Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  “Really? Are you sure about that, Weed?”

  “Jesus, Partridge! I’ve got all the stuff I need to Purify someone, but then they fall apart.”

  “I’ve seen your handiwork,” Partridge says a little sarcastically.

  “You mean the wretches we brought in?” Weed says, walking to the window, looking down at the street. “Those were just experiments.”

  “No, they were people.”

  He turns to Partridge quickly and says, “And their sacrifices will not be in vain if I have the formula and that one last ingredient. I’d be able to fix all of the wretches without any of the side effects that killed your father. You think the guys in Special Forces are going to come out of it clean? There are friends of ours from the academy in there, Partridge.”

  “I just didn’t know you had this altruistic bent. I mean, Arvin Weed, humanitarian. I had no idea when you were, you know, overseeing my torture.”

  “Orders are orders. Some would say I was more dutiful than Willux’s own son. Say what you want about him; he was a genius, your father was. You’ll never even begin to imagine what his brain was capable of. You should show some respect.”

  “Weed, in your head and in your gut, you know my father was a mass murderer; you’ve got to know that.”

  Weed nods. He lightly scratches his forehead. He says in an eerily calm voice, “I can make something good happen. I can save people. I can make good where your father failed.”

  Partridge shakes his head.

  “You think you can take over where my father left off somehow?” Partridge stands up, turns his back on Weed, crosses his arms on his chest. “I know you were the one who developed the pill,” Partridge says softly. He’s unable to look Weed in the eye. In this sentence, he’s acknowledging the fact that Partridge used the pill to kill his father, as well as the real possibility that Weed was an accomplice to this murder. It could be that Partridge and Weed are not as different as they seem, bound as they are in a moment in history—in an assassination.

  “Without you,” Partridge says, “I couldn’t have done it.” He turns and glances at Weed, then looks down at the floor.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Weed says.

  Partridge can’t stand the lies and denials anymore. He walks over to Weed, pushes him and grabs him by the shoulder. “Goddamn it! If you admired my old man so much, why’d you do it?”

  Weed glares at Partridge, full of hate. He pulls his shoulder free of Partridge’s grasp.

  “I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  And then Partridge knows the answer. Arvin already said it: I can make good where your father failed. Weed wanted to take over.

  Weed walks to the couch and sits down heavily. “You don’t know anything, Partridge. It’s the same old shit. You’re strolling along, being Willux’s son, and you haven’t done any homework.”

  Partridge sits down across from Weed again too. He presses his palms together. “That’s not entirely true. I’ve been to my father’s secret chamber in his war room. I learned a lot there. In fact, your name appeared in a document there.”

  “Of course it did! I’m in the thick of it, Partridge, and I have been for a long time. Even when we were both in the academy, I was already being brought into inner circles.”

  “If I don’t know anything, Weed, how about you enlighten me? Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

  “Well,” Weed says, “for one, your sister and her friends stole one of our airships. It was tagged, of course. We know its route. We know who they likely contacted—how they figured out where to find these other survivors is a mystery—but they actually do their homework, turns out.”

  Partridge ignores the dig. “What the hell are you talking about? A route?”

  “Across the Atlantic Ocean, and they’re on their way back.”

  Partridge laughs. It’s ridiculous. “The Atlantic? In an airship? Not possible.”

  “They took it to Newgrange, one of your father’s special locales. If you’ve been in his inner chamber, then you know he’s spared a few holy places and the people lucky enough to be there at the time.”

  Newgrange. Partridge thinks back to all of Glassings’ lectures on ancient burial mounds and Partridge’s father’s obsession since childhood with domes. “But Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud—they went all the way there and back again?”

  Arvin nods.

  “Foresteed should have told me all this!”

  “I’m sure it’s in the reports.”

  “I don’t read those reports!” Partridge says to himself more than to Weed.

  “And there. You’ve proven my point.”

  “Newgrange,” Partridge says. “In an airship.” The world seems to open up. Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud—they’ve been across an ocean. “My God,” he whispers. “But they’re not back yet? It sounds dangerous.”

