6.9 km from flash curtain
WE WEAR ARMOR, like we’re going into battle. I can’t guess why they didn’t equip us like this in the cordons of Westfall, unless they just wanted us for flash dust. Here, it actually feels like they want us to live.
Some of us, anyway.
They march the Brunts before us, men and women, a mix of ages. They don’t wear armor, though many have tried to fashion protection from pieces of wood and rope—even bits of glass. They hold long spears. The ones with hands, anyway. Most are Tempered Conjies, their cirium-stumped arms still swollen from processing. Others have been fitted with crude appendages, blunted, forklike tines that resemble fingers and thumbs.
I can’t tear my gaze from the Brunts. Most are young men; there are a few women, and someone really short, heaped beneath layers of piecemeal armor. Fire, I hope it’s not a child. I think of Winn trembling beside me in Cordon Four, wearing Graham’s too-big suit over hers for extra protection. There was never enough protection.
Dram turns from his place with the Dodgers, following my gaze, like he’s reading my thoughts. He glances back at me and lifts his rifle. He’ll do his best to protect them. And me—I’ll find the dust as fast as I can so we can collect it and get the hell out of the Overburden.
As we pass beyond the fence, some of them murmur anxiously, but most are silent with terror. Greash said they’re tagged with transmitters. I think of the devices I saw in the prison cordon. The towers that drew the emberflies with some sort of tech. Congress adapted that tech to people, to attract cordon creatures and give the Dodgers steady targets to aim at.
I’m in the back of the procession with the other Miners, seven of us assigned to this quadrant. My collection pouch sways with every step. I feel once more like the lead ore scout of Outpost Five, guiding my caving team to the only element that earns us freedom. Only, there was never any freedom then, and there isn’t this time, either. There’s just exposure in the Overburden and dust that buys us refuge from it.
We trudge across the desolate ground, silent but for our heavy footfalls, and the occasional murmuring voices. A ragtag army come to steal from the flash curtain. I trip over scrub brush that pokes up from cracks in the ground, dead-looking bushes with thorns as big as my fingernails. If we’re not careful, they’ll tear holes in our suits and leave us exposed to the elements. It’s like everything that survives in the flashfall is hostile—even the plants. The Miners don’t watch the skies. I’m scanning for flash vultures, but they’ve barely lifted their heads for the past kilometer.
“Is it all like this, Kara?” I ask the girl next to me.
“Like what?” She doesn’t lift her eyes from the sand.
“Covered in these thorny plants.”
“The plants?” She looks at me, startled. “Who cares about the glenting plants?”
My gaze darts over the land stretching before us, to the Dodgers just ahead of us, all with their heads bent. “Then what is everyone looking for? There’s no flash dust here.”
“I’ve got movement!” Reuder shouts. “Dodgers up! Protect the Miners!” A wall of armored bodies hems us in.
“What’s hap—”
They come up through the ground.
It’s so unexpected that, at first, I can’t make sense of the ridges of sand streaming toward the Brunts like underground bullets the size of my fist.
“Cordon rats!” Kara shouts.
I stare, openmouthed, as the creatures burst from the sand, fast as a dust storm, and launch themselves at the Brunts. Their thick tails are barbed, like spiny branches, and they swing them into their targets, latching on. Brunts scream, kicking and beating at the creatures with their makeshift weapons.
The furry brown beasts are everywhere, clambering up from the sand and attacking the nearest Brunt. They make a squeaking sort of cry as they tear through the thin layers of clothes, rooting for flesh. Soon I can’t hear the rats anymore, just the Brunts crying out.
I step forward, and Kara clutches my arm. “Stop,” she hisses, and I can see tears welling in her eyes. “This is how they serve Alara. This is how we stay alive.”
“Move on!” Reuder calls.
Dram raises his rifle.
