scout? I can practically hear Dram’s voice.
“Still here,” I murmur. A gust of burning cinders slams against me, and I draw my neck cloth up. My eyes water as I lope across the cordon, masking my approach behind sulfur clouds.
I focus on the tasks ahead. Crossing the sectors of Cordon Four without notice. Clearing the fenced boundary on the other side. Hunting down Dram and Dad in the unknown.
The place on my mental map that I can’t fill in with a single detail.
Cordon Three.
But that’s likely two days’ journey. I need to stay present and alert in every moment before then if I’m to survive.
The ash-soaked wind pushes against me, as if warding me away from certain danger. Too late.
There’s no turning back now.
* * *
Night falls, and I crouch behind a pile of rubble, watching people deposit their flash dust and push through the turnstiles of Cordon Four. Clouds of emberflies illuminate the cordon, swirling through the air like sparks from a fire. My body aches from holding this cramped position, but I force myself to wait. I’m desperate for shelter, but I can’t afford to get caught.
An hour later, not even a Gem remains to guard the fence. The perimeter lights dim. They’re not expecting anyone else.
I shake feeling into my legs and stand, Mere’s sifter brushing my side.
“You need this more than I do,” she’d said just before I left Cordon Five. She’d unfastened her metal appendage and thrust it at me while I’d stared at her in shock. “To sift the sands for flash dust. You’ll need to mine as you go, and it’ll be fastest this way.”
I’d finally found my voice. “You can’t give me your hand!”
“What if there’s a dust storm? Or emberflies? Getting past that turnstile might save your life.”
I’d backed away from her, horrified by the idea of taking her appendage—horrified by the truth of her words.
“I only give my hands away for important reasons,” she’d said. My throat tightens now, remembering how she’d winked at me and hugged me close a final time, her right arm ending at
the metal cap of her wrist.
I grip my pouch of flash dust and run toward the shadowed boundary of the camp. The rungs of the turnstiles gleam beneath the flashfall like exposed ribs. In my addled state, I feel as if I’m sneaking into the belly of the beast. I empty the pouch of dust onto the scale, my ears straining to hear a guard shout. Cordon sand swirls around me, stinging me with scorched grains. Wind whines through the slats of the corral towers so loudly I can barely hear the automated voice thank me for my deposit.
Something crunches the sand behind me—footsteps maybe—but I don’t pause to look. The lock clicks open, and I shove past the turnstile.
It strikes me that I am willfully breaking into a place I couldn’t escape from—a place that nearly stole my life multiple times each day.
And someone else is coming after me.
I duck into a tent and collapse. My chest heaves as I drag in lungfuls of toxic air. I’d forgotten how bad it is here. How the air can kill you even faster than the curtain.
The tent rustles. I crack a light stick and hold it high. A man stares at me.
I drop the stick and free a blade. He grips my wrist as I lunge.
“You’re alive,” he says.
“What?” I know that voice … “Jameson?”
It’s Jameson … but not. This man wears a ragged cap pulled low over his brow, and plain clothes like those of Subpars. But Subpars don’t wear rings and wrist cuffs, and they never wear beaded sashes belted around their waists.
“I knew about the boy, so I guessed your plan,” he says quietly. “But when they blew the Range, I was afraid you wouldn’t make it in time.”
My eyes narrow. “Who are you?”
“My given name is Carris, but I haven’t been him in a long time.” He speaks the words like a confession—in an accent I’ve heard only one other place.
“You’re a Conjuror.”
“Free Conjie. From the mountain provinces. My people found you that day beyond the shield. It’s how I knew where to send Cranny.”
The full impact of what he’s saying hits me like a fist to the gut. “You…” My words fail as a dozen implications whirl through my mind. I dropped from the sky into Cranny’s waiting Striders because of him. “But you said you weren’t working with him!”
Jameson’s eyes soften. “Sometimes you have to sacrifice your bait to catch the bigger fish.”
“Must you always speak in riddles? Is that a Conjie thing?”
He grins. “Actually, yes.”
“So are you here to rat me out again?”
“I’m going to get you over the boundary fence. Though I admit I’m terribly impressed with how you managed the first one.”
“So the commissary is going to escort me from Cordon Four?” I ask.
“No, Jameson can’t be linked to you again. But Carris will gladly sneak you out.”
Voices intrude, beyond our tent. I crouch and grip my blade. Jameson yanks a bead from his sash and grasps it in his fist. Seconds later, he opens his hand and releases a thick fog that blends with the heavy layers of flashfall. Not even Gems will walk past the low-hanging haze he’s shrouded us with. Not in a place with emberflies.
“What kind of bead was that?” I ask.
“Wood. From a tree in the provinces.” He lifts his ringed fingers. “More than adornment. Natural things made in dirt without cirium. That’s the key to conjuring this close to the curtain—and even then, only some of us can manage it. The cirium in matter prohibits our ability within the flashfall. So we need a conduit.”
“The dirt Bade carried…”
He nods. “Like flint to a spark.” He drops onto a cot. “We’ve learned to hide our resources well.” He swipes a finger along the lashes of one of his kohl-lined eyes, and it comes away darkened with pigment. He twists his fingers and presents me with a flower and a cocky grin. “I’m better than most.”
“My mother told me Conjies have magic.”
