Fuse

by Julianna Baggott

  “I’ll tell him,” Fandra says, and then she lowers her voice and whispers to Pressia, “I’m so glad you two are together. You found someone to love who loves you back.”

  “What?” Pressia says. “Who are you talking about?”

  “You and Bradwell,” Fandra whispers, surprised Pressia doesn’t know.

  Pressia shakes her head. “No, we aren’t together.”

  Fandra smiles. “I see how he looks at you.”

  “It’s going to get dark,” Bradwell calls to Fandra. “Is there any place safe enough for the night?”

  Fandra points into the distance. “There’s a stone underpass from an elevated train track. You’ll be okay if you take turns standing guard.”

  “Thanks for helping us out there,” Bradwell says. “Without it, we’d be dead and buried.”

  “We owe you,” Fandra says. “You know that, Bradwell. So many of us here owe our lives to your lessons in Shadow History, the underground, and you. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” Bradwell says, obviously choked up.

  “I imagine you all have set out to do something important?” Fandra says.

  “Or maybe just crazy,” El Capitan says.

  “Go on, then,” Fandra says. “And keep going!” She steps away from the fence.

  Pressia misses her already, and not only Fandra but her childhood, the tents of sheets—pup tents—called home.

  “We’ll see each other again,” Pressia says.

  Fandra nods and then runs off back into the depths of the amusement park, and she’s gone.

  Set against the sky in one direction, there’s the bare stalk of a tower, with the charred frames of chairs dangling from it. Pressia imagines for a moment what it would have been like to be there when the Detonations hit—the air filled with light, the force of the heat, and, if you survived at all, to be suspended in midair, dangling above the earth, seeing the hysteria and destruction in every direction. She looks at Bradwell. Fandra thinks they’re together, that they found each other—someone to love who loves you back. And then it’s as if she is being spun by one of these rides. Her stomach flips. Bradwell, his clothes ripped in places, dotted with blood, his muscles riding beneath his shirt. His ruddy cheeks and dark lashes. Bradwell.

  They start walking, but she has to look back at the roller coaster, black and bony against the darkening sky.

  PRESSIA

  FIREFLIES

  AFTER WALKING FOR AN HOUR or so, they find the stone underpass. It’s beaten but standing. They sit on the ground, eat from the provisions El Capitan has brought—heavily salted meats. When they’re finished, El Capitan offers to take the first watch. He walks up the incline and sits on the tracks.

  Bradwell says, “We should snug up, backs to the wind.”

  Pressia nods. They lie down together, him curled around her, his arm wrapped around her waist. Her heart is thudding in her chest, but it’s countered by this gnawing in her stomach—that same old gnawing that she’s named fear.

  “What do you think Hastings meant about the airship having sentimental value?” Pressia asks him.

  “Willux is a romantic, according to Walrond. Aren’t romantics sentimental?” Is Bradwell a romantic, deep down? Isn’t his footlocker, filled with memorabilia of the past, sentimental?

  “You know what I’m sentimental about?” Pressia says.

  “What?”

  “The things I don’t remember—stuff I’ve only heard about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like fireflies,” Pressia says. “During the Before. Do you remember them?”

  “The yards had too many chemicals for lightning bugs to survive, but farther out, in the unmown fields, they used to crawl up the grass at dusk and flash a little yellow light. My father took me out to the country once to see them. They blinked off and on and we chased them, caught them, and put them in glass jars, poking holes in the lids.” She can feel his warm breath touching the edge of her ear. “But I thought you wanted to know about the Detonations, not the Before.”

  “I’ve remembered things now. A few.”

  “There were other kinds of insects just after the Detonations.”

  “What kind?”

  “They were fatter than lightning bugs, more like glowing blue butterflies that flashed and then disappeared into thin air. They were beautiful. After I left my aunt and uncle’s house, people were dying everywhere, but some of the ones who could still walk tried to catch these phosphorescent things—little flames, that’s what they were like, these quick little darting flames. I almost went with them, remembering my father and the unmown fields, but this woman grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t follow them,’ she said. ‘They are drawn to death.’ She shouted warnings too, but they didn’t listen.”