“No!” Reuder commands. “Save your ammo, Subpar. There’s nothing to be done for them. The tail barbs are poison, a toxin that paralyzes the prey.” Even as he explains, the Brunts stagger, and two more fall to the ground, limbs jerking. “Mark the coordinates, Kara,” he orders. She types into a screencom on her wrist.
“Why?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
“You know why,” she says.
“I need you to say it.”
“We mark the location so we can collect the flash dust tomorrow.”
I’m falling down a well of despair so deep, I feel like I’m folding in on myself, my soul collapsing until it disintegrates. I stand in my squad, a dutiful servant of Alara, watching four Brunts writhe on the ground, tossing up cordon sand as they flail, covered in cordon rats. One man’s face is bleeding, and as a rat nibbles close to his mouth, he bites it, crushing it with his teeth even as he cries in agony.
I slide back my face protection and vomit. I thought I knew fear in the cordons of Westfall but this is something I didn’t know existed—terror that drives you to paint a target on someone else’s back.
Kara tugs my arm. “We have to keep going, or it will be in vain.”
We march onward, and the cries fade to whimpers as we pass. I stumble over a rocky bit of ground, not looking where I’m going, the stale taste of vomit stinging the back of my throat. I think of the cages in the prison cordon, the machines that moved us toward the curtain and forced us to mine dust for Congress. Machines don’t work in the Overburden, so Congress made one out of people.
I see the squads now for what they are: cogs in Congress’s wheel, gears in a flash dust factory. I wonder morbidly what hurts worse—the tails or the teeth.
Dram maneuvers himself to my side. A glance at his face tells me he’s riding his own waves of shock.
“If that happens to me—” I begin.
“It won’t.”
“But if it does…” I touch his shoulder before he can argue again. “I need to know you have a bullet in there for me.” I nod at his rifle.
“They won’t fire at a human heat signature.”
“Then use your knife,” I answer.
He holds my gaze, brows lowering. “Same,” he says, and I nod. Teeth and tails won’t matter for us.
His gloved hand catches me behind the neck, and he tugs me close, our headgear pressing together. Then he’s gone, jogging back to his squad, his place in the machine.
We’ve promised each other death without suffering, and it’s a sign of just how bad things have gotten that I now feel like I can breathe again.
* * *
The hours wane, and in the absence of sunlight, I gauge the passing of time by my body’s reaction to radiation exposure. It starts with the heaviness in my chest, like I’m breathing with a boulder pressed to my rib cage, then the dryness that travels up my throat until my mouth feels like I’ve swallowed sand. I probably have—tiny particle dust that leaks past my headpiece. We put on eyeshades, but I feel myself squinting behind them, even closing my eyes, walking blind for moments at a time, just to spare my burning retinas.
“Just ahead,” Kara announces, consulting her screencom. “Twenty meters.”
My stomach grows hollow, but this is our third collection site. I thought they would need me to help scout for flash dust, but all they need are Brunts and cordon rats.
A small flag whips in the wind above the spot. “Fire,” I curse beneath my breath. The Congress loves its glenting flags. And cirium cloth, too. They’ll use precious metal for a marker flag, but not as added protection for people. I yank the flag from the sand—somehow I got tasked with this odious job—and jab it into my pack. I wonder if all the teams function this way. Lead people out to die, mark with flag. Collect flash dust from unfortunate Brunts, retrieve flag.
I collapse to the ground and sit cross-legged as my squad of Miners holds our position and the Brunts move into place. A few of them limp, having pulled barbed tails from their legs before the venom could take full effect. They lumber over the collection site, visible now as tattered clothing and shoes, scrap pieces of armor and sticks—whatever the curtain failed to consume in the evening’s flashtide. There are a few bones, some ashes. And flash dust.
The Brunts move on, strapping on whatever useful bits they scavenged, taking their places as lures to keep the flash curtain’s horrors occupied while the rest of us do our jobs.
