Steel Lily ARC

by Megan Curd

  “What’s an alchemist?” I interjected.

  He smiled at me and glanced at a tree as we walked toward the gleaming city, as though he thought someone might be sitting in a branch, watching us. His eyes darkened for a moment, and then he continued on as though I’d never spoken a word.

  “There are twenty-six residents at Chromelius Academy, all here for their unique talents and abilities. Atticus Riggs protects our kind. He finds us in the other domes and brings us back here. He gives us chance to be ourselves.”

  “Are you his delivery boy, then?” Alice asked with a sour look on her face.

  Jaxon looked at her coolly. “I’m nobody’s delivery boy, Miss Dobson. Riggs said Avery was hesitant to trust him and needed persuasion. I was the persuasion.”

  “You decided to persuade her by sticking the entire Polatzi on us?” Alice said, now incredulous. She seemed to grow taller in her irritation. Right now she looked like she might take a bite out of Jaxon.

  He smiled, but I could tell Alice put him on edge. “I didn’t do anything, Miss Dobson,” he said defensively as he stepped away from her. “Riggs can be quite persuasive when he wants something. He told me there would be an, ah, altercation, and for me to watch for two lovely girls to be pushed from their hidey-hole like rats chased by terriers. And just as Riggs said, there you were, running wildly in the streets. No one told me the Polatzi would be involved, that there’d be so many, or that they would be as stupid as they are. One would think the governor’s special forces would possess some sort of mental fortitude. I might send him a letter pointing this out.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to get a letter from the gentleman who sprung two of his people out from under him.”

  Jaxon nodded thoughtfully, then smiled. “I’ll make sure to let him down easy. I’ll put some cologne on it. Seems to make my words sound better to the ladies.”

  I remained silent. To be honest, Jaxon intrigued me. I would never admit it to Alice, who already made it clear she found his company as enjoyable as a hugging a leper. Personally, I found him to be an enigma — a puzzle to be pieced together. An intricate puzzle that probably was missing a few pieces, but I was still curious.

  “By the way,” he added as he strode on through the wild grass, his palms down against the tips of it, “an alchemist works to transmute common metals into gold or silver. Amongst other things.”

  “And why would we want to do that?” asked Alice, undeterred by the boredom in Jaxon’s voice. “Iron and steel are what we need. Steam powers everything.”

  Jaxon winked at me before he turned in a circle, arms extended in a simple yet grand gesture. “Ah, but how do you think this place runs? How it looks as nice as it does? Gold and silver are still the currency of the modern world, and we have it here at Dome Seven.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Alice and I followed Jaxon in silence after his introduction to the dome. The onslaught of new sights, sounds, and smells was overwhelming.

  We were out of Dome Four. I was away from having to donate steam. I was free.

  I laughed at the impossibility of it all.

  The skyline grew in size. The sun hung low in the sky, and the shadows of the tall buildings swallowed much of the roadway ahead. But the darkness didn’t hold fear like it did in Dome Four. It held promise. Dreams. Come morning light, anything was possible.

  Information whizzed along the top of the dome in the holograms. It was hard to look away from the blatant use of technology. I’d never been allowed anything other than my high-end oxygen mask. I wondered what else they had here. Would they have computers? Phones? Tablets? The possibilities were endless if they didn’t run on steam.

  Thousands of questions fought for the tip of my tongue, but I had to start somewhere. “Where are we?”

  Jaxon’s eyes scanned the area, seeming to search for something that lay unseen. It reminded me of my adventures into the market back home, and nervousness prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. His voice was low, and I leaned closer to him to hear him. “Like I said, Dome Seven. If you want to get technical, we’re situated on what’s left of the Twin Cities.”

  “The Twin Cities?”

  “Minneapolis and Saint Paul. They were in Minnesota, United States of America. You do know we’re in the United States, right?”

  I rolled my eyes, grateful we were behind him. “Of course.”