  “And what happened to the people who tried to catch them?”

  “The people who touched those little flames—even if they only held one for a second, trying to bring it back for their dying kid to see—didn’t last long. They were sick within a few hours and dead from the radiation poisoning within a few days—quick, violent deaths.”

  Pressia shudders. “I have a feeling that won’t go away.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a feeling in my stomach. I’ve thought it was fear, but maybe it’s

  guilt.”

  “What do you feel guilty about?”

  “Being alive.” She tries to imagine the glowing butterflies darting and disappearing and the people, out there, sickly and staggering and trying to catch some beauty. And then she thinks of her mother in the forest, sickly and staggering, kneeling next to her dying son, her eldest, Sedge. Pressia feels the weight of the gun again. Her ears start ringing and suddenly she’s crying.

  “Pressia,” Bradwell says, holding her more tightly. “What is it?” His voice is somber, almost scared.

  “No,” she says. “I can’t tell you.” She hears the rustling wings of the birds embedded in his back, brushing the cloth of his shirt. She can’t look at him. She can’t say a word. The bloody mist is a cloud around her.

  He sits up a little and tilts his head so it’s touching hers. “Tell me. Tell me what it is.”

  She says, “I killed her. I thought it was the right thing to do, but now . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know.”

  “No,” he says, “I was there. It was a mercy.”

  She can’t catch her breath.

  “I felt that way for a long time, Pressia. I hauled all of this guilt around for years.”

  “What did you feel guilty about?”

  “I was asleep in bed when my parents were shot, Pressia. I slept through their murders.”

  “You were just a little boy.” Pressia turns and faces him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “And it’s not your fault that your mother is dead. It was a mercy. I was there.”

  “I know why they didn’t listen to the woman’s warning about the blue butterflies,” Pressia says.

  “Why?” Bradwell says.

  “They needed something to catch and hold. They needed beauty. I can’t explain it. They needed to believe that something beautiful might come from all the terror. I understand the impulse to want to believe in something beautiful again—and hold it in your hands like that.” It’s dark but she can see the shine of Bradwell’s eyes. He’s staring at her intently. He cups her face in his hands, which are warm, strong, and rough. He kisses her. She closes her eyes and kisses him back, feeling his chest pressed against hers. His lips are hot. She grips his shirt. Everything around her seems to fade.

  When he pulls away, they’re both breathless. “What were you going to say to me out there when the Dusts were circling us?”

  “Something about falling . . . how you make me feel like . . . I’m falling and crashing.”

  He kisses her, quick kisses—her mouth, her jaw, along her neck. “When I first met you, I thought we were made for each other even though we seemed like opposites in some ways and we fought. But now . . .”


  “What?”

  “Now I feel like we weren’t made for each other. We’re making each other—into the people we should become. Do you know what I mean?”

  She does, immediately. It feels like the truest thing she’s ever heard. “Yes,” she says, kissing him. “I know what you mean.”

  PARTRIDGE

  CAKE

  PARTRIDGE IS STANDING in a bathroom in someone’s upscale, topfloor, roof-access apartment in the Wenderly, back on Upper Two. The Crowley family? He’s not even sure who’s hosting the party, only that it’s in honor of his engagement to Iralene. It dawns on him that he doesn’t have a ring. Isn’t he supposed to propose first? He thinks of Lyda. He gave her the music box. It meant more than a ring. It was the truth. This is all fake, temporary

  Partridge can hear the murmur of conversation, the occasional laugh rippling above it. These people know he escaped, although they think he did it on a dare, to impress a girl from a bad crowd. But they can’t know his father wants him to hand over his memory of it all. Then what? They’ll all pretend the story of the girl from the bad crowd also disappears? These people are good at denial. They practice it daily, like a religion.

