429.21 grams cirium
I’M NOT THE one to finally destroy the sign above the tunnels. Lenore took her axe to it sometime in the night. But her last act of defiance was going down six without her team, or any protective gear.
Lenore gave us a day. Her Burning Day.
Dram’s door creaks when I push through, the way it has since I was a child. As I walk inside, I have this weird thought that Lenore will never hear that sound again. Dram sits hunched in the corner, weeping. I kneel and wrap my arms around him, trying to take some of his pain into myself. But I know I can’t. Instead I press a vial into his hand.
He looks up with bleary red eyes. “Will it even work?”
“Dad says it’ll either help us or kill us quick,” I murmur.
He lifts the vial in a solemn toast and upends it in one toss of his head. I drink mine in two gulps, and it burns—like Lenore Berrends will burn this afternoon.
I weave my fingers with Dram’s and lie down beside him. I squeeze my eyes shut, but it does nothing to hold in the tears. I find myself making more promises to Dram’s dead family.
I won’t let him burn.
* * *
As the only surviving member of his family, Dram is the one to set fire to Lenore’s funeral pyre. He lowers the torch, and I clutch my mother’s remembrance pendant. Mom always wanted to see the sky—the real one—so Dad had her ashes preserved in blue glass.
I’ve told Dad that I want mine saved in clear glass, so he can see my death unobscured, a clear reminder of what the Congress took from us. But I’m not going to a place where they preserve a person’s memory.
I don’t wear Wes’s ashes. His small yellow pendant sits in my drawer, tucked inside one of Mom’s old shirts. His death is too painful to bear remembering, so Dad and I don’t speak of him. Not since Dad held a torch to that tiny pyre and blue flame took his round cheeks so, so fast.
My hand cramps, and I realize I’m gripping my knife. Graham slips his arm around my shoulders.
“Now’s not the time, girlie,” he whispers, helping me sheathe the blade.
“It’s almost done,” Dad murmurs, walking up beside me. “The other batch of liquid cirium.” His gaze slides over the crowd. Everyone’s watching the glassblower. “We may only have this moment. You and Dram need to drink the solution again before you enter the sands.”
My eyes mist with tears, and I tell myself it is the smoke blowing into them. “Dad—” My throat constricts. I can’t get the words out, and there is so much I want to say.
His eyes fill, and he stares into mine. “They always underestimate your strength,” he whispers. “Find a way to escape or survive. And when you do…” He looks over to where Dram stands watching the flames. “You bring that boy with you. He is part of what makes you strong.” The tears slip down his cheeks.
I touch his face a last time. “So are you,” I whisper.
* * *
When the hover comes for us, guards parade us from the Rig like a ritual sacrifice. We’re wearing our cavers’ suits, as if they will offer enough protection where we are going. Mine has a foreign lump that bumps my thigh when I walk. Dad sewed the remaining vials of liquid cirium into my suit.
I feel naked without my axe and knives. Where we’re heading, neither is necessary. Tunnel nine is a playground compared to the burnt sands of Cordon Four.
The caving roster hangs beside the lodge, but for the first time in years, my name is not on it. It’s at the top of the new list marked CORDON FOUR, and there are six others beneath it: Dram, Ennis, Graham, Reeves, Gabe, and Winn. Lenore’s name has been crossed out.
We’re going to die, but our names will live on as cautionary tales to future Subpars. I was right about Winn’s age. She’s eight. It’s posted beside her name. Mine says sixteen; beside Dram’s, eighteen. Graham is seventy-one. For some reason, the ages unnerve me even more than the names. Like the Congress is making a point that no one—child or elder—is beyond the reach of corrective action.
Dram walks beside me, a shadow of his former self. His hollowed cheeks show that he’s not been eating even our meager rations.
“I’ve dreamed of leaving this place my entire life,” I murmur. “This was never how I imagined feeling.”
He takes my hand in his. Without the barrier of gloves, I feel the warmth of his skin, the gentle scrape of his calluses against mine. I steal a glance at Reeves and see the warrior he’s kept concealed, the one who ate tunnel gulls and strung the skulls from his belt. He wears his caver’s suit knotted around his waist. His chest is bare, showing all of Outpost Five the scars of being forfeit, along with Foss’s black memorial pendant, and one other beside it. Lenore’s.
“Duck your head,” a guard says as we climb into the craft. I slip onto a narrow bench beside Dram, holding tight to his hand.
The engine rumbles, and the door seals shut. The hover lifts, but there are no windows, no last glimpses of Outpost Five.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
“We have nothing left to lose,” Dram says. It’s the most I’ve heard him say in two days.
But as his arms steal around me, and I press my cheek above his heart, I know that he is wrong.
There is still so much to lose.