Burn (The Pure Trilogy)

by Julianna Baggott

  EL CAPITAN

  HEART

  They’re moving—all of them: Groupies, mothers, OSR soldiers, Dome worshippers, even a few Basement Boys, and families that were smoked out of the city and headquarters and the outposts. There aren’t many Special Forces left, but every once in a while, one will skirt the edges, sniff the air, and before getting shot, dart off.

  The survivors crowd into the woods at the edge of the barren territory, which rises uphill to the Dome, gleaming white and crowned with sleek black weapons, its cross piercing the dark clouds.

  El Capitan is propped on either side by OSR soldiers, who are shouldering his and Helmud’s combined weight. His bones ache, especially his broken ribs, and his skin is turgid from bruises and deep swelling. Where the ropes dug into his wrists there are now bandages.

  Bradwell is talking to a group of mothers. Everyone moves with quiet intensity, hushed electricity. El Capitan’s relieved that their unifying purpose is no longer killing him and Helmud.

  The mothers have been organizing the herd. Survivors fan out in either direction to circle the Dome. And they’ve sorted out the ones who will stay—children, those who will watch over them, and those who are more burden than help. They’re putting up a few makeshift tents to cut the wind and cold, and that’s where the two OSR soldiers stop.

  “This one will work,” one of them mutters.

  “I’m not going in a tent,” El Capitan says.

  “Not going!” Helmud says.

  “Sir, we were told to set you up in a tent.”

  “No. I’m staying with Bradwell. He goes. We go.”

  “We go,” Helmud says.

  “But you can’t really walk, sir,” the OSR soldier says.

  “Bradwell!” El Capitan shouts, breaking the quiet.

  Bradwell walks over. “What?”

  “We’re not sitting this out in a goddamn tent.”

  “Cap, you’re not in any condition—”

  “We’re coming with you. Even if I have to crawl, we’re coming.”

  “Seriously, you can’t even—”

  “I’m not going for the reasons I always thought I would. I’m going because I’m not letting you go alone. We’re like brothers.”

  “Brothers,” Helmud says.

  Bradwell looks up into the tops of the stunted trees. “Fine,” he says. “If you’re coming with me, I want you to promise me something.”

  “What?” El Capitan says.

  “If I don’t make it,” Bradwell says, “I want you to check my heart.”

  “Your heart?”

  “Just make sure it’s no longer beating. Make sure it’s stopped.”

  “If you die, you want me to put my ear to your chest and make sure your heart’s not beating?”

  “Yeah. And take Gorse to his sister. That’s what I want, and don’t ask me anything more about it.”

  “Okay,” El Capitan says. “You’re not going to die anyway, Bradwell.”

  Bradwell doesn’t respond to that. Instead, he says, “The wind is strong today. Isn’t it?”

  El Capitan nods. “Pretty strong.”

  “Hopefully it’ll keep up,” Bradwell says, and he walks away.

  “The wind?” El Capitan says. “We’re talking about the wind?”

  “The wind,” Helmud says.

  PARTRIDGE

  TIED WITH STRING

  The long mahogany table is actually a screen. It’s projecting a live map—the Dome sits in the center. Partridge looks down at the image. Small dark flecks have circled the Dome, and more are coming—flecks are pouring out of the woods.

  “It’s produced through a compilation of various cameras that tag movement and follow it,” Beckley explains.

  “Each fleck is a survivor?” Partridge says. It’s really happening. He realizes now that he never fully believed it.

  “Correct.”

  Iralene hooks her arm around Partridge’s. He’s so disconnected that her touch surprises him. “There are so many of them!” she says.

  Partridge’s heart thuds in his ears. He feels a surge of pride. He can’t believe they’ve organized and joined together like this. He imagines what El Capitan and Bradwell are feeling now. Are they at the head of this? Has it happened around them? But at the same moment, that surge of pride quickly switches to fear. They’re gathering because they’re expecting entrance. This isn’t a feel-good mission. This is the beginning of a revolution.

