Lark Ascending

by Meagan Spooner

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  Caesar let go of my arm, sensing the shift in my mood. “I don’t know. She was fine, and then the gas happened—it’s like she went crazy. Lost control. It’s like when she blew the supply depot at the Institute, only—”

  “Only you didn’t plan it this time,” I finished for him.

  He lifted his chin, his one good eye meeting mine. His lips pressed together, refusing to speak, but I saw it in his face. Regret. Apology. Anger. “I took her home because I thought it’d be safe,” he said. “But then I heard people coming in from the street. I brought her up here, I thought it’d be safer if—” He swallowed hard.

  “If she exploded.”

  “Stop her,” he gasped, weariness evident in the way his shoulders drooped. He must have had to bodily drag her up here. “I know you can, why do you think we sent you away before the explosion? But this—this isn’t what I wanted.”

  I wanted to scream at him that this is what happened when you tried to use these forces, to bend them to your liking. But Eve moaned in my mind, and my attention snapped back to her. Her head was thrown back now, eyes skyward, lips parted in that same silent scream I’d seen in the underground chamber at the Institute. Though no glass wires connected her to anything now, I saw the power flaring up around her, seeking the machinery that had once kept her captive.

  “Eve!” I shouted, trying to move toward her. The power pushed back, and my shoes slipped against the pavement. “You’re just panicking.” My voice was barely audible over the crackle and hum of magic.

  She couldn’t hear me. An arc of power snapped upward, connecting with the roiling storm of the Wall overhead with a deafening crack.

  EVE. I shouted it with my mind, putting all my power behind it.

  She didn’t reply, but I saw her body twitch in response. She’d heard me that time.

  You have to stop! I shouted. You’re remembering what they did to you. You’re safe now. Caesar’s here. I’m here. You have to calm down.

  Fractured images slid down the bond connecting us. Needles. Wires. The color red. A saccharine smile. Screaming. I nearly dropped to my knees and fought to stay upright, knowing that if I fell, I wouldn’t be able to get back up.

  “Lark!” A voice behind me penetrated the haze of magic. Kris.

  I couldn’t turn to look, but threw up a hand to keep him back. I couldn’t have him near me. And he would only make it harder for Eve to get control of herself.

  Eve’s back arched, her hair lifting from her shoulders as though tossed by an impossible wind, wind that couldn’t exist inside the Wall. I felt the hairs lifting on my arms and took another step, fighting against the push of her power. I couldn’t touch her, Kris’s presence was enough of a reminder of that. But if I could get near, perhaps I could shield her and soften the blow.

  Fight it, I thought at her. Don’t become what they made you. Power doesn’t make you a weapon. It gives you a choice.

  Eve’s eyes snapped open and met mine. For an instant I could sense more than feelings and images; I was a part of her, thinking what she thought and feeling what she felt. The panic ebbed, easing back and parting to show what lay inside. Rage and hatred and the utter, utter certainty that she was right. That this was right.

  Panic wasn’t leading her to do this. She was choosing it.

  No—Eve, wait—

  Eve threw her head back. I had a single instant to act, and I flung the shield around her that I’d used to hide from the pixies.

  Her power bashed against mine once, twice—and then the world exploded.

  I was thrown against the door to the staircase, colliding so hard I blacked out for a second. When I came to, the world had gone dark again. I blinked, struggling to regain my balance, drag myself upright. The building was still here. Kris and Caesar were alive—I could hear them groaning and stirring. Eve was slumped where she’d been crouched, still—but breathing.

  Afterimages blinded me as I battled confusion, trying to figure out why it was so dark. Eve was no longer glowing, but it was more than that. Always at night there was still some light, a soft, gentle glow from the violet cocoon enclosing us.

  The Wall. My head tipped back, and my heart froze.

  The shimmering violet of the Wall was gone, replaced by inky blackness. No comforting shimmer, no background hum of magic. But neither were there stars overhead, or clouds or the moon. Just darkness, stretching on forever.