  “Well, they got there and they’re in the air again. The question is why. What did they think they’d find there? And were they successful?”

  “Is Foresteed on this, tracking their progress?”

  “Foresteed doesn’t care much about your sister and her friends. He’s got other interests.”

  “Like what?”

  Arvin smiles. “You can ask him that yourself.”

  “Arvin, listen. I think we could get a council together—people from the outside and the inside sitting down to talk. We can help each side to understand the other. That’s where my father really failed. These people are killing themselves, but if they knew some of the people out there, if they met Pressia—”

  Weed cuts him off. “That’s nice, Partridge. But it won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “As long as the wretches wear our shared history on their skin, there will be no peace. Guilt, Partridge. You can’t live with all of that guilt without wanting to blame the victims and exonerate yourself. Human nature.”

  “But…”

  Weed wags his head, smiling. “Here’s an example. You want me to bring these people out of suspension. What the hell are we going to do with all these people? Huh? Some of them are deformed. Some are even wretches. What are you going to do? Get them jobs? Send them into grocery stores?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve spent the last few days stitching up slit wrists, staring into big, gaping gunshot wounds, pumping people’s stomachs. Because of you.”

  “Wait, now,” Partridge says. This is the second time Weed’s pinned the deaths on him. It’s not completely fair. “My father shouldn’t have shoved lies down their throats.”

  “So while I was cleaning up the mess, you were busy rationalizing it all away? Is that how you’ve spent your time?”

  “No, I told you I went into my father’s secret chamber, and I know that my father knew he’d made a mistake. He knew the end was coming.”

  “And that’s where you saw my name, huh?” Weed smooths his hair, rubs his temple. “Yeah, I remember that report. Pretty sobering. So we’re not the superior race after all. Imagine how your father felt when he caught on to that one.” Weed laughs, but there’s no lingering smile.

  “I don’t know what made him think we were superior to begin with. I’ll never understand him.”

  “Is that what you want from me? A psychoanalysis of your father?”

  “I wouldn’t ask that of my worst enemy,” Partridge says. “But I do know that if my father didn’t like a truth, he found a way to change it.” Partridge reaches into his pocket and pulls out the sheet of scientific information that he took from his father’s files. He doesn’t want to show it to Weed, but who else is there? “Explain this to me.”

  Weed takes the sheet, glances at it, and hands it back. “It’s a recipe.”

  “To make what?”

  “People.”

  “I don’t get it. People?”

  “Why would you? You’re making a person the old-fashioned way, right? Knocking someone up.”
/>   “You know her name. She’s not just someone. Just explain the science, okay?”

  Weed smiles, happy to get a rise out of Partridge, and leans back again. “This was his recipe to make them from scratch. A little DNA from Pures, a little from the tougher breed, the wretches. Some cloning, some breeding.”

  “Did you give this recipe to him?”

  Weed laughs. “That stuff is very advanced. Who knows where he got it? But not from us. No. It’s high art.”

  “So he was going to start to build his own super race from scratch.”

  “He wasn’t going to start to do it. It’s under way. In fact, I was with you when you saw them.”

  “Saw them? Who?”

  “Maybe it’s one of the patches that hasn’t yet come clear. Plus, you were a little drugged up. We were taking you in for cleansing.”

  “You mean when you almost drowned me?”

  “Your father preferred the term baptism.”

  “Who did I see? Where?”

  “The babies—rows and rows of tiny babies.”

  And then Partridge remembers it—clearly. The bank of windows like in a giant maternity ward, but all of the babies were premature, tiny, writhing, some squalling, some placid and still. Babies. He was lying down—no, strapped down—rolling…being rolled on a gurney.