  “We have to communicate with them,” Partridge says. “There’s still a way to slow it all down! We have to do this peacefully. Do we have an update on Pressia and Lyda?”

  “They’re on their way,” Beckley says.

  The thought of Lyda makes his chest constrict. Why didn’t she ever return his letters? Has she fallen out of love with him?

  “You can talk Pressia into calling a truce. I know you can,” Iralene says. “She comes from those people. She’ll know how to communicate with them, right?” Wretches—that’s what Iralene means.

  Beckley’s talking to someone on his walkie-talkie. “He’s ready? Here now?”

  “What’s going on?” Partridge asks.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Beckley says, “but I took the opportunity to get someone who could be a liaison.”

  “A liaison?”

  “You’ll need someone on the ground to serve as a go-between. I thought of the perfect person. Someone who might seem…trustworthy to them.” Beckley walks to the door, opens it, and in walks a tall, lanky Special Forces soldier hobbled by a sleek prosthetic, the soldier’s leg ending in the thigh. The soldier stares at Partridge, and Partridge knows him.

  “Hastings…” He tries to see his old friend, goofy and easily embarrassed. He misses him.

  “Partridge Willux.” Hastings’ voice is more robotic than ever, but there’s still something deeply human inside of him, something they can’t erase.

  Iralene is afraid of Hastings. She tightens her grip on Partridge’s arm and shifts so that she’s standing slightly behind him.

  “What happened?” Partridge asks about Hastings’ leg. The last time he saw Hastings, Partridge had told him to go find El Capitan. Did that lead to his loss? Is Partridge to blame? It wouldn’t surprise him.

  “An incident.” Hastings has been shut down. He can only give short answers—the least revealing kind. He went rogue and they recoded him.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Partridge says.

  Hastings nods. They’re still old friends. Some loyalty remains.

  “Hastings,” Beckley says, “we need you to be our eyes and ears.” Hastings is fully bugged. “We’ll set you up with communication so we can speak directly to who’s in charge down there.”

  “El Capitan and Bradwell,” Partridge says.

  “We’ll give you a handheld that will transmit our voices from here,” Beckley explains.

  Hastings takes a deep breath. His bulky shoulders rise and fall.

  “Beckley brought you in because you’d be the one they might trust out there, but really you’re the one I trust, Hastings,” Partridge says. “We go way back.”

  “You don’t have to play on your old ties,” Iralene says softly, recognizing something in Hastings. “He’s programmed to obey you.”

  “She’s right,” Beckley says. “Foresteed doubled up on his behavioral coding. He’ll never go rogue again.”

  “I want him to have a choice!” Partridge says. “Damn it! I want people to make up their own minds!”

  Beckley walks up to Hastings. “Can you make up your own mind, Hastings?”

  Hastings looks at Partridge and then at Iralene. He shakes his head. “No, sir.”

  “We have to get him out there fast,” Beckley says, “if we’ve got any hope of negotiating.”

  “Okay, Hastings, go on out. Find Bradwell or El Capitan. Pressia will be here soon,” Partridge says, hoping it’s true. “When you find them, we’ll be ready to talk. We can still turn this around.”

  Beckley walk
s to the hall and picks two guards to escort Hastings out of the Dome.

  Before Hastings leaves, he glances over his shoulder. He gives Partridge a look—it’s all he has, an undeniable humanity in his eyes. The look is both accusatory and full of suffering. It’s sharp and quick and sends a shock through Partridge. It’s as if Hastings knows the future, and it’s worse than Partridge could ever imagine. But before Partridge can say anything—and what would he say?—Hastings has walked out of the room, half lumbering, half limping.

  He remembers Hastings talking to a girl at the last dance he ever went to, the one where Partridge danced with Lyda. How did they end up here—each newly broken in ways they never could have predicted?

