Copper Veins

by Jennifer Allis Provost

“Caffeinated,” I replied. I saw Aregonda offering a plate of sausages to Max out of the corner of my eye. He waved them away and dunked a crust of bread in his coffee before popping it in his mouth. “So, this is the resistance.”

  “Just one of many outposts,” Jerome said proudly. “We’ve worked hard to set up bases and safe houses across the eastern portion of Pacifica.”

  I nodded and looked over the bedraggled band of resistance fighters, seven of whom were copper Elementals like me. Somehow, I’d assumed that meeting others of my metal would be a momentous occasion, not one celebrated with over-boiled coffee and stale bread. “So, where’s headquarters?” I asked. “I mean, I know this is headquarters, but there must be a base with things like Internet access and indoor plumbing.”

  “Portland,” Jerome replied, using Capitol City’s pre-war name. “Right in the heart of the Promenade.”

  I fought the urge to smile. I loved that market for so many reasons. “Anyone find out where my father is?” I pressed.

  “He’s probably there, at the Promenade,” Jerome replied. He would have said more, but Aregonda approached us with her platter of sausages.

  “Please, eat,” she said, indicating my untouched food. Since I was starving, and those sausages couldn’t possibly be as bad as the cookies we’d been provided with in our cell, I selected the smallest one and took a bite. It was pretty good.

  “You must understand, we did not mean to confuse the issue,” Aregonda continued, picking up our prior conversation while I chewed. “It is difficult for humans to journey to the Otherworld, and the scroll we sent traveled by a most circuitous route.”

  I nodded, then I grabbed two more sausages from her platter and wrapped my bread around them. “So everyone here is an Elemental?”

  “Yes,” Aregonda replied.

  “Everyone except me,” Jerome muttered.

  Aregonda looked at Jerome, her eyes softening. “You know we consider you one of us,” she soothed.

  “Are you the only Peacekeeper?” I asked. The last thing I needed was to hear Aregonda stroking Jerome’s ego.

  “No,” he replied. “We have operatives at every level.”

  “How do you all keep in contact?” Sadie asked, and Jerome launched into an explanation of rendezvous points and elaborately coded messages. I left the two of them and made my way over to Max.

  “No sausage for you?” I asked, eyeing his coffee-soaked bread.

  “No sausage for me,” he replied. “That crap will sit in me like lead for a month. I’ll stick to bread and coffee.”

  He didn’t say anything further—mostly because he hated discussing his lingering digestive issues that were a result of the Institute’s experiments on him and the accompanying mostly-liquid diet he’d been forced to adopt—but I knew he wasn’t going to last long on just bread and coffee. I made a mental note to ask Aregonda if someone could make him some broth. Maybe we could crumble the sausage and boil it down to a thin soup. Somehow, we had to get a healthy portion of protein into Max.

  However, I knew better than to say such things to my brother. “So what did you dream about last night?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, “absolutely nothing. You?”

  “Same.”

  Max’s eyes darted back and forth, then he murmured, “I guess the cell wasn’t just warded.”

  It figured that the drugs that turned off our affinity with metal had affected our dreamwalking abilities as well. I squinted at the tin cup in my hand and tried to collapse the sides. The cup vibrated a bit in my hand, but retained its form. “What are we going to do about this?” I asked.

  “Drink a ton of water, try to piss out the drugs,” Max replied, then he gulped the rest of his coffee. “Until then, we stay quiet.”

  I nodded—telling these people, resistance fighters or not, about our temporary lack of abilities probably wouldn’t go over well. Lopez was already suspicious of us, as if he suspected we weren’t really the Corbeau children. As if anyone in their right mind would want to impersonate us.

  Speaking of Lopez, he picked that moment to stride toward Max and myself, Sadie and Jerome trailing behind him. Max turned his back and refilled his coffee. Lopez noticed the affront, but kept quiet. I guessed he was smarter than he looked.

  “Have you both eaten?” Lopez asked.

  “We have,” I replied. “So, what does the resistance do all day?”

