Blood, Ink & Fire

by Ashley Mansour

  The wind picks up and blows debris in my face as I walk. I pull the hood of my suit forward, but it does little good. The air has fingers, full of ash and sand. My outfit was never meant for this, for the outside. I know that now. It has sustained three tears along the legs and one down the arm that leaves my sleeve flapping like a flag. One more well-placed gust, and it will be lost to the wind.

  I feel the leather cuff as I walk, every step carefully guided by John’s map. Ahead on the right, I spot a shadowy pile. According to the map, I should be entering the zigzag zone. I glance up and see a line of cars piled up high, some overturned, most of them charred and insect-like. There’s debris, glass, and who knows what else. I decide not to check it out and walk on the left, where the two safe squares will be.

  I pass the first, a car upright and in reasonable condition, minus some charring and mostly demolished windows. All four doors are open and flapping back and forth on squealing hinges. I walk on toward the second square: a car with a low fabric roof, two doors, and all of its windows intact. Gearing up for the vast area of crosshatching ahead, I feel the leather cuff and find the single thick stitch in the center. What are you?

  Before I meet the crosshatching, I pass a single white thing in the road and stop. It’s the first light-colored object I’ve seen. Fresh. I crouch down. It’s not so much one white thing as many white things, together in a clump. A little fetal clump. A skeleton. I stagger back and fall, my hands landing on a twisted piece of metal. I see it now. The head of the dog near the center, the bones of the spine rounded into a neat spiral. This is a world where animals curl up and die. Where their clean, dead bones are the only bright things you can see for miles. Except the Winnow. That is bright. And Page will be there. She is an animal, and she is not dead. I tell myself these things, hoping it will be different in the Sovereign. It has to be.

  The road gets steeper. Up ahead, the yellow light of the Winnow has sharpened, into many yellow lights. I feel the single giant stitch on the leather and search the horizon for it. A big shadowy body lies across the road. I am almost there. My fingers feel the scattered crosshatched stitches. I know I’m right in the middle of them because the ground is talking. The language is little snaps and breaks, then the groan of something large that should not give up and shatter as it does. A skull. I’m in an animal graveyard, only it’s hard to tell by the color. Most of the decaying skeletons are gray with ash and soot. I step over bones, avoiding large ones, crushing those too little to avoid. Femur. Tibia. Sternum. Half of a pelvis. Teeth.

  When I get to the fat central stitch, I’m careful not to look too closely. An overturned truck partially blocks the road. Its belly has been torn open, and containers of things spill out onto the road. They must have held food once, because the smell is pungent. More animal carcasses litter the ground nearby. Whatever attracted the animals is long gone, replaced now by something soft under a slimy green carpet.

  I look up, focusing on the flickering lights on the horizon. Keep walking. Leave the boneyard behind you. Almost there. I know the blockade of crosshatching is coming up, but I plow on, head down against the gnawing air. The howl of the wind seems alive. I stop to listen for a moment. Ash and sand cover my shoes as the wind whips against me. Wind that’s relentless. And barking.

  I run toward the familiar sound. “Page!” I shout, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Page! Here, girl!”

  Her golden coat appears like a floating speck in the middle distance. She sees me and runs toward me, leaping easily over piles of debris. The life in her feels like the last soul on Earth out here. In seconds, she’s with me. I kneel as she nuzzles me excitedly and knocks me to the ground, bouncing into my lap. Her little warm body and soft fur meet my cold fingers, and it’s all I can do not to cry.

  A whistle cuts through the night. John! Page bounds back to him. I race after her, my heart drumming in my chest. He’s standing expectantly, arms akimbo, in his long brown cargo jacket and Winnower boots. The light of the Winnow encircles him, and for a second the word angel pops into my mind. I leap into his arms, burying him in a too-tight hug.

  He laughs a little, and I know I’ve caught him off guard.

  “Wow,” he says in his wonderful, easy way. “It’s that bad out here, huh?”

  I nod. “Bad doesn’t even begin to describe it. You could have warned me—prepared me for all of this.”

