“If this is it, then once we’re closer, we won’t have the vantage point for it to lead us,” Bradwell says. “We’ll have to find some focus to keep us on the right trail.”
“We’ve gotten this far,” Partridge says.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” El Capitan says.
Helmud has a slack jaw but his hands still move nervously behind his brother’s back. There’s something in his eyes that makes Pressia wonder if he’s smarter than he looks. “Lucky,” Helmud says.
PRESSIA
SWARM
EL CAPITAN PARKS THE CAR in vines at the foot of the hills. He covers it as well as he can with clumps of plants he pulls from the earth, roots and all. He tells them which plants not to touch. “The one with the spikes on the tips of the three-pronged leaves, they’re acidic. Coated in a thin film of it. They’ll blister you.” He points out a clutch of white flowering mushrooms. “Those are infectious. If you step on them and break them open, they’ll send out spores.” One group, he tells them, was part animal. “Vertebrate,” he says. “They have berries that lure animals that they can choke and eat.”
Pressia walks directly behind Partridge, who walks behind El Capitan, avoiding the most poisonous plants.
Bradwell insists on walking behind everyone, “to keep watch,” but Pressia wonders if he’s worried about her. She remembers the feel of his hand on her neck before he cut out the chip and the gentle touch of his finger on her wrist scar. And his eyes, the gold flecks. Where had they come from? It was as if they’d suddenly appeared. Beauty, you can find it here if you look hard enough. Every once in a while, in a quick shot, she’ll remember how he looked at her, taking in her entire face. The thought of it makes her nervous, the same feeling as having a secret you hope no one ever finds out about.
They’re in the brush, tromping uphill over thorny brambles and spiked vines, trying to stay true to the direction of the white light. Pressia feels unsteady, as if she has the legs of a newborn colt. The ground is unpredictably loose with gravel. She can hear the light noise of their blades tinking against one another as they walk. El Capitan huffs, and Helmud sometimes makes small noises on his back—little clicks and murmurs. Each of them loses their footing from time to time. The wind is stiff and cold. It helps to keep her alert. At their backs, the Deadlands writhe.
She’s aware of her body more keenly now. Her vision is still a little milky, her hearing dimmed. Her head and neck wounds throb.
If she finds her mother, won’t that mark her death? If they somehow get her mother to a safe place and don’t hand her over to the Dome, they’ll become targets, all of them. And if they fail and Special Forces gets hold of their mother first, Pressia will no longer be of use and she’ll be killed.
She feels a well of dread in her stomach. She should be happy that there’s a chance her mother is alive in a bunker in the hills. But if that’s the case, why didn’t she come for Pressia? The bunker isn’t halfway around the world. It’s right here. Why not leave the bunker and search for her daughter and bring her back? What if the answer is simple: It was never worth the risk? What if the answer is: I didn’t love you enough?
Partridge stops so abruptly that she almost runs into his back. “Wait,” he says.
They all stop and fall silent.
“I hear something.”
It’s a faint hum. The humming grows louder.
A hazy golden cloud descends upon them through the trees, and then suddenly there are wings beating around their heads. El Capitan bats the air. Pressia strikes what seems to be a swarm of large bees with heavily armored shells, like beetles. The hum fills her head, her chest. It vibrates through the surrounding trees. The insects are like a hive spinning around her head. Partridge smacks a few. They fall to the brambles.
But then she sees one of them—just one, stalled on the ground. It looks like Freedle, except not rusty and mottled. She picks it up in her hand, cupping it so it doesn’t fly away. She knows this sensation immediately. A fat shiny insect crawling on her palm. Its wings fold in close to its body, like a cicada except that it’s made of filigree metal, light and ornate. It has fine wire ribs and gears that churn slowly, a wasp’s stinger—a golden needle like a tail—and small eyes on the sides of the head. “Wait. These are good,” she says. The insect then lets out a familiar click and purr.
“How do you know?” Partridge asks.
“I’ve had one of these as a pet almost all my life.”
