Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  I could tell by Nik’s tone that he’d forgotten where we were. What was happening here. But Edison hadn’t—I was sure of that. He was doing everything in his power to pull Nik back into a time when it was the two of them against the world. Giving Nik the satisfaction of piecing together the mystery they’d been born to solve.

  I’d have to think for both of us, then. I peeked out from my hiding spot next to the open door—checking if it was safe to make my move. The two of them were in profile now, and as I shifted, I discovered I could see their reflections in the window of one of the food synthesizers. Squatting next to the plane in safety, I watched, waiting for my moment.

  “Only . . .” Confusion clouded Nik’s face. “What makes you think they’re going to welcome us back now?”

  “Because they need us!” Edison’s voice was suddenly infused with compassion and it was clear he was intent on drawing Nik into his scheme. “The dead zone did nothing to stop the spread of Red Death. Los Angeles was infected in a matter of hours. The west coast in a matter of days. They kept expanding the dead zone, but Red Death kept spreading. And with a ninety percent fatality rate, it only took a few months for the whole world to fall apart.”

  Nik played right into Edison’s hand, his face filled with horrified fascination. “Even if there was still electricity, anything with a computer in it would’ve broken down in a matter of years or even months . . . and there would’ve been no one to fix it.”

  “And nothing to fix it with.” Edison stepped toward Nik, reeling him in, and I tensed. Turn toward Nik! Go on! Look away!

  “They would’ve been too busy just trying not to starve,” Nik said.

  “You see it now, don’t you? We were never meant to save the Dome.” Then Edison threw his arm around Nik. “We were meant to save the world!”

  And I could see it too. Gabriel—our valley—had survived because the Dome’s technology had remained intact. It’d kept us all alive. But the rest of the world wouldn’t have had anything like the Dome to safeguard them. And now Edison was going to take our incredibly advanced tech back out into the world. He wouldn’t just be a hero. He would be a God.

  “Then Jenner was right . . . this is what we were made for.” Nik was smiling, but his eyes flicked to me as he threw an arm around Edison. Pivoting his brother away from me and the plane.

  I jumped up, scrambling into the compartment, and plunged the detonator into the bomb. I hit the timer—red numbers flashed three-zero-zero. Then they started counting down. Edison would not get the chance to destroy another world.

  Through the doorway, I flashed three fingers at Nik and he nodded. We both knew that Edison would never let Nik share any of the power this new tech would bring. Edison liked to rule alone.

  I backed out of the compartment and, keeping low, crept toward the nose of the plane. Trying to stay hidden. Trying to hurry. Trying to stay silent. Two minutes, forty seconds.

  Nik kept talking, distracting Edison while I put distance between myself and the bomb. “If the whole world was infected, why keep the dead zone?”

  “Same reason the Dome never let in the Citizens. The outside world never came up with a cure, but they weren’t saturated in the contagion like we were. With strict quarantine procedures, they managed to eradicate the disease. They haven’t had a case in—”

  A squawk of feedback blasted through the plane’s radio as I slipped past the cockpit. I leapt back, my skirt swishing around me, and the squealing stopped. My stomach dropped as I looked down at my dress and realized what I’d done. Grimm’s feathers. I’d decorated myself with a whole array of shiny antennas.

  I ran.

  But Edison ran faster. He had me by my arm and was dragging me around the front of the plane before I’d made it three steps. “Why, Leica! How lovely of you to join us! I should’ve known a little bonfire wouldn’t stop you. Though you put on quite a show for my Curadores.”

  Edison thought he’d won. But my mind was on the clock, running down the seconds. There couldn’t be more than two minutes left. I’d rather not die, but I was willing to.

  “I suppose Nik bestowed his little miracle upon you too.”

  I needed to keep him talking—distract him while the clock ran out. And I knew just the spot to hit. “Yeah . . . too bad for you that Nik turned out to be the smart brother.”

