7.2 meters from flash curtain
I DREAM OF freedom.
And fire.
I wake inside the Box, to utter darkness. My only light shattered when they forced me inside. But that fire. It stirs within me—worry for Dram formed of molten fear. I roll a wooden bead in my palm, over and over, and all the while that fire blazes, builds, expels from me—
I conjure fire.
I stare at the flames in my hand—light that illuminates the cirium walls around me. This shouldn’t be possible. Not even Forgers can conjure within this prison. But still the flames burn, and the energy swells within me, fed by something more powerful than fear.
I used to wonder if Conjies needed to feel an exchange with the elements, the way Naturals need air and light. Now I know. We do.
And so my flames burn, burn—
Burn.
And when I sleep, the fire is there again, awaiting me in my dreams.
* * *
The door vibrates at my back, and I stir. In the haze between sleep and waking, I think it’s Dram, knocking on the metal, reminding me he’s just a wall away from me. Then images invade: a termit leaping … biting.
The door slides open, but I don’t turn. I’m paralyzed with dread.
“Dram’s all right,” a man says. Something about the voice triggers a feeling of recognition. “His armor caught most of the termit’s bite. Did you hear me, Orion?” Whoever he is, he doesn’t breach my solitude with anything more than his voice. I roll over and see his boots, just beyond the cirium floor. “He said to tell you you don’t need to take his axe to the Sky.”
Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and I laugh into the floor with a sound like sobbing. I push myself up, my stiff muscles protesting the movement. It doesn’t feel like my arms shaking under my weight, or my head throbbing and dizzy from lack of food, lack of everything.
“I tried to get you to the infirmary, to see him,” the man says. “I’m afraid that not even I can get a Ghost that close to Fortune.” There is gentleness in his tone that seems at odds with the forceful command of his words. I know this voice … I look up.
“Jameson?” He doesn’t answer, just stands there, holding my questioning gaze with one of his own.
“Meredith tells me it’s been four days. Four days since you’ve been in the light or heard another voice.” There’s anger in his tone. Anger at the commissary. He steps inside the Box, eyeing the doorway like he’s stepping into a gulls’ nest.
Slowly, he crouches beside me. His eyes track my features like he’s reading a map, and when he finally meets my stare, it’s with the shadows of memories lingering there. “Four days in this hell,” he muses. “The longest I ever went was five.”
The words hang between us, his admission like a bridge to a place inside me. A place I didn’t know was there.
“You were a Forger?”
He nods. For the first time, I see that his eyes are not dark, as I’ve always thought, but the sort of hazel that changes depending on the light and the color one wears. He wore black in the outposts and cordons, but his uniform now is a muted green, and his eyes—
Are like mine.
“I saw you on the screencom,” he says, handing me water and rations. “Meredith didn’t use your real names when she reported your commissioning status. I think she was afraid the council would insist on sentencing you for treason or perhaps hold you to gain access to Arrun. But she forgot that I’ve seen you and know you well enough to recognize you from a brief glance during the commissioning.
“At first I was shocked. We’d lost you, and then there’s Dram, a Prime Delver. I couldn’t make sense of it—I kept waiting to see you standing before one of the other quadrants…” He looks at me with sorrow in his eyes.
“I had to pretend I wasn’t feeling anything.” He laughs, a sharp bark of sound. “I’m sitting there—in the council’s high chamber, this objective commissary, and I didn’t know where you were. I knew nothing could keep you from Dram’s side. So I looked away the whole time Meredith prattled on about her new Prime, thinking you were dead. But then she dropped her grand surprise. A new Forger.
“And I … flash me, Orion, somehow I knew before I even looked. There you stood, brave and foolish, with that damned collar. It didn’t seem possible you’re a Conjie and Subpar both—but then I realized … it is possible. I had to get up and leave the chamber, because I was afraid that someone would see the Conjie inside the commissary.” Tears gather in his eyes. His hazel eyes that look just like mine.
Neither of us says it.
Mom is our link, and she is gone.
“What happened to you?” I ask. “After they sent my mother to Outpost Five?”
“Few people had seen my face besides her. I’d been a Forger since I was twelve. After she and I…” He swallows. “This is hard—sorry. I’ve never talked about this with anyone.” He sits beside me and leans back against the cell wall. “Meredith hired a tech from Ordinance to upgrade the security down here. He asked me to plant a monitoring device close to the seam so Ordinance could run their own tests. In exchange, he smuggled me out of the Overburden, gave me a new identity, and shielded me inside Alara. When I was older, they arranged my commissions—I held various posts on both sides of the curtain—until I worked my way onto the council.”
“Did you know about me?” I ask. “When you came to Outpost Five—was it because you knew who I was?”
“I knew you were Ferrin’s daughter. I didn’t know … that you were mine.” He sighs and drags his hands over his short hair. I wonder if he used to wear talismans. “You look just like her,” he says, a sad smile playing about his lips. “Not … me.”
