Fuse

by Julianna Baggott

  Beyond the pyre, the massive Dome stands on a hill, its bulk lording over them, the cross piercing coal-dark clouds. At first he doesn’t see anything unusual, except for a few small black dots. Then he sees that the dots are moving. They have legs. They’re not dots but small, black, spiderlike creatures, crawling out of a small opening at the base of the Dome. Shiny and robotic, they skitter over and around one another.

  “They’re sending gifts!” the young woman says.

  “I don’t think so. No, not gifts,” El Capitan says.

  Helmud says, “Not gifts.”

  Even from this far off, El Capitan swears he can hear the clicking of their metallic bodies, the rustling of sand under their pronged feet. Wicked creatures, Dome creations. He’ll need to get word to Bradwell and Pressia. “We don’t have much time,” he says to the young woman. “Let’s move.”

  On the walk into the city, El Capitan learns that the young woman with the braided face is named Margit. She talks the entire time—about picking morels and finding the girl with her blind friend—but El Capitan barely listens. If she slows down, he nudges her in the back with his gun. How long before the robotic spiders make it to the city? Their legs were small but swift.

  El Capitan and Margit walk quickly down alleys of darkened shanties built from piled rocks, plywood, tarps. The city is always rotting—the sharp stench of death, the sick-sweet ripening of bodies, meat churning on spits.

  Skirting the Rubble Fields, El Capitan counts the trails of smoke, a habit. Each trail piping up from the rocks represents a cavity filled with Dusts or Beasts that feed on survivors they drag down. El Capitan has lost a lot of soldiers in the Rubble Fields.

  He keeps an eye out for the Special Forces who sweep the city. There are none, which makes him uneasy. Have they evacuated because they know the spiders are coming?

  Margit leads him to a culvert guarded by a Groupie—two men with conjoined torsos and a woman, half of her body melded into one of the men’s backs. They could have been strangers, knocked together by the Detonations while at a bus stop or in a bank line. At least El Capitan is fused to someone he knows. Family.

  One of the Groupies has a chain, the other a rock, and the woman behind them glares from beneath a dark hood. They see the gun, the uniform, and back off a little.

  Margit says, “He wants to see her with his very own eyes.”

  They nod and step aside.

  The culvert is caved in on one side but seems solid. El Capitan and Margit are both too tall to stand upright, and so they bow to enter and walk hunched. Helmud’s back rubs the top of the culvert. He whimpers.

  “Stop complaining,” El Capitan says.

  “Complaining,” Helmud says back.

  El Capitan sees a homemade oil lamp and a few people huddled around it. He stops and tells Margit, “I want to see her alone. No one else around.”

  “She’s too precious,” she says.

  “Too bad.”

  “Can two of us stay with you? The ones who found her? We’ll keep quiet.”

  El Capitan looks at the faces, pitted with shadows. “Fine, but get all these others out.”

  “Others,” Helmud says, as if he’s better than they are because he gets to stay. Where would he go anyway?

  Margit walks over. They argue, briefly, and then disperse, scooting past El Capitan as they scuttle down the culvert.

  In addition to Margit, only two figures remain, sitting on the ground—one bigger than the other, a blind picker and the girl.

  As El Capitan approaches, Margit says, “This man wants to talk to you. He wants to know the truth.”

  El Capitan swings the rifle around Helmud’s back and kneels. Closer to the light, he can see the blind picker’s eyes—burned out from the Detonations. There are plenty of blind people like her. The cataracts aren’t milky like El Capitan’s grandmother’s were in the Before. No, these eyes seem to glow, more cat than human.

  “This girl is holy,” the blind woman says. “Angels guarded her until we arrived, and then they left her to us for keeping.” She reaches up and touches the girl’s pale face.

  There’s a hitch in the girl’s breath, and then she starts to cry

  “Her voice . . .” the blind picker says. “It isn’t the same as ours. Been made Pure. No roughness to it. It’s like bells!”

  “It’s ’cause she’s been made new!” Margit says. “She’s the Girl with the New Message, who will save us all!”

