Fuse

by Julianna Baggott

  “That’s right,” Holt says. “We’re men, after all.”

  “Boys will be boys,” Foresteed says. He grabs the back of Partridge’s neck now and rattles it a little, as if he’s being playful, but Partridge has always been suspicious of chummy people. As his father’s son, he’s had to be.

  He sees Arvin edging away from Mr. Winthrop. “Excuse me. There’s someone I’ve got to talk to.” But Foresteed grabs him by the arm and pulls him in close. He whispers, “You know, I’ve heard that the operation erases everything right up until the moment you were put under and only as far back as they pinpoint it.”

  “Interesting,” Partridge says.

  “Which means I could say anything right now and it’ll be washed clean away.”

  Partridge looks up at Foresteed’s square jaw, his narrowed eyes. “Go ahead, then. Say what you want to say.”

  “You’re just a little shit, Partridge. That’s all you are and all you’ll ever be. And if you think I’m going to let you take over because your daddy says so, you’re wrong.”

  Partridge stares at Foresteed, refuses to look away. “Nice to know that you’re a coward. Why don’t you tell me that again when I can remember it, huh?”

  “I’d prefer it take you by surprise.”

  Partridge twists his arm and Foresteed releases his grip. “Happy engagement!” Foresteed says loudly.

  Partridge tries to head Arvin off before he makes it to the door. “Weed!” he shouts.

  Arvin keeps moving.

  Partridge shoves through a small circle of women. “Sorry. Excuse me.” He cuts Arvin off just as he’s about to slip out. “Are you ducking me?”

  “Partridge!” Arvin says. “Hey, I was hoping to see you but figured you’d be swamped. I gave up trying.”

  “Really? Because it seemed like you were trying to sprint out.”

  “No, no,” Arvin says. “Not at all.”

  Partridge grabs him by the elbow and walks him into a corner of the living room. “Don’t screw with me, Arvin.”

  “Hey, that hurts,” Arvin says. “Not all of us got the same enhancements, you know. Can you lighten up a little?”

  Partridge lets go of Arvin’s elbow. “What enhancements have you gotten? Brain and . . .”

  “Behavioral? I oversaw my own enhancements, Partridge. I’ve been given incredible resources and power. You can’t imagine.”

  “No,” Partridge says. “I can’t. I’m a pawn here, Arvin. So tell me, what’s all this congratulatory buzz for? What’s your breakthrough?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Partridge lowers his voice. “Is it the cure?”

  Arvin looks at the ground, shakes his head ever so slightly. “No? It’s not the cure? What is it?”

  “I can’t say!” Arvin’s flustered. He looks back up at Partridge.

  “Don’t get irate, Weed. Listen, I’m relying on you.”

  “Well, you’ve got that right. I’m completely in charge of the next phase,” he says, suddenly cocky.

  “What’s going to happen to me, Arvin?”

  Arvin tugs at his necktie. “How’s the pinky progressing?”

  “Fine. Don’t change the subject.”

  “It’s really amazing what we can do these days. Regrow a pinky? I mean, as a kid, did you think we’d ever be able to do that?”

  “I never thought I’d need to regrow a pinky.” A waitress walks by with a platter of cheeses. “No, thank you,” Partridge says and then, once she’s passed, he whispers, “Don’t dodge the question. I want to know what’s going to happen to my memories, Weed.”

  “Memory’s a tricky thing. It isn’t infinite. It’s a net. Your mind is an ocean. We can dredge only so far.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “There are things you consciously remember and then there are things that have settled down into the deepest silt on the ocean floor of your memory. Your subconscious. If something is down that deep, we can’t touch it. We can try to damage pathways, but that’s about it. Then, after a short time when there’s limited access to the damaged pathways, they get sealed off forever.”

  “But I’m not going to have to worry about that. Am I, Arvin? You’re in charge. You’re going to take care of it.”

  Arvin winks again—the same kind of nervous, almost undetectable winks that he gave Partridge when he was going through his cleansing. Arvin’s on his side; Partridge is almost sure of it! “Your pinky is being regrown, Partridge. It’s amazing. You should be happy with that science.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Be happy about it,” Weed says, like a command.

  “I’m happy, okay? I’m very, very happy that I’ll get my pinky back. All right?”

