Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  “Did you really think that you could do what you did without bloodshed?” Beckley says.

  “I want peace, Beckley. That’s what I’m after. In here and out there.”

  “And that’s usually paid for in blood,” Beckley says.

  Partridge recognizes some of the faces here and there—not anyone he can attach a name to, but there are only so many faces in the Dome. They circulate and become familiar. But maybe it’s hard to place them now because they look different—desperate, helpless, lost.

  A few people spot the long dark car and assume there’s someone important inside of it, so they run after it for a block or two, gesturing wildly and angrily. One boy is fast. He jumps onto the back of the car, pounding it with one fist. “Slow down! There’s a kid on the car!” Partridge says.

  “You want him to climb inside?” the driver asks.

  “I said slow down!”

  The driver slows the car but then fishtails enough that the boy jerks backward and then falls to the ground, stunned.

  Partridge stares out the back window—the boy is on his back, kicking the ground, while others are running and shouting and brawling. Amid the chaos, there’s an older man, wearing a necktie, standing in the middle of the street. Partridge knows this man. Tommy. That’s all he has—a first name. Tommy was his father’s barber. He got dressed up for the broadcast. His sport coat is folded over his arm. His chin tucked to his chest, he rubs his eyes. Is he crying? He then staggers a little and stares straight up as if expecting to see the sky.

  * * *

  Surrounded by bodyguards, Partridge is ushered from the car and taken to the set of elevators reserved for the Dome’s elite. The war room is buried in the core of the Dome on the lowest subterranean level. The elevator doors open, and they step into a building with mazelike halls that echo loudly with the clomp of their bootheels.

  One of the guards opens the door to the war room with a series of codes typed into a wall-mounted keypad. The door opens, revealing a long mahogany table surrounded by leather chairs. The walls are covered with black screens, now dark and glassy, almost wet-looking.

  The guard ushers Partridge in along with Beckley.

  Partridge walks the length of the table and runs his hand over the back of the chair at the head of the table. His father’s chair. His father’s body was once here. His mind flashes on his father’s face again—his skin festered red and, in some spots, already blackened with necrosis, and his hands, curled inward, shaking with a constant palsy. Willux had overdosed for decades on drugs to enhance his mental abilities. It caught up with him, causing Rapid Cell Degeneration. Partridge tries to remind himself that his father had done himself in, but it doesn’t mute the guilt. There’s no way to let it go. “Has anyone been inside the chamber since my father’s death?”

  “No, sir,” Beckley says. “We were under strict orders only to retool the codes. We weren’t allowed to enter—only outfit it so that you could.”

  Partridge wonders if this room is really meant for his protection—or was it a trap, a way to eliminate him if he didn’t perform exactly as the Dome wanted him to? Is this something that his father dreamed up for his successor, or has it been rigged by Foresteed so that he can take over? Partridge feels a cool ridge of sweat across his back, and he thinks about his father, who was a leader for so long. Is this the kind of doubt and suspicion he lived with all the time? Is that why he ruled with such an iron fist?

  Partridge looks at the guard who opened the door. Partridge has never been completely sure who he can trust. Even his trust of Beckley has been hard-earned and sometimes feels shaky. But now that he’s spoken the truth about his father, Partridge is even less sure who’s been rocked by that news and how they might decide to turn on him. These are the Pures—not the types to rise up. But he still has to be careful. He glances at Beckley, trying to gauge his read on this guard. Partridge doesn’t want to go into the chamber only to be isolated and get attacked.

  Beckley looks back at him calmly. “You okay?” he asks.

  “Fine,” Partridge says. He has no choice but to trust those around him. They’re all he has. “Let’s see it.”

  Beckley nods to the guard, who reaches under the head of the table, perhaps pressing a button hidden there, and one wall breaks into panels and opens, revealing a door.

  On the other side of the door could be his father’s secrets. He’s never understood his father. His father was so absent—even when he was in the same room, his mind was working on something else. Partridge doesn’t remember ever having the feeling that his father was actually looking at him. His father was more than aloof. He seemed nearly hollow. But he hadn’t always been like that; there was something about his father—once upon a time—that had made Partridge’s mother fall in love with him. Hadn’t he once been funny? Thoughtful? Maybe even a little vulnerable?

  He’s also well aware that on the other side of the door there might be proof that he could offer the people here—proof that his father was the mastermind behind it all, that the people on the outside need their help.

  He walks up to the door. “How do we do this?”

  “You look into this beam of light for the retinal scan,” the guard says, “and press your hand on this square to check your fingerprint.” The beam is blue and it appears from a small camera-like lens in the wall. The square is made of glass, but it too has a bluish glow.

  Partridge leans into the beam. Something inside of the lens clicks. He presses his hand to the glass square, and he hears another series of clicks. Partridge puts his hand on the knob, but the door opens automatically. The room is dark.

  Beckley moves forward to usher him in.

  “Wait for me outside,” Partridge says. “All the way out. In the hall.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beckley says, and he tells the rest of the guards to back out of the room.