  “New Eden deserved its own Adams and Eves,” Weed says. “Willux gave up on the people of the Dome too—we’re weak and vulnerable with delicate lungs and testy hearts. He started to hate us near the end, Partridge. And when you went out and survived, he was proud of you. You didn’t even have any of the things that had been built into your brother’s coding. You were just out there, raw and alone and surviving. You should have heard him talk about you.” Weed looks sickened by the memory. And Partridge finds it hard to believe. His father was always so disappointed in Partridge. But then he thinks of the war room, all of those pictures from his childhood, all of those love letters. Maybe his father hid his love and pride well.

  Still, Partridge isn’t sure what to think. His father’s feelings for him are so twisted and impossible to pin down. “He never told me he was proud of me. Not ever.” Except at the end, just before he died—knowing Partridge had poisoned him—he told Partridge, “You are my son. You are mine”—which made Partridge feel like his father, for the first time, saw something in Partridge that was a reflection of himself. When Partridge thinks of it now, it’s as if his father were telling him that he and Partridge were alike, maybe even that Partridge was bound to become his father, which his father would have meant as a great compliment. “He only loved himself.”

  “Well, the new Adams and Eves became his people, his hope. They were the future.” Weed stands up. “You should see for yourself.”

  “What about little Jarv Hollenback? Did you get him out of suspension? Is he with his parents?”

  Weed nods.

  “Were the Hollenbacks happy to have him home again?” It’s a stupid question, but Partridge wants one good thing—some positive effect of his being here, even if it’s small.

  “Well, Mrs. Hollenback…”

  “What?”

  “She’s in the hospital.”

  “Did she try—”

  “Nearly succeeded too.”

  He remembers the last time he saw her—in the kitchen, her hands dusted with flour, the panic in her voice. Lucky us, she said. Lucky us. And she wanted so desperately to mean it. Mrs. Hollenback, who taught the History of Domesticity as an Art Form—he remembers her singing about a snowman. How did she try to do it? He doesn’t want to imagine it. She’d gotten Jarv back. Why would she do this now? Where did her resilience go, her will to live? “I want to see Mrs. Hollenback—first, before anything else.” He rubs his hands together, thinking of guilt and blood. “And I want to see the wards. I don’t want any more escalation talk from Foresteed, no more data. I want to see the people.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Weed seems to appreciate this. “Okay.”

  “Do you think the wedding will help—at all? I mean, do they really just need a distraction?”

  “You ripped everything away from them. The wedding gives them something to orient themselves around again.” Partridge nods. He was hoping that Weed would have given him reason to back out. “Anyway, who wouldn’t want to marry Iralene?”

  Partridge looks at him. He feels numb suddenly. “You know where my heart’s at.”

  Weed scratches his head and shrugs. “To each his own.”

  “I want you to bring me to the wards, now,” Partridge says. “I need to see things with my own eyes.”

  Weed tilts his head. “And I want to talk to your sister, Partridge. If they don’t crash that ship, I want to know what she knows.”

  “Do you think they’ll crash?”

  “Who knows if they’ve got any real pilot aboard? Chances are slim, right?”

  But Partridge isn’t so sure. He immediately thinks of El Capitan and how much he loved his car. He’d go crazy for an airship. No way he wouldn’t be at the controls. Would he be any good at it? Partridge doesn’t really know, but he feels a surge of confidence in El Capitan just based on the power of El Capitan’s will alone. “I can’t tell you what my sister might or might not know.”

  “Trust me,” Arvin says. “She knows something!”

  EL CAPITAN

  CRAZY JOHN-JOHNS

  El Capitan sits in the pilot’s seat, hunched forward because of Helmud on his back. Fignan is in the copilot’s seat, projecting bright maps of the surrounding territory. El Capitan’s scanning the horizon for Crazy John-Johns Amusement Park. He wishes he didn’t have to go back; they almost died there. In his mind’s eye, he can still see Helmud over his shoulder, stabbing each of the Dusts’ eyes as they blinked up from the earth, the big hulk of the ones that pulled themselves up from the dirt, and Hastings’ leg bitten by the teeth of a trap, how he ripped it free—his leg half gone. And his car—he loved that damn car; it’s stuck out there too.