  “I might be able to help,” El Capitan says to the girl. “I hope I can.”

  The girl looks up at him, pulls her hair back from her face, which is pale and creamy like milk.

  “You say she’s been made Pure?” El Capitan says.

  “Pure?” Helmud says, leaning forward for a closer look.

  “Pull up them sleeves,” Margit says. “See with your eyes, if that’s what you need to believe.”

  “I don’t need it,” the blind picker says proudly.

  El Capitan looks at the girl first, and then cups her wrist. She doesn’t seem afraid. In fact, she seems to be pleading. He tugs one sleeve, revealing pristine flesh. Disbelieving, he pulls up the other sleeve. This arm is equally flawless. “She wasn’t born in the Dome? She’s not a Pure?”

  “She was mangled and living with strays. Some of those orphans identified her,” Margit says.

  “What’s your name?” El Capitan asks the girl.

  She doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word.

  “Her name is Wilda,” Margit says. “The orphans said it, and she nods to it.”

  “Tell him the New Message,” the blind picker says, reaching out and touching the girl’s shiny hair. “Tell him.”

  The girl knits her fingers together, pulls them to her chin, and retreats into herself.

  El Capitan says, “Something you want to tell me?”

  Helmud’s hand appears over El Capitan’s shoulder. He’s holding a small boat, whittled from wood. Damn, El Capitan thinks, Helmud made that? It’s so delicate and beautiful that El Capitan feels a little choked up. His eyes flood and he presses them shut.

  The boat is a gift. El Capitan opens his eyes and watches as the girl accepts it, cups it in her hands. “Tell me,” Helmud says to her. “Tell me.”

  PRESSIA

  CADET

  “HAVE YOU ASKED THE BOXES personal questions?” Pressia says to Bradwell. “You know, about your parents?” They’re eating waxy meat from tins at the cleared end of the metal table.

  He nods. “Yeah, I have.”

  Fignan sits on the floor, next to a radiator that occasionally gives a weak blast of steamy heat, his arms and legs retracted into his body. His lights are dim. She walks over and kneels next to him. “He likes to keep warm?”

  “I think he’s leaching energy, actually. He seems drawn to the sockets, the lamp I use for reading, and the radiator when it starts to buzz. I don’t know how he gets energy from them, but it explains how he survives.”

  “And the others?”

  “Whenever I let them out of the drawer, they do the same thing.”

  As soon as he mentions the drawer, Pressia thinks of the bruised dead boy with the handlebar in his ribs. She can’t shake the sight of his body stretched out on the slab. Her mind quickly races through the deaths she’s seen in the past few months. She shudders. “So you think about your parents still?”

  “Now more than ever.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m getting closer to them, not farther away. Ingership said that Willux knew my parents. They’re still connected to this world—by their work to try to stop Willux and by me. Like with your mother, right? She’s still here. The swan, the Seven. It’s all jumbled, but it means something.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’m not like El Capitan. He wants to bring the Dome down. And Partridge, he wants to get back at his father. I just want everyone to know the truth.”

  “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I know that your parents risked everything f
or the truth. I want to know the difference between what’s real and what was made up and handed to you as the truth.” But she doesn’t mean it the same way Bradwell does. He wants to know the truth about the world. She wants to know only the truth about herself in that world. It seems like such a selfish desire—small and petty. Emi Brigid Imanaka. They’re just three words. And Pressia Belze is an invention.

  He says, “Good,” but when she glances at him, he’s looking at her in such a way that she’s pretty sure he doesn’t quite believe her. Maybe he knows what she wants. “Go ahead. Ask Fignan about your mother and father.”

  She rests her hand lightly on the top of the box. “Should I?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “I feel like it might be cheating.” She pulls her hand away. “I want to remember them on my own, but I don’t think I can. Why don’t I remember the Detonations? Or, really, anything much from the Before?”

  “Have you ever wanted to?”

  “I need to,” she says. “I mean, I have to tunnel back through that part if I want to get to the Before. I feel like it’s a locked door to an attic. If I open it, I’ll find the things my mind has blanked out from the Detonations, and, deeper in the attic, maybe memories of my mother and father.”

