35.6 km from flash curtain
THEY SECURE A boat for us.
Well, not a boat. A floating structure, half organic, half Ordinance tech, that will traverse the ocean on its own photosynthetic power. This biostructure is the first of its kind, designed to navigate seas altered by flash curtains.
We call it the Outlier, naming it for its crew, people set apart from others. Also for its mission to assist others like us—those on the fringes of fragile societies, trying to survive this world and shape it into something better.
Our first encounter will be aiding the miners on SeaPod One, an aquatic mining outpost. The council received a distress call from its techs shortly before they lost communication. Cirium, Jameson explained, is still the best shield we have against flash curtains, and our people aren’t the only ones who figured that out.
Jameson replaced the Prime Commissary and has begun to reshape the Congress of Natural Humanity in ways that protect the futures of all Alara’s people, Natural and otherwise. The agreements he reached with the leaders of Ordinance will help ensure a partnership between our city-states.
I hug Mere, and her new commissary’s chain presses against me. “Go shake things up,” I say.
She smiles. “I never stopped.”
Winn clasps her arms around my waist. “Bring Roran back safe,” she says. I brush my hand over her long black hair.
“I promise.”
“Conjie promise or Subpar promise?” she asks.
“Both.” I lift my hair and show her the shell talisman conjured into my hair.
“The outboard vessels are in place around the Outlier,” Bade says, lifting his gaze from a screencom. “They’re ready to depart.”
“And the Subpars from Outpost Five?” I ask.
Bade checks his screencom. “Owen, Roland, and Marin. All confirmed.”
I smile, imagining my friends seeing the ocean for the first time. “Before we go, there’s one last thing I need to do.”
* * *
Greash opens the shield door nearest Cordon One and I step through, into white sand. I wear a Dodger’s suit, and over it a Strider’s electrified armor.
Serum 1 doesn’t protect us from everything.
The flash curtain shimmers in the distance, a luminescent wall, the end of it dissipating in waving tendrils of energy. I jog toward it.
As I near the curtain, something moves beneath the sand. I adjust a sensor on my armor, and a transmitter pulses out a frequency I can’t hear, modified from the devices Delvers used down the tunnels. I told Jameson that I had a theory. If I’m right, this will repel cordon rats as well as moles. One last suit to test for the Congress.
But that’s not really why I’m out here.
The screencom on my wrist chimes a warning. I’ve reached the edge of the Exclusion Zone. Every step past this point exposes me to the flashfall.
I stand at the invisible boundary line, one that used to signify freedom and safety on one side, danger and oppression on the other. Now, all Subpars and Conjurors have Serum 1 and protection from the curtain’s particles. They can live within the flashfall without sickening from exposure. Or they can choose to leave. Freedom and safety.
On both sides.
“We did it, Mom,” I whisper. We broke apart the box the Congress had us contained in. Whatever stories Alarans choose to tell in the Honor Hall, I know the truth.
I step past the boundary. One last time, I tell myself.
Violet auroras fade to blue and collide with garnet ripples, shimmering above the sand. I close my eyes as I walk, not to shield my eyes—I’m wearing eyeshields beneath my Strider helmet—but to better hear it, the call I have known and answered all my life. No one would understand the ache rising in my chest. Not even Dram.
The flashfall dances over me. I turn beneath it, stretching my hands upward. Energy swirls around me, in me, a part of me. It has taken so much, but it also made me who I am. Something like loss hollows my gut. I feel as if I’m leaving Mom and Wes behind, and Graham and Lenore, and all the Subpars I’ve loved and lost here. All of my memories are tied to the curtain. The flashfall has touched every one of my days, and leaving it behind feels like leaving them behind.
Good-bye.
I will make new memories in places they have never been a part of. It aches to breathe, and for once, it has nothing to do with the flashfall.
“Quite a view,” a voice says in my helmet. “Now that it’s not cooking our insides.” I turn to see Dram walking toward me in a matching suit and armor. I leave the heaviness of the curtain and join him where he stands, halfway to the shield.