  My ears rang with the sudden silence, broken only by the pounding of my pulse. Panic gripped my throat and squeezed, dropping me back down onto my knees; my eyes searched for something, anything, to interrupt that black expanse. Once, I had thought the stars were the most terrifying thing I could imagine. Now I would have cried to see just one twinkling above me. The darkness closed in around me, smothering and thick.

  I heard a shout in the distance, Enforcer or rebel, I could not tell; it was a wail of confusion, despair. The Wall was supposed to be eternal. No matter what, it was our protection against everything in the outside world. It was what made this home.

  My eyes had begun to adjust and see that it wasn’t just darkness enclosing the city. There was a weight to it, definition. I strained, staring hard through the gloom.

  It was iron. Like the Wall had looked on the outside, only now it was encasing us. Cold, dead metal spread across the city, impenetrable and finite. The Wall had petrified; we were trapped.

  My eyes fell on Kris, who looked across the intervening space at me. He’d gone white, and I knew why. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d told me, that everyone in this city was a shadow waiting to happen the moment the magic ran out. Without the Wall and its gentle magic glow, there’d be nothing to sustain this city’s humanity. It was impossible to know how long it would take; we could no longer afford to wait for reinforcements. Because once the residual magic drained away, everyone I was fighting to save would become a monster.

  CHAPTER 24

  “We have to press the attack.” Asher, who had been among the rebels who escaped along with me, paced from one end of the couch to the other, nervous energy spilling out at his every movement. “Use their disorganization.”

  “What makes you think they’re any less organized than we are?” I argued, frustration beginning to show in the shortness of my words, the bitter edge to my voice.

  “We’re smaller. We can mobilize faster.”

  We were gathered in what had once been my parents’ living room, after having dragged Eve into the basement to lock her there until we could figure out what to do with her. I glanced at Caesar, who was uncharacteristically silent. I’d expected him to join in Asher’s war cry, but instead he sat there, kneading the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. His knuckles were red and irritated, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  I sighed and spoke slowly. “I know you want to find Alice. We all have people missing.” My mind seized on the image of Oren’s face, the fear and shadow consuming him as Kris dragged me away. “But assuming we’ll win because we’re the smaller force is mad.”

  Asher kicked the ruined couch, grimacing in pain before dropping down onto a creaky chair. “Well, what do you propose then?”

  I felt his eyes, Caesar’s, even Kris’s, from where he sat in the corner, all come to rest on me. Eve had asked me the same question. I had no answer. “We have to keep Eve under control. We have to stay hidden. The Institute will be occupied for a time, trying to figure out a way to slow the drain of magic.”

  Kris lifted his head. “This will only make them more desperate,” he pointed out. “They’ll be taking prisoners to be harvested.”

  Asher’s face flashed agony, his missing sister at the top of his thoughts.

  I shook my head, narrowing my eyes at Kris. “We can’t let that get out,” I warned him. “If the others knew what would happen to them once the magic ran out, we’d have complete panic.”

  Kris raised his eyebrows at me. “More than there already is?”

>   He had a point. The fraction of the rebel army that had ended up with us was huddled below in the lobby and first-and second-floor apartments. I’d only spent a few minutes there before the stench of fear and despair overwhelmed me, and I’d called this meeting of the leadership. Such as it was.

  Now, though, all I wanted to do was yell at them to leave me alone, to let me absorb the implications of what had happened. I needed time to make decisions. I needed Caesar to wake up, to start taking charge again. Even a bloodthirsty leader was better than no leader at all.

  But they were all looking at me, so I lifted my head. “Keeping the people we have safe is our top priority. We’re not going to waste these lives on an all-out attack. The streets are crawling with machines; we’d never even make it to the Institute gates.”

  “But if we keep retreating, they’ll just keep finding ways to pick us off bit by bit,” protested Asher.

  “We aren’t going to keep retreating. We’ll hide here for now.” I leaned forward. “Kris, you know them better than anyone. Do you have any idea why they’re still using machines, when magic is at such a premium?”

