Flashfall

by Jenny Moyer

  “Fire,” I gasp, and sprint north toward a corral tower, the only thing taller than the bizarre canopy of trees. I have no idea what I’ll be met with there, but it has to be better than the Conjie Dram stabbed twice.

  Somewhere in the distance, King lets out a whoop. Other voices shout back in response, and I pound across the earth, throwing my arms out at the foliage that blocks my path. They chase me like a pack of wild dogs. I skirt the edge of a pond, where orbies gather in clusters. Losing precious seconds, I drag on extra gloves, dump my satchel out, and scoop it full of the glowing water. Orbies swarm over my gloves, and I quickly tear them off.

  A crash in the leaves behind me signals their approach. I force myself to stay still, to wait, vulnerable, my back to my pursuers.

  “Get her!” King shouts. He laughs, as if this is a game he’s about to win.

  My pursuers’ hungry breaths fill the air. I don’t have to see their faces to know they’re smiling too. I hold tight to the bottom of the satchel and whirl around, flinging the water at the three men who reach for me.

  Shock registers across their faces as water soaks their heads and shoulders. They look down, trying to make sense of why they’re suddenly wet, then—

  They scream. I turn and run, not waiting around to watch. The corral looms ahead, its white legs visible through the tangles of vegetation. My lungs are bursting, but I push myself toward it, faster, vines and leaves slapping my face.

  King tackles me to the ground. I thrash, arms and legs aiming at every place Dram injured him. My Radband catches him in the face, and he reels back, clasping a hand over his eye. I scramble up, but he traps my legs.

  “You’re mine!” he snarls, knotting his fist in my hair. He says something else, but I can’t hear over the sounds of his men.

  Then his fist connects with my face, and I don’t hear anything at all.

  THIRTY-TWO

  1.5 milliliters Cirium 2

  2.0 milliliters Serum 854

  I TRY TO sleep. To escape to the numb haze that blocks out the musty cold and my fear of dying at King’s hand.

  They have me belowground, in the Congress’s old research facility. I’m not sure what these pitted iron bars once contained, but it works perfectly for a Subpar prison. I huddle in the corner, arms wrapped around my legs, imagining myself far, far from here.

  Something rattles my cell. My eyes open, but I can’t shake free of my stupor. I’ve gone too many days without light and air and food.

  “Feed the little witch,” King says. “She’s useless to me dead.” In the glow of a single lantern I watch him tear into one of the pouches of food he pulled from a box of rations. It oozes onto his plate in a gelatinous heap, and he stabs at the chunks with his knife. My stomach twists and I hunch over, waiting for the dizziness to pass. His men gave me a plate of it the first day, but my stomach rebelled at the unfamiliar solid food. They’ve only given me water in the two days since.

  My bars rattle again. I peer up at the Conjie who made the noise. In the darkness, it’s impossible to distinguish his features. He’s dragging a metal plate beside the lock. I have just enough energy to glare at him. The least he could do is let me die in peace.

  The Conjie kneels and slides the food beneath the bars. I reach for it, and he catches my hand. His rings slide against my fingers, and I struggle to pull away, but he holds my hand tighter.

  “Let go,” I snarl.

  With the finger of his other hand, he marks something on my palm. His dark hair hangs in his eyes, but I see them flick toward King. He repeats the action, two parallel lines. A caver’s mark.

  My breath catches. The Conjie lifts his kohl-lined eyes, and I peer through the dim confines of my cell. His earring catches the light of a candle, and I try to see his face past the scruff of a beard. I realize I’m searching for the thin, long scars left by a flash bat. His eyes hold mine a second longer, but I can’t tell if they’re blue. It’s darker than nine in here.

  “Leave the girl,” King orders around a mouthful of food. “She needs all her strength for what’s coming.”

  The Conjie nods and slips through the door.

  My heart races. Is it possible that Dram somehow found me?

  “Eat,” King commands.

  I dip my fingers into the food. Dark chunks in some kind of liquid. My fingers brush something hard. I trace the teeth of a key.

  A way out. The symbol the Conjie traced into my palm. Tears fill my eyes as I stare at the door.

