Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  “Of course,” Peekins says. “I can only try. No promises!”

  “Don’t tell Foresteed or Weed or anyone else in power.” Even though Glassings vouched for Weed, Partridge isn’t sure. “I’m asking you directly. Okay?”

  Peekins nods. “Yes, yes.”

  “There’s something else he’s here to see,” Iralene says.

  “I think I know what’s brought you,” Peekins says.

  “What’s that?” Partridge asks.

  “You’re not the first person to come down and ask about it. Anything that’s locked up that tight must have been of incredible value to your father, right?” So he knows that Partridge wants to be let into the chamber. Who’s come before him? Probably Foresteed. Maybe Weed. Did members of Cygnus try to get access?

  “Do you know what’s in there?” Partridge asks bluntly.

  “What’s in the room isn’t meant for you.” Partridge isn’t sure what this is supposed to mean. Was it meant for his father? For someone else?

  “I wasn’t expecting to find my inheritance, Peekins.”

  This comment startles Peekins. His head jerks a little, and then he looks away.

  “Do you know what’s in the room? Or should I say who?”

  Peekins doesn’t answer.

  “You have to tell me.”

  “No,” Peekins says. “I don’t.”

  “I’m in charge now. Didn’t you hear?” It’s a lie, but Peekins might not know the truth.

  Peekins looks at him and blinks.

  “Dr. Peekins, I thought you knew how to follow orders,” Beckley says, standing in the door, one hand on his gun.

  “I am following orders.”

  “Whose?”

  He looks at Partridge. “Your father’s.”

  His father’s alive? Is this what Peekins is saying? “Jesus, Peekins,” Partridge says, trying to laugh. “He’s dead!”

  Peekins doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word. He looks as frozen as one of the suspended bodies. Why would Peekins be following his father’s orders? “Unless he’s not dead. Is that who’s in the chamber, Peekins? My father? Did he somehow get resuscitated?” Partridge leans his shoulder against the wall to steady himself. “Is that urn that’s supposedly filled with his ashes and that was put on display at every goddamn memorial service just a hoax?” Partridge’s ears start ringing. I killed him, he reminds himself. I killed him. I wanted him to die, and he’s dead.

  Peekins still doesn’t answer. Partridge wants to punch him in the head. Maybe Weed’s right and a little act of violence is needed every once in a while. “Tell me the truth, Peekins—right now. Tell me what you know.”

  “Or what?”

  Partridge rears back. Torture. “Or I’ll send you in.”

  “Where?” Peekins says. “I heard you put an end to all that.”

  Partridge’s jaws knot. He looks at Iralene and Beckley for help, but what can they say? Peekins is stating the obvious. “Take us to the high-security chamber, Peekins. Can you manage that?”

  Peekins walks them through the halls to one that ends in front of a large metal door. It’s locked and barred, with a blue-lit alarm system mounted on the wall and a keypad to one side of the door. Partridge places his hand on the blue screen, hoping it will work like some of the fingerprint systems in his father’s war room and inner chamber, but as Peekins predicted, nothing happens. He leans down, looking for a retinal scan, but nothing flashes across his eyes.

  He stares at the keypad. Is this the only thing keeping him from the suspended body of his own supposedly dead father? Or is it Hideki?

  He starts typing in all of the key words that he associates with his father:

  Swan. No response.

  Cygnus. No response.

  Phoenix, Operation Phoenix. Nothing.

  “Peekins, am I close? Is this how it works?”

  Peekins is silent. Partridge hates him for this. “Damn it,” Partridge mutters. He’s so frustrated that he starts missing letters, misspelling—he hits CLEAR, CLEAR, CLEAR and starts over. Seven, the seven. He starts to type each of the names of the Seven—his mother’s, his father’s, Hideki Imanaka, Bartrand Kelly…

  Then Beckley gets a message through his earpiece. “The other guards say that the crowd is beginning to worry. They want someone to call an ambulance. A doctor has identified himself and has asked if he can help. We have to go.”