  “It’s hard to extract the magic once it’s been transferred to a machine,” Kris explained. “You can retrieve some of it, but it’s an imperfect process and they’d lose a lot of the power. They’re not going to drain the machines already running.”

  “So we just have to last until this round of machines runs out of fuel?” I asked.

  Kris nodded uneasily. “I think so. If I were them, I wouldn’t waste any more of the Resource on their machines. They’ll assume they’ve caught most of the rebels by then anyway.”

  Unspoken was the very real possibility that we’d be caught by then too. But no one voiced that fear.

  “What about Alice?” Asher murmured. “What about the rest of our people?”

  “We’ll look for them.” I spoke instantly. It seemed to me that leadership, even pretended leadership, was simply about sounding more sure than I felt. “The Institute’s patrols are looking for people on the ground. In the Iron Wood, they had the advantage over the shadows because their scouts kept to the trees. We’ll stick to the rooftops and send out a few people at a time to scout for survivors.”

  “Why not send all of us out?” Asher pressed. “With that many eyes, we’d be sure to—”

  “Sure to get noticed,” Kris interrupted. His wit had not vanished with his ordeal, only his humor. I missed the old Kris.

  Asher glared at Kris with thinly disguised dislike, his lip curling. I couldn’t blame him. Kris was still wearing the red coat he’d worn when they tossed him out on the steps and left him for dead. It was hard not to see him as a symbol of those who’d done this to us. “Isn’t Lark’s magic limited now too? Like the machines we’re trying to outlast? We should strike while she still has power left.”

  I swallowed. “Yes, it’s limited. All the more reason to conserve what I have until we’ve got a plan. And I can still siphon off of Eve, in an emergency.” I glanced at Kris, who said nothing. He knew what I’d just said was a lie.

  “Like the architects did.” Caesar’s voice was hoarse. He didn’t look up, his shoulders bowed and his hands dangling between his knees.

  My jaw tightened. “Yes,” I agreed. “But we don’t have a choice. And what I’m taking is tiny compared to what they took from her. She can’t even feel it when I do it.”

  “What are we going to do with Eve?” Kris asked quietly. “I know no one wants to discuss it, but we can’t keep her here. Those chains won’t hold her when her power regenerates.”

  I closed my eyes. I could feel her, as I always could. She was in the basement, but I could sense her there, through the layers of concrete and iron and the crowds of people in the lobby. I could see her as though she was standing next to me. I could feel the iron chains weighting her wrists and ankles as though they were shackled around my own.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I had no answer where Eve was concerned. “We don’t have the capability to contain her. The only place with the right facilities to deal with her is the Institute.” I felt Caesar’s gaze on me like a red-hot knife’s edge. I didn’t look at him.

  “We should just give her back to them,” Asher spat. “Better she explodes in there than out here.”

  I expected Caesar to snarl a response, but he just sat there, staring at Asher with red-rimmed eyes, his gaze haunted. Part of me had to agree with Asher’s logic—giving Eve back to the Institute as a gesture of goodwill would potentially solve both problems, containing her and opening a dialogue with our enemies.

  Asher drew breath for another jab, but I lifted a hand and interrupted. “We’re not giving her back to them. No one deserves the kind of life she was living in there.”

  “She’s still recovering,” said Kris. “But this will all happen again when her power builds too much for her to contain.”

  “Then we have time to figure out what to do with her,” I replied firmly. Delivering her back to that hell was not a part of my plan.

  Caesar lurched to his feet, and without another word, left. The door banged shut behind him. Asher half stood, ready to go after him, but I convinced him to stay. I knew why Caesar was so ragged. I’d seen it in his face when he begged me to stop Eve on the roof. What that betrayal had cost him. He loved her.

  I listened with half an ear as Kris and Asher debated ways to gain the upper hand over the architects. My attention was on the basement. I felt Eve’s power flicker and surge and then die again as Caesar appeared there in her basement cell. When I closed my eyes I could almost see them, the knot of white-hot power that was Eve and the shape encircled by it, outlined by little sparks and crackles of magic. He didn’t touch her, but sat only a few inches away. I had no way to know if he spoke to her, but he didn’t move.