  Dram. Finding a way to rescue me from the depths once more.

  * * *

  I’m crouched against the wall with the key hidden in my fist, waiting for my chance, when an explosion rocks the compound. Dirt rains down over me as I hug the floor of my prison. King curses and grabs a vial off the table—the Serum 854 his groping hands discovered the day he knocked me unconscious. He storms from the room, shouting orders.

  I leap for the cell door and thread my hands through the bars. I wedge the key into the rusty hole and twist. It’s like I’ve got my double-bladed knife in a flash bat’s skull, but the lock won’t yield.

  This is taking too long. King could return any moment.

  I jam the key in farther and use every bit of leverage I can manage. It clicks. The door creaks open, hinges scraping loud enough to announce my escape.

  I snatch a knife from King’s plate, then duck through the door into chaos. People run up and down the corridors. King left his coat, and I pull it on, hiding my hair beneath the hood. No one seems to notice me as they scurry about, grabbing weapons and supplies.

  I tuck the knife in my sleeve and search for the way out. It’s like a cavern down here, darkened passages that lead so many directions, with no clear exit.

  Cavers’ marks. Remembering how Dram marked my hand, I press against the wall and wind my way back to the cell. My nerves riot against me, but I press on, determined to see if …

  A V turned on its side, marked with chalk near the bottom of the wall. Dram couldn’t tell me the way out, so he did the next best thing. I follow the direction of the arrow, jogging the corridor as I search for the next marker. Another V, this one at waist height. I continue east, my pace quickening. These aren’t his bolt lights, illuminating my path in swaths of glowing yellow, but they’re just as comforting.

  “The girl’s gone!” a man shouts.

  Doors slam. Pounding feet echo along the corridor. I run.

  A man grabs me. He grips a hand over my mouth, stifling my scream.

  “It’s Bade,” he says, pulling me into an alcove just as three of King’s men sprint past. I turn and recognize the Conjie who helped us in Cordon One.

  “Where’s Dram?” I whisper.

  “Up top. I followed his marks down to you.”

  He lays his palms on the dirt wall and closes his eyes. The dirt shakes and pushes up, pressing around us like it’s taking a breath. Roots twist up from the ground, stretching and extending their reach with branches and leaves. The air fills with a dust that I recognize as pollen, and the verdant scents of grass and blooming flowers.

  “Hold on,” he says.

  I grab hold of a thick branch, and it tows me upward as he conjures a path. Dirt and rock rain down on us, but the branches weave a protective canopy over our heads. It reminds me of Roran, when we fled down his tunnel with the Range toppling down behind us.

  We break through the earth. Hands reach for me before I’ve even cleared the dirt from my eyes.

  Dram. He pulls me hard against his chest.

  “Rye.” He squeezes me so tight I can’t breathe. I reach up and tug his shaggy Conjie hair. He eases his grip.

  “You found me,” I whisper.

  He pulls away, his eyes roving over me like he can hardly believe it himself. “I wasn’t sure I’d get to you in time.”

  His eyes look different ringed in the black liner the Conjies use. They stand out even more, blue pools, glowing like safe cavern water.

  I grasp the sides of his head and
pull him down to me. His lips find mine, and he sighs against my mouth as if he hasn’t breathed until now—as if I am the only air he needs.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you,” I say against his lips.

  “It was the best way for me to get close.” He’s squeezing me again, and I let him hold me as tight as he wants. Sounds of muted gunfire lift, and he pulls away, taking in our surroundings before settling back on my face. His eyes linger on the place where King hit me.

  “It’s not as bad as the one I gave him,” I say, hoping to erase the haunted look in his eyes.

  “That black eye was your doing?” he asks, a smile tugging at his lips.

  “Only because I’d already used my bag of orbies up on the other guys.”

  His smile widens, and he tucks me in his arms.

  “You went with Cranny,” he says, his voice rough.

  “To save you. He told me he would send you to Alara.”

  He laughs, a harsh sound without humor.

  “He’s dead,” I say. “And Congress blew the Range. Outpost Five is a cordon.”

