30.2 km from flash curtain
OUTPOST FIVE IS a husk of its former self. I walk the barren, ash-ridden patch of land, winding past scorched pathways peppered with smashed, burned-out cottages. The imprint of the lodge still marks the ground, and axes are scattered in the dirt where the Rig once housed the cavers’ gear. Timber poles poke up from the ground at odd angles, like bones picked clean. Congress destroyed the only thing standing between the outpost and the burnt sands, offering the outpost up like a sacrifice to a hungry, merciless god.
And the curtain consumed it.
Something catches my toe, and I stumble. I look down at the rough-edged metal protruding from the sand. Realization steals over me, followed by a sort of eerie reverence. I smear the dirt away with my boot, but I already know what I’m standing on. I walked beneath this sign on my way to the tunnels nearly every day of my life in this outpost.
“We are the fortunate ones,” I murmur, staring down at the words of our Subpar motto.
I’ve never been down the tunnels without Mom’s axe. Maybe I’m more superstitious than I ever realized, because suddenly I’m desperate to find it, wasting precious minutes searching the rubble for a piece of gear that’s just like all the rest I’m stepping over.
Only it’s not like the rest. My axe—Mom’s axe—has a handle indented from the press of both our hands. A handle that should’ve been replaced multiple times by now, but that I held on to—literally—because it was the only way I could still feel the curve of her hand against mine. Wood groans as I ease a fallen board aside and slip inside the leaning remnants of the Rig. Hooks still line walls covered with climbing rope and harnesses, standing by for cavers who will never come. I free a headlamp and click it on, searching the shadowed husk of the building for the one thing I need.
Part of the roof has collapsed, and steel rebar juts free like the shattered ribs of a beast. What I need is in its belly. I straddle a beam and wriggle past debris. The way the building’s shifted, the hooks hang at an angle. I grasp them like the rungs of a ladder, pulling myself to the one I want. Suddenly I see it, hanging on Dram’s hook. I exchanged it for his when I fled the outpost months ago.
Subpars never mined the cirium that lined the basin of the Sky. Our secret memorial was the one place we refused to mine, and it’s that ore I need now to guide me to the tomb buried beneath the rubble, or the risks we’ve taken will be for nothing.
I drop to my knees beside the rock and debris. Congress detonated flash bombs inside the Range, so that parts of it have been reduced to sand. The Sky is beneath me, somewhere in this heap of stone that once formed tunnel six. I stretch forward, bits of stone digging into my chest. I lie prone, heart and palms pressed to the earth, willing myself to feel, to hear the song of the cirium deep inside.
“Help me, Mom,” I whisper. I picture her telling me I did this as a child—a girl who loved the Range because I didn’t yet understand the tunnels.
Use it to find a way out, Orion.
I imagine the last time I went to the Sky—with Dram and Lenore and Reeves. Memories flood my mind so powerfully, I can feel the cool blue water holding me buoyant. Then Dram held me, and for the first time I knew it meant more than just a marker assisting his scout. We wrote our names on the wall, and deep inside I made a promise to every Subpar. I’ll find the way out.
Now Len and Reeves are gone, their lives sacrificed to give us a chance. And Dram … My chest tightens so hard I can’t breathe. I shut out the image of his Radband, with its indicator the color of dried blood.
You’re dying, Orion. All of us are.
Clouds shift and the flashfall glares over me in shades of pink and aquamarine. It licks my skin in ripples of heat, like a carnivore testing my taste. I roll onto my back and raise my sleeve, ready to see exactly how much of me the curtain has consumed. I understand now why Dram covered his Radband. It’s terrifying, watching a color countdown to your own death.
I just crossed the cordons for the second time in my life. There is a cost.
Amber.
A soft cry escapes my lips, and it sounds too loud for this deserted outpost. My indicator is the shade when yellow ends and orange begins. And the Congress manipulated our bands, so I’m really at …
Red.
“Flash me.” I stare at the light until my eyes sting. I can’t bear to have it attached to me—to die with this shackle, marked as the Congress’s slave. I grasp my double-bladed knife and wedge it between my skin and the band—the space created when Dad removed it. The skin is so scarred beneath, I don’t even feel the blade as I pry at the sensors connecting the biotech to my wrist. Blood streams, but the wounds are shallow—just the few places the biotech had begun to adhere. My hand shakes as I work the knife, scraping against metal and skin and whatever else was used to mark me as an outpost miner. I won’t be bound another moment by another of the Congress’s lies—a tool they used to secure our compliance.
A scream builds behind my teeth, but I lever the band free, letting the pain sharpen my determination. Metal twists, biotech cracks, and the Radband falls to the dirt. Blood trickles past my fingers as I stand and stare at the shackle they promised would help keep us safe.