  “There’s one more thing,” Beckley says to Partridge as he steps back into the room. “Cygnus decided it was better if you and Lyda were split up.” He reaches into the pocket of his uniform jacket and pulls out two bundles—stacks of folded paper, each tied with string. “Letters—from you to Lyda and from her to you.”

  PRESSIA

  SACRED

  Pressia and Lyda are running along the streets of the Dome toward the war room. Their spears are tucked into their belts. Pressia took one that was small and sharp, just six inches long and easier to hide. Lyda is wearing her armor. Everyone is so panic-stricken, so dazed and angry and hopeful and lost, that they don’t even notice. A shop window has been shattered, and people are on the street, fighting over flashlights and batteries. Another group has blocked an official Dome truck and is looting gas masks, blankets, bottled water. Pressia remembers the stories her grandfather told her about what happened just after the Detonations—fights in mini-marts and sprawling superstores. The posters announcing Iralene and Partridge’s engagement, plastered in storefront windows, have been defaced, their faces x-ed out, DIE written in thick ink above their heads, along with nooses and skulls.

  “He’s the goat,” Lyda says. “Partridge is the goat!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The scapegoat. They’re going to blame him for everything!”

  Pressia’s scared. These people want blood. She knows that look in their eyes. She remembers it from the survivors who took to the streets during the Death Sprees. People can only suffer for so long before someone must pay.

  She and Lyda cross the street to avoid the Pures, who are brawling in their overcoats and pantsuits and sliding around in their thin-soled loafers.

  They head into a cloud of smoke. It’s billowing up from a crowd in front of a church up ahead, roiling and roiling with nowhere to go.

  “It’s starting to smell like home,” Lyda says. “Not just the smoke but the desperation.”

  They cover their mouths and noses with their sleeves and press on.

  As they pass the church, Pressia sees that the crowd is burning an effigy—a stuffed suit with a crackling face. “Par-tridge! Par-tridge! Par-tridge!” they shout. Pressia can barely breathe. She’s lost faith in her brother, but burning him in effigy?

  She looks at Lyda, who’s stricken. Pressia shoves her away from the crowd. “Just keep your head down,” Pressia says. “Keep going.”

  Lyda stumbles a little, but they press on.

  When they turn the final corner, Pressia slams into a guard. He grabs her by the arm. “Where the hell are you going?”

  A woman is standing nearby. She sees the doll head before the guard does, and she screams.

  “They’re here already!” she screams. “Wretch!” the woman screams louder. “Wretch!”

  The guard sees the doll head and falls backward, clawing for the rifle on his back. “Stop!” he shouts through the thickening smoke. “Stop now!”

  But they keep sprinting as fast as they can. Pures around them are running and shouting. A gunshot goes off. Was it from the guard shouting at them through the smoke? Someone else?

  Lyda pulls Pressia into a building, and they run across a broad, airy lobby with mirrored walls and beautiful gold trim. Another guard shouts, “This way!” They run to a sole elevator and step inside.

  The guard hits a button. “He’s been waiting for you.”

  “Which one of us?” Lyda asks.

  The guard shrugs as if he doesn’t even really know who they are, and now Pressia can tell that he’s young—younger than she is. “Do you think I should stay?” he asks quietly. “I’m worried about my sisters. Should I leave? It’s getting bad, isn’t it?”

  “Are you related to the Flynn girls?” Lyda says. “Did you go to the boys’ academy?”

  “Aria and Suzette,” he says. “My parents are gone. They didn’t make it much past”—he lowers his voice—“the speech. They did it in a good way—really well planned. No blood, and they arranged it so the maid would find them, not us. They were good parents.” The boy shivers.

  “Of course they were good parents,” Pressia says. “I’m sure they loved you very much. They’d be proud of you now, thinking of your sisters.” She knows what she always wanted to hear from her mother and father—I love you. I’m proud of you. She’s hung on to the idea of them watching over her for so long… She can’t imagine if they’d killed themselves.

  Lyda reaches out and grabs the boy’s sleeve. “You should go. Now’s the time for people to talk about love. There might not be much time left.”