“Where did yours come from?” Bradwell asks.
“I don’t know. It was just always there.”
“The birthday card,” Partridge says. “Follow your soul. May it have wings.”
“Do you think she sent them?” Pressia asks.
“If she did, then she knows we’re coming,” Bradwell says. “It’s not possible.”
“How else will we know exactly where to go from here on the ground in the hills? They’re here to lead us the rest of the way,” Partridge says. “It’s part of the plan. It’s just been a very long time coming.”
“But anyone could have found that necklace and held it up,” Bradwell says. “These insects could be leading the enemy to her.”
The cicada twitches in Pressia’s palm. She bends closer, opens her hand just enough so that she can see through the slits between her fingers.
Its gears speed up. It cocks its head. And one of its eyes flashes a beam of light into her left eye. She blinks. Her eyes tear. The locust tries again.
“A mechanical insect with a retinal scan,” Partridge says.
“It’s old world,” Bradwell says. “But it doesn’t seem to recognize Pressia’s retinas.”
Pressia hands it to Partridge. “You try it. If she sent it, it will recognize you.”
A bead in the center of the insect’s chest flickers. Its wings flutter.
“It knows who you are,” Bradwell says.
The locust starts beating its wings.
Partridge flattens his palm and raises it up. “Let’s see where it goes.”
If these insects were sent by her mother, was Freedle a gift from her?
The insect, now aglow, flits into the air, dipping through limbs.
PARTRIDGE
PULSES
THE LOCUSTS HAVE ALL SCATTERED EXCEPT for the one that did the retinal scans. It’s a strange sensation, to be known for your retinas. Partridge assumes that his mother set this up before the Detonations, that she planned ahead and had his retinas recorded. How else? The specificity of her plan unnerves him. If she could do so much to prepare, why couldn’t she have kept the family together? He wants to know what happened in the final days.
But her plan also feels scattered, buckshot. There were so many places they could have lost the trail that he wonders if his mother ever really believed that he would put all these riddles together. In his childhood, weren’t there some presents he couldn’t find without her help with the riddle she’d concocted for him? He supposes that the plan took shape out of desperation. She worked with what she had under constraints he couldn’t imagine.
The insect is up ahead, flying quickly through the trees, much faster than they are. It’s strange to see someone as gruff as El Capitan following a dainty winged bug, as if he’s a butterfly collector.
Bradwell, Pressia, El Capitan and his brother—these are his friends now, his own herd. He thinks of the herd of academy boys as he last saw them, saying their good-byes in the coding center. Vic Wellingsly, Algrin Firth, the Elmsford twins—broad shouldered, low-voiced. They shoved each other around and went their separate ways. Partridge misses Hastings all of a sudden. Did he ever have lunch with Arvin Weed like Partridge told him to? Or did he try to join the herd? Have any of them thought much of Partridge since? He wonders what story they’ve been fed about his disappearance. Maybe they think he had a ticker put in and someone flipped the switch to put him out of his misery, just like they said.
El Capitan stops up ahead. He holds up one finger and points into the woods. E
veryone freezes and looks. Partridge squints into the shadows. He sees a very quick shifting of light. A limb bobs. Leaves rustle. But no one is there.
“It’s them,” El Capitan says. “Special Forces. That’s how they communicate with each other. Feel the electricity? It’s like echolocation.”
“Special Forces?” Partridge says.
“But how can they know we’re here?” Bradwell asks.
“The chip is gone,” Pressia says. “It doesn’t make sense.”
A pulse of electricity prickles his skin and crackles like static electricity. The buzz is in the air. Partridge tries to follow the pulse, which moves wave-like.
“They’re part animal, part machine,” El Capitan says. “They can sniff you out.”
“But not miles away,” Pressia says. “They were tipped off.”
Partridge looks at Pressia. “Your eyes,” he says. “The retinal scan should have picked up your eyes as well as mine. I mean, she probably got both of us scanned, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Interference,” Partridge says. “That’s why.”
