Shadow Fall

by Audrey Grey

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was hungry.” My voice catches. “I had to. I had to leave to get food. I told him I was coming back, but then the Centurions caught me stealing at the market and . . .” The pity in his eyes makes me realize how foolish I am for letting Pit Boy see my weakness, something he’ll undoubtedly use against me. Hands clenched in my lap, I swallow the tears burning my throat. “Forget it. If I wanted to discuss my feelings, the last person I’d do it with is some one-eyed freak who’s just as likely to kill me in my sleep as care.”

  “You’re wrong.” One side of his mouth quirks. “I prefer to snuff people when they’re awake.”

  Is he making a joke? I cross my arms. “Okay, let me make this clear. I find you deplorable, a reminder of the pit and everything it stands for. So cut the caring act. We’re partners because we have to be, but we’re not friends.”

  Part of me is sorry for saying it, but the other part is relieved. Now he’s clear that I know who he really is so he can stop pretending otherwise.

  The muscle in his jaw flickers as he looks away. Perhaps he’s glad to be resolved of the normal civilities expected between two people. After all, neither of us excels at it.

  I suddenly realize what’s been bothering me about him. Although just as ruthless, he’s different than Ripper and Rafe. “Why don’t you talk like the others?”

  His shoulders tense. “I was born to a prisoner in the upper levels of Rhine.”

  “What happened?”

  He has been staring at the sky, but now his head swivels my direction. “Discussing our feelings now, are we, Digger Girl?”

  “No,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Just thinking out loud.”

  He resumes gazing at the asteroid. Almost as if he’s staring Her down, showing Her he’s not afraid.

  I nod to my right. “Do you see the red Xs on the houses over there?”

  Riser follows my gaze.

  “It means there are Sleepers inside, people already uploaded to Caskets.”

  A small furrow splits his forehead. “Caskets?”

  “Cryo-machines that can keep bodies in a hibernating state for years while your mind experiences everything your Avatar does. Once inside them, you connect the same way we are to Nicolai, through a Microplant, only you get to choose from a pool of Avatars.” I struggle to explain the Chosen. “Special people with special privileges, created to carry on the human race.”

  “Why would you want do that?”

  I let out a breath. “Look up. See that thing in the sky? She’s going to pass right by us, and she’s going to do a lot of damage. It will take years for the earth to be habitable again.

  “The Emperor and his court of Golds and Chosen will be safe in their palace in the sky. The Silvers get Caskets located deep inside the earth so they’ll be protected. But the rest of us have to upload above ground and take our chances.”

  “And people have actually started . . . uploading?”

  “The Royalists sold it like this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Taste the Chosen’s food.” My voice deepens to mimic the announcer from the propaganda videos. “Wear their sumptuous clothing and experience all the fineries court life has to offer. And don’t forget the courtly intrigues.” I let out an angry sigh. “The populace watched the Chosen grow up. They’re beloved figures from famous Houses. Our saviors.”

  Riser tears his gaze from the sky. “And if we’re frozen in our Caskets, we can’t cause trouble.”

  “Exactly. And when they come back down from Hyperion here we’ll be, preserved and ready to work their factories again.” Bitterness taints my voice. “Except, as you can see, not everyone wants to go to sleep. Even with the rations dried up and the water shut off, they refuse. That’s what the Shadow Trials are for. To entice the rebellious populace to comply.”

  “And the ones that still refuse to upload?”

  “I don’t know.” It’s a lie, of course. I do know. But I wish I didn’t.

  Riser goes dead still, his head cocked slightly, my first indication that something is wrong. That’s when I notice that the dogs have scattered.

  To the right in the woods behind the curving row of residences, small shadows trickle from the trees. Young kids it looks like, ranging from seven-years-old to fourteen, a group too large to count, carrying sharpened-sticks and pipes.

  They converge on a building seemingly at random, kicking and clawing at the door. A boy no older than nine whacks the head off a garden statue. They whoop as it tumbles down the path.