  “Just checking,” he said without turning around. “But don’t roll your eyes again if you want any more answers.”

  “How did you —”

  “There are no secrets in your voice, Avery Pike. You’d do well to learn to control that, lest your whole life be laid out to be read like a book.”

  I looked at Alice, who shrugged. “I thought I could read you because we’ve known each other so long.”

  “I’ve known her for less than twenty-four hours and could tell you her life story,” Jaxon said.

  His comment caused a surge of indignation within me. “You don’t know anything about me.” I called out, careful to keep my voice from wavering.

  Jaxon whipped around, his eyes bright as though he was accepting a challenge. “Avery Jean Pike, your middle name probably comes from a deceased loved one. You have lived on your own cleverness for so long you don’t think you need anyone. You walk with a chip on your shoulder. You desperately want to be normal, which means you have a very powerful ability, you lost you parents at a young age, or maybe even both.”

  My mouth opened and closed as I tried to formulate a response, but he hit nearly every part of my life on the head. How did he know those things? Mr. Riggs must have given him information before he sent Jaxon out.

  Alice leaned into me, her voice low. “He’s a guy after your own heart. Overconfident, good looking, and witty. It’s like you in male form.”

  “I am not like him.”

  Alice giggled. “Uh huh. Don’t look now, but I think I can already see your dreads growing in. Which, by the way, would be disgusting. I bet his are moldy inside.”

  “I resent that,” Jaxon called back to Alice. “There’s no mold in my dreads. They’re probably cleaner than the grease ball you call a hairdo.”

  Alice opened her mouth, but I waved her off. “Just let it go,” I said in a whisper. I closed my eyes and stopped for a moment to try to clear my head.

  When I reopened them, the image wasn’t the same.

  The field we stood in flickered like an old TV, and underneath it I saw the true Twin Cities. Jaxon wove in and out of abandoned cars, sometimes even jumping on top of them. A windshield cracked under the pressure of his heel. In the distance were huge craters in the road. Chunks of cement stuck out of the sides of the lower levels of buildings. Empty gun shell casings were everywhere, making it feel like the very ground we walked upon rolled and swayed under our feet when we stepped on them.

  “What happened to the grass?” I called.

  Jaxon turned around, his eyebrows furrowed and concern in his eyes. “What do you mean, what happened to the grass? It’s still here.”

  Alice looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Avery, we’re standing on it.”

  I looked around and the grass flickered once more, as though fighting for existence. In front of me sat an old tank. Jaxon leaned against it, and the image changed to a tree. He stood there with his arms crossed, eyeing me carefully. “What do you see, Pike?”

  Instinct told me to lie. “A tree.”

  Jaxon nodded his head as though he were relieved. He looked at Alice and tapped the side of his head. “Has your friend ever been checked? You know, to see if the hamster is still on the wheel?”

  Alice looked at me, then Jaxon. “She doesn’t need to be checked. I saw a tree, but now I see a tank.”

  Jaxon blanched. “Pike, did you lie to me?”

  I ground my teeth. “Well, I thought I saw a tank, but it changed to a tree and…”

  I trailed off and ran my hands along the cold metal of the tank that s
at aged and decrepit. The military insignia was still emblazoned brightly on the side, as if it could spring to life at any time. I rapped the side with my knuckles and heard a hollow twang. It felt like it reverberated in me, too.

  “Done playing?” Jaxon asked, his eyes peering over the treads on the opposite side of the tank.

  The holograms of beauty faded in and out, revealing the destruction underneath. Just when I thought I’d catch a glimpse of something, the hologram would snap back in place. It made me question my sanity.

  Question this place.

  At least Dome Four didn’t lie about its appearance.

  “What happened here?” I asked as I looked around once more.

  Jaxon’s eyes darkened. “Same thing that happened everywhere. The war. This was one of the areas that the Resistance tried to take over, since it was at the heart of the United States.”