  Edison laughed, pulling me close so my face was pressed against the speakers of his suit—his words rumbling through me. “Intelligence isn’t everything.”

  Nik was only a few feet away, but his voice was very soft when he said, “Let her go.”

  “Of course, brother . . . in a minute.”

  As Edison smiled at Nik, I pulled my dagger from my pocket, wanting to cut the smug smile off Edison’s face. But Edison seized my wrist and twisted hard, turning the knife on me.

  There was a glint of silver as he forced me to slice my own arm and then his hand—tearing a gash through the white isolation suit and into his palm. Blood flowed down my arm, dripping on the sand. Staining my skin.

  Nik was moving, but Edison had already clasped his injured hand around my bleeding arm. My mind went blank with the agony of it—the pain finally catching up with me. And by the time Nik had closed the distance between us, Edison had got what he wanted. The nanites.

  He threw me at Nik, my limp body slamming into Nik’s chest. My dagger flying. The two of us skidding into the sand.

  “I guess I should thank you for sparing me the task of killing my own brother.” Edison stripped off his isolation suit as we scrambled to our feet.

  But I barely heard him over the refrain in my head. One minute. One minute. One minute.

  Nik’s hands curled into fists. But I grabbed his arm, stopping Nik from going after Edison. “Don’t! Can’t you see that he’s won?”

  But Edison’s face changed as I pulled Nik away, seeing through my pleas of surrender. “I told you we were the same, Leica. And neither us would ever give up.”

  Edison seemed to think for a second, then climbed into the plane and rooted around. A moment later he said, “Ah, here it is.” And came out holding the pouch of explosives.

  “Thirteen seconds. You definitely don’t disappoint.” He pulled out the detonator and, almost amused, he tossed it on the ground. “I’ve asked you once before to come with me . . . here in this same place.” Edison looked around the Indigno camp. “And now I’m asking you again. You know there’s nothing . . . no one . . . left for you inside that Dome.”

  “They were your own people!” Rage shook my voice and I didn’t try to control it. Let him think he’d succeeded with his Decontamination Protocol. Let him stay cocky.

  Fear tinged Nik’s words. “Edison, what did you do?”

  In a cold voice Edison said, “I simply finished the job.”

  I didn’t need a bomb or a self-destruct button. My second knife was already in my hand. My feet already moving.

  I would’ve killed him. We would’ve. But Marisol suddenly burst into the clearing, flinging herself at Edison’s feet. “Don’t you dare leave me here!”

  Her eyes were wild. Face caked with grit and tears. “They’re dead. All of them.” Her shredded dress dragged in the dirt as she clung to Edison’s legs, begging him. “You can’t just leave me here to die.”

  There was a madness in her, and even Edison took some kind of pity on her. Or maybe her prostrations made him feel more powerful. Either way, he helped her up, wiped off her face, and lied. “You know I’d never leave you.”

  I met Nik’s eyes. If we wanted to stop Edison, we’d have to kill them both now—if Marisol had proven anything, it was that she was a fighter. And they’d be painful, violent deaths—fists and knives. But I was a fighter too.

  I adjusted my grip on the knife, six fingers wrapping tight around the hilt. Then I heard the shick-shick and I saw Edison’s gun pointed directly at my fac
e. “Not tonight, sweet Leica. As much as I’d like one last dance, there’s simply no time.”

  His gun was smaller than the Mother’s, but I guessed just as deadly. And like that, it was over.

  “Like I said, life wants to live.” Edison shrugged, and gave us a smug grin as he helped Marisol onto the plane and slammed the doors. After all the planning, after all the fighting, there was nothing more to do. Numb with shock, Nik and I backed away as the engines roared into life. And through the shimmering waves of heat, I saw the pup running toward me. Tail wagging. Wonderfully alive.

  Even as Edison and Marisol lifted off the ground—the wind of the engine scalding my face and throat—a tiny hope blossomed in my chest. With Edison gone, we could start over. The outside world would get what they wanted . . . and maybe we would too.