  Arvin Weed—this is his hope. Glassings might have his doubts, but Partridge has to hold out hope that Arvin is going to get him through this—hopefully he can fake the damn operation. He’s a boy genius after all, right? He hopes Arvin’s here somewhere in the small crowd and that he can get a minute alone with him.

  Partridge strips down and takes a brand-new suit off its hook. He puts on the pants, buttons the cuffs of the shirt, knots the light blue tie, and pulls on the dark blue suit jacket. It fits so perfectly—even the smooth contours of the leather shoes—that he wonders if they got his measurements from his old mummy mold. It’s disturbing how much they know about him—not just his shoe size but down to his DNA.

  He doesn’t want to smile and shake hands. Will Iralene’s mother, Mimi, be here? He wonders if she comes out of her capsule for these kinds of things.

  There’s a knock at the door. “Do you need anything?” It’s Beckley.

  “I’m fine.”

  “People are asking for you. Are you ready?”

  “Just a minute.” He pops off the cast on his pinky. One day, will there be any sign that it was chopped off? If his memory gets erased, will there even be the tiniest scar left over to tell what happened? His mother’s research made this possible. She could have rebuilt her own limbs with bionanotechnology, but she refused. Her body was the truth and she wasn’t going to cover it up. Partridge wonders what the hell he’s doing here.

  Beckley knocks again. “Sir?”

  Partridge replaces the cast, opens the door, and strides out ahead of Beckley, toward the voices. “Let’s get it over with.” He walks through the living room, which is white and fluffed, and out onto the terrace.

  Everyone turns. Some start clapping. Someone clinks a fork against a wineglass. He sees faces he recognizes—all smiling and laughing and calling his name. There are neighbors from Betton West, where Partridge grew up, the Belleweathers, the Georges, the Winthrops, and high-ranking officials—Collins, Bertson, Holt, and some he recognizes only from public announcements, including Foresteed himself, who’s become the face of Dome leadership. More people are chiming in with their forks against wineglasses. Even the help, young men and women in white shirts and navy-blue vests and bow ties, have frozen in place and are smiling at Partridge. They’re serving real food—puffed pastries, cubed chicken skewered with toothpicks. What do they expect from him?

  Beckley leans forward. “You could wave.”

  “What?” Partridge says, baffled.

  “Nod or something.”

  Partridge gives a small wave then tucks his hands in his pockets, not sure what else to do. He’s actually relieved when he sees Mimi in the crowd. She is leading Iralene to him, beaming. Her skin shimmers with makeup. Her hair is piled up in a loose network of curls on top of her head, like a tiered cake.

  Iralene’s dress and corsage of dyed-blue flowers match Partridge’s tie. She’s holding a boutonniere, with the same dyed-blue flowers. The flowers look real, fleshy, not plastic at all.

  “Hello, Partridge,” Mimi says. “It’s so nice to see you again. How lovely that this has all worked out.”

  Iralene lifts herself on her tiptoes and kisses Partridge’s cheek. The crowd gives a collective awww and finally the clinking stops. Partridge can feel the heat in his cheeks, but it’s not because he’s embarrassed by the public display of affection. No. He’s furious. How far does this have to go? Why do they have to be paraded like this? Iralene pins the boutonniere to the lapel of Partridge’s suit. When he thinks she’s done, he backs away, but it was too soon, and Iralene pokes herself with the needle. A dot of blood beads on her finger.

  “Sorry,” Partridge says.

  “It’s okay!” Iralene says.

  “Just finish the job,” Mimi says angrily, handing her a cocktail napkin.

  Iralene pushes the pin all the way in. “There,” she says.

  The couple then turn around and face the crowd. Mimi says, “Please eat, drink, mingle! We’ll have some dancing later!”

  Dancing would only make him think of Lyda. He’ll have to get out of it.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Iralene whispers. “Don’t blame me, Partridge.”