  I wrenched my attention away. “I’ll go tonight,” I said, interrupting the stream of increasingly impractical suggestions from both Asher and Kris. “To scout the Institute and make sure they’re not planning another attack.”

  “You’ll go tomorrow,” Kris retorted, lips firming with resolve. “Even you can’t run without sleep.”

  I started to protest, but Asher shook his head, interrupting me. “He’s right,” he said grudgingly. “With Eve so unreliable, you’re all we’ve got against them. If you don’t sleep first, you’ll make stupid decisions.”

  I decided to ignore the not-so-hidden barb, the implication that I was already making stupid decisions. “Fine. Tomorrow, then.”

  Asher got to his feet and made for the door. Though the couch was ruined, there were a few blankets and towels that the raiders had overlooked. I’d be able to make a bed here, and even though it felt twisted and unreal, there was a strange comfort in sleeping in my own house. My former home.

  Kris exhaled as the door closed behind Asher, getting to his feet as well. “It’s a plan,” he said quietly. “It’ll work for now.”

  “I don’t know what I can do even if I do find the Institute gearing up for another attack,” I said slowly. “I don’t have much power left.”

  “You did the right thing,” he said, voice low. “Letting Asher and the others know that you can’t siphon from Eve anymore would destroy any remnant of hope they have.”

  “She’s white-hot,” I said, closing my eyes with a shudder. “It’s like trying to breathe fire.”

  “Maybe she’ll cool down eventually,” Kris said. I knew he was trying to be comforting, but I could tell that behind the attempt was the certainty that Eve wasn’t going to cool down. It was only going to get worse.

  “Maybe,” I said with what I thought was a smile. He grimaced back, and for a moment it was a little easier to pretend we both believed there’d be an “eventually” to look forward to.

  I stood and went to the window. I didn’t want to twitch aside the curtain for fear someone in the street might be able to see the movement. Instead I just leaned my head against the wall and peered through the crack at the slive
r of darkened street below. The street was empty, but I found myself staring at the shadowed alleyways, trying to detect movement, until my eyes watered with effort.

  Kris watched me from his spot across the room. “He’ll be okay,” he murmured. “He had a lifetime of being a shadow before he met you. He can take care of himself.”

  I swallowed hard, disengaging from the feel of my burning eyes. I couldn’t afford to fall apart right now. “I know.”

  He cleared his throat. “Get some sleep, Lark.” He turned for the door.

  “Wait.” My voice broke on that single syllable. I turned so I could press my shoulders against the wall. “Stay here tonight.”

  That was enough to penetrate Kris’s thick misery. He blinked at me, hesitating with one hand on the door handle. “Stay here?” he echoed.

  “I’m tired of feeling like I’m on my own.” I nodded at the pile of linens scavenged from the back closet. “And there’s room for two.”

  Though I didn’t have the courage to look at him directly, I saw his hand clench around the handle, white-knuckled. He drew in a deep breath. “I’m not the one you want. Don’t ask this of me, not when I’m a substitute for—for someone who isn’t here.”

  I wanted to hate him for turning me down. I wanted to yell at him that I wasn’t asking him to marry me, just stay with me while I slept so that I wouldn’t be alone. But somewhere, deep down, I knew it was more than that, what I was asking. I tried to find anger somewhere, even humiliation I could express as anger. But I was too tired. I couldn’t find any of it. So I just shrugged. “Goodnight, then.”

  Kris stood there so long that I began to think I’d have to tell him to go. But finally I heard the door open with a creak and close behind him again. I shut my eyes, pressing my forehead against the cool wall. My heart was with Oren, wherever he was, and I couldn’t sleep without it.

  CHAPTER 25

  Waves lapped at my toes, tugging at the sand around my feet. The wind tugged at my hair, sending it whipping around my face. Brown strands like seaweed floated before my eyes, and I closed them. My nose stung with salt and sea spray, but I didn’t move.