“Electrified armor,” he murmurs, glancing down at his suit. “Is it strange that I actually want a vulture to attack me?”
I grin behind my face shield.
“I stole something for you,” he announces, reaching into his pocket. “Well, stole something back for you.” He holds up my memorial pendants. The ones I traded to save Roran.
My breath catches. I can’t speak as Dram clasps them around my neck. The glass pendants hang down my chest, right where they belong above my heart.
“What did you fill them with?” Dram asks.
“The earth of the provinces,” I say.
“Can you mute your armor so I don’t kill myself when I hug you?” Dram asks.
“Strider armor works on a repulsive charge. We can’t shock each other.”
He draws me into his arms. Our suits crackle and spark.
“You ready to go places that haven’t been mapped?” he asks.
“Always.”
We turn away from the flash curtain and walk toward our future. With each step, I realize that memories aren’t tied to places, but to the people who made them. Wherever we go, I’ll bring the best moments with me.
* * *
Dram and I stand in the greenspace at the top of the vessel, watching the shoreline disappear. The flag illuminated above us is a holographic image, a blend of the seal of Alara and Ordinance’s Codev-like symbols. It’s intended to project our intentions as a research and aid vessel, representing the best parts of both our city-states.
Still, we’re not taking unnecessary risks. Greash leads the contingent of Striders and Untempered Conjies making this voyage along with us. We wear the Trades on our sleeves. Honorary Outliers, Arrun said. I was familiar with the symbol, but I had to ask him to translate the Latin motto.
Invictus maneo. I remain unvanquished.
A powerful statement, as far as mottoes go. Whatever trouble we may get into, I’ve vowed to keep the patch clean and the words clear. I may not carry an axe, but I haven’t left my Subpar ways behind.
“Orion…” Dram grips the rail. “There are things we need to talk about.” The ocean air snatches at his words, so I lean in closer. “What I did in the Tomb—”
“It wasn’t you. You were out of your head with venom.”
“Sometimes, pieces of that night come back to me,” he says gruffly. “It’s like I’m reliving the moment in someone else’s body, because I can’t believe what I’m seeing, what I’m doing—” His voice breaks and he squeezes the railing so tightly I’m expecting it to crack under his Gem-supplemented strength.
“I forgive you.”
Tears fill his eyes, and he pulls me close, so tight against him, I feel his heart beat with mine. I thought I forgave him in the cordon when I found him beside Soma, but this is different. More. Like now that everything’s been exposed, all the ugliness and pain is burned away by the light.
He pulls back, clasping the sides of my face. He looks into my eyes and nods, as though he’s found what he needed to see. His lips move, but no words form, as if sorry is too small a word for what he’s trying to say.
“It’s all right,” I whisper. He wears a lost look, like he’s unsure he can cross to the other side of this bridge we’re standing on. So I show him, reaching across and pressing my mouth to his. He exhales—I feel it against my lips—a shuddering sigh that turns into a kiss. And then he fills me, and I him, and we are all touch and taste, banishing the empty places.
I touch the climbing rope he still wears around his wrist in the place his Radband used to be. Blood stains the fibers, but the figure-eight knot is still woven tightly against his skin.
“I wouldn’t let them take it off,” he says. “Not even when they…” He doesn’t finish. Not even when they took away the Subpar and replaced him with something that I still don’t understand. For a moment, I’m back beneath the curtain and Dram is fighting me. I wait for the anguish to come, for the bitterness of betrayal to harden. But it’s only sorrow that I feel now, tempered with understanding. What Dram did then, he did to save me.
“I wish I hadn’t destroyed my bracelet,” I murmur.
“I’ll make you a new one,” he says, and the light is back in his eyes. “I’m good with knots.”
I take a moment to savor those eyes, free from shadows. Then I cross the bridge again, to where I am strong, and he is strong, and together, we are invincible.