The grin slides off his face. He seems to consider this, hands tightening on the cloth of his sash. “What else did she say about Conjies?”
“Not enough. Instead she taught me about stars—things you can’t even see living in the flashfall.”
“Maybe she wanted you to understand that the world was bigger than Outpost Five.”
“She knew the word glenting,” I murmur.
He makes a choked sound, not quite a laugh. “Then she must’ve known a foul-mouthed Conjie.” He lies back, exhaustion written over every line of his face. “Rest now. We have to leave before the morning patrols.”
“How long did you know about Roran?” I ask. “You guessed my plan—but how did you know what he could do?”
“That boy and his rock…” Jameson muses. “If they’re close enough, Conjurors can sense when elements are being altered.” He tosses me a satchel. “Food and water. Don’t use the nutri-pacs unless you have to.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Many things, but no time to get into that now. Sleep. Tomorrow I get you past the fence.” He settles back and closes his eyes.
“Dram and my father…?” I ask softly.
“If my people are doing what they do best, your father and Dram are still alive.”
“What is it they do best?”
He smiles. “Revolution. Sleep now, Scout.”
“Orion,” I say. “We’re not in Outpost Five anymore.”
“Trust me, you’re still Scout.”
“To whom?”
“I imagine you’ll meet them soon enough.” He rolls onto his side, away from me.
“You said they’re safe?”
“Today,” he mumbles. “Tomorrow’s another story. The Congress isn’t taking any chances. They can’t afford an uprising on this side of the curtain.”
“So they’ll send Striders.”
“No. Not when they can just drop bombs.”
I grab the satchel and leap to my feet.
“Sleep, crazy girl,” Jameson says.
“But if—”
“I’m going back to Alara to stall the demolition. I’m a commissary. Go to sleep. You’re no use to us dead.”
I ease onto my cot, still clutching the satchel of food that apparently won’t harm me like the nutri-pacs do. Curling on my side, I watch the tent canvas ripple as the cordon winds blow.
I’m coming for you, Dram. Wherever he is—I hope somehow he senses me. Hold on, I tell him.
I close my eyes and will my body to relax. In the space between waking and sleeping, I feel him answer.
Hurry.
* * *
We run the length of the cordon, north, toward Cordon Three. By the time the first buzzer sounds, we are well beyond the authorized sectors.
“You should eat something,” Jameson huffs from my side.
I peer into the satchel he gave me with distaste. “I already tried the ‘cheese.’” Cheese. Even the word sounds gross.
“You need nourishment,” he says.
“I never needed that before,” I mutter.
He laughs. I don’t see the humor. Everything my body’s ever needed the nutri-pacs supplied. Food seems like added effort.
“Finally,” Jameson gasps. The barrier fence rises up beyond the swirling embers. It hums with electric current.
“Is this when you put your Conjie hat back on?”
“It wasn’t a commissary who just ran the cordon with you.” He pulls off his gloves and pushes his hands in his pockets. They come away grasping fistfuls of dirt.
“Do all free Conjies carry dirt around in their pockets?”
He grins and cradles his hands together. “Wouldn’t you?”
I’ve seen Conjurors enough that I know what to expect, but I still gasp when plant roots thrust between his fingers. With the snapping of wood and branches, a sapling sprouts upward, its leaves consumed by the radiation winds before they’ve even unfurled. He drops it to the ground, and it arches over the fence.
“It won’t last long here. Bette
r get climbing,” he says.
I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something I’m missing. I stare at him, so utterly non-commissary, and my suspicions click into place. “You knew my mother, didn’t you?” His mouth drops open. “You taught her Conjie curse words.”
“Orion—” He looks at the tree, where some of the leaves are starting to catch fire. “We can’t—”
“She knew what the stars looked like, because you told her about them.” He shakes his head, but the look on his face is screaming yes.
He sighs. Dying leaves drop from the tree and swirl past us.
“What’s down seven?” I ask.
A line forms between his brows, and I wonder which version of the truth I’m going to get. “An old passage that leads under the curtain—all the way into Alara. But every route’s collapsed.” He scans the sky. “You need to go before we’re seen.”
“She was trying to get us free.”
“Yes.”
She died, not trying to earn four Rays to get herself behind the shield—but to get everyone there. She believed there was a way out beyond what Congress told us. I pull a folded paper from my pocket—a copy of the one I gave Mere—and hand it to Jameson. “Take this. Whatever you’re after, it may help.”
“What is it?”
“Mom was the only one at Outpost Five better at maps than me.” I leap for a branch, and the wood cracks under my weight. Already, the curtain is stealing the life from it. I haul myself to a larger branch, and the tree lurches suddenly, dangling toward the electric fence.
“Hurry!” Jameson shouts.
I pull myself atop the next branch and climb across. The branch snaps and, as I clutch the trunk, hits the fence with a pop and sizzle.
“Jump!”
It’s an echo of Dram’s words to me when we rode the tow cable into Cordon One. The tree dissolves beneath me, and I leap once more into the unknown.
Only this time, I am alone.
* * *
Sometime during the third day of navigating Cordon Three’s odd, jungle-like terrain, I determine that the voices I’m hearing aren’t just in my head.
In fact, now that I’ve stopped, they’re loud enough to recognize. Terror rakes along my nerves. King. The voice calling to me belongs to the King of Cordon Two.