“I guess the parts I have of you are on the inside,” I say, lifting my hand.
He makes the laugh sound again, but it is filled with pain. He scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes. “Ah, flash me,” he mutters. “I’m a glenting weeper-lily.” I wonder if he realizes he’s slipped into his accent. He swallows hard and looks up, his face red and blotchy.
It surprises a laugh from me. “I get the same way when I cry,” I admit, gesturing to his face. He smiles, and I realize it’s the first true smile of his I’ve seen. The commissary didn’t bring his mask into the Box with him. This is the man my mother knew.
“Before you became a Forger, who were you?” I ask.
“Carris Imber.” He hesitates, like he’s waiting for a barrier—a protective guard on his history—that doesn’t come. “Bade’s my brother. My youngest. He was a baby when the Congress put me in here.”
Bade.
Bade is … my uncle. So many questions storm my mind, but the one that makes it out is—
“Can you make fire too?”
His brows lift. “No. Can you?”
I smile, and he laughs.
“No wonder Meredith’s afraid of you. My father—your grandfather—could do it. Of all the Conjurors, only he and Bade … but now…” He looks at me, shaking his head like he still can’t believe I’m real. Then he looks at the Box, and his brow furrows. “But forging all the way to the seam … No one, not a single Conjie could do that. That part of you comes from Ferrin.”
Mom’s name. Spoken from him to me. There is something to it that feels like more than word, or breath, or sound. It feels like the last scrape of chalk on the circle drawn beneath her name.
“Because she was a Subpar, you mean?”
He shakes his head. “Because she could do impossible things.”
“You’re the Ghost who became a commissary,” I murmur. “Maybe I get some of that from you, as well.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Jameson says.
“What do you mean?”
“The devices that you delivered worked. They’ve transmitted back the data, and techs have mapped the seam. We’re ready to proceed with the next step.” He stands and helps me to my feet. “Time for you to meet the Luna.”
* * *
A sleek metal craft fills the tunnel outside my cell.
“The Congress named it for the moon,” Jameson says. “Since it’s the only way we can hope to control the flashtide.”
“How do we mine eludial soil with a ship?” I ask.
“We don’t. The Luna’s just a vessel to drop this off at the seam.” He presses a code into a panel, and the floor of the craft slides away, revealing a narrow pod. “The real technological marvel is this: the SAMM. Semiautonomous Mining Module. Just get it to the eludial seam, and the SAMM will take care of the rest.”
“Get it to the seam…” I touch the side of the craft.
He opens the door, and I clamber inside as he directs me to the control panel, discussing technology that I barely understand. He trails off halfway through his explanation of underground altimeter readings. “You won’t have to know these things. Techs in the city will monitor the instruments.”
I touch the throttle. “You want me to fly this?”
“The Luna practically flies itself.”
My gaze skips over the illuminated screens. “This isn’t what I know. I was raised to rock and earth and instinct.”
“So was I,” he says. “But we adapt, Orion.”
“What do you think my mom would say?”
Something shifts in his eyes. He looks past me to the hold of the ship, and I wonder which version of her he’s remembering. “She’d tell you that nothing is impossible—unless you convince yourself it is.”
Tears prick my eyes. She used to say that all the time.
“When do we start?”
Jameson steers me into the seat before the console. “Right now.”
* * *
Instead of tunnels and termits, my days fill with belowground flight training.
The Congress prepares Dram and me both. I’m the lead on this mission, but any good plan has a backup. As Dram recovers from his injuries, he logs hours in the Luna, testing, prepping for a mission we’re not likely to survive.
In one of the rare moments we’re left alone, Dram shows me his new scar from the termit bite. I show him the flames I can make dance in my palms. It’s good to see him smile again.
We spend the day talking about all the ways my abilities could’ve helped us down nine. I don’t tell him what I’ve come to believe—that without all we went through in the tunnels and cordons, I might not have discovered the fire within me. I think maybe Dad was right. What breaks us can also make us stronger.
Finally, Jameson returns to inform us that we’re ready. Or, more accurately, that we’re out of time. He’s pensive, his demeanor gruff. “Techs have tracked an approaching solar storm. They’re concerned its effects could fry the transmitters, that we’ll lose the passage.”
My stomach flutters like I’m falling. “I’m not ready.”
His features tighten. I know him well enough now to recognize when he’s trying to rein in his emotions. He looks away, running his hand over the instrument panel. “You are capable of this, Orion. I wouldn’t send you if I didn’t believe that.”
“What will happen to me when this is over? If I succeed and deliver the SAMM, am I still the Congress’s Ghost?”
He doesn’t say anything, and I have my answer.
“There’s nothing I can do that will result in your freedom,” he says. His stark hopelessness slams into me.
“I can’t spend the rest of my life in the Box.”
“I know. So when you find a way out—take it.”