Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  A streak of light flashed by my windows and from downstairs there came the sound of someone rattling the locked doors. Careful to stay hidden, I eased myself off the bed and crawled over to the balcony door—pushing back the curtains a few centimeters to look.

  Outside, four Curadores wearing isolation suits stood in the street. The Dome was dark except for the beams of their flashlights scanning past the house. I cracked the porch door open and listened.

  “Nope . . . doors are locked. Tracker says she’s in there, but we haven’t seen any movement. Not out back either. Decontamination must have gotten her.”

  Pause. Static.

  “On foot. The magfly tracks are a wreck.”

  Pause.

  Static. Then a squeal of feedback.

  “Repeat that last part, Edison.”

  Short pause.

  “Of course . . . I’ll report back if there’s movement anywhere on the street.”

  I eased the door shut again. At least I knew that Edison was still close enough to make contact with the Curadores and I didn’t intend to let him get any farther. More importantly, I knew Edison was afraid I was coming after him. And he was right to be.

  But first I had to find a way to get out of this house. I was too drained to fight my way through Edison’s Curadores, and even if I could, Edison would hear about it. It would defeat the whole point of removing the tracker.

  There was another problem too. Everyone had seen me in my Dia de los Muertos outfit. And I would be easy to pick out in the streets of the Dome if I had no costume at all. That had been the whole point of the Festival—the ability to hide in plain sight.

  I needed to make something new. And quick.

  I rummaged through my closet, picking up the fairy tale again—trying to steady myself.

  “The middle sister agreed to marry the sorcerer. But she said, ‘Give me a day, for I must make myself beautiful for the wedding.’

  “And she sent him away to invite all his friends and relations to the celebration.”

  I grabbed the first thing I found with pockets, a short blue dress. Then I pulled the bottom drawer out of the dresser. Grimm’s feathers lay inside it, catching the candlelight. Leaning against the bed, I sewed Grimm’s feathers onto the fabric—tacking them down with quick stitches on either side of the shaft. Every so often I heard a distant explosion and my fingers worked faster and faster. Until the skirt was covered with them.

  Then the mask. I covered the eyes, the cheeks, the chin with smaller feathers—hiding Riya’s designs. Tall plumes fanned out around the top, concealing the crown of flowers.

  Finally, I removed one of the pouches of explosives from my old dress and sewed it into the hem of my new one. Leaving the other for Tasch.

  I picked up the tracker from the floor. Rolling Tasch onto her side on the bed, I made a small cut above her shoulder blade. I knew she was dead, but I still flinched as a trickle of blood leaked from the wound. Carefully, I slipped the tracker under the skin.

  My cheeks were wet and my throat tightened against my voice. But I forced the words of the story out, as if they could take away the horror.

  “As soon as the sorcerer had gone, the middle sister crept into the gruesome basement to free her sisters. She sent them home and promised to follow soon after. Then she pulled a skull from the basin of blood and took it with her.”

  I pulled the blankets off of Taschen and slit her gown with my knife—letting the ragged fabric fall away. Her body was covered with sores and bruises, and a whimper rose up inside me.

  “This isn’t her,” I reminded myself. “This is only a body.”

  Carefully, I fit Taschen into my corseted dress and arranged her in a chair facing the porch door—her now-pale face stark and terrible against the bright marigolds.

  “She decorated the skull with flowers and a wedding veil and carried it to her bedroom. Then carefully, she placed it on the windowsill.

  “One by one, guests began to arrive at the house for the wedding. They waved to the grinning bride sitting by the upstairs window. Even the sorcerer was fooled when he returned home. Looking up, he delighted in his bride’s wide smile and blew her a kiss.”

  Stripping the bed, I balled up the sheets and pulled down the gauzy canopy, piling them on the mattress. Then I slipped on the feathered dress and tied the mask. One knife in my pocket. One in my boot. Almost ready now.

  “Finally, the sister sliced open the feather bed. She covered herself in honey and rolled in the white feathers. When she was done she looked, not a bit like herself, but like a magnificent bird.”