  They smash a window. One, then two, and finally the entire group snakes through the broken glass. After a minute, a solitary scream erupts and then dies. Two more screams shred the air. These take much longer to subside.

  They are killing the Sleepers. I imagine the family resting inside their row of Caskets. They believed the Royalists when they promised to protect them. To give them a better life.

  I turn my head and cover my ears as more shadows dart from the trees and scurry through the streets, grateful for Brogue and the other Mercs guarding our door.

  All at once, the shadows scatter as a shrill whistle stabs the air, followed by the sound of faint buzzing.

  At first, in the hazy shadow murk, the drones look like large birds. But the way they dart and zigzag gives them away. Bramble and Duchess are crude versions of the drones watching us, except the sensors in the pit were used mainly for gathering information.

  These drones aren’t here to gather anything. They’re here to enforce the edicts.

  My breath catches as they rotate in place ten feet in front of us. A red laser serrates the darkness, and I blink against its angry light. More bizarre noises as the machines seem to communicate and my heart threatens to explode. The Archduchess. What if the drones recognize me? What if she can see me right now? I can’t let her find me. I can’t—

  My breath releases as they zip to the street so fast I can’t see them move. I catch sight of them gliding low through the alleyways. A few seconds later, an explosion rocks the buildings, followed by the sound of childish screams of pain. More explosions. More screams.

  And then no more screams.

  Feeling relieved and strangely empty, I stand up to go inside.

  Riser, who’s watching it all with detached curiosity, rises with me. “They came too late to protect the Sleepers.”

  I hear myself laugh, but it is a hollow, sick sound. “They don’t care about protecting us. Only making sure we cannot group together. Because that would be dangerous for them.”

  Riser peers down into churning smoke. “Just like the pit, then. Only more scenic.”

  I’ve decided Riser needs to work on his humor.

  Chapter Seven

  A gazillion and one days. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve had a bath. After putting my request in to Brogue, the small tub in my old bathroom is miraculously shimmering with water. It’s even warm as if it’s been heated over a fire. Brogue insisted I use the noxious delousing powder under the cabinet first—I happily complied—so I’m covered in a fine layer of white poison dust.

  The uniform peels from my body and makes a slopping noise on the floor. Shadow Fall is over, and muted light slips through the skylight and refracts in the tiny waves my finger stirs up.

  My legs wobble as I step into the now lukewarm water. I sink to the bottom. Tiny bubbles escape my nose as I watch all the ugly remnants from the last seven years leave my body.

  Lungs burning, I rise and come face-to-face with Pit Boy.

  I glare at him. “You really have to work on the knocking thing.”

  Despite the fact that I’m indecent, his attention never falls from my face. I almost wish it would, just to give me a break from the intensity of his focus.

  “I only get a few more hours to be the ‘one-eyed freak’ from the pit. Might as well take advantage.” He doesn’t dare crack a smile, so it’s hard to tell if he’s joking or serious.

  “Don’t worry. In my heart, that’s exac
tly who you’ll always be.”

  His words remind me that soon we’ll be reconstructed using forbidden nanotech. But it won’t just be our flesh they’ll reengineer. It will be our brains, too.

  I don’t foresee my rewiring being too complicated, but Riser needs to upload almost twenty years of false memories. That will be tricky and time-consuming.

  And time is the one thing we don’t have.

  Riser flicks his gaze to the mirror. He lifts a hand, touches the patch of mottled flesh where his eye should be.

  “How did it happen?” I ask.

  “Careful, my lady.” His gaze settles on my face. “You’re beginning to sound like you care.”

  I roll my eyes. “And I thought I was lacking in conversational skills.”

  He focuses his attention on the graffiti sprayed across the mirror.

  “It’s written language,” I blurt, even though all I want to do is end the conversation so Pit Boy can leave. His presence unnerves me more than the other Pit Leeches ever could. “It’s how we communicate.”

  “I know what it is.” He examines his jagged thumbnail. “I just . . . can’t read it.”

