Steel Lily ARC

by Megan Curd

  He was all business at the moment. “I wonder if it’s me, though. Like I can breathe because of what Riggs did—” he stopped quickly, “you read the journal, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks for not bringing it up.”

  “I figured you’d talk about it when you wanted to.”

  We stood there like that for a moment, lost in the revelation that there was no barrier to keep us from leaving, and so far we hadn’t exploded for crossing the threshold.

  I wanted to see if I could step outside the dome, too.

  After a deep breath, I took one step, then two. Jaxon startled. “Avery, don’t do that! You don’t know if — ”

  It felt like I’d walked through a crisp spring rain, but as I stepped to the other side, I was still dry. I looked at Jaxon, expelled my breath, and prayed that I would be able to inhale again.

  I could.

  “Hell, yeah!” Jaxon whooped and punched the air with his fist. “Everything they’ve told us about being outside, that the world was ruined, it was all a bunch of lies! Look at us. We’re standing outside, breathing the air.”

  He spun in a circle, then picked me up and took me for the ride. When Jaxon placed me back on the earth, he cupped my face in his hands.

  It was like someone had set every neuron in my body on fire. His closeness, his scent, the way his lips curved upward. He smiled at me, and his blue eyes were sincere.

  “We’re going to escape. We’ll take Sari, Alice, your parents, even Gimpalicious.” Jaxon’s words came out in a rush, his excitement increasing with each syllable he uttered. He bounced where he stood, too emotionally charged to stand still. He thrust his arm behind him as to show me the endless darkness that we now knew could be ours. “We’re going to go far away from here. Build a life. Build a new world, one step at a time. We’re going to do it all, and I want you to be by my side. I want you for myself.”

  Without warning, his lips crushed mine and I lost all sense of self. His body heat pressed against me like a tidal wave, and I welcomed it. It felt like electricity had replaced the blood in my veins, every limb tingling with excitement.

  I had caught fire with him, and I never wanted to quell the sensation.

  Never wanted to let go.

  This was home. Not Dome Seven. Not Dome Three. Not any dome.

  Home was finding the person whose heartbeat matched yours, then dancing to the rhythm together.

  His lips moved gently and I parted mine, welcoming his advances. We moved as one person, his hands roving along my waist and mine finding the nape of his neck. I wound my fingers through his dreads and pulled him closer to me. His moan spurred me on, encouraging me to hold him tighter. I shivered as he moved his hands across the small of my back. He pulled me to the ground with him and it didn’t matter that we were lying on cement. The fact that we knew we could escape, that our lives could be better than this tyranny and fear, made everything that much sweeter.

  I bit his bottom lip and he let out a sigh as he squeezed my sides. He broke our kiss long enough to trace my jawline with his finger. “I know we haven’t known each other that long, but…”

  “Shut up and kiss me, Jaxon.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  His lips pressed against mine and we found our pace again. My heart was thrumming in my ears, his breathing was heavy, and everywhere I looked, Jaxon was there. He commanded every sense of my body. Every touch sent flames and electricity and excitement through me. I never wanted it to end.

  I rolled to my right to sit on top of him and we slipped back under the sensation of rain, back into the dome.

  And that’s when hell ripped through our little sliver of heaven.

  High-pitched alarms blared, threatening to burst my eardrums. Jaxon pushed me off of him and clutched his ears in agony.

  “Jaxon!”

  He was jerking uncontrollably, blood dripping from his ears. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over me. I fought through the pain that assaulted my eardrums.

  “Jaxon! We’ve got to go!”

  As I spoke, the alarms receded and the broken pavement trembled and shook. Jaxon’s eyes grew wide. “The dome isn’t meant to keep people from leaving, it’s meant to keep people from coming in!”

  “What do you mean?” I yelled over the din.

  Jaxon launched himself off the ground and hauled me in tow behind him. “Why would anyone want to leave?” he yelled as we ran, “Riggs makes sure his students are happy. He doesn’t need to keep people here. They don’t even know they can get out!”