  “You can’t be much older than me,” I said, trying to figure out why when he talked of the war it aged him beyond his years. “How do you know so much?”

  “There are libraries and such.”

  “We didn’t have free reign to go dig up information on the war in our Dome.” Alice interjected.

  Jaxon shrugged. “I don’t remember much of the war, to be honest. Riggs brought me here when I was five, and the domes were already built. This was the last one constructed. I’ve only seen what was recorded on television or documented in papers.”

  He seemed to answer enough of the question, yet not really answer at all. It was plain to see I’d never receive a straight answer from him.

  “You didn’t tell us how old you are,” I reminded him.

  “I’m sixteen.”

  He hopped an overpass lane barrier that for a moment looked like an old wooden fence, and dropped down a muddy embankment. When he slid down, mud slapped his face and hands and sprayed a wake behind him. Moments later, he disappeared completely below another highway that rose off the ground. I would have never seen the hole had he not slipped through it.

  Alice screeched in horror. “He can’t expect us to act like cavemen and slide around in mud!”

  I laughed. “I don’t think he left us a choice.”

  Hoisting myself over the barrier as Jaxon had, I followed suit and slid down the mucky hill.

  Mud caked itself in the folds of my jacket and in and behind my ears as I wound down the slope. When my feet hit the ground below, it was stable and dry.

  “You look good as a brunette, Pike,” Jaxon said as he tried to clean his hands.

  “I prefer my natural red, thanks.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t say I disliked your flaming locks,” he said as he eyed me with a devious smile. “I simply said that you looked good covered in dirt, too.”

  Heat rushed to my face. Jaxon smiled and looked away, seemingly pleased with himself.

  Moments later the wailing above us indicated that Alice was coming.

  Limbs flying in all directions, her back hit square against the ground and air whooshed from her lungs. She coughed and batted at her dress as though it were alive and trying to attack her.

  “Good Lord,” she said between assaults on the layers of ruffles, “this…is…ridiculous. Can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” She looked at me through narrowed eyes, but the softness within them gave away that she wasn’t really mad. “Do you know how long it took me to make this?”

  “I hope not long,” said Jaxon. “Why would someone roll in the mud if their clothes were important to them?”

  Alice looked at me and muttered something about a conspiracy before glaring at Jaxon. “Well?” she said contemptuously, “Are you going to take us to this Academy?”

  Jaxon grinned like the Cheshire cat. He was getting exactly what he wanted, which was a rise. “Sure, sure, we can go now. I just wanted to see if you’d roll down a hill of mud to follow me, and you did. Haven’t met a woman yet who hasn’t if I’m the prize at the bottom.”

  If Jaxon heard the growl that bubbled from Alice’s diminutive throat, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead he hopped over another ledge, leading us deeper into what looked to be an old parking garage below the highway. I glanced out over the waist-high cement walls of the garage, and saw a massive building with a white cross and a snake coiled around it.

  “That’s a hospital, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “It used to be a hospital, yes. We ransack it for antibiotics when someone falls ill, but it’s nearly cleaned out. There are two other hospitals in the dome, though. Another reason to use electricity. It keeps the refrigerators running in the hospitals, which keeps the medicines cool. They’ll eventually expire, but until then, we’ll keep them at the ready.”

  The smell of wet and dank disrepair became more prominent the deeper we went into the parking garage. Sunlight began to wane, casting long, spindly shadows along the walls. It felt like someone was watching us, and the hairs on my neck stood on end at the thought.

  “Hurry,” Jaxon urged us as he slid a card through a machine on the left side of two metal grey doors. The machine flashed red, then green twice, and a beep sounded. Jaxon opened the door, but then barred us off with his long wingspan. I stopped quickly, and Alice ran into me. She sniffed in aggravation.

  “Once we go in there,” he whispered, “don’t talk about you saw out here.” He glanced around, “No one has ever questioned the holograms before you two. Don’t talk about what you saw.”