There’s a quick series of pulses now, crisscrossing the woods.
“What are you talking about?” Bradwell asks.
“Where have you been?” Partridge asks Pressia. “I mean, that car. That didn’t survive the Detonations. It’s from the Dome. So other stuff from the Dome is here, too. Right? What have they done to you?”
“At OSR headquarters, they dressed me, fed me, tried to make me shoot people, and eventually, when I was taken to the farmhouse, they poisoned me.”
“Poisoned you?”
“I don’t know what happened really. I passed out, they put me under with ether of some kind, and I woke up later in the car. I had a headache, and I felt out of it. Everything was blurry and my ears felt muffled.”
“You’re bugged,” Partridge says.
“What do you mean?” Bradwell says.
“Her eyes, her ears. Jesus,” he says. “They’ve seen everything she’s seen, heard everything she’s said.” He looks at Pressia and wonders, for a moment, if his father is watching him now. He imagines that he’s looking past her eyes and into the Dome.
Pressia whispers, “I got the chip taken out for nothing?”
“No,” Bradwell says. “This is temporary, right? We can get her free of all this, can’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Partridge says.
“The electrical pulses are getting stronger,” El Capitan says, “which means they’re closing in fast.”
“Okay, let’s stay calm,” Bradwell says. “She’s bugged. That’s all.”
“It’s worse, actually,” Partridge says. He doesn’t want to say the next part, but he has to. “Your headache. Do you have a cut, a bruise?”
“I think I hit my head while I was fighting Ingership.”
Partridge thinks of Hastings, how he was panicked about the ticker. Partridge told him it isn’t real, that it is a myth. It’s not.
“What is it?” Bradwell says. “What’s wrong? Talk to us.”
The pulses are coming even faster now. The crackling, buzzing electricity seems to be ricocheting around them through the trees.
“She’s got a bomb in her head,” Partridge says.
“What the hell are you saying?” Bradwell asks.
Pressia looks at the ground, as if she’s remembering what happened at the farmhouse, putting pieces together.
Partridge says, “They’ve got a switch that they can flip, and if they do, her head will explode.”
Everyone looks at Pressia. For a moment, Partridge wonders if she’s going to start crying. He wouldn’t blame her. Instead, she gazes solemnly back at them, her eyes steady, as if she accepts it. Partridge realizes that he still fights the idea that humans are capable of such evil.
Pressia looks away, uphill. Her vision catches on something. “It’s stopped. It’s hovering.”
And there is the cicada, batting a small circle over one particular spot.
El Capitan runs to it and starts digging through the dirt with his bare hands. He wipes a crescent pane of thick glass. “It’s here.”
Partridge runs over and lies down on his stomach to look inside. It’s dark, but there’s a distant glow somewhere deep inside the earth. “This is it!” he says. “Get a rock. We can try to break in.”
The pulses are almost constant. The electrical buzz whines, set at a higher pitch. There’s no time to get a rock.
The bodies emerge, one by one, from the trees, until there are five of them. They’re grotesque—monstrous thighs and swollen chests; their arms, thick with muscle, are fused with arsenals—and their faces are distorted, their craniums bulging distortions of elongated and protruding bones. Could these soldiers once have been academy boys, jostling across the turf greens, sitting through Welch’s lectures in front of the art projector, listening to Glassings make his dangerous asides? How many of them has the Dome done this to? Is this what they were going to do to Sedge? Was this future part of the reason he killed himself?
One of them knocks El Capitan to the ground with an elbow cross to his face. El Capitan falls hard. Helmud takes the brunt of the fall. The soldier rips El Capitan’s rifle loose from his grip.
Another moves into view, partially hidden by billowing white cloth. But then Partridge sees that the white is clothing, a jumpsuit. A small figure, a shaved head, a face covered with a white scarf. A woman. The soldier—if that’s what he can be called—is holding her around the waist. He pulls down the scarf.
