7.4 km from flash curtain
THE COMPLIANCE REGULATOR eyes Roran over her screencom. “Dodger,” she announces flatly. Her assistant hands Roran a rifle and a stack of gear, tossing a pair of crude hinged hands atop the pile. Dram steps in to fasten Roran’s appendages, which is good because the kid looks like he’s eager to try driving his metal fingers into their eye sockets.
“Your squad leader is Reuder.” She points to a Dodger leaning against the side of a squat metal building, his rifle slung across his chest. “Check in with him. He’ll show you to your barracks and rations.”
Dram carries Roran’s gear and meets my eyes over the top of his head. He’s staring down at the things now attached to his body. Dented, twisted metal that has been worn by countless Conjies before him. He unfolds his arms, tries to let them hang at his sides, but these are not hands. And these are not the arms he knows.
A shudder of revulsion rolls through his body. The free Conjie who laughed and spun petals from his hands is gone. In his place stands a Dodger with hands that are tools made for killing cordon creatures. Everything a boy was, cut down and fitted for a solitary purpose. A person whittled into a weapon.
“You gave away your pendants for me?” he asks.
“I traded the memory of my brother for the one who’s still alive.”
I wait for him to acknowledge what I’ve said: that he is a brother to me—as much as Wes was. More, in some ways, because Wes was just a baby, and Roran and I have fought and bled for each other. But the anger in his eyes remains, and he doesn’t say any of it.
“You don’t need a piece of glass to remember someone,” he says. He turns and walks into the barracks.
I press my hand over my heart, where I used to feel glass, warm where it touched my skin.
* * *
Our squad leader speaks to us with a grumbling reluctance. I barely make out the words rations and follow before he shoves away from the side of the barracks like it was the one thing keeping him upright.
His hands aren’t crude appendages but the perfect, carefully formed cirium prosthetics given to Conjies in Alara.
We descend a set of wooden steps into a rectangular space. The building is windowless, half underground. Even down here, I feel particles tickle my throat, like the feeling just before a sneeze. A few of the squad members lift their heads as we near; most barely look up from their beds.
I have to squint, my eyes adjusting to the murky half-light as we make our way toward a row of bunk beds lining one side of the barracks. Three rows of narrow beds, with gray blankets and flat pillows. There’s a rack for Dodgers’ weapons, but no space for personal belongings. Probably because nothing here belongs to us.
Still, it could be worse. It could be a cage.
“You’re Subpars,” Reuder says. It’s not a question, but I nod anyway. “You’re a long way from home.”
I feel the familiar ache at the thought of Outpost Five. My eyes flick to his hands. “So are you,” I answer.
He squints, like he’s trying to see me through a lens. Dirt and dried blood crack in the creases of his skin. “Name?”
“Orion. This is Dram.”
“Your other names?”
I hesitate. It’s possible he means our last names. But his dark eyes bore into me, and I know he means the names that have stories attached to them. By now, most of the squad sits watching, listening to our exchange.
“Scout,” Dram answers. “She was lead ore scout in Outpost Five. I was her marker. We were Fourth Ray cavers.”
Silence greets his explanation. I’m not sure how much of it they understand.
Reuder leans against a wooden support beam. I’m beginning to suspect he has an injury he’s trying to ease. “I’m not sure why they allowed you to live and why you’re not both headed on a hover to Cordon Two, but I will tell you this: compliance is the key to our survival. It is all that matters. If you step out of line, I will turn you in myself.” Reuder apparently believes in using all his words at once, firing them at us like the bullets of an automatic gun. I feel them land, the concussive impact. Anger blooms inside me.
I step toward our squad leader, and Dram catches hold of my arm. “Compliance,” Dram says loudly. “Got it.” He steps on my toes until I stop pulling away.
There are a few things I’d like to say to Reuder of the shiny Alaran hands. But I have a role to play here. If I’m to gain an opportunity to become a Delver and earn Fortune, then I have to bury my resentment deep as a vein of ore.
“Tomorrow you begin your service to the city-state,” Reuder says, and I catch an edge of bitterness in his tone. He may be compliant, but he’s not happy about it. “This is your gear.” His muscles strain as he lifts two packs from hooks behind him. As he crosses the uneven stone and dirt floor, I notice his limp. I take the pack he shoves into my hands. “These contain your canteens, nutri-pacs, medkits, flash blankets, clothes. Armor’s over there.”
Dram and I exchange a glance. This is more than they gave us in the cordons of Westfall. We might actually have a chance here.
“We need another pack,” I say. “For Roran.” I motion to the eleven-year-old sulking in the corner.
“If he wants supplies, he’ll have to speak up for himself,” Reuder says.
