0 grams flash dust
WE DROP INTO a graveyard. I’ve never seen one, but Dad told me once of places where people used to bury their dead. Before the curtain fell. Before Burning Days.
A human skull rests beside my hand.
I lie on my back, waiting for my breath to return, taking stock of my injuries. I still have skin on my skull, so I suppose I’m doing better than I could be.
“Rye?” Dram gasps. He’s half buried in sand an arm’s length away.
“Still here,” I croak. I have sand in my mouth. On my face. In my eyes. Maybe that’s why I can’t breathe. I slowly roll onto my stomach. “You?”
“Alive.”
“Good. If you ever pull me from another hover cable, I’ll kill you.”
“Fair warning.” He groans, struggling to his feet.
“So, Cordon One?” I ask, still hugging the ground. “What’s it like?”
“Empty.”
“Any cages?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“Crazy Conjies?”
“Huh-uh.”
“A big sign that says ‘Welcome to the Protected City’?”
“See for yourself.” I clasp his hand, and he drags me to my feet.
A massive, shining silver barrier rises up out of the sand in the distance, taking the place of the flash curtain. It towers more than a hundred meters high, curving like a protective arm. The ends of the flash curtain wave, in tendrils of light and particles, stretching like fingers from Cordon Two.
Maybe it’s the cirium shield, but Cordon One doesn’t consume its victims with fire and heat like the others. It leaves the bones to litter the ground like a monument to lost hope.
I search the white sky, expecting flash vultures, but there’s nothing. No sound, barely any wind. This place is empty. A perfect place for a Subpar to finally let go.
I tip my face to the ash-soaked sky. I imagine it is blue.
“What are you doing?” Dram asks.
“The air is stable.” I don’t know this for sure. I just don’t care anymore.
“Let’s search the perimeter of the shield.” He starts walking toward the massive wall of cirium. “They won’t be looking for us that way.”
“You still think there’s a way out?” I ask. He stops and turns.
“You saw that map. Come on!”
“Look around, Dram,” I call. “There’s no camp, no turnstiles.” I lift my empty hands. “There aren’t even collection deposits. The dead don’t turn to flash dust here.” He turns in a slow circle, his eyes scanning the distance. “It’s because we’re done. This is the last cordon.”
“Then what is the point of bringing people here?” he asks, pointing to the remains of a former inhabitant.
“The same as the rest,” I say. “To study us and see how long we last.” And then, as if it’s lending support to my words, a weathered sign, pitted with holes, catches my eye. I point at it and laugh. Dram walks toward it, but I can read the worn print from here.
DANGER: FLASHTIDE
Flashtide. The word sounds beautiful and horrifying at the same time. I glance at the bones studding the sand and settle upon horrifying.
“What’s a flashtide?” Dram asks.
“I’m pretty sure it’s what killed these people.”
Dram hits the sign and curses. I hear the Really Bad Conjie Word and worse.
He stomps back toward me. “That settles it, then. We go for the shield. It’s our only option.”
The shield. Like we can just walk up and ask nicely for them to let a couple of rebel Subpars into the jewel. It seems all my strength drained away the moment I touched this sand. I’m as brittle as the bones at my feet.
“I think I’ll just rest here with my new friends for a bit.” I gesture toward the skulls. Dram squints at me, and I know part of him is trying to gauge if I hit my head when we dropped here. “Have you looked at your Radband? At mine?”
He stiffens. “So you’re just giving up? After everything we’ve gone through—”
I press my hand over my mouth and turn away. I can’t stand for him to see me break apart. But my Radband is yellow as a caver’s suit, and his is like the tip of a flame. Dark amber. I don’t have magic, like Mom once told me. I’m just a girl who was reckless and naive, and now people I loved are dead.
Dram turns back to the cirium shield. I watch him run toward the barrier, like it’s got the answers he needs.
I drop down onto the smooth white ash. It snowed once at Outpost Five, when I was little and Mom was still alive. We took Wes outside so he could feel it—before Dad told us it wasn’t safe.
I spread my arms wide and push them through the ash of Cordon One, the way I wanted to that day at Outpost Five. The snow that day seemed like a promise from the sky. I am here, just past what you can see. Reach for me.
My life has been one long empty promise.
