Fuse

by Julianna Baggott

  He leaves the camera’s field of vision again. Is there a window nearby? Is he checking for people following him? When he returns, he says, “I can feel them closing in on me. We’re running out of time. If you’re hearing this, it means all our attempts here have failed.” He almost laughs—or is it a sob? Pressia can’t tell. The man’s chest heaves for a second and then he says, “Willux—he’s a romantic when all’s said and done, right? He wants his glorious story to live on. I hope one of you hears this, and I hope you give his story an ending. Promise me that.” He stares up at the ceiling. The image sputters for a moment and then returns. “Not that I deserve your word, especially not Silva and Otten. Your word is too good for me. I’ve broken so many promises. You two are better than me,” Walrond says. “You always have been. And Bradwell’s the best of both of you put together.” He looks directly at the camera then, directly at Bradwell. “In fact,” Walrond says, “what if he’s the one to survive out of all of us? Maybe I’ll add one more feature, just in case. All your kids,” he whispers. “God, I hope they outlive us all. I hope they survive what’s coming. I hope they have a world left to survive in.”

  The light fades. The small camera that projected the hologram clicks down into the Black Box.

  It’s quiet.

  “Are you okay?” Pressia says. She can’t imagine the shock of seeing Walrond again.

  “Fine. Just fine,” he says, staring at Fignan. “It’s the formula after all that. He’s got it in there somehow The formula. So, there you go.” He takes a deep breath. “Let’s go.” While Fignan’s inner motor keeps churning, he starts walking so fast that Pressia has to run to catch up.

  “Wait,” she says. “What did you want from Walrond? Isn’t the formula good news? If we can get it, we need only one more ingredient and then we can save Wilda and—”

  “It is good news for you, I suppose.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The Dome can Purify people. They’ve figured it out, but it causes Rapid Cell Degeneration,” Bradwell says. “And then there’s this hope, this little chance that if you could get your mother’s vials and one other ingredient plus the formula on how they would work together, the Dome could Purify people, and then have some meds to offset the side effects. Life would be perfect, right?”

  “When Willux and the people of the Dome decide the earth is clean enough again for them to return, Willux has it worked so there will be two obvious classes—the Pures and the wretches who’ll serve them,” Pressia says. “This could erase his plan.”

  “Or they could come out here and face us. Face what they did to us, and accept us for who we are.”

  “You can’t ignore the fact that a cure is an interesting possibility.”

  “You mean a tantalizing possibility.”

  “Don’t tell me what I mean!”

  “I know what you’re hoping for, Pressia. You want your hand back. You want to erase your burns. You want to be like them.”

  “Is there something so wrong with that? Really? Is wanting not to be disfigured and burned such a crime?”

  “And if you got what you wanted, Pressia, what would that really change?”

  She isn’t sure, but it feels like she’d get some part of herself back. She says, “I still have this memory of who I was. I want that person to exist. I want to be wholly me.”

  “You are whole,” Bradwell says. “This is who I am—scars, birds in my back. I’m whole now. I accept that. You go around seeing beauty in all this wreckage, but when will you see it in yourself?” He reaches up and runs his finger along the curve of the crescent scar around her eye. “This self.”

  Pressia wants to jerk her head away, but she doesn’t. It’s the way he looks at her—so intensely. “At least the formula is real. You just wanted to dig around in the past. You just wanted old truths, didn’t you?”

  “There is one truth,” he says. “We have to find it and keep it.”

  “I don’t know,” Pressia says. “Sometimes I think you believe everyone else’s truth is malleable, changeable, untrustworthy—but not yours.”

  Finally she turns her head and looks across the river. A light fog drifts across the surface. Something rustles in the underbrush not far away. They both peer through the leaves.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Pressia says.