  “Prepared you?” John laughs. “You just escaped Fell by yourself in the middle of the night with a piece of leather as your map. You didn’t need preparation, NH. You needed permission.”

  I smile, suddenly elated. “So you just knew I’d find you?”

  “Or I’d find you. Hard to go wrong. The road is straight, just an old freeway. Still pretty well intact, except for the vehicles.”

  “And the bones.”

  “The what?”

  “The bones. Of the animals. They’re everywhere.”

  “Oh. So that’s what those are. I was thinking something else. Anyway, you got here in one piece. Not bad for a Vale girl.”

  “Yeah,” I manage, catching my breath. “The crosshatching. It was clever.”

  “You did the clever part. You got out. You never fail to surprise me, NH.”

  There’s a shift of wind. I shiver. My teeth chatter.

  “Here.” John starts removing his brown cargo jacket. Underneath, a long gray thermal top hugs his chest and arms.

  “No. I’m not cold,” I say. “Just . . . nervous.”

  “Adrenaline.” John feels for my shoulders and drapes his coat lopsidedly around them. “And the weather, too. I’m not surprised you feel it, given the obscene temperature regulation in the Vales.”

  “Thanks.” I slip my arms into his warm sleeves.

  We walk toward the Winnow, John following Page, me following John. He knows the road—every obstacle, every pothole—with a telling familiarity. Page trots easily by his side, instinctively setting our pace. When we reach the blockade, Page darts ahead and stops at a chain-link fence.

  “This is the only real tricky part,” says John. “For me, that is. For you it will be a piece of cake.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “The fence is full of chemi-wire,” he says.

  I bend to inspect it further. Page barks, and John pulls me back. “Careful!” he says. “You can’t see it, and you can’t touch it. Which makes getting through . . .”

  “Difficult?”

  John smiles. “I was going to say an adventure.” He winks at me, exposing a quick flash of his gemstone eyes. He calls Page to him and kneels at her side.

  “See,” he says, lifting up the fur on the slope of her back. She swings her tail between her legs and shakes as he exposes a long pinkish scar. “It’s the same stuff they use in the chemi-tasers. Really powerful. It just decimates whatever it touches.”

  “Poor Page,” I say. “Why would you want to keep people out of your Sovereign?”

  “Oh no,” says John. “The fence isn’t ours. Fell put it here.”

  “Why?”

  John shrugs. “Probably as a deterrent.”

  “They hardly need one. Have you seen the bioslice on the outside? It’s ridiculous. No one could get in there.”

  John nods. “Yeah. Not easily anyway. We need to hurry. Not much time.”

  I pull up the hood of the chemical suit, and it rustles. John pauses. “What’s that noise?”

  “My mother’s uniform. A chemical suit.” I feel a strange sense of shame. “I put it on so I could get out.”

  John’s face falls. “Right. I forgot she works for the Fellmaceutical folks.”

  I don’t have to ask if they are the ones who make the chemical infused into the fence we’re about to crawl under. I can see it in John’s expression. You’re one of them, he’s thinking.

  In seconds, his face relaxes. He offers his hand. “Well, it looks like you’re dressed for the occasion, my lady.”

  With a quick whistle, Page takes off, rustling aroun
d at the side of the road. She returns with a heavy piece of charred wood, a notch in one end. “Good girl.” John pets her and points toward the fence. “Lift, Page.”

  Page hurries over to the chain-link fence laced with potent chemi-wire. She wedges the piece of wood under the fence, catching the bottom of it in the notch. With a careful twist of her head, she expertly lifts up a section of the fence, the wood gripped firmly in her teeth. She holds it steady, waiting for us to crawl through the opening.

  I’m stunned. “That’s how you get through?”

  “You know a better way?”

  I sigh and flatten myself onto the ground.

  “Be careful,” says John.

  There isn’t much room between the dirt and the deadly wire above me. I slide through, pulling myself along, aware that Page is holding the fence up for two this time. I get through, finishing on my elbows, then push myself up.