  “It’s just stuff about the Chosen. You know, insults.” The populace is finicky. As much as they love watching the Chosen with their petty intrigues and court life, they would be just as happy to see their heads on a pike.

  “Chosen?”

  Time to explain what you are, Everly, Nicolai’s voice grates inside my head. Riser’s eyes flutter just enough that I know he’s heard Nicolai’s voice too.

  You do it, I think, watching Riser’s reaction. But his face remains emotionless; either he’s a good actor or only Nicolai can hear my response.

  “The Royalist astronomers discovered the asteroid twenty-one years ago,” I begin. “It’s actually a slow moving planet called an earth-crosser, meaning its orbit and ours intersect every twenty-thousand years. Usually it’s too far away to affect us, but this time it will pass close enough to wreak havoc and make the earth uninhabitable for years.” I stir the water with my big toe. “Before I was born, the Emperor decided that creating a population of genetically superior humans would be a great idea, you know, just in case the Caskets don’t work or the asteroid does more damage than predicted.”

  Riser’s hyper-focused gaze bores through me. “You’re one of them?”

  “Yes.” I run my hand through the filthy water. “But my father’s a Bronze, so even though my mother comes from a Gold House, the Emperor only allowed them one Chosen instead of the customary twins. So it’s just me . . . not Max.”

  “What makes being Chosen so special?”

  “I don’t know . . .” I bite my lip, trying to remember everything my parents told me. “My genes are perfect, I guess.”

  For some reason, talking about my body makes me remember that I am naked in a room with a boy. As if reading my mind, Riser slowly lets his gaze fall, his expression both curious and unapologetic as he takes me all in, his thoughts cryptic.

  “What are you staring at?” I blurt, smashing my breasts beneath my hands. Not like there’s much there to cover. “Haven’t you seen a naked girl before?”

  A smile twitches his lips. “Not one that’s genetically flawless.”

  “It doesn’t work that way! You can’t just look at us and tell. We look like everyone else—”

  “No.” Riser shakes his head, a dark swath of hair covering his damaged eye. “You don’t. Whatever you are.”

  “You must be happy . . . about our reconstruction, I mean,” I mumble, trying desperately to change the subject. “They’ll fix your eye . . . and . . . and all those horrible scars.”

  I freeze as he slides off the counter, unable to look away as he hooks one finger beneath his shirt and lifts.

  Scars ravage his anemic body in varying shades of red and silver and white. Some deep and pitted like the craters of a far-away planet, others smooth and neat. One particular nasty scar carves down his shoulder, tunneling across his chest and stomach. A fresh red wound nestles just below his throat.

  He carefully touches the long ugly one. “I’m not ashamed for surviving.”

  “How could you want to keep them?”

  He abruptly kneels beside the bath, his eyes holding mine, and parts the water with his hand. My breath catches as his elbow brushes the inside of my knee.

  “Don’t,” I gasp, but he seems to be looking through me at something I can’t see. I want to kick him; I want to scream.

  His breathing is shallow and rough as his hand emerges cupping the soap. His fingers are long and deft, perfect half-moons adorning his otherwise ruined fingernails. Every muscle beneath his damaged flesh seems to spring and strain, trapping shadows.

  His breath cools my wet cheeks. “Let me.”

  But he’s not really asking. Rubbing the soap into a rich lather, his fingers slide gently through my tangled nest of hair, separating the gore of seven years from my scalp.

  Our eyes meet. I’m startled by the agony in Pit Boy’s one haunted eye.

  Somehow I find my voice. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Oh . . . I’m . . . I don’t . . . Sorry.” As if breaking out of a trance, Riser jerks his hand away and stands. Water bleeds from his fingertips. “The, uh, guards forced my mom to do manual labor until she couldn’t stand up.” His hands clump into fists. “Eventually, she broke, so I helped take care of her. Feed her the little bit of food they gave us. Sometimes wash her hair.”

  Nicolai’s words taunt me. “And you think I’m broken too?”

  “No.” But he’s frowning.