  Bradwell looks up at the sky broken by limbs. “Why would time be of the essence?” he says. “It’s like Walrond forgot that we’d be listening to that message after the Detonations. Time was only of the essence during the Before, when they could still hope to stop Willux. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “How could he have really fully imagined all this? Back then, time had to have meant something different,” Pressia says. “We have to keep moving.” Time, right now, makes her think of El Capitan. Has enough time passed that the spider embedded in his leg has exploded? She has no watch. What if he and Helmud are dead now? It’s something they don’t talk about. Can’t.

  PARTRIDGE

  DOWN

  STILL LYING ON HIS BACK, Partridge opens his eyes to the ashen bowl of the dark night sky, so much of it, stretching on like a cloudy ocean. The moon offers some frail light. When Lyda whispered goodbye, he was thinking the same thing—good-bye to this world, its ash, sky, wind. The world outside the Dome has a wild heartbeat all its own, a vicious, pumping heart that makes everything—even the air—feel violently alive. He doesn’t want to go back to the Dome’s stale, trapped air, its punctuality, scoured cleanliness, all of that well-mannered hypocrisy. And yet he would love to be warm, in a real bed—with Lyda.

  She’s already dressed and standing at the edge of the exposed wall, which comes to her hips. It’s like she’s looking off the prow of a tall ship.

  He sits up and gets dressed. He says her name. She doesn’t turn around.

  Partridge grabs his coat and walks over to her. He slides his hands around her waist from behind and kisses her cheek. “Do you want my coat?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You should take it.” He wraps it around her shoulders.

  “It’s a matter of time,” she says. “I’ve seen Hastings out there.”

  “Where?”

  “He was walking the rubble of the prisons, alone. He must have split from the others. He’s probably looking for you.”

  “Maybe he’ll be the one to take us in. Better him than Wellingsly. It’d help his reputation to be the one who hands me over.”

  “He won’t be the one to bring us in,” Lyda says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not us.” She pulls away from him.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She whispers, “I’m not going with you.”

  “But we’re going back in together.”

  “I can’t go back.”

  “You’ll be with me. I can make sure you’re protected.”

  “That’s just it,” she says, her eyes tearing, her voice suddenly desperate. “I don’t want to be protected anymore.”

  Partridge doesn’t believe her. It makes no sense. He looks out at the decimated landscape. “It’s barbaric out here. I can make sure—” He’s about to tell her that he can make sure she’s taken care of, but he knows that’s not what she wants to hear either.

  “It’s barbaric in there too. The only difference is that in the Dome they lie about it.”

  She’s right, of course. He watches the Dusts rise and then disappear, roving just beneath the surface of dirt and snow. Trawling—that’s the word that comes to mind. “You might not need me, but what if I need you?”

  “I can’t.” Her voice is firm, unwavering. It surprises him.

  “But you were going to come with me. You said good-bye to all this. I heard you say it.”

  She shakes her head. “I wasn’t saying good-bye to all this,” she says. “I was saying good-bye to you.”

  Partridge feels choked, like he’s been punched in the chest. He looks at the fallen prison. A thin beam of light flo
ats over the fallen girders. It’s Hastings picking his way along the rubble. He stops, as if sensing someone watching him. He turns and looks at Partridge, lighting Partridge’s face and chest. Hastings is outfitted with excellent vision. He would be able to see Partridge in great detail. Hastings gives Partridge a nod, then doubles back over the wreckage, starting to make his way to the house.

  “Hastings is coming,” Partridge says. He turns and looks at Lyda, her cheeks pink from the wind, which makes her blue eyes even bluer. “What can I say to make you come? Tell me. I’ll promise you anything.” He’s afraid he might cry.

  “You’ll need this.” She holds the coat to his chest. For a moment, he refuses to take it from her, as if this will keep her with him—a coat she can’t return. Then he takes it and looks away. She kisses his cheek.

  “You shouldn’t be alone out here,” he says.

  “The mothers will come for me.”

  He can hear his own heart and then Hastings’ boots downstairs. He reaches into the coat pocket and pulls out the music box. “Here.” At first she won’t even lift her hands, but then she looks him in the eye. “Please,” he says.