  “Some elemental part of your pinky still existed. That’s why it could be brought back.” Is Arvin telling him that his memory will be able to be brought back too because some elemental part of it exists deep down?

  “It’s dark outside,” Arvin says.

  Partridge glances over the crowd of guests on the roof deck. “It’s gotten late.”

  “It’s only going to get darker,” Arvin says.

  This sends an icy shiver through Partridge’s body. It’s a warning. Whatever Partridge thinks he knows, Arvin Weed knows more.

  Arvin looks at a vase of flowers. He touches the center of a flower. “It’s not the cure,” he whispers. “It’s worse than that, Partridge.” What can be worse than the cure? Arvin shows Partridge his finger, dusted with pollen. “Nice touch,” he says. “Real flowers. Wonder where they got ’em.”

  Partridge wants to ask him more questions—so many he’s not sure where to start—but Iralene arrives. She glides her hand along Partridge’s arm.

  “You found me,” he says.

  She turns her mouth to Partridge’s ear and whispers, “They’ve brought out the cake,” as if sharing an intimate secret.

  “Good to know,” Partridge says, and then he introduces Iralene and Arvin.

  “I know Arvin,” Iralene says. “Nice to see you again.”

  Arvin shakes her hand awkwardly, pumping it too hard then looking at his shoes. He was always nervous around girls. It’s kind of comforting that some things don’t change.

  “How do you two know each other?”

  “Lessons,” Iralene says. “I’ve been taking private tutorials over at the academy. Brushing up. It’d be a shame if I couldn’t enter into intelligent conversations with you, Partridge. Wouldn’t it?”

  “We ran into each other a few times in the academy halls,” Arvin says, looking up, “when I was there visiting friends.”

  “Who have you taken lessons from?” Partridge says. “Which teachers?”

  “A few here and there. It was so boring I could barely stand it.”

  “Glassings? Welch? Hollenback? Who?”

  She shrugs. “What’s the difference between any of them, really?”

  “I should be going,” Arvin says.

  “Do you want some cake?” she asks. “It’s lemon cake!”

  “Thank you,” Arvin says, “but I’m full and I’ve got to take off.”

  “Oh,” Iralene says, pouting. “Sorry to see you go.”

  He smiles at Iralene but doesn’t seem to have anything to say. He turns to leave, then doubles back. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Partridge.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Your father’s a great man but not known for his patience. The procedure is scheduled for tomorrow.”

  “But . . . no. It’s too soon.”

  “What can we do about it? Right? All you can do is prepare yourself. Mentally.”

  Mentally, Partridge thinks. How do you mentally prepare yourself to lose a chunk of your mind?

  And then Arvin pauses for a moment. He wants to say something, but he looks at Iralene and her presence stops him. Partridge can tell that instead of saying what he wanted to, Arvin is trying to put it another way.

  “What is it?” Iralene asks.

&nb
sp; “Nothing,” Arvin says. “I’m just glad Partridge is back. That’s all.” He looks at Partridge. “Glad you’re back. You’re here.”

  “What do you mean?” Iralene says and she pokes Partridge with her elbow

  “Back? Here? Ha, ha!” Partridge says. “I never left.”

  LYDA

  CAIRNS

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, Lyda slips her hand under her cold pillow. She finds the metal edge of the music box that she keeps hidden against the plaster wall. She pulls it to her chest. Usually, she’ll open it—for a brief second—to let a few notes out as if the music itself might suffocate in the box and die. But this time she doesn’t. She sits up and slips her bare feet into her cold boots. She doesn’t lace them. She doesn’t get dressed. She simply puts on her coat over her sleeping dress—given to her by the mothers. Freedle lets out a mechanized chirp. He wants to come too? She lets him perch on her shoulder, close to her neck, where her long hair once draped. She walks as quietly as she can past the sleeping mothers and their children. It’s winter, so they’re congested, a little wheezy, and restless.

  They’re living now in an old storage room beneath what was once a factory that manufactured some kind of candy—something gummy that required animal parts. Almost a decade later, the air still smells sickeningly sweet with a dark undercurrent of death. The smell of the factory makes Lyda feel sick. Mother Hestra spent the day telling Lyda about pregnancy—how she will continue to feel sick and light-headed for a while, but that this will pass as she swells, how her breasts will feel tender—they already do—and how she needs to eat more. Lyda asked about labor and birth, but Mother Hestra said they would talk about that later. “Only so much we need to get to now.”