  “Of course not,” he says. He reaches down and holds her hand. “We still have our secret, Iralene, to help each other. Don’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  She’s wearing an engagement ring. He lifts her hand. “Where did this come from?”

  “You,” she says. “You gave it to me before the accident!”

  “You can’t do this, Iralene.”

  “But you agreed to your father’s plan. Your memories are going to be gone. I’ll fill them in for you. This is how you help me.”

  “Is that what he’s got planned? My memories will be erased and then I’ll be force-fed the story from the society pages?”

  “You can choose the truth—”

  “Stop.”

  “Neither of us can stop this, Partridge. It’s bigger than both of us.”

  “Weed can stop this,” Partridge says. “I need some air.”

  “We’re already outside,” Iralene tells him.

  They’re outside on the roof deck. But the air here is no different from inside the apartment. Partridge feels claustrophobic. He scans the crowd. That’s when he sees Arvin Weed wearing a red tie, lifting a puffed pastry off one of the waitress’ trays.

  Partridge thinks of all those train rides with Weed’s head bowed to his screen, reading, the way that made him invisible. The last time Partridge saw him, the day Partridge had planned his escape, just before Vic Wellingsly offered to beat Partridge’s ass, Arvin had given Partridge a look as if, for a second, he might stick up for Partridge. But then he didn’t. When it comes right down to it, does Weed have enough courage to be on Partridge’s side? Partridge has seen him tested, watched him tuck his chin to his chest and let his eyes glide back to a screen. Weed’s got to help him this time. It’s his only chance.

  “I see an old friend of mine,” Partridge says. “I’m going to catch up with him.”

  “You don’t want to introduce me to him?”

  “I just need a little time, okay?”

  Iralene nods. “There’s cake. I’ll see if it’s going to be brought out soon. I’ll meet you back here.”

  “Fine.” Making his way through the crowd is harder than he expected. His father’s friends stop him, shake his hand, clap him on the back. They make jokes about marriage using prison terms, and Partridge hates them for it. This is a prison sentence, more than they’ll ever know, he’d like to say.

  Across the room, Arvin is being congratulated too. Partridge can hear little bits of praise, sees the telltale handshakes and back-claps. What did Arvin win now? Partridge catches Arvin’s eye. Arvin looks around nervously, downs his glass of punc
h, excuses himself from his admirers, and walks toward the punch bowl for a refill.

  “We need some fresh blood,” Holt says. “We’re glad your father’s bringing you in.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Partridge says, keeping an eye on Arvin, who’s now being lauded by Mr. Winthrop, one of Partridge’s neighbors, a top adviser of his father’s and an avid tennis player.

  “What’s Arvin Weed’s latest accomplishment?” Partridge asks the group.

  They all start talking at once. “A team effort and a real breakthrough!” “Great work!” “A true feat of scientific achievement!”

  Partridge feels sick. Has Weed figured out the cure? The men keep prattling on and finally Partridge cuts them off. “You have no idea what the breakthrough is, do you?”

  They look at one another. Holt finally says, “Message from on high told us that it was truly praiseworthy.”

  “But you don’t know what you’re praising him for?” Partridge is exasperated, but also filled with dread.

  “Not really,” Holt says.

  “Not at all?”

  “No,” Holt confesses. “But it’s truly great, Partridge. Truly.”

  And then Foresteed himself appears—broad-chested, lightly tanned, his hair a little stiff. “Partridge! How good to see you safe and sound. You had us worried.” He pats Partridge’s shoulder in a fatherly way, but then glances at Holt and smiles. He leans in. “We’ve all had our heads turned by a pretty face, though. Right, Holt? Happens to the best of us. I got the chance to sow a few wild seeds myself.”

  “Excuse me?” Partridge says. Is Foresteed talking about Lyda? Is that what this is about? Lyda corrupted him and he had wild seeds to sow?