  She takes it.

  He calls to Hastings, “I’m coming!”

  “Be careful,” she says. “I’m afraid of what your father might do to you.”

  “I know better than anyone he can’t be trusted,” he says defensively.

  “I know,” Lyda says. “But you still want him to love you.”

  It’s true. He can’t even fight her on it. It’s what makes Partridge so vulnerable. “You said good-bye, but I’m not,” Partridge says, “because we’ll find each other again. I’m sure of it.” And then because he can’t bear the thought of her leaving him, he shouts to Hastings again and runs down the stairs.

  PRESSIA

  GHOSTLY GIRLS

  THEY’VE BEEN FOLLOWING THE RIVER along the bank where the reeds are high. Occasionally, a Beast growls from the reeds. Once, she saw a dark muzzle and then the quick shine of bared teeth. Bradwell is supposed to know where it’s low enough to cross, but he hasn’t found it yet. The river is deep and dark. Rivers. Has she seen one before? Is there a memory here that’s her own? She can almost feel it, but she fears it too. If there’s a memory, she’s not sure it’s one she wants to surface.

  The air is windy and cold. The reeds, covered in thin layers of ice, click together. Near the bank where the mud isn’t as stiff with cold, it suctions Pressia’s boots, as if there’s something alive in it, something with tentacles. Bradwell has Fignan under an arm and the two maps—now dirty and crushed—tucked into his belt.

  The current is quick. Pressia thinks of the ghostly girls. She sings the song softly: “The river’s wide, the current curls, the current calls, the current curls.”

  “The outpost we’re headed to was the school the girls in that song went to, supposedly,” Bradwell says.

  “Really?”

  “I’ve heard it was bad here. Well, you know how it was anywhere there was water. Swimming pools, duck ponds on golf courses, rivers like this one.” The reeds rattle. A small, furred body slips through the underbrush.

  Pressia knows what he’d heard. Everyone moved toward water—a procession of death—because there were fiery tornadoes, and the world was, for a while, a tinderbox. Everything went up in flames. People found water—like the ghostly girls—and the rivers became glutted with bodies. There, burned and bleeding, the people died. But she has no memory of this. None at all. She looks out across the river. “You know what I’d like to know? If I can swim. It feels like something you should know about yourself, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  More dark forms rummage nearby. There’s scattered growling now.

  He turns around and looks at Pressia. “So how would you like to test it?”

  “Swimming? Are you crazy? The water’s freezing. Where’s the place to cross?”

  “Yeah, about that,” he says. “I’m not sure if it’s a mile ahead of us or a mile behind. And these Beasts are giving us an ultimatum.”

  “I’m not getting into that freezing water. Whether I can swim or not is beside the point. We’ll die of the cold in there!”

  Upstream, reeds are clicking. A small, lean animal darts through them. The growls are growing louder.

  Bradwell starts untying his boots. “More likely we’ll get eaten by whatever’s growling.”

  “What are they?” Pressia whispers.

  “I don’t know, but their hackles are up. See the tin roof over there?” Bradwell asks.

  Pressia squints across the river. She can barely make out the distant tip of a roof through the trees. “Is that the outpost?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hasn’t someone built a bridge or something?”

  “Like beavers?”

  “Like whoever.”

  “Do you see one?”

  “Maybe if we shout, someone at the outpost will hear us.”

  “Over the sounds of the river? And what would they do if they did hear us? Join hands and make a bridge for us to walk across?”

  A bridge of bodies. A river. There is a memory here. She feels sick, the saliva in her mouth hot. She leans over and spits.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I am.” They wade in water to be healed, their wounds to be sealed, to be healed. Death by drowning, their skin all peeled, their skin all pearled, their skin all peeled. She can see the ghostly girls in her mind’s eye, leading one another, blindly, singing their school song. Bodies of water. Bodies. Bradwell said, Well, you know how it was anywhere there was water. Swimming pools, duck ponds on golf courses, rivers like this one. Does she know?