  “Not yet,” Partridge says.

  “We have to go!” Iralene says, pulling on his arm, making him mess up again.

  “Iralene! Let go!” He starts over. Eden, New Eden… Nothing works.

  Peekins walks up close and whispers, “You’re not really supposed to be here. I know the truth.” That Foresteed has all the real power? That Foresteed is blackmailing him? Or is Peekins saying that he knows Partridge killed his father?

  “The truth is that my father is dead. You can’t be following his orders,” Partridge shouts at Peekins. “I know he’s dead!” The more he says his father’s dead, the less true it feels. The words seem to peel away from their meaning and are just sounds. “You’re just trying to get into my head, aren’t you? Who are you really working for? Foresteed? Weed?”

  Peekins lifts his chin and doesn’t say a word.

  “I’m going to get into this chamber, Peekins. With or without your help. You might as well be on the right side when the time comes.”

  “I know the right side from the wrong side,” Peekins says very slowly. “Do you?”

  Partridge leans in and puts his face an inch from Peekins’. “Don’t push me. Are you listening? Don’t push me.”

  For the first time, Peekins looks a little scared. He nods slowly. Is this what a bully feels like? Partridge wonders. If it is, then it feels good.

  Beckley says, “Come on.”

  “We have to go,” Iralene says. “Follow me.”

  And they start running down the halls, passing nameplate after nameplate—so many bodies, frozen, stuck, but still alive.

  EL CAPITAN

  BETTER OFF

  Dusk is coming on, but how many days have passed? Where’s Bradwell? The broken, smoldering city is losing its edges. The shadows fill in like tidal pools. The Rubble Fields are quiet. Have all the Dusts been burned alive? The streets are nearly silent. El Capitan passes a pile of bodies covered with a tarp, but he can see a folded burned hand, a stiffened foot embedded with metal.

  Bradwell’s gone to tell Pressia that he loves her. Has he found her already? Will he ever show up at the meeting place? El Capitan knows she loves Bradwell and that she’ll never love El Capitan. “Better off,” he whispers, and it’s an old thought—one he used to rely on when he killed wretches, used them as live targets, counted the bodies after the Death Sprees. Better off dead than living this life, which is just a long death.

  Helmud is quiet. He must remember El Capitan’s dark moods. He shrinks on his brother’s back, doesn’t twitch, doesn’t hum.

  El Capitan is making his way to the old bank vault. There’s a good chance survivors are already huddled down there. He’ll tell them to get the hell out. He wants to be alone. He wants to be completely alone. He never will be.

  He pulls his collar up around his neck and walks next to a wall that used to be a building. At this very moment, Pressia and Bradwell might be falling in love again. He remembers finding them in the stone underpass, kissing. And he has the sudden desire to ram his brother into the wall, to find a stick and beat Helmud with it. All the old habits, comforts—that’s what he’s drawn to: the power he once knew, the power that once knew him.

  He stops walking, clenches his fists, and stares up at the sky, smoke scudding across it.

  It used to be that beating his brother made him feel a little more alive. He doesn’t know how or why. Maybe because it was the closest thing to beating himself.

  “We’ve got nothing,” El Capitan whispers. “Nothing.” He grips the front of his coat, twists it, and then screams. He can’t remember the last time h
e screamed like this.

  Helmud tightens to a knot on his back.

  “Get off me!” El Capitan shouts. And he throws his elbows into his brother’s ribs. He reaches over his shoulders and grabs Helmud’s arms and yanks him forward so hard that El Capitan falls to his knees. “Get off me!” he shouts, clawing at Helmud.

  “Get off me!” Helmud shouts, jerking backward as hard as he can, twisting across the wet ground. “Get off me! Get off! Me! Me! Me!”

  “No, me!” El Capitan shouts. He reaches wildly for his brother, who arches and weaves. “Me!” He doesn’t care about the bacterium. Nothing matters. He can feel the tape ripping up from his skin.