Lyda—her delicate cheekbones now dusted with ash, her startlingly blue eyes, her lips, and dainty nose. “Why are you here?” Partridge asks, amazed, but he knows the answer, at least in part. She’s a hostage. She’s here to force him to make a decision. But what decision?
“Partridge,” she whispers, and he sees that she’s holding a blue box in her hands. He wonders for a moment if she’s come all this way to give him something that she forgot earlier—a boutonniere for the dance? He knows that the thought is illogical, but he can’t shake it.
She lifts the box. “It’s for someone named Pressia Belze,” she says, and she glances at everyone standing before her.
Pressia steps forward and walks to Lyda. Pressia clearly doesn’t want to take the box.
Lyda is hesitant too. She says, “Are you the swan?”
“What did you say?” Partridge asks.
“Who here is the swan?” Lyda asks.
“Did someone tell you something about a swan?” Partridge says.
“They’re waiting for the swan,” Lyda says, and then she pushes the box into Pressia’s hands. “That’s all I know.” She wants to get rid of the gift. She’s scared of it.
Pressia looks at Lyda and then at the soldiers around her. The red target lights of their guns are trained on Pressia’s chest. Her hands are shaking. She opens the box, fiddles with some tissue paper. She looks at what’s inside, and Partridge can tell that, at first, it makes no sense to her. But then she looks up and lets the box fall to the ground. Her face has gone pale. She staggers backward and drops to her knees.
Lyda reaches for her or perhaps the box, but the soldier jerks her back.
“Get up!” the soldier shouts. Pressia looks up. The soldier has a red bead of light trained on her forehead. And then the soldier speaks more quietly. “Get up. Come on. It’s time.”
And it’s in that softer voice—maybe the rhythm of the words—that Partridge hears his brother’s voice, talking to him in the way he used to when Partridge was just a sleepy kid waking up, kicking sheets.
Get up. Come on. It’s time.
Sedge.
PRESSIA
TUNNEL
AT FIRST PRESSIA TELLS HERSELF that her grandfather is not dead. They’ve taken out the fan, repaired his throat, and stitched him up. Pressia is still on her knees. She can’t get up. She looks at the girl’s face. A Pure. Someone Partridge knows. Someone he calls Lyda. “He’s not dead,” Press
ia says.
“I’m supposed to tell you that it’s all they have left,” Lyda says gently.
The small set of fan blades looks polished, as if someone took their time. Pressia’s grandfather is dead. That’s what this means. And what does the light through the crescent window dug into the dirt mean—that her mother is alive? Is this the way the world works—endless taking and giving? It’s cruel.
Still on her knees, Pressia grabs a fistful of dirt.
There’s a bomb in her head. The Dome sees what she sees, hears what she hears. They’ve heard everything she and Bradwell said to each other last night—the confession of his lie, his desire to see his father with an engine in his chest, her scar. She feels stripped of all privacy. She looks at Bradwell; his beautiful face looks anguished. She closes her eyes. She refuses to let them see anything. She presses the doll head and her dirty hand to her ears. She’ll starve them—the enemy, the people who killed her grandfather, who could kill her by exploding her head with a remote-control switch. But this makes it worse. She’s punishing herself in order to punish someone else. Kill me, she wants to whisper. Just do it—as if she could call their bluff. The problem is that they aren’t bluffing.
She looks at Bradwell again. He gazes at her as if he desperately wants to help her. He says her name, but she shakes her head. What can he do? They killed Odwald Belze, and then it was someone’s job to polish the fan that had been in his throat and wrap it in pale blue tissue paper and find the perfect box. The people who did this are in her head. These are simple unalterable facts.
Pressia stands, her fist still clenching dirt. She’s crying, silently. The tears work their way down her face.
Partridge looks dazed. His expression is a strange mix of fear and maybe anxious anticipation. He looks at the girl, Lyda, and the soldier beside her.
The beasts Pressia saw with El Capitan just days ago are soldiers. They were once human, once boys. She spots the cicada. It has perched on a furred leaf and tucked in its wings. Its light has faded.
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