  “Plan, mostly,” Lopez replied. “We collect and sort information, determine what’s credible from the government’s attempts at blowing smoke up our asses.”

  That answer was Lopez’s attempt at blowing smoke up our asses. I drank a bit more coffee, just to make him wait. “What are you planning to do about Mike’s army?”

  “You told them about the army?” Aregonda demanded, coming to stand beside Sadie. “When did you do that?”

  “Oh, a few months ago,” I demurred, then I turned back to Lopez. “Remember, at the rally, you wanted us to learn our history? Well, tell us the history of this army.”

  Lopez stared at me for a moment, his mouth a slash across his face. “Do you always ask the Inheritor’s questions for her?”

  “No, I ask my own.” When he didn’t reply, I demanded, “What, don’t you know what they’re up to?”

  Lopez’s eyes narrowed and the cords in his neck bulged, but he replied, “I can do more than tell you. I can show you.”

  Once we’d finished our bread and sausages, Sadie, Max, and I hopped into the back of a truck, and Lopez and Aregonda took slid into the cab. Just as we were pulling away from the camp down what was little more than a dirt path, Jerome ran to catch up. He grabbed the tailgate and vaulted himself into the bed.

  “Don’t want to miss a field trip,” Jerome said when I gave him a look. Since spending quality time with Jerome was not on my to-do list, I passed the time by watching the trees. How was it possible that no matter where I went in the Mundane world I couldn’t find a single fricken’ oak?

  After about an hour of driving, Lopez squeezed the truck through a copse of trees and parked. Once we had all exited the truck, he and Aregonda pulled two ropes that hung from the branches above, and just like a stage curtain, a camouflage net fell onto the truck. It was the most impressive thing either of them had done yet.

  “This way,” Lopez muttered, and we hiked uphill for a time. Once we reached the crest of the hill, we followed his lead by dropping to our bellies and crawling forward on our elbows, then looked down into the valley. What we saw turned my heart to ice.

  Below us was a facility the size of an airfield, maybe even larger, that was fenced off into five distinct areas. Just like we Elementals were divided into five groups—metal, earth, fire, water, and air. Lopez said nothing, but then he didn’t have to. This was the training camp for Mike Armstrong’s army.

  “Are they real Elementals, or people he’s worked on?” I asked.

  “A little of both,” Lopez replied. “Some are Elementals he captured, others he paid off. Not all elements translate well into Mundane bodies.”

  I shuddered, wondering what kind of payout those traitors got to betray their families. “Which elements?”

  “Well, if you try to put water into a Mundane, they drown from the inside out,” he explained. “No water recipient has ever survived.”

  Max touched my arm, then indicated the closest of the practice yards. It was dominated by a large pool, and it did have the smallest number of people milling about. My gaze drifted across the entire facility, and I pointed at another yard. It was packed, with easily twice as many people as the next most crowded. “Which element is that?”

  “Metal,” Lopez replied. “Lucky for us, metal is most easily donated.”

  “Donated?” Sadie asked. “You mean, they have to find an Elemental willing to part with some?”

  “They put the metal they want to donate in the presence of that Elemental for a few days,” Max replied, stone-faced. “Then, once the metal has soaked up some magic, they scratch
it into the recipient’s skin, like those old-time tattoos that were done with a needle and hammer.” He didn’t look at us as he spoke, his gaze trained on the metal yard. I wondered how many times he’d had a hunk of regular old copper placed near him for just that purpose.

  “These fabricated Elementals aren’t as powerful as born Elementals,” Lopez continued. “But they’re strong enough to make things difficult.”

  “So this is what he always wanted,” I murmured. “Mike was so jealous of us and our abilities, he Frankensteined an army.” I looked at the other three yards, determining which were fire, air, and earth. The fire area held the second-largest amount of people, which couldn’t have been a good sign. “Besides water, is there anything else he can’t replicate?” I asked. What Lopez said next terrified me to my core.

  “Armstrong’s ultimate goal is to make himself a Dreamwalker,” he replied. “Word is, he’s almost done it.”