  Then Helmud punches El Capitan hard across the jaw. El Capitan is stunned. He freezes on all fours. Helmud cocks his fist and punches him again. El Capitan rolls over and piledrives his brother into the ground. Helmud gets a choke hold around El Capitan’s neck and keeps punching El Capitan in the head.

  “I’ve got nothing,” El Capitan shouts at his brother. “I’ve got nothing!” Helmud keeps beating on him.

  And then El Capitan stops fighting. He covers his head with his arms, curls up, and lets Helmud punch him. Helmud is breathless. His knuckles are sharp, and his jabs come at El Capitan hard and fast. “I’ve got nothing,” El Capitan says over and over.

  And then Helmud says, “Me, me, me.” But he keeps pounding his brother, keeps beating him until he grows weak, until finally he gives out and lies down, holding El Capitan’s shoulders. They lie there in the wet dirt, muttering—nothing and me and nothing—until El Capitan isn’t even sure which of them is saying what.

  Nothing.

  Me.

  Nothing.

  PARTRIDGE

  KNOWING

  It’s his wedding day. Foresteed pushed it up without telling Partridge and Iralene why, and maybe there’s no other reason than Foresteed exerting his power. But the thought—wedding day, my wedding day—keeps jolting Partridge like a sharp electrical shock. It hits him now as he stands in front of a tall mirror rolled into the apartment by the tailor who made his tuxedo. Partridge is wearing black pants and socks and is buttoning up his dress shirt as the tailor, a small and quiet man, unzips a hanging bag that holds the tux’s jacket, cummerbund, and bow tie. And Partridge just stares at it. It’s all wrong. Everything has gone so horribly wrong—one small step at a time. He whispers, “A wedding. My wedding.”

  “Sir?” the tailor says.

  “Nothing,” Partridge says.

  No way to get to Lyda. No response to his letters. No way to go back to the high-security chamber. No way to know if Peekins has brought Belze up from suspension or not. No way to return to his father’s war room without rousing suspicion, and part of him wishes he’d never see that room again. The thought of it turns his stomach. Those pictures of the past, those love notes from his loveless father. No way to find out what’s really going on outside of the Dome.

  Where are Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud? Weed sent word that the airship landed safely, but beyond that he knows nothing and has no means of communication.

  And Glassings has gotten worse. He said he wouldn’t recover, and maybe he won’t. Partridge has been staying up late, sitting in the chair pulled to his bedside. He waits for the moment when Glassings will wake up and be conscious enough to talk to him, but it hasn’t happened. And since his visit to the high-security chamber, Partridge has been keeping busy writing a growing list of possible passwords to unlock it. Is he crazy to pin his hopes on the idea of one of his father’s greatest enemies being not only alive but able to help him? He’s not sure when or if he’ll get another shot at unlocking the chamber. After Partridge’s time in the suspension chambers, security has gotten tighter. Foresteed has to have gotten wind of something. For now, Partridge has to maintain the facade that he has power so that he can quietly take Foresteed down. How? He’s not sure.

  For now, he feels alone, cut off.

  Caged up.

  As the tailor is bustling around him, Beckley walks in. “Getting all gussied up, I see.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m getting married,” he says to Beckley, half statement, half question.

  “Does Iralene know?” Beckley says, joking. But the joke falls flat. He’s marrying the wrong girl, after all.

  Partridge steps away from the tailor and says to Beckley, “Anything?” knowing Beckley will understand that he’s asking about Lyda. It’s always the first thing he asks.

  “No,” Beckley says. “You’ve got to cut her some slack, right? It can’t be easy.”

  “She was the one who pushed it,” Partridge says, his voice hushed. He hasn’t heard from her in so long now that he can’t help but think she’s punishing him—or is she having doubts? Then it hits him. “You don’t think she talked me into this because she wanted to get rid of me, do you? I mean, maybe even subconsciously?” Partridge refuses to whisper in front of the tailor, sick of all the secrecy.

  “I don’t know how my own subconscious works, much less hers.”