  Somewhere deep down, the girl from the pit understands that this interaction, whatever it is, is meant to break me. Break open the barriers between us, the ones that one day may save my life.

  Riser takes a faded-yellow towel from the counter and dries his hands. “I remember when you first came to the pit.” Even in motion there is stillness to him. “We called you Digger Girl because you hid in the tunnels.”

  I pause my feeble attempts at smoothing my hair. “Neat. I bet that came in handy when you talked about me. Like, hey, there’s Digger Girl; let’s sneak up on her while she sleeps and gut her.”

  He shrugs, any intimacy from his strange gesture earlier gone. “I didn’t make the rules.”

  “But you chose to play by them.”

  “No. There is no choice but survival, Everly.”

  “Well I chose something different.”

  “You hid,” he amends.

  I straighten, sending water sloshing over the tub. “There are ways other than violence to respond to conflict.”

  “No, Digger Girl, there aren’t.” He goes silent for a moment. “I had a friend in the pit—or as close to one as you can have there. Karl wasn’t like the others. He had these rats that he fed and they followed him everywhere, begging on their hind legs and doing little tricks. Pretty soon there were hundreds of them. Too many to feed.” Our eyes meet, but my stare keeps gravitating toward his disfigurement. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. “One morning I found Karl—or at least what was left of him. The rats had gotten to him while he slept.”

  I swallow down my horror. “Oh . . . I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” His expression hardens. “Karl taught me two important lessons. First, caring for someone other than yourself makes you weak.” For some reason he looks away from me as he says this. “Second, only the savage survive. The rats knew that, but he didn’t.”

  I stare at Riser. And maybe it’s the water, but I suddenly remember that I still don’t know how I survived after falling out of the boat. “Yesterday in the water, did you jump in to save me? Even though you couldn’t swim?”

  He rises to leave. “The water was waist deep. I simply fished you out. I’m a lot of things, Digger Girl, but a hero isn’t one of them.”

  I’m sitting on my bed, staring into the darkness, when Biotech arrives. A small candle flickers on the dresser. The last hour of sunlight has left me w
ith enough solar power I can use my lamp if I want to, but I have this desperate need to conserve it.

  Downstairs I can hear the two Biotechs talking with Brogue. Teenagers—a girl and a boy. The girl is agitated, her voice high and jumpy as she persistently fends off Brogue’s offers of food. Smart, considering I checked the pantry earlier and there was nothing near edible.

  Nicolai must be paying them a hefty sum because the penalty for reconstructing someone is severe. The Reconstructor machines, I’m guessing, are downstairs in the basement. They would need close proximity to a generator and to be easily hid if we are searched.

  I need to get up and find something to eat. But the feeling that in the next hour I will be made into someone else paralyzes me. Undoubtedly my freckles and nose and bright orange hair will be altered—most parents followed regulations and chose the most aesthetically pleasing attributes for their children. My divergent looks will make me stand out when I desperately need to blend in.

  But it’s more than that. Once the reconstruction is complete, the girl who looks like her father and loves the stars will be gone for good. And as much as I long to forget her, I also long to salvage a small bit of her. Her crooked teeth or her dry humor. Just a bit, like a child keeping a patch of fabric from a once precious teddy bear.

  They will be coming to fetch me soon. I hop off my bed, intending to go downstairs, but my attention’s drawn to Max’s partially open door. Blue and red strobe lights pulse from the room, along with the sound of Max’s favorite electric violin remixes. It’s as if Riser has turned on every single anti-Reformation Act toy Max owned.

  I nudge open the door. The music is so loud it reverberates inside my chest. Who does Riser think he is, listening to Max’s music, playing with his stuff?

  Riser has taken the navy comforter and matching blue sheets off Max’s bed and made a twisted nest on the floor. Max’s highly prized strobe cube pulses, disjointing my movement. The airplane model I secretly got Max for his fourth birthday—blatantly anti-Reformation—whirs in the air, diving and ducking, its propeller creating a slight wind.