  Alice huffed. “But why? Why use energy to cover up the ruins? Don’t you have more important things to use the power for? And why hasn’t anyone else noticed?”

  Jaxon’s face grew pale. “Haven’t you ever wanted to believe the world isn’t as ugly as what you see every day?”

  “Of course,” I said, “but we don’t try to hide what the world is. What good does that do?”

  “Have you ever heard of morale?”

  “Where we’re from, we don’t have time for morale. Surviving is priority number one, and if you don’t see life for what it is, how do you expect to survive the ugly when it’s thrown at you?”

  Jaxon looked at me, stunned. “You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”

  “Sure am,” I said with a smile. “But you know what? If I piss in your Wheaties, you’ll know it. I won’t try to hide it with a hologram.”

  Jaxon looked ruffled. “We don’t like to talk about the war any more than your dome did. People avoid looking too deeply into anything. It’s better if you keep your nose out of places it didn’t belong, and the holograms are one of those places. Trust me.”

  The skeletons that Dome Four hid may have been different than those of this dome, but it seemed that secrets lurked in the shadows all around us.

  We walked through the door and into a hallway so plain it felt surgical. I wondered if this place was that different from home. The smell of stale medicine and sickeningly clean sheets tore at my nose. A camera was mounted in the middle of the hallway ceiling, and a red light blinked beside the lens. “Where are we?”

  “Lower level of the hospital, but only for a moment,” Jaxon said as he swiped his card at the door on the other end of the hallway. Another beep sounded, and we marched on.

  He led us down a flight of stairs and through another set of double doors. The hallway was as white and bare as the previous one, with no windows or doors. There was nothing to indicate where we were, whether we were above or below ground. I kept my eyes on the nondescript tiles and listened to our footsteps echo off the walls. After what felt like forever, he turned to us and smiled. Behind him was a pair of metal grated doors.

  “Elevator going up,” he said. He pulled down a grate that locked us into the contraption. Its bare cogs and pulleys out for everyone to see, and reminded me of Dome Four. My stomach twisted with homesickness that I never knew was there.

  Jaxon looked at me, his mouth half open from formulating a question. “Say, why are your eyes two different colors?”

  “Got into a fight,” I replied. “Guy p
unched me, and they said he permanently altered the color.”

  “That’s not possible,” he said argumentatively.

  “What isn’t possible is that I won’t punch you and do the same thing,” I said without a hint of jest in my voice.

  Alice kept a straight face to make it convincing. This was one of the games we played together: seeing how many unlikely scenarios we could come up for my heterochromia. She nodded and stepped forward into the conversation. “You should see the other guy if you think her damage is bad.”

  Jaxon didn’t say anything after that, but kept glancing my direction as though I might attack. It was all I could do to not burst out in laughter.

  Alice leaned in for the second time today, her voice smug. “What did I tell you? You’re a match made in heaven—full of crap and just waiting to call one another’s bluffs.”

  I elbowed Alice in the ribs. She giggled, and Jaxon looked between the two of us with trepidation. That’s right, Mr. Pierce, I thought to myself, you should be the one out of their element for a change.

  The elevator groaned and lurched into movement. We were thrown forward with the sudden jolt, and it did nothing to ease my tension. From the way Alice had one hand on the solid side of the elevator and the other covering her eyes, I wondered if she wouldn’t throw up on Jaxon’s dirt-spattered shoes. The thought made me smile.

  Without warning, the elevator halted. Jaxon shielded his face as light poured through the bars, but gave us no warning to do the same. Through watering eyes I saw him step out of the elevator, and his tall frame blocked the light for a moment. He bowed, his body thrown into shadows from the glow behind him. The rays that filtered between his arms and his body almost made him look like he had angel wings. When he spoke, his voice was proud and proper. It was different from the voice he’d used on the journey here.

  “Welcome, my ladies, to Chromelius Academy. I’m quite sure you’ll find your new home to be a bit more opulent than your last one.”