  The tailor coughs politely to get Partridge’s attention. He’s holding the jacket on its wooden hanger. Partridge lifts his hand, telling him to hold on.

  “So you think it’s possible? She didn’t come back with me into the Dome. I wanted her to. I begged her. But then she said she surrendered herself to get back in, so I thought…well, I thought she changed her mind. But now maybe she’s changed it back.”

  “You two are having a child together. That’s a bond that lasts forever.”

  “It makes us parents, Beckley. It doesn’t mean we’re in love.” His own parents fell out of love. He figures it happens to most couples. His parents had stayed married even though his father knew that his wife had fallen in love with Imanaka and had his child. Partridge steps over to the tailor, pulls the jacket from the hanger, and shrugs it on. “Love doesn’t last. It’s not permanent.” He feels sick, yanks the jacket a little to make it feel less confining. “And now it’s my goddamn wedding day.”

  “You should try to enjoy it,” Beckley says.

  Partridge looks at his reflection. He’s a fake, an imposter. “How am I supposed to enjoy it? If Lyda still loves me, this will hurt. If she doesn’t, then what’s worse than that?”

  “Do you mean that?” Beckley says.

  The tailor flips up the collar of his shirt and starts tying the bow tie. Partridge nods. “Of course I mean it.”

  “What if you let Lyda talk you into marrying Iralene because it’s what you wanted—you know, subconsciously, as you put it.”

  “Don’t tell me about my subconscious!” Partridge is suddenly furious. Now that he’s caged up, his anger flares quickly.

  Beckley shrugs. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to throw your own logic back at you.”

  Partridge stares at Beckley a moment. There’s something about him that’s different from other people in the Dome. Beckley has these moments when he just has to be honest—as if he can’t help it.

  “What?” Beckley says.

  The tailor is cinching the cummerbund around Partridge’s waist.

  “I refused to pick a best man,” Partridge says. In fact, Purdy and Hoppes handed him a binder of appropriate best men, and he slammed the binder shut and told them to shove off. “But maybe I was wrong.”

  “You’re not thinking…”

  “No one gives me shit the way you do, Beckley. And that’s what friends do.” He thinks of Hastings back when they were roommates. They always shot back and forth at each other. And then there was Bradwell, who always put Partridge in his place, and El Capitan, who wasn’t always the nicest guy, but he spoke his mind. “Will you do it?”

  “I think you’re supposed to pick someone from your…well, your own social class.”

  “Here’s the added benefit. Choosing you will piss off a few people from that class.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Look, you have to stand next to me as my guard anyway. You might as well have something real
to do while you’re up there. You just have to hand me a ring, I think. You can handle that, right?”

  “I think there’s a toast too. I have to get up and say something.”

  “Just say, To the lovely couple! Raise your glasses! Cheers! That’s all it takes.”

  “Why not someone else?”

  “Like who? Weed? You think his jaw has healed up? Is he able to chew solid food again?”

  “I guess that wouldn’t be the best pick.”

  “It’s you, Beckley. So let’s get you suited up, okay? If anyone asks, you can say you’re just following orders.” He holds out his hand and Beckley shakes it. As he lets go of Beckley’s hand, he says, “This is still good for the people, right? I’d just like to hear someone say it.”

  “It’s good for the people,” Beckley says. “They need this.”

  “I know.” He feels nervous all of a sudden. It’s his wedding—sham and all. He’s got to do this right. His father’s not here—he killed his father. Killed him. But now he needs someone to give him advice. Isn’t that what a young man needs on his wedding day? He puts on his shoes. “I need to see Glassings.”

  “But sir!” The tailor’s not finished.

  “Good enough,” Partridge says.

  He walks down the hall and slowly pushes open Glassings’ door. The room is well lit. Glassings has pillows propped behind his back, but as the swelling has gone down some, he looks sallow and gaunt.

  Partridge knows that Glassings probably won’t wake up, and even if he does, he won’t be lucid enough to give him any advice. But still, he pulls the chair close to the bedside and sits down. “I’m getting married,” he whispers. “What do you think of that?”