  He looks at me through ghost eyes again, the blue dimmed with shadows. “I know.”

  “Out of time,” Bade calls, tossing Dram a weapon.

  “You know how to use that?” I ask.

  Dram checks the chamber and slams the cartridge into place. “You’d be surprised the things I know now.” He guides me past a team of armed men. “Your father’s down there. We’re going after him and the compound he’s been working on.”

  “I’ll come with—”

  “You can barely stand, Rye.” His concern marks his face. In the light of the flashfall, I can see the shadows under his eyes. “Reese!” he calls to another man. “How far out are the H-3s?”

  “Bombers are less than ten,” the man responds. He holds some sort of earpiece to one ear and calls out coordinates.

  Dram leads me past him, and suddenly I see the source of the sound I couldn’t place. Rotating blades cut the air above a flying machine. Not a hover—a cirium-plated helicopter like the one we discovered in the burnt sands.

  “Stay with the chopper,” Dram shouts over the noise. “I’ll be back as soon as I can!”

  My wide eyes search Dram’s. “Who are you?”

  “My father’s son, apparently.” He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He nods to a Conjie behind me, then runs back toward the compound—the smoking hole in the earth that contains my dad.

  I grip King’s dinner knife, preparing to run after him, but the Conjie grasps my arm.

  “Dram asked me to make sure you got on,” he says. “He was right—you don’t like to be left out of a fight.” He guides me into the helicopter, where I sit clutching the seat, staring toward the place Dram disappeared.

  Smoke lifts, blending with the flashfall. It grows as the minutes pass, until I struggle to see beyond the opening of the craft. Suddenly, a figure emerges, his arm across the back of the soldier guiding him aboard.

  “Dad!”

  “Orion.”

  My arms close around him, and I feel his bones through the layers of his clothes.

  At some point in that cell, I’d given up believing I’d see him again. The ache of loss slides away, leaving me adrift in raw emotion. There is so much to tell him—how I survived the cordons, that I traded my freedom for Dram’s and returned to Outpost Five, that Congress blew the Range while we ran beneath it …

  “I saw the sky,” I choke out. He makes a sound—one that I feel rumble from his chest—like a sob and a laugh mixed together.

  “Orion, you need to strap in,” the Conjie says.

  His soft command reels me back to the present moment. I pull away and settle into my seat. “Dad, I need to tell you what I found—”

  “Serum 854?” he asks.

  “How did you know?”

  “The commissary told me what you and Dram found in that helicopter. You stumbled across something they’d given up on recovering.”

  My mind spins as I try to catch up to what he’s saying.

  He leans closer, lifting his voice above the sounds of the blades beating the air. “Five years ago, Arrun Berrends sent a team to Outpost Five. They planned to liberate the Subpars there.”

  “They crashed in Cordon Four,” I say softly. I picture the craft half buried in sand, the wreckage that housed our salvation that day beside the curtain.

  “Arrun risked everything stealing that serum. His source inside Alara was exposed, and he’s been on the run ever since.”

  “Didn’t Arrun have more? Surely he didn’t send it all with that helicopter.”

  “What little he had was used up in the process of trying to replicate it.”

  “H-3s are two minutes out!” the man with the earpiece shouts.

  The remaining soldiers scramble aboard the crafts.

  “Wait!” I grasp the edge of the door frame and lean out.

  “Strap in, Orion,” my escort calls. “We’re lifting off.”

  “Dram’s not back!”

  “Time’s up,” the pilot calls from the cockpit. “Congress has hovers en route with flash bombs.”

  “We can’t leave him!”

  Shots fire, and Bade bursts from the compound. He leaps for the craft just as we lift off. Three pairs of hands grab hold of him and drag him inside.

  “Got the serum,” he says thrusting a vial into Dad’s hands. I recognize the vial of Serum 854 King took from me.

  “Where’s Dram?” Bade asks, his gaze flicking around the seats.

  “Down there!”

  “I thought he was already in!” He stares out at the ground, a curse slipping past his lips.

  “I see him!” I cry. “There—” Dram sprints toward the corral tower.