  Partridge steps just inside the dark room; he can tell that it’s relatively small, and it feels cluttered. From the dim light cast by the war room, he can see that the chamber walls are covered in something that seems to shiver. He thinks of wings—the birds on Bradwell’s back and how, when they shifted, his shirt would flutter.

  Is his father’s chamber filled with batting wings? He wants to call this off, back out of the room, but he can’t. He’s gone too far now. They’d know he’s afraid.

  It’s not logical, but he feels like he’s about to move into his father’s mind. He always sensed that his father held infinite secrets, that he seemed so absent because there was a version of himself that he refused to share. A secret self.

  And Partridge has uncovered so many secrets—destruction, death, so many layers of lies. He doesn’t want to know any more of them.

  He shudders then takes a step past the threshold.

  Immediately, the lights flicker on. The room fills with light. The door slams shut behind him.

  The walls are covered with sheets of paper—hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Some are glossy and thick, others white and papery.

  The glossy sheets are photographs, and the papers are covered in his father’s handwriting. Partridge walks to a wall. He sees his mother’s face, poised over a baby swaddled in a blanket. Sedge is at her side, peering at the baby. It’s Partridge, a newborn.

  He looks at the paper taped to the wall beside the picture. It’s a letter. It reads,

  To my beautiful wife,

  I remember you in this moment. Was I there? Do I only have a memory of looking at this photograph? Our lives are layered like this. I miss you still. I miss you always. You’re mine. Don’t forget that. Mine.

  Ellery

  Partridge moves to the next sheet of paper.

  To my beautiful wife…

  And the next: To my beautiful wife…

  And then he finds one that begins,

  Dear Sedge,

  What happened? Why did you turn away from me? Why…

  Did Sedge ever turn away from his father?

  Partridge,


  Look at how young you once were. You used to shout and sing when I came in the door, and now you’re grown. An Academy Boy…

  His father’s brain was affected by the enhancements. It was deteriorating, and he was willing to sacrifice his own son to be able to live on. Partridge whispers through his dry lips, “My father was insane.”

  Partridge reaches up and grabs the letter. He balls it in his fist. His father was writing letters to them all this time? He was making a walk-in photo album, a display. And he kept it to himself all these years.

  Partridge pulls loose a photograph of himself at five on a bike, of Sedge in his ice hockey gear, of his mother and father dressed for a formal occasion.

  His love and hate for his father churns within him. Who was Ellery Willux? Did he love them after all? Is this place proof that he couldn’t show it?

  Partridge lunges at the wall and tears down as many photographs and letters as he can. They fall to the floor. He drags his hands down the walls, ripping one swatch and then the next. His chest contracts. He feels like his heart is clenched, and his breath is suddenly shallow. He holds his fist to his chest. “Damn it,” he says.

  And he staggers to the only chair in the chamber, the one behind his father’s desk. He sits down heavily and slowly looks around the room. This is everything he ever wanted from his father. Some show of his love. Some gesture of affection. And all along he was building this?

  He hears a knock on the door.

  “I told you to wait in the hall!” he shouts, then tries to catch his breath. Is he having a heart attack? Jesus, is his father trying to kill him with this shit?

  “It’s me. Lyda.”

  Lyda. He pushes himself up from the chair and moves to the door. He turns the knob and, as before, the door opens automatically.

  There she is. He takes her in for a moment—her face, her lashes, her parted lips.

  “You told the truth,” she says, astonished.

  For a second, he’s not sure what she’s talking about—saying all those things at the service feels like it happened a long time ago. “I was hoping you were out there, watching.” He pulls her in close. He smells the lavender scent of her perfume. “I told them to bring you here. I had to see you,” he says. “Come in here with me.”

  “What is this place?”

  He puts his hand on the small of her back and guides her into the chamber. She looks around at the floor littered with photos and letters, and at the walls splotched with tape. “Partridge,” she says, “was this your father’s room?”

  “His secret chamber.” He’s relieved that she’s here. She’s like an antidote to his father’s lonesome madness. She brings sanity to this room. He can focus on her and let the rest of it all blur behind her.

  “Why did he do this to you?”

  “To me?” Partridge asks. “What do you mean, to me?”

  She looks up at him, surprised. He can tell that she’s holding back. She doesn’t want to say something that will hurt him. She’s not good at hiding it.

  And then it hits him, and he looks around the room again—this time seeing it the way she sees it. Is this all for show? His father must have worked on this for years—long before he’d planned to use Partridge’s body to move on. Is this room some kind of prank? Are all of these photos and stupid letters an attempt to wrench Partridge’s heart? Or maybe it was originally designed to mess with Sedge. He was the rightful heir.

  Is this all fake? A ploy to garner sympathy? A final power grab at love?

  “Do you think he’s messing with me still?”

  She walks to Willux’s desk with its shiny surface. She circles behind it and pulls out his chair.

  “Don’t,” Partridge says.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “This room. It feels like it’s filled with contagion. Don’t you feel him in here? His presence? It’s like he’s not dead. Not in here, at least. He fills up the room, the air.” Partridge wonders if the contagion he feels is his own toxic guilt. He looks at the faces of his family staring up at him accusingly. He was once a baby; now he’s a murderer.