  Pressia thinks of Bradwell. She can’t help it. Love. There it is. She’ll always love him. Will they have more time together?

  The elevator rocks to a stop. Pressia will never get used to elevators. The doors open, and Lyda and Pressia step out.

  “This way!” another guard calls to them down the hall.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” Pressia says, turning to the boy in the elevator.

  His eyes tear up. “No one ever says anything like that here. No one talks about them anymore. It’s like they disappeared.”

  “They aren’t gone,” Pressia says.

  The guard lowers his head, and the doors glide shut. Pressia knows she’ll probably never see him again. This is how everything feels now—a first time and a last, all in one.

  Lyda runs down the hall. Pressia follows after her. As they pass a series of doors, Lyda ducks into a hall and presses her back against the wall.

  “What are you doing?” Pressia asks.

  Lyda wraps one arm around her ribs. “I just need a moment. Go on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nods.

  Pressia continues on. A door opens up ahead. Partridge steps into the hall. Pressia remembers the first time she ever met him—how, with his scarf unwound, she knew that he was the Pure that she’d heard about, the Pure with the short hair and the perfect skin let loose from the Dome. He reaches out—to shake her hand? Is this going to be formal? “I saved your life before I even knew who you were,” she says. She doesn’t accept the handshake.

  Partridge puts his hands in his pockets. “That’s right,” he says. “Groupies were about to take me out.”

  “They wouldn’t have, though, right? We were being herded together then, and we’re being herded together now,” she says.

  “Maybe that’s true.”

  “I have a feeling it’s going to be different this time.”

  “We’re in a lot deeper,” Partridge says. “As deep as it gets.”

  “What have you done here, Partridge? Who have you become?”

  “What about you? You turned on me. You gave up on me.”

  “No, you gave up on us,” Pressia says.

  “You have to call off the attack,” Partridge says coldly. “We’re getting a location on Bradwell and El Capitan and are setting up communication. Hastings is the messenger. It’s all coming together. We’ll be in dialogue—real dialogue—for the first time in the history of the Dome.”

  “And in this dialogue, you tell them what to do? Is that a dialogue?”

  Partridge looks down the hall, and Pressia knows by the changed look on his face that Lyda has appeared. And then he says her name. “Lyda. Lyda Mertz.”
He starts to walk toward her, and then he starts running. Lyda stands completely still. Pressia doesn’t know if she’ll accept him or not. Does she really still love him, or does she just have to know whether he loved her at all—really and truly loved her?

  At the last second, he slows. She says something that Pressia can’t hear, and he says something back. He reaches up and touches her cheek with the back of his fingers. She hugs him then, whispering something to him.

  Pressia hears a noise behind her and turns. There’s a woman. She stares at Partridge and Lyda, and she takes a sharp breath in and a ragged breath out.

  “Iralene,” Pressia says, recognizing her as the bride at the wedding.

  Iralene nods. “I have something that will change your mind.” Iralene looks down the hall, and Pressia follows her gaze to Partridge, who is now holding Lyda’s face in both hands, talking to her in a rush of words. “It was a wedding gift.”

  “Iralene,” Pressia says again. “Are you okay?”

  Iralene grips the doorframe. “It’s heaven,” she says, and she smiles at Pressia as tears slip down her cheeks. “I had them make heaven. Here. Right here. Because it’s the safest place in the world. Here,” she says, “let me show you heaven.”

  As she steps into the hall, her ankle buckles, and she teeters for a moment in her heels. She whispers so softly Pressia can barely hear her. “Come with me. I want to show you why you should tell them to stop. This will change everything. It will make everything right. You’ll see.”

  Iralene walks a few feet down the hall. Partridge and Lyda notice her now. They look up, holding hands, just as Iralene opens a door, and suddenly she is aglow in a bright wash of light. It’s as if she’s opened the door to a room containing the sun itself. “Pressia,” she says, “you’re family. Family is sacred. What’s a home without family?”