  The soldier beside me sights down his rifle and fires, taking down one of the men chasing Dram, then another.

  “We can’t land,” Bade says.

  “That’s not what he’s going for,” I say. “Lower a tow cable—”

  “What cable? This isn’t a prison hover.”

  “Then lower me!”

  Dram grips the white intersecting beams of the corral and climbs.

  “I’ll do it,” Bade says.

  “It needs to be me.” I don’t have time to explain. My eyes beg him for understanding.

  “Fire,” Bade murmurs. He cuts the harness from his seat and fastens it around me. “Reese—get me that rope.”

  They knot the rope around my makeshift harness, and I crouch beside the open door, the wind buffeting my body and my legs dangling over the side.

  “H-3s in sight,” the pilot calls. “I’m taking us out—”

  “No!” I step down, my feet braced on the leg of the craft. My hair whips around me, and my heart bashes my chest like a fist. I’ve never been so scared. I’m terrified that Dram will be ripped from this life by a flash bomb, right before my eyes.

  “Orion, stop!” Dad shouts. “There isn’t time—”

  I pitch myself over the side, stretching my arms to make myself as long as possible, my hands open—ready to grasp any part of Dram I connect with.

  The world tips upside down, and I twist on the end of the rope. I’m going to pass out before I reach him.

  Some part of me registers the drone of approaching hovers. They’re far above us. Only the foolish risk skimming along so close to the ground. Only the desperate—

  Flash bomb.

  They’ve dropped the first one. A concussive wave jolts the chopper, and I spin wildly, a puppet with too many loose strings.

  “Dram!” I scream. The ground is on fire, and I feel myself lifting. They are pulling me back. “NO!”

  Please, please, please.

  We have a deal. I imagine I’m saying it to Dram. Screaming it to him.

  My arms stretch, like I could touch the earth with the force of my will. Like I could make the earth shudder and shift and carry him to me with roots and branches.

  I hit a wall. Not a wall.

&n
bsp; Dram.

  I slam into him, and he clutches me, clings to me. I am his lifeline.

  They tow us up. I’m dying. I’m ripping apart. Dram’s weight is too much for me and my harness of helicopter belts.

  I scream from the tension. Dram echoes me.

  “Almost there!” Bade’s voice. Shouting from safety. “Hang on! They’ve dropped another—”

  Blast of heat. I’m in the curtain. Her arms surround me, holding me. I am hers. I grip Dram with my arms and legs, but she grips me with luminescent death.

  “Got you!” Bade’s hands on me. I’m still burning, I cry out.

  “Use the serum!” Dad’s voice.

  “It’s the last one—you won’t be able to replicate it!”

  “She’s dying!”

  A needle pierces. Cool, liquid safety. Chases the curtain away. She runs, fast as my veins can carry her.

  “Rye…” Dram’s rusty voice, hoarse from yelling.

  He’s alive.

  I’m alive.

  The flash bombs did not claim us after all.

  “Pull up her sleeve. We need to start a drip,” Dad says. More hands on me. Another needle slides into my vein.

  “They’ve both been burned. Get me Serum 60, and I’ll need…” His voice fades to the background.

  The helicopter bumps beneath me, and I imagine it’s like riding a butterfly. High up and swirling, at the mercy of the wind.

  “Lower the cirium shields,” another voice commands. The door slams shut, cutting off the wind and the sounds of the rotors.

  “Take us through the curtain,” Bade says. “We’re going home.”

  Home.

  Past the curtain.

  The words dance in my mind to a tune I don’t recognize. They don’t match—these two ideas. Home, past the curtain.

  Cool spray mists my skin, and I feel less and less like I’m lying in the burnt sands of Cordon Four.

  “Dra … Dra…” I can’t push any more sound past my lips.

  “He’s right beside you, Orion,” Bade says. “You got him.”

  I got him.

  Lifeline.

  I reached for him, and he reached back.

  The tune in my head grows louder. I like this song, the one that mixes “past the curtain” and “home.” They swirl and dance together in my mind until they are one and the same, and the tune is familiar now.