  Edison had forgotten his own lesson—he’d underestimated us. If the pup had been saved, maybe Riya had been too. Maybe they all could be.

  I crouched down, wrapping my arms around the pup as she barked madly at the rising plane. Then I saw it. Or rather, didn’t see it. The explosives, the detonator, they were gone.

  Marisol. She’d played the devoted Kisaeng so convincingly.

  “Don’t look!” I grabbed onto Nik and pulled him to the ground just as the sky exploded with a flash of white. The plane combusted in a great orange fireball. Raining debris and ash and death down on all of us.

  CHAPTER 49

  MY VOICE WAS HOARSE, but I raised it up anyway. The words rasping against my scorched throat. “May the fire cleanse you. May you take wing from the ashes and be remade. You are worthy.”

  A tear streaked down my cheek as I knelt in the grit. Mourning the girl I’d known. The ruthless, unflinching woman Marisol had become. And the courage she’d died with.

  I wished this was not happening again. I wished this was not how our new world had to begin—built on the bones of the old. But maybe that’s how worlds are made.

  Nik and I clung to each other, there in the sand. Each lost in our own complicated grief. Until a cold, wet nose wedged itself between us. Nudging my arm up and out of the way. Insisting that she be included in the hug.

  And when she couldn’t stand it any longer, the pup bowled me over. Humid, stinky breath in my face. Cleaning off my tears with her sticky tongue.

  “Okay. Okay!” I laughed, pushing her away. “Enough.”

  And it was.

  • • •

  Nik and I held hands as we climbed the steep hill out of the valley in silence. The pup led the way with a wagging tail. Impatient with our slowness, she ran ahead, then doubled back to check on us. Then ran ahead again.

  “Do you think that’s who I was talking to on the radio, then?” I asked, thinking out loud. I had so many questions, but this one had been with me since I first discovered the plane. “Do you think it was someone from the LOTUS Corporation, way on the other side of the mountains? Can they really not have known we were here . . . all this time?”

  Nik was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “If you infected and then murdered millions of people, I doubt you’d go looking very closely at the end results. Especially if things generally appeared the way you expected them to. I think you’d just try to bury what happened and get on with the job of putting the world back together.”

  I nodded. “Do you think our people ever imagined we’d still be hiding here, believing our own lies five hundred years later? Do you think they’d even recognize who we’ve become?”

  We crested the ridge, and we could see fragments of the burning plane strewn all across Tierra Muerta. Pillars of smoke staining the early dawn—black against the fading grey.

  “I don’t know,” Nik said. “But we’re alive, aren’t we?”

  “Well,” I said, gazing up at the open sky, “we certainly are now.”

  • • •

  We hiked out to the magfly I’d left behind. But when we reached it, I had to coax the pup aboard, holding her while Nik closed the door. She whined a little.

  “I know.” I buried my face in her soft fur. “But we’re going home.”

  The sky turned pink and ash floated down across the valley like snow. Nik and I stood hand in hand watching the burning wasteland slide past. There were more fires on the Festival Grounds and fear clutched at my heart. What would be left of Pleiades? I hit the emergency brakes, the magfly dragging its rudders in the sand.

  But when I got out, I was relieved to see they were simply bonfires, granting light and warmth to the crowded grounds. Behind the crackling flames, the nine buildings of Pleiades stood tall and untouched, shimmering in the rising sun. I had no prayers left in me—I had given Marisol my final one. So I simply let the words float up on the morning air.

  “Thank you.”

  People were everywhere. Carrying bodies on cots and improvised stretchers. Corralling groups of children. Asking for news of loved ones. And Lotus stood in the middle of it all, her voice booming across the Festival Grounds.

  “Conscious patients in the north corner! Unconscious in the east. Dead in west. And if you come across anyone you suspect might not have been dosed by the flys, take them to the south corner.”