  Below the window, there were more Curadores now—their isolation suits standing out against the dark street. The perfect audience.

  “Taschen . . .” I looked at the girl propped up and decorated in the chair—that was not my sister. Taschen had finally been given leave from this world and I was not going to keep her here any longer. I kissed the top of her head. “Thank you for . . .”

  But how do you thank someone for being a piece of your soul? So I said, “I’ll look after Lotus for you. I promise.”

  I pulled Lotus’s necklace from the drawer and hung it around my neck. Then tucked the scope with the glass lenses in my pocket. There were still two sisters left.

  I was ready now. Standing off to the side of the balcony window, I yanked down the curtains and added them to the bundle on the bed. Finally, I nested the candle in the middle of it—wax and flames spilling across the cloth.

  The fire caught immediately, flaring up behind Taschen, bright and dramatic. Shouts came from outside. I imagined what Tasch must look like in that gorgeous gown. She would be perfectly framed by the door, the room ablaze around her. Illuminating her in the black night.

  As I fled down the stairs, I heard someone pounding on the front door. “Leica? Are you in there? Quick! Sagan, help me get this door open!”

  Panicked shouting rose up from the front of the house and then they were trying to force their way through the door and the rhythm of their blows matched my heart. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

  I raced through the kitchen to the back door. How long till the flames reached Taschen? Minutes? Seconds?

  Like I’d hoped, the back of the house was empty. Any Curadores who’d been standing guard had run to the front at the first cries of alarm.

  I made it out the back door, just as Curadores rushed in the front. I sprinted around the house and into the street—trying to get clear as fast as I could. In the chaos, no one noticed me as I ran.

  As the sorcerer came into the house, he walked passed the middle sister without even recognizing her.

  “Little Bird,” he said. “Won’t you stay for my wedding?”

  “I cannot,” the sister said. “It is time for me to fly away.”

  When I got to the end of the street, I glanced back. Just for a fraction of a second, I saw her. Taschen’s body blazing white hot. A silhouette of flame.

  Then she erupted into ball of fire and the vast explosion shattered the air. Glass shards and splinters rained down into the night—the house consumed by a magnificent burst of light.

  CHAPTER 45

  I RAN THROUGH the network of streets, my lungs choked with smoke and grief. But I felt strong too—like Tasch’s fire sizzled through my veins as well. I no longer had my tracker, so I was free to follow Edison now. But that was easier said than done. Even if I was right and he’d taken a magfly out to the Indigno camp, we’d just spent the last few hours bombing the hell out of tracks and taking down the Dome’s systems. I just hoped when I found Ada she’d have a better answer than walking.

  And finding Ada in this wreck was going to be its own challenge. When I got to the Complex, the whole place was crackling like an enormous bonfire, and it wasn’t the only building burning. Water misted from the Dome ceiling—trying unsuccessfully to contain the blazes. I had t
o hope—I had to assume—that Ada and the Mothers made it safely to the Genetics Lab.

  There were no streetlamps on anywhere, but I could see by the flicker of flames as I ran through the neighborhood toward the Lab and the Promenade. And what was worse than the fires was the silence. The emptiness. Other than the Curadores outside my house, I’d seen no one.

  Then I heard the hiss. I followed the static, tracking it down one street, then another. Until there, sprawled on the dark asphalt, was Riya—a small radio gripped in her hand.

  I dropped to my knees, scanning for a knife wound. For blood. There was nothing . . . but her body was so still and my voice shook as I called her name. Her eyes stayed closed, her face slack, but I swore her hand twitched.

  Then she started seizing—terrible, violent convulsions. I pried the radio out of her hand, shouting into it, “Hello? I need help!”

  Static roared its blank answer while I pulled Riya onto my lap, trying to keep her from hurting herself.

  My voice sounded so tiny in the empty night. “Please! Anyone!”