Lies.
I grip my mother’s cracked axe handle and slam the axe down on my Radband. Bits of metal and biotech break off.
“I am not your slave,” I say, bringing my axe down again and again. Tears fill my eyes, and the shattered Radband blurs, but I hammer at the pieces. For Mom. For Dram, and my Ghost father. For every Tempered Conjie. Every Brunt. Every Subpar.
The crack in my axe handle widens; I can feel it splintering apart—the wood that I’ve held in place of Mom’s hand all these years. I collapse to my knees, weeping. I don’t want to let go. Letting go of this shattered handle feels like letting go of my past, and Mom’s past—the two woven together and forming the deepest parts of me.
And, too soon, I will have to let go of everything—this life included.
“AUGH!” I scream to the sky. The sky that isn’t sky. The blanket of clouds and colors that have kept me prisoner my entire life. The radiation that kills and calls to me at the same time.
I let go.
Wood falls away, and my hands fill with dirt.
Dirt.
Splintered wood reveals a hollowed-out space carved into my mother’s axe handle. I turn it on end, and more dirt pours out.
“Holy fire,” I whisper. I sway on my knees, the weight of too much emotion sinking in—the possibilities burning in me more than the embers on the wind. No. Surely, not—
You have magic, Orion.
I study the dirt Mom hid inside her axe. It’s not from the outposts or the cordons. This is Eastfall soil. From the mountain provinces. I know because its elements do not sing to me. They do not burn me. They contain no particles of cirium to contain me.
Slowly, like I’m reaching toward a mirage, I touch it. My mother’s secret.
My secret.
The dirt is soft, with no sand or glass or bits of rock.
She could not comply. Meredith’s words, describing why my mother was sent to the outposts.
And when she was discovered with the Conjuror … Cora, telling me that the Congress’s best Delver loved her Ghost enough to be exiled for it. Or maybe she was doing what she could to get away from the Congress, protecting me even then.
The dirt sifts through my fingers, and I close my eyes, stretching my Subpar senses. Maybe more than what I’ve always thought of as Subpar.
If they’re close enough, Conjurors can sense when elements are being shifted. Jameson told me that once. It was how he knew about Roran’s ability. And now my heart pounds so hard I’m dizzy, my breath coming in erratic bursts—because I’ve felt it. I just didn’t know what it meant.
Subpar and Conjuror.
Maybe. I stuff the dirt into my pockets—all but a handful.
“We are the fortunate ones,” I say, pressing my palm to the ground. I envision the rock shifting, forming to the mental map I’ve laid out in my mind. Minutes pass, with the flashfall heating the air. I close my eyes and picture Fern shaping caverns with nothing but her hands. The wind kicks up, sending ash into my face, but the rubble remains simply rubble.
I am not a Conjuror. Just the daughter of two ghosts.
I slam my hands against the dirt, the cursed Conjie dirt. And it burns me. No—my hands are burning. They are suddenly a forge, altering the elements beneath them.
The earth shifts, and I tumble forward, flailing through darkness.
“Oof!” I land on my back and stare up at the flashfall shimmering above the crater I … carved. It can’t be. It’s not possible that I’m a Conjuror as well as a Subpar. My mind rebels against the idea, even as I stare at the proof.
Then I hear it—the faint hum of cirium, setting my nerves tingling. I need to get deeper. I imagine the ground shifting, opening a passage down to the Sky. And this time, I’m prepared for the burn. I feel the elements like they’re strings on an instrument—I pluck the ones I need, and the melody is one I play by instinct.
* * *
I wedge myself through a tight crevice, hands stretched before me. When they hit air and my headlamp reveals a vast drop, I know I’m getting close. I smell water.
Rock is relatively easy for me to manipulate. Vines—any living things—are proving more of a challenge. All I have to go on are the things I heard and saw while living with the free Conjies. And what I learned was that it takes time and practice to develop the sort of abilities they had. Even then, not all Conjurors are gifted equally.
I’m hoping desperation counts for something.
That, and Subpar instincts.
The dark is oppressive, a heavy thing that breathes in all the air and leaves nothing for me. I’m not sure any air caves survived the collapse of the Range. If that’s not the Sky down there, I’m not sure how much farther I can go. I pull myself to the ledge and bathe my face in the musty air lifting from below.
This has to be it.
We used to follow secret markers to this cavern, ones only the cavers knew about. Now I find my way with nothing to guide me but instinct. My headlamp catches a white mark smeared across stone. I make a sound, not quite a sob. Maybe something more than instinct led me here. I turn, the path new but marked with guideposts I know by heart. And then—
A pool of luminescent blue water, its glow revealing cave walls.