  “So why not let people in?”

  Just then rain began to fall, except it wasn’t rain.

  It was fire.

  I screamed as the small droplets singed my clothes and burnt my skin. Jaxon batted a small flame that erupted on his shirt, but he couldn’t contain it. The fire quickly spread up his shirtsleeve. He panicked, and I did the only thing that came to mind.

  My hands stretched to the heavens, I closed my eyes and screamed. “WATER!” I prayed that my desperation would make it true.

  As soon as the word escaped my lips, I felt the cool relief of rain. Steam hissed and billowed up as the water extinguished the flames on the ground.

  I immediately began to feel the backlash of using my ability. “I can’t hold this for long. We have to go.”

  We ran back to the car. Darkness threatened the edges of my vision. Red and yellow spots danced before my eyes as I pushed my ability to keep the rain from turning back into fire. When we reached the car, I was spent.

  Jaxon looked at me with wide eyes as I swayed on the spot. “What in the hell are you doing? Get in the car!”

  “I can’t keep the rain going,” I gasped as I felt my control wane. Even now the rain became warmer and warmer, like a too-hot shower on my skin. It wouldn’t be long before the flames came back. “Get out of the car.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Get out of the car!” I exclaimed again as my knees buckled under me. The water was now an impossible combination of both water and fire. It came down in buckets and splashed against the ground, licking my skin and burning through my clothing.

  “Gas and fire…” I sputtered, “you…you don’t have to be genius to know what that’ll cause.”

  “Crap!” he yelled as he leapt from the car and scooped me up in his arms.

  My consciousness faded as he ran, and I finally gave up on trying to hold off the deluge of fire. The moment I did, my strength began to return, but now we were pelted with miniature fireballs.

  Jaxon yelled in agony as one hit him in the side of the face, sending us both off course as I slipped from his embrace. I hit the ground hard and my neck whipped around like a rag doll’s.

  Where was Jaxon? I squinted to see through the haze of the heat. He was underneath what was left of an overhang, clutching the side of his face. I ran to him and put his arm around my shoulder.

  I willed him to stand. “We’ve got to keep moving!”

  He moaned in assent and struggled to put one foot in front of the other. Just as we got the hang of walking together, a massive explosion erupted behind us, the force catapulting both of us off our feet. The car’s gas tank must have exploded.

  A high-pitched hum reverberated in my ears from the blast. I skidded to a stop beside a car tire and touched the side of my face. My skin felt as though someone had taken a grater to it. I whimpered under the light pressure, and knew it would be something that even Xander might not be able to fix. Jaxon lay a few paces away, struggling to pull himself up.

  I forced myself to cross the gap between us and help him to his feet, both of us scrabbling for purchase against the gravelly ground. Jaxon seized my hand and pulled me toward a nearby alleyway.

  “We need to get to cover before the next wave hits!”

  “The next wave of WHAT?”

  Thunder erupted from above us and howling winds threatened to whip us into ob
livion. I looked to the west where the sound originated, and saw a huge funnel cloud taking form. Cars and other debris spun wildly and gave it more fuel for its violent trek.

  Jaxon pulled me into the alley, but my eyes refused to budge from the horror that was coming for us. “It’s going to kill us, Jaxon!”

  “No it won’t! We need to get to lower ground!”

  His pace was too fast for me, but he managed to half-drag, half-carry me into a nearby derelict building. Down a pair of industrial stairs, down into the bowels of darkness so deep that I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I prayed Jaxon knew where he was going.

  The angry howl of the wind came closer and closer, and I began to panic as the ground rumbled underneath its fury. Just when I thought we couldn’t go down any more stairs, the ground leveled out and a light flicked on in front of me.

  Jaxon had a flashlight.

  “You waited until now to use a flashlight?”

