by Alex Mara
"And why is that?" Elder Leila asked.
"Because I forfeited my life and citizenship when I agreed to go to the facility," I said, ducking my head. "I gave it all up, and in return, I thought I was helping humanity survive against the silvers. As it turned out, the facility has become corrupted. The Scarlet was sent here because I escaped with Blaze."
"Blaze?" the murmurs went up.
"Blaze is the man standing on the platform across from me," I said.
"They have names?" Elder Lucian asked.
"Shouldn't they? They're men, after all," I snapped. I shouldn't have done it, but Lucian had always been a blowhard. I was sick of kowtowing to him.
Elder Lucian's eyes narrowed on me, and he folded his arms.
"You said you escaped," Elder Leila said, fingers nearing her mouth. "Escaped what, dear?"
"They were going to kill Blaze," I said. "Down there, clones are expendable. I couldn't let that happen to him. He showed too much humanity, too much heart. So my only choice was to help him escape."
"You snuck him into Beacon," Elder Lucian said.
"Yes, beneath the city," I admitted. "It was nighttime, and we discovered one of the docks for the generators. We used it to get to safety."
"And what of the engineer?" he asked.
I lifted my eyes to him. "What engineer?"
“Guardians, please bring out Ehren Lightsmith,” Elder Lucian said, and my eyes widened as the engineer we had encountered beneath Beacon was escorted into the center of the council room. He bore an ugly bruise at his left temple.
“Ehren,” Elder Leila said, gesturing to the three of us on podiums, “do you recognize either of these individuals?”
He looked first at me, and then at Blaze. “Yes, elders,” he said. “A few days ago, that woman assaulted me at my post beneath the city.”
All the elders’ eyes shifted to me. “Is that true, Darcy?” Elder Leila asked.
I swallowed. I was about to nod when Blaze’s voice rang out in the room for the first time.
“It was me,” he said. “I knocked him out from over Darcy’s shoulder.”
All twelve elders shifted their attention to Blaze.
Shit. At least if I had been able to claim credit for the assault, I would have been able to assert the innocuousness of the infiltrators when it came to humans. But that was over now.
“Why did you assault this man, Blaze?” Lucian asked.
“He was going to shoot Darcy West with a crossbow. I had to intercede.” Even with his hands and feet manacled, Blaze still stood straight and tall, unbowed.
Murmurs rose around the room, the elders whispering to one another.
“Why did you have to intercede?” Leila asked.
Blaze’s eyes flicked to me. “Because I love her. I couldn’t bear to see her hurt.”
A moment of silence followed, and my vision blurred as I tried not to show the emotion I was feeling. I lowered my face, allowing the tears to slide down my cheeks.
“Love,” Elder Lucian said. “Now that’s interesting. And do you love that clone, Darcy?”
I raised my face. “Yes,” I said at once. “Very much.”
And then the questioning proceeded to why Blaze and I had been in the tunnels beneath Beacon, but I wasn’t fully listening for the next few minutes. I answered the questions, explained our escape, but all of it seemed to fall away from that one shining moment.
He loved me, and I loved him.
Whatever else happened from there, at least we had that.
“Well,” Elder Leila said, bringing me back to attention, “were you going to shoot her, Ehren?”
He half-shrugged. “She surprised me. She wasn’t supposed to be under the city.”
"Ehren," I said, "tell the elders about the generators."
His eyes flicked to me. "I don't—"
"What is this about the generators, Ehren?" Elder Lucian interrupted.
"They're losing efficacy, Elder. They're slowly dying," I said. "Surely you knew that."
I surveyed the faces of the elders, and then of Ehren Lightsmith. None of them seemed surprised by this announcement, and I realized that they had known this. That they had chosen to live with it, their attentions turned elsewhere.
"You all knew," I said. "You knew the generators are dying."
"It's a separate issue, and one we're addressing," Elder Lucian said.
"Even if you can pump out another ten years of energy from them, that's still only ten years," I said.
"It's a separate issue," Elder Lucian repeated loudly, his voice bearing the brittle sternness of a man who couldn't acknowledge his own fear.
And that was when I understood that these people had no long-term plan. They were winging it. All my childhood, I'd believed Lucian and Leila and the other adults—my parents—were something like demi-gods, flawed only a little at most.
But I was an adult now, and I had spent the past week and a half figuring things out as I went along.
My eyes met Blaze's across the room, and silent understanding passed between us. This outpost needed more than we needed them.
9:53 a.m.
Blaze
These “elders” were afraid. They were fearful of me, and they would be even more afraid after I said my piece.
They had filed out of the circular room some minutes ago, and the three of us had been left at our podiums, awaiting their deliberations as to our fate.
I didn’t know how the elders would judge us, but it didn’t matter; they wouldn’t put a noose around her neck. I would never allow that to happen to her.
When the elders returned, they filed back to their seats positioned at the two semi-circles connecting the podiums. None of them sat.
“We have reached a decision,” Elder Lucian began, “though it was not unanimous.”
He turned toward the podium where Darcy stood. “Darcy West,” he said, “for the crimes you’ve committed—abandoning the outpost, reentering in secrecy, your part in the assault on Ehren Lightsmith, and your five years of participation in creating these monstrosities and allowing them to enter Beacon—you have been sentenced to hanging.”