The Dodgers fan around us as we scurry in with our collection pouches and sifters, scooping the sand on hands and knees, an eye on every shifting line of sand, lest it belong to something with teeth. But this time we need little effort; there is so much dust. I try not to think about how many died here and how their deaths give us another day of living.
The Dodgers keep their rifles angled upward, scanning the sky for vultures. Dram moves so that he stands at my back, a couple of meters away. A knife gleams at his side, and though he’s lifted his gun, his eyes trace the sand around me.
The buzzer sounds in the distance.
“Move out!” Reuder calls.
I shove to my feet, securing my ore pouch and sifter as we trudge back toward the camp. An anxious voice carries from the front—the pack of Brunts. I can barely breathe through the shield protecting my face, I can’t imagine using my energy to form words. But as I watch, a Brunt pulls away from the cluster and stoops to lift the smaller one I saw earlier. It is a child. A boy, younger than Roran.
Oh, flash me.
The man staggers, trying to hold on to the child I assume is his son.
One of the heavily armed Dodgers stops and stares at me. Dram. Waiting to see if he’ll need to hold me back.
In this moment, I’m glad they didn’t commission me a Dodger. I’m yearning for a weapon, so I can attack the next Strider I see.
“Move, Dodger!” Reuder commands, looking back at Dram.
But Dram holds his ground, boots planted wide against the rising cordon wind. He watches my face.
“Winn,” I say, thinking of the child we protected in the cordons. He nods, like he expected my response, and jogs away from the Dodgers, passing ahead of them toward the Brunts.
“Stay with your glenting squad!” Reuder shouts.
Dram slings his rifle over his shoulder and lifts the boy from the man’s arms. One of the man’s appendages is bent at an odd angle, into a sort of zigzag shape that looks like it could’ve been someone’s idea of a cruel joke. I see now that he’s injured—lifting the boy must’ve opened his wound.
“You can’t save them,” Reuder says. “Congress made him a Brunt!”
“Flash Congress,” Dram says. He drapes his armored vest over the child.
Reuder shakes his head. “Don’t do this, Berrends. You’re young and strong—you might actually have a chance. But not if they make you a Brunt.”
“You know who I am?”
“Everyone knows who you are. There are Striders just waiting for a chance to punish you. Don’t give them a reason.”
“Already met them,” Dram mutters.
“Maybe since you weren’t Tempered, you didn’t get a healthy dose of fear at processing,” Reuder says.
“Did you lose your humanity when you lost your hands, or just your balls?”
Reuder shakes his head. “You’ve been out here one day. Show me how brave you are after a week.”
“I never said I wasn’t scared,” Dram says.
“We don’t protect them; we protect the Miners!”
“We can do both.” Dram hoists the child onto his back.
“Are you insane?” The Dodger nearest him lurches away. “That Brunt’s tagged with a transmitter. You’ll draw the creatures right on top of us!”
Dram spears him with a look and walks a few meters away.
“You just put a target on your back,” Reuder calls, “and I’m not talking about the kid.”
* * *
They may have commissioned me a Miner, but I will always be a warrior first when it comes to Dram, and I don’t need a Dodger’s rifle to defend him.
I’ve worked my way to the front of the squad, up beside the Dodgers. Reuder glances at me and just shakes his head. I return my focus to the land and air around Dram and the unconscious child he’s shouldering. He keeps pace halfway between the Brunts and the rest of our squad, a distance deemed an acceptable risk by the others. They haven’t forgotten that Dram’s holding a tagged Brunt.
Neither have I.
I’m not the only one watching Dram’s back. Roran walks at his side in defiance of Reuder’s orders. He doesn’t lift his eyes from the ground.
We near the corral tower, and I begin to breathe easier. I push back my headpiece with a sigh. Dram and Roran have theirs off, and their conversation carries.
“You’re angry. I get that,” Dram says, slinging a look at Roran. “You want to blame Orion for this, I can’t stop you. But know that you were two glass pendants away from being one of them.” Dram thrusts his finger in the direction of the Brunts.