  “My turn,” says John, edging up to the fence. He finds Page’s paw with his hands and gauges the distance. “This is where having working eyes really is a boon,” he laughs. “But c’est la vie.”

  John lies prone along the ground and takes a deep breath. “Bark if I’m near the edge, Page.” She whimpers her acknowledgment as John pulls himself under. In seconds he’s through, barely missing the wire. He bounces to his feet on the other side.

  “Ta-da!” He feigns checking himself over. “Did I catch anywhere?”

  “I think you’d feel it.”

  “You’re probably right.” He smirks. “Easy to know if your skin is burning off, I guess.”

  “Funny. But how is Page going to get through?”

  “Ah,” he says. “Watch.”

  John crouches down. “Page, come!” Like a little canine genius, Page bites down on the wood and then wedges it between the ground and the fence. She splays out on her belly and slips through, making it look incredibly easy. Her tail pulls through last. She flicks it, which topples the wood so that the fence falls. She runs to John and finds his waiting hands, relishing the affection. “Good girl,” he says. “Like a pro. Now, go hide.” Page darts off with the wood and conceals it along the side of the fence.

  I study John as we turn toward the yellow lights, each one an individual home, each with people inside. I knew John was a strong person, but I’m suddenly struck by his resilience. “You do this every day,” I say. “Just to get to Fell.”

  He nods absently. “What can I say? I’m committed I guess.”

  “To what?”

  John opens his mouth, then falls quiet for a moment. “To my work.”

  “But you work for Fell.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  I know better than to press him. Other than the games we play, John doesn’t like to talk about his work much. The ironic thing is if it weren’t for his job, I never would have met him.

  As we approach the Winnow, John slows down. “Okay,” he says, stopping in front of me. “You need to be careful here. The streets are messed up.”

  I can’t imagine how the streets inside the Winnow are any more messed up than what we’ve just been through, but when I see them, I understand. Even Page has to take her time here.

  She leads us slowly around a bend to the top of a hill. My eyes adjust to the soft haze. I get my bearings and see wildly tilting earth in all directions. The pavement undulates, torn and ragged with the evidence of many earthquakes. Streets jumble together creating obstinately narrow passages, long and twisted alleys. We start down the road, John holding Page tight, me holding John. I feel utterly useless as I stumble along behind him and finally let go.

  He whistles, stopping Page, and turns to me. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m afraid I’ll fall and take you down, too.”

  “You go down, I go down. That’s how it works, NH.” He holds out his hand, but I don’t take it.

  “JP, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Hurt? What’s a little scrape or a bruise? Come on,” he insists. I glare at him, hoping he’ll feel my expression through the air.

  “Did it occur to you that I might actually want to hold your hand?” he adds. “Even if it means falling down due to your terrifyingly uncoordinated efforts at walking?”

  I’m unable to keep from smiling. “Fine,” I say. “But if you fall, it’s your own fault.”

  “That’s better, NH. I knew I could count on you.”

  It’s hard not to marvel at my surroundings as we make our way through the Winnow. Houses with many windows shove up next to each other, standing so high they block out the night sky. Precarious-looking buildings sitting at disturbing angles crowd a central thoroughfare. The road sweeps downhill at an extreme angle, then forks at a junction headed by crooked buildings with sagging steps. My eyes struggle to keep up with the twists and turns, the details of each streetlamp, house, and pointed roof. Things look older here, and handmade, in a wonderful kind of way. There are no prefabricated pod homes, no perfectly manicured dry-lawns, no cleanly paved roads. The whole of the Winnow is one long path of jumbled chaos.

  “Watch your step,” John warns, which seems like a sick joke. No amount of watching my feet will prevent a fall here. Chunks of concrete twist up from the central thoroughfare. Miniature mountains of rubble pile up unpredictably near the curb as we follow the left fork of the junction. I grip John’s hand as we round a tight corner, passing a building that seems to lurch toward us, like a giant.