Roran peels himself away from the shadows and saunters toward Reuder as if he’d like to test his spit in the man’s face. “Roran. You haven’t heard of me. My family’s dead. I can’t promise compliance, but I’ll fight the glenting vultures.”
Reuder studies the boy. “Three days, and the swelling will stop making you feel like your arm’s about to burst.” He pulls one of Roran’s folded arms free and adjusts the straps and pulleys of his appendage. “You’ve got to loosen these every hour. Helps with the swelling. You’ve got the fever. That’s a normal reaction to the cirium. Sleep it off.” He loops the pack over Roran’s shoulder. “I’m not going to say you’ll get used to it. But it gets easier.
“We take our meals as a squad, at the table. Twice daily, cordon rations.” Pouches line the shelves, just like the ones King and his men ate from in Cordon Three. Real food, instead of nutri-pacs. “Fridays off,” Reuder continues, “curfew’s at ten, and, of course you must be deconned before you enter the barracks—”
“Deconned?” Dram asks.
“Decontaminated.” Reuder stares at us blankly. “Did you not have decon units in Westfall?”
“We didn’t have meals there, either,” I mutter.
He shakes his head. “How did you Subpars protect yourselves from exposure?”
Dram shoves his sleeve up past his Radband. “We didn’t.”
“Well, I guess the stories about you in the Honor Hall are true. The hardy and brave Subpars, who need nothing but their pickaxes and cavers’ creed.”
“If only I had my axe right now,” Dram says.
Reuder grins. “Welcome to the squad, Subpars.” He turns away. “You missed mealtime. You’ll find nutri-pacs in your gear bags.” He joins other squad members at the table, where they’re playing a dice game.
“Glenting skant,” Dram mutters.
Roran vaults into the nearest vacant bunk and stretches out, one leg dangling over the side. He’s not fooling me. I know he’s terrified.
Whatever we face tomorrow in the cordons, it includes a guaranteed march closer to the flash curtain and its creatures. He will have heard all about it from Mere, but stories about the cordons pale in comparison to actually experiencing the burnt sands.
Dram and I choose our bunks, and as I run my hand over the thin blanket, I try to imagine what Mere would tell her son. I want to assure him that the worst is over. Can there really be anything worse than having your hands cut off, your abilities taken?
Then I think of mining flash dust. The burning sand. Suffocating air. Bearing the attack of flash vultures, some with the curtain in their bites. Of watching cordon winds rise up and steal away someone you love until they are nothing but dust in your pail, and I think, Yes. There are worse things than Tempering.
“You know what Graham would say, don’t you?” Dram asks.
I look at him, lying with his arms pillowed behind his head. I smile because he’s right: I know exactly what our old mentor would say. But I miss Graham with a piercing ache, so I don’t answer, just so I can hear his words again, even if they come from Dram.
“You can’t do his climbing for him,” Dram says.
I’m facing Roran, but what I see is the second ledge beneath tunnel eight, stretching into darkness beyond the glare of my headlamp. I see my blistered hands, knuckles bent, struggling to maintain a crimp hold.
I can’t do your climbing for you, girlie. Graham’s words echo through my memories. You’re going to have to keep going, keep reaching. Just step in my steps.
I climb up to Roran’s bunk. “Hey.” He doesn’t look at me. “Bade and Aisla know where to find Arrun.” I lean closer, lowering my voice. “Help is coming.”
“I believed you the first time you said that. So did the other people you abandoned.”
“Rora—”
He twists the pulleys and forms his appendage into a crude gesture.
“Clever,” I mutter. I set rations on his blanket. “Don’t use up all your energy hating me.” I tear open the nutri-pac with my teeth, giving him a hint as to how he might do this later, on his own. His wrists are swollen over the edge of the appendages, and sweat sheens his face. “I’ll ask Dram to come help loosen your appendages, then you can tell him to go flash himself too.”
I drop to the ground and give Dram a look. “Roran needs help, but he’d rather die than admit it. His anger might kill him before the cordon does.”
Dram lifts a brow. “I don’t think anger is fatal.” He climbs up past me. “You’re still alive.” I give him the same gesture Roran gave me.
I dig through my pack and find a set of clean clothes, then stride to the back of the barracks, into one of the shower alcoves. I step into the pod, and water shoots from a mechanized arm that revolves around me. A scent lifts on the steam, as a cleanser mists my hair and body. Water streams over me, and I will it to wash away some of my anger, too.
The lights suddenly flicker and fade. I duck my head outside the shower and the water cuts off. In the half-light, I can just make out the bare outlines of bunks and tables and gear.
“What’s happening?” I call.
“The lights are set with atmospheric sensors,” Reuder says. “They change to night-dim as a warning.”