I stiffened, the image of her with a noose around her neck, cutting off her life, blitzing into existence in my mind. I couldn’t make it disappear. “No,” I said, my voice slowly rising. “I won’t allow it.”
He turned toward the podium where I stood. “Blaze,” he said, a seamless transition, “for the crimes you’ve committed—illegal infiltration of our outpost, assaulting a citizen, entering in secrecy, and the very fact of your dangerousness—you are sentenced to be hung along with Darcy West.”
Across the room, Darcy stood bravely still and upright, though I could see the fear in her eyes.
“Fools,” I saw her spit under her breath.
"They're afraid," I mouthed to her. And they were pretending not to be, which never ended in good judgment.
Elder Lucian sat, and the white-haired elder they’d called Leila rose. “However, we have allowed for an amendment to Blaze's sentence. As an engineered soldiers sent from this facility, you present exceeding danger for us.”
Her eyes seemed to study me, to await a reaction. But I didn’t give her one. “However, you were instrumental in protecting this outpost from a silver attack, and you returned our deputy captain of the guard to us. In particular, you provided a transfusion of his blood, which we’ve learned contains antibodies that fight silver infection.”
She was crediting me for 7950's deeds, and I ground my teeth.
Her eyes surveyed the council room. "I've learned from Dr. Sorin that those antibodies will be reproduced, and we'll be able to generate enough of them to eventually innoculate everyone in this outpost from the worst effects of silver venom."
She paused, and her lips quirked. I realized that a small victory had occurred during the deliberations; she was the reason the elders’ decision hadn’t been unanimous, and she had fought for another fate for me. “To that end, we
have chosen to banish you from Beacon. You will have your life, sir, but you must never return.”
With that, Elder Leila sat, and Elder Lucian rose. “The trial is concluded. Guardians, please bring the prisoners down from the podiums and escort them back to the tower.”
I set my hands on the railing in front of me with a clank of the manacles. “Elder Lucian,” I interrupted, “may I say one thing?”
The elder paused, his mouth closing after a moment. He studied me with narrowed eyes before offering a single nod.
"You've commuted my sentence, but you should know that the man who brought Zara West back to you—and the one who provided you with his blood was not me. He was another infiltrator from the facility, and he is probably a better and braver man than I am."
I tried not to look at Darcy. I knew she was cursing me for outing myself, revealing the truth of my identity.
Instead, I continued. “7950 has done nothing to the people of Beacon except protect them. As you acknowledge, he was responsible for the transfusion of blood that will likely save Zara West’s life. He he saved me from outright death as I attempted to take her from the silvers who had kidnapped her, and he carried her back to this outpost. He ran for hours, for miles. Infiltrators are not the monsters you believe them to be."
My eyes fell on Lucian, who met my gaze with unflinching steel.
"The true threat," I continued, "will come from the silvers. You must prepare Beacon for a fight unlike any you've experienced."
“And why is that, Blaze?” Elder Leila asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.
I took a deep breath. “The silvers are planning to destroy this outpost. The reason I’m alive now is because I was allowed to live to deliver a message. I’ve been informed by one of their leaders that they will attack in larger numbers than you’ve ever seen before, and they will kill or turn every last human in this place.”
This drew a gasp from a few of the council, and before they could respond, I added: “You need Darcy West, and you need me. We’re your best hope of survival against these creatures.”
I heard whispers: "They speak?" "He communicated with them."
Elder Lucian seemed agitated, because his retort was quicker than I’d heard from him to this point. “You fought them and only lived because they allowed you to. Because they sent you here as a messenger. What makes you so instrumental?”
“They didn’t kill him because they respected him—feared him,” Darcy said, her voice wavering from across the room. All eyes shifted to her. “Because the clones don’t just turn into silvers. They’re capable of something greater. They can shift into a form that will wreak complete destruction on the silver population.”
At that moment, that room we’d seen as we escaped the facility entered my mind: the aerie. The massive claw marks, bigger than silver claws. Deeper, more powerful. And the high ceiling, the perch.
“And what form is that, Doctor?” Elder Lucian asked.
Darcy swallowed, and her eyes shifted to me. “Drake."
"Drake?" Elder Leila asked. "Do you mean—"
"Yes," she said. "Dragons. It's their best and truest form."
Twenty-One
Monday, May 12, 2053
7:32 a.m.
Darcy
Blaze and I sat against the adjoining wall between our cells. We'd spent the night awake, talking, which was a luxury we hadn't had since his psychological evaluation in the facility. We'd always been too busy fighting for our lives.
Most of it he’d spent trying to become a “draconis,” as he called it. But in the last hour, we had both just taken to sitting in our respective cells.
Now, every minute felt simultaneously like a lifetime and not nearly enough.
“I’m thinking of a creature," I said, my voice sailing through the open slot in the door of my cell. I was holding it open with my hand. "It's blind."
“I don’t want to play,” he said.
“I didn’t engineer you to be so moody,” I said.
“It’s not funny, Darcy.”