  Jaxon slid down a nearby wall and put the light between his knees. He closed his eyes, and I realized how badly injured he was. Gashes lined his right cheekbone and flesh hung awkwardly from his left shoulder, the blood staining his shirt as it pulsed out of his body and into the fabric. “We were running for our lives, but I apologize for withholding information. I’ll be sure to give you a detailed inventory of everything on my person the next time we’re thrust into a life and death situation.”

  He was sarcastic even on his deathbed.

  I crawled next to him and pulled off what was left of my tattered jacket to make a tourniquet. There was a reverberating crash and then the room trembled, cement raining down from above.

  “The top floor is collapsing,” Jaxon breathed. “We’ve got to get into the tunnel.”

  I worked quickly to try to stop the bleeding. Jaxon winced when I pressed the sleeve to the gouge in his shoulder, and I gagged a little when I felt the squelching of marred flesh under my fingertips.

  I asked questions to distract myself from the task at hand. “What tunnel? And how do you know what’s going on?”

  He pointed weakly with the flashlight across the room, the beam bouncing in his unsteady hand. The light glanced off a small hole that looked like it had been dug out with bare hands. It would be a tight fit for us.

  The idea of crawling into such a small hole made me claustrophobic. “You want me to go in there?”

  “The tunnel’s only small for a short while, then it opens up. I promise.” He coughed and spit out a tooth. “The other option is that we stay here and get crushed by rebar and concrete. Take your pick.”

  It wasn’t much of a choice. I helped him to his feet and we made it across the room as fast as our mangled bodies would allow. Jaxon fell to his feet and crawled in first, dragging his right foot. It might have been broken, but I wouldn’t be able to tell until we had more light.

  I followed the meager light and listened to Jaxon shuffle ahead as I heard booms, crashes, and explosions on the ground above us. I wondered how long we had until everything collapsed on top of us, but it never did. After descending farther, the tunnel gave way to a wide room that was simple concrete, as Jaxon promised.

  When we emerged into the more spacious room, Jaxon collapsed to the ground. I propped him up in the corner, and he laughed.

  I shook him gently. “I have no idea what could be funny in this situation.”

  “I never imagined I’d finally meet someone I cared about, only to die with them not three hours after I admitted it,” he said, his voice uneven and raspy. “It seems ironic, don’t you think?”

  He pointed to the thick center beam with the flashlight. “There’s a gas lamp there. It’ll give us light for a while.”

  I crouched and walked to the beam under the weak direction of Jaxon’s flickering flashlight. The lamp was there as he’d said it would be, and I fumbled to get it going. After a few moments, flames burst to life.

  I brought the lamp back to Jaxon’s corner, sat it down next to us and curled into his good arm. He sighed.

  “We’ll be okay,” he muttered weakly. “This tunnel leads to Xander’s office. We need to rest and wait out the rest of the onslaught.”

  “What else is coming?”

  “Loads worse,” Jaxon said as he winced from repositioning. “I didn’t put it together until everything started coming down on us, but Riggs said that the dome was protected from intruders. He talked about all the precautions in place, and I know that the alarm, fire rain, and tornado were some of them. He never told me exactly what else there was, but he made it clear the closer the attackers got to the Academy, the worse the attack would become. Sari programmed the onslaught.” He leaned his head against the cold wall, closed his eyes and let out a hollow sigh. “I think we’re okay down here. We just need to hunker down. I need to sleep.”

  “Jax, I don’t think you’re supposed to sleep after a concussion—”

  A smile lit his face for a moment before it was replaced by pain. “You called me Jax.”

  “I don’t think it really matters at the moment—”

  He wrapped his arm around me with a little more force, but it was still weak. “But you called me Jax. That means I’m your friend.”

  I leaned my head carefully against his shoulder, afraid to hurt him. “Of course I’m your friend,” I laughed, trying to make light of the situation we were in. “Do you think I go around kissing complete strangers?”