  Hastings? Did he survive surgery on his leg? Lots of things could have gone wrong—a clumsy surgeon accidentally snipping a main artery, a loss of blood, a lack of hygiene causing infection.

  What if he’s dead?

  Shit.

  The landscape is still dusty and barren. Last time, he crash-landed. He’d like to do it right, but he’s already distracted. He’s thinking about what Pressia said—that one day, it might be possible for him and Helmud to be severed from each other. The vial has properties to regrow cells. These could be used on Helmud from the place where his ribs lock a little with El Capitan’s ribs and where his legs are melted into El Capitan. He imagines a procedure where Helmud is regrown bit by bit as they’re slowly, surgery after surgery, separated. Could it be possible?

  Helmud has been a part of El Capitan for so long. What would it feel like to be alone again? He tells himself it would feel damn good. He wants to be that man—his own man. But there’s an ache in his chest every time he thinks of it, as if Helmud’s heart—which rides forever just behind El Capitan’s own heart—feels the betrayal and applies sharp pressure, heart to heart.

  If it could work, would it allow Pressia to see him as a real person, a man who stands alone—someone she could fall in love with?

  She and Bradwell are back in their seats. El Capitan wishes he could feel a twinge of hope that they’ll never get back together. But he also knows that he’s got no shot with Pressia—with Bradwell around or not.

  Pressia’s got what she wants—the vial and the formula—and El Capitan has the bacterium. Back in his room, he asked one of the caretakers for strong tape, and he adhered the box holding the bacterium, flat and square, behind his back—right in front of Helmud’s chest. He says, “Check it, Helmud.”

  And he can feel Helmud’s fingers pushing against the box. “Check!” Helmud says.

  El Capitan doesn’t have his guns, but he’s the most armed he’s ever been in his life.


  Crazy John-Johns starts to take shape through the ash. As he allows the buckies to take on air, the airship dips lower. He can see the elongated neck of one of the roller coasters jutting into the sooty clouds and the tilted merry-go-round, but the ash is too thick to see the giant cracked head of Crazy John-Johns himself—his permanent smiling clown face, bulbous nose, and bald head. The dust on the ground is too thick.

  “Something’s wrong!” he shouts to Pressia and Bradwell.

  “Something,” Helmud whispers.

  Fignan lets out a series of nervous beeps.

  “What is it?” Pressia calls to him.

  He passes over the amusement park and then starts to circle back. A high fence surrounds the park, but the earth around it is shifting as Dusts tunnel up, pulling themselves from the dirt. Some are loping toward the fence while others claw at it. “The Dusts are rising up!”

  The survivors are defending the park with beebees and darts. The Dusts’ weakness is their eyes—the spot where they’re most human. When struck in the eyes, they buckle and fall, and the other Dusts devour them quickly. “They can’t kill them fast enough. There are too many Dusts. Hundreds of them!”

  El Capitan doesn’t see Hastings. He starts to feel a gnawing in his gut. Pressia has convinced him that they need Hastings. He’s a Dome insider—one of their own creations, Special Forces elite. But, of course, he’s been debugged and therefore compromised, but he could claim that all of that was done against his will. He can drag himself back to the Dome as the embattled messenger. He’s also an old friend of Partridge. He’ll take Hastings back in, right?

  “I see Fandra!” Pressia shouts.

  “And Hastings!” Bradwell calls out.

  There they are—climbing up using the roller coaster’s rails as a ladder. Hastings is stooped and pale, but still tall and muscular. He’s wearing some kind of prosthetic hidden by his pant leg except for a wedge of metal—what’s now his foot. Weaponry embedded in his arms, he stops—wind-whipped, hooking his arm to the roller coaster—and fires at the Dusts. He’s a good shot and takes a few out. Their bodies spin and fall. But there are too many. Fandra is climbing up behind him. Her hair is as bright as a golden flag. She has it tied back, but thin wisps still bat around her face.