39.1 km from flash curtain
I’VE GONE LESS than a kilometer when I find the craft, half buried in snow. I know the hover’s one of ours by the parallel lines—a caver’s mark—painted on the side. It’s small, just a four-person Skimmer, but smoke pours from it, and as I approach, I hear the crackle of fire. The flight and nav systems should have been safe this far from the curtain’s interference, but just like the particle snow, the flashfall is extending beyond its normal parameters.
This must be the Skimmer Jameson told us to expect. This isn’t the coded location he mentioned, but it’s close—within a few kilometers. A bloody hand suddenly pounds against the viewing window. I run forward, shocked anyone managed to survive the crash.
“Hold on! I’m here!” I boost myself atop the metal fuselage and pound on the glass. Flames lick the sides of the craft, and I know they’ll draw any nearby Mods like a beacon. “Move away from the glass!” I shout. I balance on my knees and raise my axe. I swing it down, and the windshield cracks. Heat bleeds off the wreckage, bringing tears to my eyes and making my skin burn. Two more swings and I’ve made a hole. I holster my axe, wrap my hands in my jacket, and reach through.
“Watch the glass,” the man calls around hacking coughs.
A jagged edge catches the inside of my wrist and I gasp, more surprised than pained. “Flash me,” I mutter, ripping the sleeve of my cloak free and hastily wrapping it over the cut.
“Grab my hands,” I say, reaching through the glass. The man grasps my hands, and I give him the leverage he needs to pull free of the smashed cockpit. He wears a medkit strapped across his chest. Through the smoke and snow, I can’t see him clearly, just enough to see that he’s pulled on extra layers of clothes—maybe the pilot’s—to protect himself from the burning heat.
“What about the others?” I ask.
“Just the pilot,” he answers, his voice muffled behind a thick scarf. “I did what I could for him—”
“Then we need to get away from here. Trackers will be here any second.” We stumble through the drifts, and I barely notice the sting of the particle snow.
“Let me look at your wrist,” he calls. I glance back and realize I’ve left a trail of blood.
“Damn.” I sway on my feet, staring at the spots of red, stark against the snow. This will lead Striders to us as surely as marks on a map. I tear more of my cloak free, my fingers shaking—more from shock than cold, I realize dimly. I must’ve cut myself deeper than I thought.
The man wades toward me, his steps hampered by the snow and extra clothing. He’s unwrapping the scarf covering half his face. “Stay there, I’m going to apply pressure.” As he nears, I see that his sleeve’s soaked with blood.
“You need a physic,” I murmur, trying to connect the suddenly disjointed thoughts rambling through my mind. “You’re bleeding—”
“This isn’t my blood, Orion. It’s yours.” Without the scarf shielding his face, I recognize the man I pulled from the hover, but it’s his voice I knew first.
“Dad,” I whisper. The world tips beneath me and the snow is everywhere.
I am numb and all is white.
* * *
“Orion.”
I fight my way through the chemical haze clouding my mind. “Dad?” There’s something in his tone that makes me feel like a little girl, frightened by the panic I hear in his voice.
“You need to see this.”
“Mmph.” I bite my lip to keep from being sick. My wrist is opened up, skin pulled back, tendons exposed. He woke me too soon.
“I’m sorry, Orion, but you need to see this for yourself. You might not have believed me if I told you later.”
The glow of a lantern illuminates sutures and clamps and bloody gauze. I’m on a ledge of rock. “What are you doing?” My Radband is dangling off my arm, the biotech partially removed. I can’t believe he would attempt this surgery.
“I had to remove part of it to suture your wrist. You nicked your radial artery.” He lifts my wrist, and I flinch. “Look at your biotech. Four lights, not two.” He lifts my Radband. “The indicators don’t function properly.”
“It broke?”
“It never worked.”
“What are you saying?”
“Your radiation levels are higher than the tech indicates. You’re sick, Orion. We all are. They just don’t want us to know it.” He works the biotech back over my wrist and inserts the sensors into place. I don’t feel anything. I am numb, inside and out.
“Four lights,” I murmur. “I’m at gold.” Too soon to feel the effects of radiation. My gaze shifts to Dad. “What about you?” My fog-filled mind runs the math, the years more radiation he’s been exposed to.
He doesn’t answer and my eyes rove over him. “It’s nearly impossible to remove the biotech,” he says. “Not without irreparable damage. But Jameson found someone in Alara. He was the one who told me about the indicators.” He lifts his bare left wrist, and I see just how much he was willing to risk for the truth.
“How many lights, Dad?” I don’t recognize the strangled voice choking past my lips.
He hesitates. “Five.”
Orange. My dad’s at level orange. There’s only one light after that.
“I’m putting you back under, Orion,” he says softly. I barely notice the sting of the needle; my mind is grasping at scattered fragments of thought. There is something … something important. Heaviness settles over me, and I struggle to keep my eyes open. Red. An orange indicator means a Subpar is actually at red.
A whimpering cry pushes past my lips.
“Sleep now,” Dad murmurs. “I’ll be done soon. You’re going to be fine.”
“Dram.” I slur the name, but I hear it echo a thousand places inside myself. “Dram’s … orange.”
Dad doesn’t answer—or if he does, I don’t hear it. I can only hear that name, echoing in the halls of my heart, along with one other word.
Red.