  But no one was coming. Adrenaline surged through me and I scooped Riya up, cradling her as I ran through the village toward the Genetics Lab. “You can’t have her too. I won’t let you!”

  I turned down another street, following the magfly lines, and I saw them. My eyes didn’t register what they were at first. Piles of cloth. Heaps of salvage. I slowed to a walk, not wanting them to come into focus. There must have been thirty of them. Limp in the street.

  Riya’s seizure had slowed to a quiver and I laid her gently on a stoop. Then I crept closer. They were gauzy bundles of fabric-draped women. Knives and fighting sticks still gripped in their hands. Some wore masks. Others were barefaced, eyes closed. But like Riya, there was no blood. No obvious injuries.

  And there were Curadores too—dressed in their party finery. They were unmoving, but visibly unhurt as well. Like they had been fighting one minute, then dropped to the ground the next. It made no sense.

  “Edison, what have you done?” my voice was a whisper. Then I felt the burning in my own lungs. More than grief or fear.

  I hoisted Riya over my shoulder and I ran.

  • • •

  I was wheezing by the time I got to the Promenade. The grass was muddied and strewn with more bodies. Whatever had happened to theses people was clearly happening to me too. I dodged and leapt over them, my back aching from carrying my friend. Breath fighting its way in and out of my body. A movement caught my eye, and I ducked behind a bench just as a Curador in an isolation suit walked out of the ruins of the Sanctum.

  He barely glanced around him as he crunched across the broken glass. He obviously wasn’t expecting any surprises. As I watched him cross the lawn—ground blue glass glittering in the path of his headlamp—something bothered me about the scene. I pulled off my mask to get a better look.

  It was too dark.

  The Promenade behind the Curador should have been lit up by the Genetics Lab. Had it been destroyed as well? But then surely there’d be fires or at least ruins. I saw nothing but blackness. Maybe the main computer had been destroyed and none of the systems were working anymore. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t breathe.

  But as the Curador got close to where the Lab should be, his light strobed across the building, reflecting a dull sheen. As if someone had replaced the glass walls with a burnished black metal. Like the walls the flys had made when they’d sealed off the magfly accident.

  The Curador was headed away from the Promenade now, and as he disappeared down a street, I ran—air clawing down my throat. I didn’t bother hiding anymore. My head was spinning, and if Riya and I couldn’t get inside the Lab, then it didn’t matter who found us. But maybe if the flys had sealed this whole building up, the air inside might still be good. Ada and the Mothers might still be safe.

  I readjusted my hold on Riya, and with the last of my energy pounded on the metal shell that encapsulated the entire Genetics Lab.

  “Ada! Let me in!” There was no answer. I pounded again, sliding down the slick surface as my legs gave way. I braced myself with my free hand, trying to keep myself upright, and my fingers caught on a ridge.

  I traced it, hoping it might be a crack—the edge of some sort of door. And in the dim light of the burning magfly, I saw it. An emblem formed into the metal, right where the door should be. The LOTUS flower.

  I fumbled with Lotus’s necklace—my hands shaking so hard I could barely make them grip—pulling it off over my head. The same emblem glimmering in the same metal. And the number.

  I flipped it over, trying to keep it in focus as my vision fuzzed around the edges. A code. Edison had used a code to get in the Labs.

  But, of course, the keypad was unreachable too—on the other side of the seal. My throat and chest, my head, my muscles, my heart—all ached. Begging for oxygen. Sometimes your opponent is stronger than you. And no matter how fast you are, or how smart you fight, you still can’t win.

  “Dammit!” I hit the black metal barrier with all the strength I had left.

  And the necklace in my fist quivered—the pendant pulling on its chain. Straining to close the distance between it and the other LOTUS. But you still fight . . . in whatever way you can.

  With a last shred of hope, I slammed my necklace into the LOTUS flower and the barrier began to hum—my body pulsing with the chorus of a thousand flys. The necklace was vibrating now too. The edges of the pendant melted, then fused with the wall, sending a ripple through the surrounding metal. Then the whole barrier was liquefying—a shimmering, living wall.