  “Look.” Bradwell takes off his jacket. “If you can just float, I’ll swim you across.”

  Marching blind their voices singing, voices keening, voices singing. We hear them ’til our ears are ringing, ears are screaming, ears are ringing. She looks around. All the bushes take on the hunched look of animals. She doesn’t want to think of floating in a river. Isn’t that how the girls’ bodies bobbed to the surface once dead? “The maps will get wet.”

  “They will. But they’re written in pencil, not pen. That helps.” He pulls his shirt off over his head—maybe so that he can move through the water more easily. His chest is broader and stronger than she remembers it. The wounds on each of his muscular shoulders have healed, leaving pinkish red scars. He’s beautiful and tough—and more beautiful because he looks so tough. She can hear the birds’ wings but can’t see them. Is he keeping his back to the woods because he doesn’t want her to see them? He’d never admit it, but it’s probably true.

  “You should take off some of your heavy stuff,” he says. “You don’t want to be weighed down.” He unhooks his belt then stops. He rubs his arms briskly.

  Fignan motors to the edge of the water. He draws in his arms and wheels. Thin, webbed spokes appear at his sides. They look delicate but strong. “You think he’ll be okay?” Pressia asks.

  “He was built with the apocalypse in mind. We’re the delicate ones.” The delicate ones. She thinks of the ghostly girls again—so delicate. “Are we doing this?”

  Pressia looks across the water. She sees a swirl that quickly disappears. She thinks of the fevered dream she had as a kid, the horror all around her and how she counted the telephone poles. And when there were no telephone poles, her grandfather told her to close her eyes and imagine telephone poles to count. Itchy knee. Sun, she go. “All I have to do is float?”

  The low vibrato of growls reverberates through the reeds. Pressia sees dozens of shining eyes, muzzles, and teeth.

  “Yes,” Bradwell says, glancing at the animals. “Just keep calm, relax, and float. I’ll do the rest.”

  She shrugs off her coat and quickly unlaces her boots, ripping them off by their cold, mud-packed heels.

  Bradwell takes off his pants. He’s we
aring loose shorts underneath. He pulls the belt from its loops, picks up the maps, tightens the belt against his stomach—the maps pressed to his skin.

  “You’re really serious about not being weighed down,” she says.

  “Yep.” He wades out into the water, winces with the pain of the cold. She sees his birds now, shining feathers, their bright orange feet. Waterbirds.

  “The vials,” she says, making sure they’re still safely intact.

  “Come on!” One of the Beasts has edged out. She sees a flash of shiny hair—almost mane-like. The growling is low and gruff. The Beast’s silky mane parts like a curtain; a dark, muddy arm emerges, a thin, human arm—a ghostly girl? No, they’re just a myth. A myth. She edges backward into the freezing water. It swirls around her legs. It’s so cold it burns. The iciness scares her. She raises her arms over her head as the water reaches her hips. Bradwell grabs her hand, strong and firm. She bounces on her toes, feeling the buoyancy now.

  “Let the water hold you up. I’m beside you.” He hooks his wet, bare arm around her waist. He pulls her forward on her stomach. She reaches one arm lightly around Bradwell’s neck and lifts her legs. Her skin starts to numb.

  Pressia looks back and sees Fignan motor into the water, starting to thrum his webbed spokes, then disappears into the deep.

  She holds her breath, keeps her chin high. Bradwell pushes off the riverbed and starts kicking. “You can kick too,” he says, “if inspired.”

  She kicks but feels light-headed. She lets out her breath, draws it in again quickly. She wishes she had taken off more of her clothes. They’re weighty.

  “You’re doing great,” Bradwell tells her, huffing.

  Then Pressia feels something glide around her legs. She pulls them to her chest and tightens her hold around Bradwell’s neck. “Something’s down there!”

  “Probably a fish. That’s all.” She can tell by the way he eyes the water that he’s scared too.