That sounds ominous. I drag on clothes without bothering to dry off.
“A warning for what, exactly?”
“Flashtide. Happens most nights around midnight. You don’t want to be without shelter when it comes.”
I wring the water from my hair and twist it into a knot. I step from the shower and run into half-dressed, dripping Dram. I look up at him, just as a shadow peels away and leaps toward us. It throws something—a blanket?—over Dram, and two more squad members grab hold of him. I jump toward them, my hands claws, prying at their arms.
A blanket drops over my head, pulled so tight my neck bends. I thrash, but arms clamp me around the waist and jolt me off my feet. I yell, my voice muffled. Dimly, I’m aware of Roran’s hoarse shouts.
“This will be over soon.” Reuder’s voice. “The Overburden is different from the cordons of Westfall. Air currents bring the flash curtain’s particles to us in ways you never experienced. I could tell you what happens to the air here after midnight, or I could just show you.” The person holding me grunts as one of my kicks lands. I’m hauled up the stairs.
“What are you doing?”
“Initiation.” The blanket is whisked off me. A girl with more talismans than hair clamps my arms with her appendages. “We all did it.”
Roran is yelling, spitting threats at the Dodger carrying him up the steps.
“The night-dimmed lights are the only warning you get. You have to learn to feel the danger.”
They push us out the door and bar the entrance.
“Don’t let it kill you,” Reuder calls.
It’s the first time I’ve ever smelled the flash curtain. Ribbons of orange spiral down from the sky, as if they’re unwinding from a roll suspended in the stars. We stand transfixed; even when Roran tugs at my arm, I’m helpless to do anything but watch. The smell is so strong I taste it, like ammonia on the back of my tongue.
The hairs on the back of my neck lift, then along my arms. I feel all at once breathless. More ribbons descend, clouds of luminescent amber and orange, the color of Dram’s Radband. The sight mesmerizes me, even as I begin to feel the sting, like an emberfly landing on my arm. Waves of orange aural bands collide against yellow and citrine—shades of flashfall I’ve never seen, never knew existed. They undulate in waves that break over the horizon and cascade toward the cordon like pieces of exploded stars.
Flashtide.
I sense it pulling me, drawing me across the cordon sand. It’s a lure, bait at the end of a hook—I realize that on some level, even as it reels me in.
“Scout!” Roran shouts. I hear him, distant. The flashfall performs its dance over the horizon, reaching as high as the flash curtain, and winding down …
… down—
“SCOUT!” Roran screams in my face, and I’m pulled from the orange spirals. His brown eyes are glassy with tears—anger, fear. They pull me from the curtain’s hook, and I stumble with him toward the barracks. He shoves me toward the door, his appendages unyielding against my particle-abraded skin.
I falter down the first couple of steps, gripping the railing so I don’t pitch forward. Roran has his appendages grasped around Dram, pulling him toward our refuge. He shouts Dram’s name, then a curse, and one of his appendages snaps off at the buckle. They crash into the barracks, barreling down the steps ahead of me. I slam the door and drive the bolt through. All of me shakes. So hard. And over all of it, that odor, like the strike of a match. I make it to the bottom of the stairs and glare at our squad leader.
“That ritual just saved your life,” he says. “You needed to fear it. To respect its power. Up there, we could’ve pulled you back in.”
“I notice you didn’t.”
Reuder shakes his head. “If you thought I’d be willing to die for you, you’d be wrong.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I warned you.”
“Not enough.”
“Hard to explain the flashtide’s … draw. Techs in Alara compare it to a fish that lives deep in the ocean. A fish that illuminates a light in order to draw its prey. It consumes them while they’re still dazed by the light. Can you imagine scientists giving that kind of animalistic intention to the flash curtain?”
“To what?” I ask. “Consume living matter?”
“Or defend its existence.”
“You’re talking about a solar anomaly. It doesn’t have survival instincts!”
“The flashtide didn’t start happening until Delvers began placing devices beneath the curtain. The Congress developed ways to control the flash curtain, and it laughed at us all.”
“You speak like a free Conjie. Not everything on earth is alive.”
“Then give me another explanation for what just happened to you.” He opens a case and withdraws three syringes. “I give you your first dose, but after this, you’ll go to the prickers.” He administers the serum, one of us at a time. “Each day, when you return from the cordon, you’ll file through a tent where you will be given a dose of treatment to prevent radiation sickness.”
My father’s compound. He succeeded, but instead of freeing us, it’s the most successful bondage Congress has ever had over us. We serve, we live. Just like in the cordons. Only … my gaze flicks to the door, and I consider what we just experienced on the other side of it. Flashtide.
The Overburden isn’t as bad as the cordons I crossed on the other side of the flash curtain.
It’s worse.