Dram shouts, and my eyes shoot open. Flash vultures circle above me—two of them.
“Flash me,” I curse. Cordon One will not take me this way. I lunge to my feet. Dram sprints toward me, shouting at the vultures, waving his arms.
A dark shape dives for me. My hand flies to my arm sheath, but I used all my blades escaping the dusters, and I stand defenseless. It slams into me, knocking me to the ground, talons raking the front of my suit. I lurch away from its beak.
Dram shouts my name. He sounds terrified. Two more vultures land beside me. Someone in Alara is probably observing this moment, and I wonder if they feel sympathetic to our plight. Or ashamed. If they feel anything at all.
We’re Subpars, after all.
Rage wells inside me.
I drive my hands toward the creature’s face. Its snapping beak opens, and I shove my gloved hands straight in, grasping either end of it and tugging it wide—wider than it should go. The bird struggles; its leathery wings slap my face as it tries to free itself.
It’s making strange, desperate cries, which echo mine. I roar, rising up and snapping my arms wide. The creature’s jaw cracks apart. It flops and flutters, and I shove it off me. Another vulture seizes it, tearing into it. I roll to my feet and run.
Toward Dram.
He stands a few meters away. Somehow he drew the other vultures away from me, and two of them circle above his head. One bobs up and down just in front of him. Blood drips from Dram’s arm where he cut himself open.
“No!” I search the ground for a weapon, anything that might help. I grab a leg bone. It’s splintered on one end.
I hold it like a spear and run toward the hopping, dancing vulture that’s got the scent of Dram’s blood. It doesn’t seem to notice my approach, or maybe it just doesn’t consider me a threat. I jam the bone straight through its body. It caws and writhes, and I lift it high, waving it toward the other vultures, whose beady eyes fasten on new prey. They’re hungry for flesh. Any flesh. I toss the skewered vulture to the ground, and they descend. Dram and I back away and run. I shut out the sounds of their zealous feasting, the delighted caws of the living vultures and the violent death of the other.
We stop to catch our breath. Dram pulls me into his arms, so tight I can barely breathe. He draws his sleeve back down over his arm without letting go of me. He is courageous, my Dram, but never reckless. Not unless it concerns me.
We stand beside the cirium shield, so close I imagine I feel the hum of its metallic pulse. It’s made of the ore I was taught to chase. I know its call like it knows mine. If this wall of cirium has secrets to tell, I will hear them.
I pull off my glove and set my hand on the smooth barrier. It is warm, not cool like other metal. I close my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Dram asks.
“Listening.”
“There’s no sound.”
But there is. The cirium shield emits a low hum, an echo of its mother, the flash curtain.
I helped put this barrier here—me and Dram and Graham and Mom and countless Subpars before us. I look down. If Subpars had ever tried to get past it, they would never have gone over. They would have gone under. That is what we do best.
“There’s a tunnel,” I whisper. I drop to my knees and feel under the layers of fine white sand and ash. I can feel it inside myself—a break in the cirium’s song.
Dram kneels beside me. He grabs a piece of bone and starts digging. I grab his wrist. “Wait.” I squint at the silver wall. It reflects the white light of the sky so brightly it’s hard to look at. My eyes start to water. “I thought I saw something.”
“A door?” Dram asks dryly.
I smile. “No. I thought I saw something etched into the cirium. Like writing.”
“Fire,” Dram whispers. We both see it at the same time. A short distance to our left, scratches mar the smooth surface of the metal.
I crawl toward the line of words painstakingly carved at the base of the shield. We kneel side by side, reading the message. The sign. One that only Subpars would truly understand.
WE ARE THE FORTUNATE ONES.
Tears blur my vision, but they don’t keep me from seeing the symbol carved beneath the words: a caver’s mark of parallel lines. The way out.
Dram scoops away layers of sand. “Too bad whoever did this couldn’t leave us a light bolt to mark the entrance.”
“Maybe he did,” I say, lifting an object in my hand. It’s tethered to the ground with a shard of bone. Before I wipe the dust away, I know what it is. A caver’s memorial pendant.
“Holy fire.” Dram smooths his fingers along the green glass that matches the one he wears. And the one Lenore wore.
We know who carved the words.
Dram’s father.