  I shuddered, the implications of Lopez’s words spiraling out before me. If he had an army of Dreamwalkers, he could spy on anyone at any time. He could waltz up right next to me and hear me spill my deepest, darkest secrets, and my wakeful form wouldn’t even know he was there. I mean, an awake Dreamwalker could sense a dreaming one that they had ties to, like Micah and me, but a stranger could pass by—or through—them unnoticed. Worse, the most powerful of Dreamwalkers can invade others’ minds.

  With an army of Peacekeepers, assorted Elementals, and Dreamwalkers at his back, Mike wouldn’t just be powerful. He’d be unstoppable.

  “We have got to stop this,” I whispered to Max.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Max replied.

  The ride back to the camp was just as quiet as the ride out to the training facility, but for different reasons. My head was swirling with questions—when was Mike planning to unleash this army? How strong were these newly made Elementals? Could Mike really make himself a Dreamwalker? But one unanswered question overrode the rest.

  “How do we know which Elementals are real?” I’d posed that question earlier, when we’d first seen Mike’s nightmare army.

  “We don’t,” Aregonda had replied. “To the naked eye, it is impossible to discern a made Elemental from a born one.”

  “There must be some way,” I’d said, but she shook her head.

  “Only by blood,” she’d replied. “An Elemental’s blood is markedly different from that of a Mundane.” She’d left it at that, but her cold eyes told me that she’d have no qualms about slicing open a few friends while she identified her foes.

  Once we were back at camp, my siblings and I headed down to the stream and followed it until it spilled into a waterfall—I would have liked to use this little excursion as an excuse for a bath, but Jerome was lingering downstream where he thought we couldn’t see him. We huddled close to the falling water, using the splashing sounds to muffle our conversation.

  “Do you think he can do it?” I asked without preamble. If Mike Armstrong could dreamwalk, we were officially screwed.

  “Doubt it,” Max replied. “As far as I know I’m the only Dreamwalker he ever captured, and he couldn’t figure out what made me tick. That’s why I lasted so long.”

  “What about the real Elementals at the facility?” Sadie asked. “Shouldn’t someone help them?”

  “How will we know who they are? You want to bleed them out like Aregonda suggested?” I countered, then I looked at Max. “Were there fake Elementals at the Institute?”

  He shook his head. “Not where I was kept. This is a whole new batch of weird, even for me.”

  “Great.” I leaned back against a tree and watched the darkening sky. Had we really been traipsing about with Lopez and Aregonda all day?

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I began. “We’re going to go back to the camp, get something to eat. We’re going to keep our eyes and ears open and learn everything we can about these people.”

  “And then?” Max prompted.

  “Then we’re going to figure out how to get the hell out of here.”

  19

  My siblings and I did have dinner with the resistance, which turned out to be a surprisingly tasty stew. Since the meat had boiled for the entire day, there was lots of protein-rich broth for Max to drink, and no one seemed to notice him mashing up the vegetables with his fork.

  Another thing none of us asked was what sort of meat was in the stew. It tasted like beef, and that was good enough for me.

  Once the three of us had finished, each having gulped down what seemed like a gallon of spring water, we crashed on the guest cots so conveniently placed inside Lopez’s tent. Someone had added a third, but I didn’t complain when Sadie lay down beside me, or when Max shoved his cot up against ours. Safety in numbers, you know.

  The next morning, I woke to the heavenly scent of coffee. After I’d yawned and stretched, I sat up and saw that someone had brought in two—not one but two—pots of caffeinated bliss. Beside the pots were platters of bread and sausage, which I guessed was the resistance’s breakfast of champions. Lopez sat behind his desk, scribbling away.

  After Sadie and I had visited our favorite bushes (gallon of water, you know), we each accepted a mug from Aregonda.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, letting the warmth of the coffee seep into my cold fingers. I tried to affect the tin cup: it wavered a bit more than it had the day before, and I managed to dent the handle. Maybe Max was right about drinking lots of water to flush out the dampeners.

  Speaking of Max, he picked that moment to reenter the tent. “Aregonda, a pot just for me?” he quipped as he grabbed a mug of coffee. “You shouldn’t have.”