I sighed, stared out the window to my left. “It was the game my father used to play with me when he was drunk. It wasn’t funny then, either.”
A pause. “Silver,” came the voice from the other cell.
I snorted. "Really? We’re going to be hung in an hour and a half and you go there?"
His laugh returned to me, and I closed my eyes, relishing the sound of it. "I guess that's not what you had in mind."
"I was thinking of a bat," I said.
I expected him to laugh at the simplicity of the creature I had picked, but only silence came back to me. "Blaze?"
"Darcy," he said, and I knew what he would say next. “How do I shift? If I could do so, maybe I could burn down the metal, or break down the walls."
I sighed. He'd been coming at this in fifty different ways all night. "We've only had one infiltrator manage drake form, Blaze. Frankly, we don't even know how it happened. And then we sent them into the aerie, and they just...wilted."
"There must be a trigger," he said.
"I'm sure you're right," I said, leaning my head against the wall, "but I don't know what it is. And I doubt we'll figure it out before the clock strikes nine."
"You engineered me, but you don't know how to make us shift."
I sighed. "It's true. I'll let you in on a little secret: the first silver shift was a grand and glorious mistake. I had only meant to imbue infiltrators' blood with antibodies that would fight their venom, and then one day, about a year in...boom."
"Silver surprise," he said.
I laughed. We'd become strangely lighthearted in the last hour, which I supposed meant we had passed through all the stages of grief during the night. Or at least, I had.
Denial, bargaining, depression, anger. And now acceptance.
I just wished I could hold my sister one last time, who I'd learned from Aiden had woken in the hospital, would live. She would live longer than me.
I wished I could be in Blaze's arms.
"Were we always meant to infiltrate the silvers, then?" he asked.
I shook my head even though he couldn't see me do it. "No. At first you were just soldiers. Good fighters, great saboteurs. Things got more complex when the first shift occurred. We decided to make you invisible to them, able to roam amongst their kind without fear."
"And how did the drake thing happen?"
"That was Luther Ides's doing. He brought me a modification to your genetic code, said it would make you all infinitely more powerful. And like a good little doctor, I did as he said. That was three years ago, and Every one of you since then comes with that potential. But as for utilizing it..."
I stopped. I had heard the door at the end of the hallway open, and I straightened, dropping the slot shut. Shoes tapped across the floor, and then a key was inserted into my cell door.
I pressed myself up the wall. They were coming for us early, and I would be ready.
"I love you," I whispered through the door, my voice cracking at the tail-end.
"And I you," I heard Blaze say, just before the key hit the lock of my cell door.
When the door opened, Elder Leila stood in the frame, her hands clasped. Two guardians flanked her.
"Elder," I said, bowing my head.
"No time for that," she said, coming forward and grasping my wrist. "You're leaving."
I raised my eyes. "Leaving where?"
"Beacon. You and Blaze."
I stopped, and she half-turned toward me. "What do you mean, leaving?" I said. "Once they found out that the clones could shift into dragons, you all declared us even more dangerous. We’re to be hung, aren’t we?"
She turned toward me in full. "No, dear. Not in this case." She came close, enfolded both my hands in hers. I realized how cold I'd been, and I shivered. "You see, I believed you and Blaze. I believe you're crucial to the survival of this place, especially as our generators are slowly failing. And I believe you do love one another. I won’t see
you killed because of protocol."
Tears filled my eyes. "Thank you."
She gave me a curt nod. "Now remember your indoor voice. I’m taking you both below the city, and if any of us makes too much noise, the gig will be up."
When I stepped out of my cell, the two guardians who had been with Leila nodded at me. One of them was Aiden, and I set my hand on his arm. Our eyes met, and he offered me a faint smile.
They unlocked Blaze"s cell, and I threw myself into his arms. "Hello, Doctor," he murmured into my hair, his hands still bound at his back. "It looks like we’ll be back to fighting for survival again."
"Just the way I like it," I said into his chest.
8:00 a.m.
We didn't have much time before Beacon became aware of our jailbreak. We had been hustled into the control room beneath the city—the same one Blaze and I had entered through, and now the group of us stood together for a last farewell.
Blaze stepped onto the cart that would lower us into the bowels of Beacon. Below, the massive water wheel churned, the central pylon humming.
I stood before Elder Leila. "Thank you," I said, and I was about to say more, but she raised a hand. She gestured to one of the guardians, who stepped forward and pressed a backpack and crossbow into my hands.
"I can't use this," I said, indicating the crossbow.
"Better to have it and not know how, than not have it at all," Aiden said from behind her with a wink.
"He's right," Elder Leila said. "You'll quickly get the measure of it. I certainly did."
"Where should we go?" I asked.
"Generator 5," Elder Leila said. "We've temporarily disabled the camera at that dock, but I can't guarantee you won't be spotted on the feed from the others."
"Generator 5," I repeated, taking one of her hands in both my own. Beside me, Blaze stood waiting in the cart, a backpack of supplies on his back, a crossbow at his hip, and his original tanto tucked into his boot. "That'll take us all day," I said. "We won't get there until night."
"There's a transport waiting for you at the entrance to the tunnel," she said. "Aiden will have you at the dock in an hour."