  We reach the market square. Covered stalls with draped canopies shift easily with the breeze. The ground evens out into a neat cobblestoned patchwork. Page yips, and John reaches into his jeans to fetch a treat. “Good girl, Page. You got us home.”

  Across the market, I see a booth selling handcrafted children’s toys, another full of vegetables of colors I’ve never seen. My heart leaps. “You’re so lucky,” I say. “You have everything here. It’s like a dream or something.”

  “A dream of what?”

  “A dream of how I imagined it would be. The earlier time.”

  John smirks and flourishes his hand through the air, bowing halfway. “These are but the scraps and vestiges of yesterday, my lady. If it please you, take my hand. There is more to see.”

  I laugh a little and put my hand in John’s palm. His fingers enclose mine. My stomach flits with excitement.

  We wind toward a central fountain and a statue framed by two narrow streets. Between them is a cobblestoned alley. Page runs ahead.

  “Our house is just past the alley.” John points roughly in the direction of Page. “To the left.”

  I leap over a fractured part of the pavement and join him at the side of the statue. I see it has a plaque and that there had once been writing on it. A name comes to me when I look at it. “Prospero?”

  “Yep,” says John. “A little reminder from the earlier time.”

  “Who was he?”

  “One of our leaders. The Sovereign people know the name but not much else. Fell made us obscure the inscription, so no one knows what it says anymore.”

  I steady myself with my hand on the lip of the pool surrounding the fountain and gaze at the statue. Prospero is supposed to be a man, clearly, but the weather-beaten stone makes him appear soft, like melting butter.

  John edges close to me and lowers his voice. “Okay, so it’s very likely you’re going to be a little bit mad at me and then really, really happy,” he says breathlessly. “But it’s going to be worth it, I promise. If you can just get over the mad part faster than usual, I would appreciate it. Because we don’t have a ton of time.”

  “What are you talking about? We have all night.”

  “No, we don’t. Pedanta can only hold Verity for so long.”

  “What? Who is Pedanta? And what do you mean ‘hold Verity’?”

  “Sovereign 2. Pedanta. They’re inside the stream.”

  “They hacked it?”

  “Not so much hacked it, as found a way to worm in. With the simulcast.”

  “You saw
it?”

  “Everyone did. It went out everywhere. All of Fell. All of the Sovereigns. That’s why they shut it down so fast.”

  “Who did?”

  “Fell. They resumed the stream, thinking they’d shut it down. But Pedanta is still inside. With Verity. Keeping her occupied.”

  “You mean she isn’t running as usual?”

  “You didn’t think you could get out of Fell so neatly without being detected, did you?”

  The disguise. The ID Philm.

  “That’s why I told you to watch the stream today. We had been waiting for so long for news from Pedanta. It was only a matter of time before they could break in. My father finally got the call. He said it would be tonight.”

  “Your father? He knew, too?” John nods.

  “How?”

  “He had help. From me. I give him what I know. Whatever I can get from Fell. That’s why I work there, NH. It’s why I do what I do.”

  “You mean you’ve been giving him stuff? From Fell? From your job, all this time?”

  “I download to him what I know, yes. I had to try and help where I could. For the Sovereigns.”

  “John, are you part of this? Of the thing that happened to Verity tonight?”

  John shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I did what I thought I had to. If there was any chance it might get you out, for just one night, before it was too late . . .”

  Immersion. Why do I get the feeling John knows more about this than I do? “You said they are going to change me,” I say. “What did you mean?”

  “I can’t tell you just yet.”

  “Then why am I here, John?”

  “Because you had to come to it, here in the Winnow. Your gift could not come to you. Not under any circumstances.”

  “Is it safe now? You said the other half of the gift would be for when it’s safe.”

  He turns to me, his expression serious. “It will never be safe. As long as you’re inside Fell, as long as they exist. Do you get that, NH?”

  “Yeah,” I whisper. “I do.”

  “We don’t have long. You need to be back before the stream goes back to normal. So you’re not detected.” He stands, and Page leads him toward the alley. “Well, do you want to see the second half of your present or not?”