  Aregonda favored Max with a motherly smile, then Lopez quashed the moment.

  “We have two disruptions planned today,” Lopez began, “and we are hoping that you three would like to accompany us.”

  “Disruptions?” Max repeated, turning around to face Lopez. “Exactly what are you planning to disrupt?”

  “We have a few options,” Lopez replied. “There is a political rally nearby, and there is a university where Armstrong will be speaking about an hour’s drive away. Making our presence known at either location will greatly upset the Peacekeepers.”

  “Pissing them off is what I live for,” Max said. “What’s the intel?”

  Lopez smiled, more a baring of teeth than an expression of happiness. “Good.” Lopez beckoned us forward, shoved some paperwork around on his desk, then pushed two folders toward us.

  “And these are?” I asked, since Max and Sadie were content to remain silent.

  “We have two separate raids planned,” Lopez replied. “Mike Armstrong is on the campaign trail, and today he will be speaking at Northeastern University.” Lopez opened one of the folders and handed us a flyer for the appearance. I remembered that Juliana had gone to Northeastern to study psychology. When she’d gotten her acceptance letter I was so happy for her—now, I wondered if Northeastern was just another front for Peacekeeper operations.

  I dragged myself out of my memories and forced myself to pay attention to Lopez. He was detailing all the ways they were planning on disrupting the rally—rather than an overt attack, Lopez wanted to compromise the sewage systems and make the bathrooms inoperable. His theory was if he made those attending the rally miserable, their impressions of Mike would sour as well. I wasn’t so sure I agreed, but the image of a sewage pipe backing up into the kitchen and dining areas while his supporters were eating lunch was rather enjoyable.

  Based on Max’s grin, the idea of ruining Mike’s lunch appealed to him as well. “What’s the other raid about?” he asked.

  “Armstrong’s right-hand man, Langston Phillips, will be speaking in Portland,” Lopez replied. “Word is Armstrong is going to name Phillips as his running mate.”

  “Really,” Max said, taking the second folder from Lopez and paging through it. “This is where we’re going.”

  “You don’t think it would be better to mess with Mike?” I
asked. “Isn’t he the big bad and all?”

  “That he is,” Max affirmed. “However, I have a score to settle with Langston.”

  “Score?” I repeated. I remembered the look on Max’s face when we’d seen Langston at the rally in Portland—Max had looked like he wanted to rip Langston’s throat out. “Exactly what did he do to you?”

  Max’s brown eyes went cold. “The worst thing you could imagine.”

  I stared at Max, simultaneously wishing he would elaborate and not wanting to press him to reveal things in front of Lopez and Aregonda. Yeah, they were resistance and therefore technically on our side, but something about Lopez rubbed me the wrong way. As for Aregonda, she remained an unknown entity.

  “Great,” Lopez said, clapping his hands together. “Max and Sara can attend the raid against Langston, and the Inheritor will accompany us to Northeastern. We will have Corbeau support on both fronts.”

  “No way,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to be separated from Max and Sara.”

  “Think we can’t protect you?” Lopez growled.

  “I can protect myself,” she snapped. “Since we came back to the Mundane world, we’ve been separated from our father. I refuse to be isolated from my siblings as well.”

  Lopez’s face reddened, and he took in a deep breath as if he was about to call Sadie out. Beside me, Max clenched his fists, ready to go down fighting rather than let Lopez’s schemes split us up. Before either of them made a move, Aregonda placed her hand on Lopez’s arm.

  “It’s all right, Jovanny,” Aregonda soothed. “With these three in Portland, we will have a strong presence. I and another of metal will accompany them, thus splitting our strongest fighters evenly between events.”

  As the angry redness faded from Lopez’s face, I somehow knew that Aregonda had worked some sort of spell on him. I made a mental note to never let her touch me.

  “Okay then,” I murmured, still eyeing Aregonda’s hand on Lopez’s forearm. “The three of us will go to Portland and cause some trouble. Max, do you think the static portal from the Promenade to the Whispering Dell is still operational?”