  Alejo touched Lotus’s arm gently and pointed to Nik and me, crossing the field. Her face lit up and her body, which had been bent with exhaustion, suddenly lifted and stretched taller. She made a tiny understated wave—a happy, sad, perfect gesture in the midst of all the turmoil.

  As I returned the wave, I was surprised to realize that she no longer looked anything like Taschen had. Lotus only looked like herself now. And it made my heart hurt and glad at the same time.

  But when we reached her, Lotus was all business. She looked at Nik first. “Ada’s gonna be glad to see you. She’s in the south corner dosing people with nanites and I know she could use your help.”

  “Of course.” Nik squeezed my hand, already turning and jogging across the field.

  “Alejo, can you take the pup down to the tunnels? If anyone can find Jaesun down there, it’ll be her.”

  “Jaesun’s missing?” My chest tightened. I had lost too many people over the course of the day.

  “The whole tunnel collapsed while they were getting the last folks out,” she said. “We’ve been digging for hours, but there’s so much rubble, it’s hard to know where to look.”

  Alejo and another Indigno had already jumped into action—finding a bit of jerky, enticing the pup out to the Reclamation Fields—and I noticed the way they looked at Lotus. With complete confidence. She’d become someone people were happy to follow. She’d become someone I’d be happy to follow. And I was glad to call her my sister.

  But once we were alone, the face of the fearless leader dropped away and there was my little sister underneath. Her shoulders caved in and weariness crept to the surface.

  I pulled her to me, smiling even in my own sadness. “You’re alive!”

  “Actually, I think I’m the one who’s earned the right to be surprised.” She hugged me tight. “You were already reported dead once tonight . . . and then, when I saw the explosion, I was sure.”

  “You know about Taschen?” My voice was soft.

  Lotus nodded. “I was one of the first ones Nik treated, so once I recovered, I was able to help other Indignos clear the labs. They found Tasch in that first hour too, but . . .” And she let herself cling to me for a second before pulling herself upright again. “We lost so many of them . . . probably lost a third of the wards.”

  A third. It was a sobering figure.

  Inside the Dome, the story was the same. Thanks to the nanites, most people survived the Decontamination Protocol, but not all.

  June met me at the door of the Genetics Lab, where an exhausted, but very much alive, Riya was hovering over a sleeping Oksun.

  “Are they okay?”

  “Yes,” June said, with a tired smile.
“Thanks to Ada’s quick thinking, everyone who was in the streets was fine; the concentration of the toxin wasn’t strong enough to kill them. But the gas was piped directly into the Salvage Hall . . .”

  “Sarika and her followers.” And I thought of the look of rapture on Sarika’s unmoving face.

  June nodded.

  It hurt that my last real memory of Sarika was her abandoning me to a mob. Still. She’d been true to own her beliefs. She’d sacrificed herself for them.

  “There must have been fifty Citizens down there,” I said.

  June took my hand. “I know.”

  There had been other tragedies too. Planck and one of the Ellas had died in the riots, along with a handful of other Curadores. And there was Jenner, of course.

  But there was good news too. The pup found Jaesun and his group alive and unharmed, if a little hungry and thirsty. Olivia had been found and revived in Ward C. The Dome was trashed, but intact—along with the Meat Brewery, the water pumps, the generators, and the Salvage Hall. And all through the day, Nik’s nanites continued to win the battle, healing the Citizens and inoculating the Curadores and Mothers.

  I was also spared the task I’d been dreading since I’d stepped out onto the Festival Grounds—how to tell people about Earth. It turned out that while I’d been out in Tierra Muerta, Ada had been combing through the LOTUS files and learned all about it, the same way Edison had. News had spread through the Dome like flys and by dawn, everyone knew. All day, I overheard snatches of conversations—curious, disbelieving, angry, even a few people excited about the revelation. But in truth there was so much to do, no one had time to really absorb the idea. That would be for tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that.

  Today was for saying good-bye.

  • • •

  By the time the sun set, everyone was either strong enough to stand, or they were on the pyres.