  “You know, I thought of this the other day; you used to be fluent in Japanese,” Bradwell says. “You lived there, raised by your father and aunt. The language is inside of you, down deep.”

  “I guess so, locked away like everything else.”

  “Maybe that was part of it—a lack of language for what was going on. You couldn’t process all of it.”

  “I knew the words to the song about the girl with the swaying dress on the porch that my mother sang to me.”

  “That’s a safe memory,” Bradwell says.

  “Are you saying I don’t have the guts to remember the hard stuff?”

  “I just meant that—” Someone pounds on the door. Fignan lights up, his engine growling to life.

  “Bradwell!” a man shouts.

  Bradwell walks to the door. “Who is it?”

  “We got news from El Capitan. It’s important.”

  Bradwell lifts the bar and steps into the hall.

  Pressia can tell by the tenor of the voices that the message is urgent. Something has gone wrong. Her stomach turns. She looks at the row of lights, lined up like a series of eyes on Fignan’s back. Seven swans a-swimming, Pressia thinks, but she has no idea where the words come from. Fignan stares at her, like a dog that knows only one trick.

  She kneels down, leans in close, and whispers, “Would you tell me about my parents, if I asked?” As she says it, she wonders if she’s afraid to know about her parents. Will it only make her miss them more? Will there be information that she doesn’t want to know? She’s a bastard, after all, a secret.

  Fignan rises up. One of his arms darts out, grabs a few wisps of her hair, and pulls, yanking them from her head.

  “Ouch!” she says, standing up, rubbing the spot. “What the hell was that for?” The hair disappears like thread being quickly wound by a motor within the box. Startled, she backs away from Fignan, bumping into the metal table, jostling the bell that gets kicked to its side. It rolls off the table and clangs against the floor.

  She picks it up and starts to put it back, but first, she looks down at the newspaper clipping. The entire headline is readable now: INTERNATIONAL CADET’S DROWNING RULED ACCIDENT. The boy’s name appears under his photograph—CADET IVAN NOVIKOV. Pressia picks up the clipping, which explains that the training operation was an international effort. The Best and Brightest from a number of countries were brought together in a diplomatic effort in an open exchange of cultures. From what Pressia can tell, it was a branch of the Best and the Brightest, bringing in the most elite kids from around the globe, which explains how her Japanese father was invited. Ivan Novikov hailed from Ukraine. The boy’s face looks haunted, but maybe that’s only because she knows he’s long dead. He’s handsome and serious. Under this clipping, there’s another. The headline reads, CADET AWARDED SILVER STAR FOR HEROISM. Again, there’s a picture of a cadet, but this face she recognizes—though he’s younger and his eyes look darker and more alive. CADET ELLERY WILLUX. She skims the article. Willux, aged 19, tried to save Cadet Novikov in a training accident. “It’s a shame because the boy [Novikov] had been feeling sick for quite some time,” Officer Decker said. “He was just now on the mend. It was his first swim of the season.” There was a funeral and, later the same day, a ceremony to award the medal. She skims the article, her eyes locking on one specific quote. “It’s a sad day, but heroism is being rewarded,” said Cadet Walrond.

  Walrond, as in Arthur Walrond, the friend of the family who talked Bradwell’s parents into getting him a dog—a dog named Art Walrond? Was he one of the Best and the Brightest? Was this training facility the place where Willux and her mother and her father first met? Was this before or after they became the Seven? Why hasn’t Bradwell mentioned any of this to her?

  She puts the two articles down just as she found them, the bell on top. Fignan buzzes toward her. She backs away. He stops and his lights blink playfully. He whines then. It’s almost plaintive. Is he apologizing?

  She tilts her head, lifts her eyes. “What do you want from us?” she asks.

  The Black Box doesn’t say a word. Maybe he’s not programmed to want. She wonders if he understands desire and fear.

  Bradwell walks back into the room and says, “Talking to a box? Not bad company, are they?”

  She’s embarrassed. “What’s El Capitan’s message?”