  The metal began to ooze up and around my fingers, and remembering the Kisaeng who’d been trapped inside the magfly, I pulled away. But it was too late. The metal was already creeping up my arm. My shoulder. Cinching around my throat. And I could taste it now too. Metallic and bitter. I managed one last gasp before Riya and I were sucked into molten blackness.

  CHAPTER 46

  THE LIGHT WAS BLINDING. I squinted, trying to shield my eyes—it didn’t help. But I could breathe again and that was something. I sat up and checked on Riya, still unconscious on the floor next to me.

  “Don’t move.”

  I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the light. I was on the floor of the main room in the Genetics Lab. Screens flashed and flys flew in manic circles around the high ceiling. A woman I didn’t recognize pointed a long iron and wood rod at me. By the way she was holding it, I was sure it was a weapon.

  “Can I at least see if she’s okay?” I motioned to Riya. The woman nodded, but I was already feeling for the faint pulse on Riya’s wrist. “She’s still alive, but I don’t know for how long. What happened out there?”

  “I don’t think I’ll be the one answering questions right now.” The pale, stone-faced woman did something to her weapon and it made a shick-shick noise. She was wearing a hooped dress and I recognized Riya’s handiwork—she must be a Mother. “No one can get through that door . . . but you did. Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Leica, I need to speak to Ada right now.”

  “Wrong answer.” She pointed the weapon just over my shoulder and fired, the glass behind me blowing apart. I threw my arms over my head, my ears ringing with the noise. “Don’t play games with me. Leica’s dead! Everyone out there is dead . . . except you. So you have one more chance before I shoot your head off. Who are you?”

  After everything, I was going to die here, now, killed by allies. I put my hands in the air. “Please, look! Six fingers! I’m a friend!”

  “Emmy, what the hell’s going on in here?” Ada ran into the room, addressing the Mother, who by now was already lowering her weapon. “We heard—”

  “Leica!” June flew past Ada, descending on me. Hugging me tight. “We saw the fire and then your tracker stopped transmitting . . . we were sure you . . .” Her voice died out as she saw Riya.

/>   “I found her like that. She’s stopped seizing, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Will someone please tell me what’s happening?”

  “Edison initiated some kind of fail-safe and the flys sealed us inside here.” And Ada pointed to the screens, which all read: Quarantine Established. Decontamination Protocol Reinitiated. “It locked down all communications too. Judging by readouts from the filtration system, we think it’s flooding the rest of Dome with something intended to kill, well, anything and everything. We can’t stop it and we can’t get out.” The frustration was clear on her face. Then it turned to confusion. “Wait. How did you get in here?”

  I held up Lotus’s necklace. “This tag. Edison has one too.”

  Ada snatched it from my hand, glanced at it, then immediately punched the code into the computer. All of the screens went black for a second. There was a melodic bwong and they were back up, white words scrolling endlessly down a black screen. Finally, when the new screen loaded, there was the LOTUS flower emblazoned on a grey background. Then a warning flashed onto every monitor simultaneously, in giant letters.

  Decontamination Protocol initiated: 2084. 06. 20. 07:23

  Decontamination Protocol complete: 2084. 06. 20. 12:47

  Decontamination Protocol reinitiated 2592. 11. 01. 21:05

  “Whoa,” June said.

  And the computer responded in a friendly, efficient voice, “LOTUS admin access granted.”

  Ada didn’t waste any time. “Shut down Decontamination Protocol!”

  But the computer simply said, “Decontamination Protocol has not been completed.”

  Ada repeated her command, “Computer, shut down Decontamination Protocol.”

  “Decontamination is at eighty-five percent, not sufficient to terminate all viral and bacterial life-forms. Are you sure you wish to—”

  “Shut down the fucking Decontamination Protocol!”

  “Protocol terminated.” The computer answered. “Seal will be lifted when atmosphere has returned to viable levels.”