  “Girl like you? I’d believe it. You must be made of steel to survive on your own all these years. Doesn’t seem like kissing guys would be that hard for you if you can control the elements.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I’ve been through a major trauma, Avery. Give me some slack. I don’t have to make sense.”

  I didn’t fight him any more. Instead, I turned off the flashlight and let the flickering light of the gas lamp illuminate our tiny grotto.

  So much for our big date. I’d never been on one, but I was confident that they didn’t usually include fire raining down, tornadoes, explosions, or any other malevolent force trying to sully the night.

  Maybe I could get a rain check. If we survived, that was.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I awoke to the sound of feet shuffling across the cement. Afraid to move, I cracked one eye to see if I could make out the shape in the blurred glow of the gas light.

  “I know you’re awake, Avery,” Jaxon said, his voice tired. “You got still, and for the past hour you thrashed like a wild woman and talked in your sleep.”

  I looked for the source of his voice. He was sitting at the center beam, his arms wrapped around his knees and head resting against his legs. He smiled weakly when I caught his gaze.

  “There you are.”

  “I talked in my sleep?”

  “Yep. About me, of course. How stunning I was and that you wanted to kiss me forever if we survive this hellhole.”

  “I think you were dreaming,” I said with a laugh, but then cut it off when the motion sent a stab of pain through my ribs. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like the luckiest man alive. Who doesn’t want to feel like a bus ran them over, then put it in reverse to get in an extra swipe?”

  “Will you ever take a day off of the sarcasm?”

  “Probably when I’m dead, although I’m sure I’ll find a way to get in a comment or two beyond the grave.” He picked up the fading gas light and shook it a little. “We’re on our last leg with this thing.”

  I moved over to him and stole a glance at him from the corner of my eye.

  He was looking at me. “I suppose you deserve some answers on what just happened.”

  I shrugged. “That’s your call. I’m all ears if you have them.”

  He nodded pensively, and licked his dry lips. We needed water; we were exhausted and hadn’t eaten since—how long had it been?—it was impossible to know while underground. Even the scent of the damp earth and cement made me thirsty.


  He pushed his dreadlocks out of his face, and even in this low light, I could see the sheen of sweat on his brow. “Riggs is my father. You know that,” he said quietly, “but what you don’t know is that he wasn’t always this weirdo he is now. He was normal. Even now, I see glimpses of it once in a while, but it always gets squashed.”

  Jaxon looked down at the ground and studied the flickering shadows cast by his hand as he turned it over in front of the flame.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Jax.”

  He smiled. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Anything.”

  “Call me Jaxon. I like the way it sounds when you say it.”

  “Does that mean we’re not friends?”

  “No,” the kindness in his voice suited him much better than the bitterness he so often hid behind. “It means we’re more than friends. No one calls me Jaxon, but when you say it…” he trailed off. “Well, it makes me feel better.”

  I considered his words. “Jaxon.” I said it with new reverence.

  He smiled as he put his hand on mine. “Xander has kind of taken care of me. After every test, Xander was the one who consoled me. He hated having to administer the tests, but he said my father was insistent that it be me. That it would build my character if nothing else. Xander sat beside me at night while I had nightmares, and he was the one that would wake me up when they became too much to bear. You asked why my last name was Pierce. My mother and father were happy together when I was little, but my older brother—the one you met in the medical ward—was their breaking point. When he went missing in the war, my mom lost it. She left Riggs, blaming him for pushing my brother to join the cause. They searched endlessly for him to no avail, and one day my mom had enough. She left. I haven’t seen her since. I don’t even know if she’s alive. That was when Riggs went off the deep end. It was like a light switch was flipped. He said there was nothing to gain from fighting against the Resistance, and that we were fools to think so.”

  I sucked in a breath. Jaxon had seen so much, endured so much, that I could understand why his bitterness lingered like a persistent raincloud. I squeezed his hand and he began again.