“Talk to me about it when they cut off your hands,” Roran says.
“You close yourself off because you’ve lost everyone. Believe me, I understand. But there is a shortage of people left in this world who care about you, Roran. Be careful who you push away.”
“You understand? You’re a Subpar—one of the fortunate ones. The Congress doesn’t Temper you!”
“You know what’s unfair?” Dram asks. “Being born in the flashfall. Wearing biotech that warns you every day that you’re in danger and not being able to do a glenting thing about it!” Dram grips Roran’s chest plate and drags him forward. “I’m dying,” he says, under his breath.
His words crash into me, hollowing my chest. I’m the one who told him about the Radbands, but I’ve never heard him say it. The simple truth I can’t bear to face.
Dram looks at me, but I don’t meet his eyes. I’m not ready to acknowledge the certainty of his words. To myself, maybe. But not to him.
He walks ahead with Roran, and I follow, close enough to hear his soft words. “I need to know you’ll look out for Orion,” he murmurs. “When I … when I can’t.” Roran looks at Dram’s Radband glowing dark orange.
“Will you?” Dram asks.
Roran nods.
“Then start now. You can hold on to your anger or you can hold on to someone—but not both at the same time. Not very well.”
* * *
Roran mutters beneath his breath, and I glance up toward his bunk, where he’s struggling to work a comb through his snarled hair.
“Hey.”
“Go away, Scout.”
“Will you let me help you?” He glares at me, but there are tears in his eyes. I climb to his bunk and tuck the comb into the curve of the fingerlike ends of his appendage. His right appendage is equipped with pulleys that can be adjusted to move the fingers. I tighten them until they curl around the comb, then guide it to his head. The comb falls the first two times, so on the next attempt, I use my own hand to keep it in place, and together we draw it through his hair.
It’s awkward. Me, helping an adolescent boy do something that only a child usually needs help with. And with every pass through his hair, there’s an awareness that this is at least partially my fault. But he doesn’t pull away.
After a few minutes, I wave my empty hands before him, to show him he’s doing it on his own. A look crosses his face. Not relief—the circumstances are too grim for that—more like an awareness that he can adapt, that he’s taken a step closer to being the person he was before. Still, there is one thing he can’t do.
“What about this?” I touch the talisman discarded at his side. He nods stiffly.
I lift the twig. The white flowers he conjured last have long since wilted and torn free. I twist his hair around it, the way I’ve seen Dram do.
“Is there a special way I should do this?” I’m crossing into the sacred, the rituals the Conjies do, but don’t speak of.
“We usually … conjure it … into our hair,” he says softly. It cost him something to say the word. Conjure.
I wind strands of his straight brown hair around the twig, tying them in tiny knots.
“I’m sorry about your pendants,” he says.
“You were right—I don’t need them to remember my mom and Wes. It was just … a way for me to feel that they were still close somehow. Even though they’re not.”
“We believe they are.” He looks at me, brown eyes solemn. “We are elemental, and the elements are everywhere. Matter and energy change—they don’t cease to exist.”
Now I understand the depth of his grief. He is suffering more than the loss of his limbs and his ability to conjure. In a single moment, the Congress effectively cut him off from his mother and father, and everyone who came before him. His heritage. The elemental.
“Don’t cry,” he mumbles.
I turn my head and swipe my hand across my eyes. “If there’s a way to restore you,” I whisper fiercely, “I’ll find it.”
He holds my gaze a moment, then nods. With one point of his appendage, he drags a chipped piece of cirium closer. It’s a thin shard of metal about the size of my thumbnail. It’s not like the ore I mined; this is perfectly smooth, refined. I can’t imagine how hard he hit his stump against something to break this off.
“For a talisman,” he says. “So you don’t forget your vow.”
“I’m not a Conjuror.”
“You made a promise like one.”