“It held,” I breathe, walking into the cavern. Elation swells … then crashes down.
It’s empty.
I walk its length, hoping for a glimpse of gear, or the remains of a fire—some sign that they were here. I listen for voices, but all I hear is the quiet stillness of this memorial cavern.
I walk to the names written across the wall in chalk. “Good-bye, Mom,” I say, touching the place where her sacrifice is remembered. It feels different this time, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve changed so much, or if my understanding of her has. Her axe doesn’t hang beside her name like the others. A sudden thought occurs to me. What if Mom’s axe handle wasn’t the only one hiding secrets?
I climb to the nearest axe and pry it from the rock. The end of the handle is bare. I check the one beside it. Two narrow lines are scratched into the axe handle. I crack it open, and a square piece of biotech falls out. I lift it in my hands, a mystery that’s the size of my thumbnail. I study the coded diagram, trying to make sense of the illustration that shows a wrist and a device implanted beneath the skin where my Radband used to be. Alaran biotech hidden in a rebel’s axe in order to give us access to the protected city. Not as a Subpar who earned four Rays, but as a scout who figured out that the only way into Alara was subversion.
I leap to the next axe and pull it down. Empty. The next falls with a clatter as I pry it free. Parallel lines.
A thin sheet of paper filled with words I’ve never heard before. Do Alarans speak so differently from us? A row of familiar words are crossed through with lines. These are words I know. Subpar phrases. Cavers’ terms. Conjie curses and slang.
Words that would give me away.
I visit every memorial, every name marked with a flash date and a chalk circle. Less than half of the axes bear the cavers’ mark and contain some other piece to a plan I am slowly beginning to understand. They intended to get a Subpar inside Alara. A Subpar who, disguised as an Alaran, would make a way for her people to get free.
I lay the treasures out on the cavern floor. A pile of secrets beside a heap of broken axe handles.
Clothing. Female. A dress of such airy fabric it fit into the handle of an axe. Another contained an embroidered robe marked with the seal of Alara. Something—according to the diagram—worn by a Vestige, a person dedicated to the study of Old Alara. A person who has access to the council’s chambers.
A necklace that I hold up to the gleaming light of my headlamp. A dosimeter, beautiful, fragile-looking, but real. It’s reading the radiation in this cavern with a visible meter worked into a silver backing, steadily gleaming through its levels: green, dark green, yellow, dark yellow, amber, rust, red.
Rust.
The color of my Radband before I destroyed it.
I’m dying. Dram is dying. All of us are.
The thought spurs me to action, and I stuff the items into my pouches.
Before I leave, there is one last thing I must do. I grip a piece of chalk and press it to the wall, tears pricking my eyes. I will honor them, the cavers I could not save, the friends I didn’t reach in time.
I look for a place that will fit all their names together. There’s space on the end, the far corner beside one lone name. I glance at the writing, and the chalk drops from my fingers. Roran. The flash date beside it—just weeks ago.
I don’t read the inscription, but turn and bolt across the cavern—to a different wall. The one where an ore scout and her marker once drew their names when the world seemed full of hope.
I gasp and press a hand to my mouth. I read the names—they’re all here: Owen, Roland, Marin, Winn—every Subpar who followed me into Cordon Five two months ago. Mere. She’s alive, her name written in barely legible scrawl because she likely drew it herself with her one remaining appendage. This wall is for the names of those who got free.
“Scout?”
I whirl toward the cave entrance and peer past the light of a headlamp, a glimpse of broad shoulders and brown skin gleaming beneath layers of particle dust. “Owen?”
His stunned expression gives way to a smile. “Flash me, it is you!” He drops the water bottles he’s holding and runs to me, crushing me in his arms.
Safe. I let myself savor the feeling I haven’t known in far too long. This caver helped carry Dram and me up out of nine when our air tanks failed. He kept me running when the Barrier Range collapsed above our heads. Tears fill my eyes.
“You’re all here?” I ask, my throat tight.
“Yes. We’ve been waiting—for you, for word that things have changed.”
“Soon,” I tell him, pulling away. I dash my hand under my eyes and take in his smiling face. “There’s a serum—a way for us to live in the flashfall without sickening from exposure. I’m going to find a way to get it to you—to everyone.” I smile as I secure my gear over my shoulders. “Tell Mere…” My throat closes, and I swallow hard. “Tell Mere her son’s name is on the wrong wall.” Owen’s eyes widen. “Tell her he’s with me—in the Overburden. And that I’m going to get him out.” He crushes me in another hug. “And, Owen?”
“What is it, Scout?”
“Tell Mere I made the promise like a Conjie.”