  “I’m meeting him near the Rubble Fields. There’s this girl. A strange case. And spiders. Something about spiders.”

  “He doesn’t want me to come too?”

  “It’s too dangerous out there.”

  “I’m coming with you. I want to help.”

  “Cap would kill me if I let you come.”

  “Am I being guarded for my own sake or am I a prisoner here?”

  “You know the answer to that. Cap just wants—”

  “If I feel like a prisoner, I am one.”

  Bradwell shoves his hands in his pockets and sighs.

  “I’m not fragile.” But she isn’t sure if it’s the truth. Is there now a fissure inside of her—she pulled the trigger; her mother is dead—and is it a fissure that will never really heal?

  He lifts his eyes, looks at her. “It’s too soon.”

  “You forgot something.” She recognizes this voice—quiet but sure.

  “What?”

  “I make my own decisions, and this isn’t up to you.”

  LYDA

  SUBWAY CAR

  AS A CHILD, LYDA NEVER RODE the subway. The wrong element rode underground—revolutionaries, the viral, and the poor, whom God didn’t love enough to bless with riches. Righteous Red Wave films showed scenes of ferreting out the wrong element on subways. Her father was fond of these films and the video games that came with them.

  But she never expected that a subway car would look like this. The floor is tilted and littered with glass shards and debris. The windows are shattered in spiderweb patterns. The rest of the car is intact—the orange plastic seats, the silver poles, the subway maps and advertisements under splintered Plexiglas. The lantern casts everything in shifting shadows as if there were ghosts darting behind the seats.

  “So this will be home for a while,” Lyda says. “How long?”

  Mother Hestra is trying to fix the Christmas lights the mothers had strung up and connected to a small battery. The lights flicker. “Can’t say. Days or weeks. Until it’s no longer safe.”

  Partridge and Lyda pass close enough that their elbows brush. Lyda checks if Mother Hestra saw them. She didn’t.

  “What will we eat?” Lyda asks.

  “I’ve carried provisions for a few days. After that, someone will come with more.”

  Lyda is afraid to talk to Partridge. He wants them to return to the Dome to
gether, to make a plan? He’s drawn backward—that’s the way she thinks of the Dome, as something she left behind, the past, another world. How could she go back? But she’s drawn to him. She moves close to him, lifting the lantern to an advertisement for a line of sunny cleaning products—SPRUCE UP YOUR HOME THE RIGHT WAY!—and a lemony sparkling soda with smiling bubbles. The one beside it simply shows a young woman staring out a window, NEED HELP? It gives a phone number. “Do you think she’s depressed? Suicidal?”

  “Or pregnant and unmarried?” Partridge whispers. This makes Lyda blush. It’s not possible to be pregnant and unmarried. Is it? “Maybe the operators standing by didn’t care. They had one answer for everything.”

  “Asylums,” Lyda whispers. “What do you think about Illia? She told me this story about a man and a woman and a seed of truth. It sounds like make-believe, but it isn’t. I’m sure . . .” She stops mid-sentence. Partridge’s eyes are roaming her face. “What?” she whispers.

  “God. How long are we going to be trapped here?” Partridge whispers. “I won’t be able to take it—not with you here.”

  The comment stings. “What do you mean?”

  “This close,” he says, “and not allowed to kiss you?”

  Her stomach flips. She covers her face with her hands, and then whispers, “I feel the same way.” They’ve been monitored all their lives, counted like sheep, put in rows, taught to read in groups, turning the pages in unison—during the Before and in the Dome. So it seems cruel that they find themselves here, where everything is wild and uncharted, and instead of being wild themselves, they’re monitored, once again.

  She places her hand on the Plexiglas and he does too. Her pinky touches his wounded one—proof of the mothers’ wildness. Although she’s sorry that his pinky is gone, she loves the barbarism of the mothers. She loves the weight of the spear in her grip, throwing it with all her might, the thick sound it makes when it strikes the target. After her childhood of battened-down emotions, the constant tamping of anger, the denial of fear, the embarrassment of love, barbarism seems honest.