  “This room is yours now,” she says.

  “What if I don’t want it?”

  She walks toward Partridge, kneels down, and picks up another picture of him as a baby. In this one, Partridge is wearing a cap. His face is a bright pink. And it’s his father who’s holding him. “You were a pretty baby,” she says. She stands up and hands it to him. He stares at it for a minute. And in an unexpected rush of longing, he wants to go back. He wants to be that baby again. He wants to do it all over.

  But he can’t let his father get to him. He was led here, and he’ll use this room for his own end. He’ll use his father’s secrets against him, try to undo what his father’s done.

  He hands the picture back to Lyda, walks to his father’s desk, and says, “What else does he have hidden in here?” He won’t sit in his father’s chair again. He pushes it back from the desk and then presses his hands flat against the glossy surface. Suddenly the desk lights up.

  Before him is a map of the world, dotted with blue lights, each of them pulsing except for one—located on the map where the Dome stands. It glows.

  “What the hell?” Partridge whispers.

  Lyda walks up and stands beside him. “It’s the world and that’s us.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “So the question is what do all the blinking lights represent?”

  “What do they represent, or who?” Lyda says quietly.

  Partridge’s skin feels suddenly chilled. “These could be other places that were spared. Could it mean that there are other survivors out there?”

  “Touch one,” she says.

  Partridge thinks of Pressia’s father, Hideki Imanaka. He was one of the Seven. One of the tattoos still pulsing on his mother’s chest before she died was proof that he was still alive. Maybe this is one way to find him. One of the flashing lights is on the island of Japan. Partridge reaches out and touches it.

  Static rises up from unseen speakers, and then a voice. “Partridge.” It’s his father’s voice, and for a second, he thinks that his father’s still alive, that the murder wasn’t a success. He looks at the door to the chamber, but it’s closed. Lyda reaches out and grabs his hand. Is his father back from the dead? Is he unkillable? “My son,” his father says.

  “No.” Partridge feels dizzy. He grips the edges of the desk and sits in his father’s chair.

  His father’s voice goes on: “Your fingerprint—that tiny swirl that’s been there since birth. You found this room, this map, my world. You unlocked my voice with a single touch. And this means only one thing: You’re alive and I’m dead.”

  “Lyda,” Partridge whispers. “I can’t listen to this.”

  She grabs his arm. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “We have to.”

  “With that touch, a message has now gone out to all the others that I’m gone and you’re in charge. Did you really think I was content with just one little Dome to take care of?”

  Partridge wants to press the heels of his palms over his ears, but he can’t move. He can barely breathe. He killed his father, and his father’s still here.

  “Open the top desk drawer. There, you’ll find a list of my enemies—now they’re yours. You’ll find out the truth that I’ve hidden from everyone—even you. You’ll find the simple, honest irony of everything I’ve tried to accomplish. Hopefully you’ll understand the fragility of what you’ve inherited. You might hate me. I understand. I hated my parents too. This is the way of the world. I saw the end, Partridge, and I was trying to save you from it. Believe what you want, but this is what fathers do.” His father pauses then. Did Willux see his own end in sight? What end? “One more thing,” his father says. Is he going to sign off by telling Partridge he loves him? What does Partridge really want from the dead man?

  His father lowers his voice and says, “A question. Is the
re blood on that fingerprint now?”

  There’s another brief burst of static and his father’s voice is gone.

  It’s silent. He stares across the map with its blue lights. His breath feels high and tight in his throat. He flips over his hands and looks at his fingertips—the tiny intricate swirls that are his and his alone. His father knew that if Partridge was listening to this recording then he probably killed his father.

  Lyda whispers, “He knew you’d do it.”

  “Don’t,” Partridge says.

  “He’s still in power.” Her voice is cold, or maybe fearful.

  He lifts his head and turns to look at her. “No,” Partridge says. “I killed him.”

  Lyda’s face looks pale and stiff. “He’s still…” She pulls her hands up to her throat, tightening her fists. He stands up and she backs away. “It’s changed you, Partridge. Part of your father knew you’d do it, knew you were capable of killing him, and it’s changed you deep down.” She backs against a wall, the photographs rattling.

  “What else could I do? Let him kill me?”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head angrily. “It’s just…”

  “Just what?” He remembers the feeling he had just after he’d done it. His hands went numb. He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t think. His heart was pounding, though, like it was the only thing left. And he feels that now because Lyda’s never been afraid of him like this, and he can read it on her face so clearly. “Lyda,” he whispers.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s another secret. We grew up with all of these secrets and lies. How can we keep living this life, Partridge? I don’t know if I can…” She takes a deep breath, quickly touching her stomach. The baby. The future.

  “Without you, I’ll be alone in this,” he says. “Don’t turn your back on me.”

  “I’m not.” She glances around as if adding, I have nowhere else to go. But then she reaches into her coat pocket. “We’re not completely alone.” She pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. He walks to her and she hands it to him. “They’re here—the sleeper cells: Cygnus, the swan.”