  Lyda’s mind is drawn to the future. When new babies are born of survivors, they’re also altered in some way. Their parents have been so deeply affected by the Detonations that their genetic coding is altered. And the changes may be also environmental. Radiation has been drummed and sealed into the earth, air, water. It rides on the ash and is breathed into lungs. Lyda was taught this in the Dome. Will her child be altered too? She’s had dreams where she gives birth to something furred, mangled, fanged, its ribs glittering with glass.

  Partridge isn’t worrying about this. He doesn’t know a thing. She feels more alone than she ever has in her life. It’s been a month since she’s seen him. Sometimes she pictures his face and the image breaks apart in her mind.

  Holding the box, Lyda walks out of the storage room and into the airy factory itself. There’s only one light—a dim one. It guides her down rows of old conveyor belts, machinery, exposed pipes. The mothers have gutted this place, per usual. They’ve stripped away gears, chains, rubber handles, levers, everything of value, giving the space a hollow feel. Lyda knows that Mother Hestra wants to tell Our Good Mother about the pregnancy soon, and Lyda is afraid of what judgment she might dole out. Our Good Mother terrifies her.

  She grips the box tightly to her chest and walks as fast as she can. There is no door on the other side of the factory’s large room—only a rectangle where one used to stand. She steps out into the cold night air. Freedle chirps lightly, perhaps happy to be outside.

  As alone as she feels, she doesn’t want Partridge to hear anything about the pregnancy. It would distract him from his mission. And now his mission has become more personal. She thinks of the girl she saw, Wilda—not born Pure, but made Pure. If Lyda’s child is marked, will she want the baby to be made Pure? She’d like to think she wouldn’t, that, instead, she would be proud of her child, in any form. But sometimes she thinks that the child would want to be Pure; it’s natural. If the others find a way to reverse Rapid Cell Degeneration, the child might be able to be made whole.

  She also doesn’t want Partridge to know she’s pregnant because she wants him to come back for her out of love, not obligation. She hates herself for thinking like this. He isn’t coming back. She must keep telling herself this. Some part of her feels like he doesn’t deserve to know about her pregnancy. This is hers. He is gone. She has to learn to rely solely on herself.

  The ground is hard-packed cement and icy dirt. Lyda walks around the corner of the factory, and there’s a graveyard. It’s makeshift and small, surrounded by metal spikes that have been driven into the ground and roped with barbed wire. The spikes go deep so that the Dusts can’t infiltrate.

  Lyda unlatches the gate and locks it behind her. Instead of tombstones, there are cairns, pale rocks neatly piled over each grave. Two of the graves are fresh—a mother buried alone and a mother and child buried together. The mother and child used to sleep on cot number nine. Lyda stops by their cairn. The stones are so white they seem to glow. She places a hand on the stones. It seems, for a moment, that everyone in the world is replaceable. This mother and child are gone. But Lyda and her child are coming. One day they’ll be gone too—buried under a pile of rocks or left like Sedge and Partridge’s mother in the woods. Bodies. Is that all we are? Is there also the wick of soul stirring inside Lyda, inside the baby too? Is she doubly souled now?

  The metal box.

  She walks to the corner of the graveyard and picks up a trowel by its rough wooden handle. She kneels, sets the music box on the ground, and lifts the trowel with both hands, stabbing the cold dirt as hard as she can. It breaks a little. She strikes the ground again and again, her breath coming out in huffs, then she wedges the trowel in deeply enough that she can upend one chunk of dirt, then another.

  Eventually there’s a small hole. She picks up the music box. Freedle opens his wings in anticipation; he’s always loved the tune it plays. She winds the tab, her fingers so numb that it’s hard to get them to work. She remembers the warmth of being with Partridge under his coat in the middle of the four-poster bed frame. She needs him right now. Tears slip down her cheeks. She opens the music box one more time. The notes pop up. Freedle flits in the air over her head. She lets the music float in the cold. The music box winds down, slower and slower, until it’s done.

  She starts to wedge the box into the hole, but then she stops. She winds it up one more time, but she doesn’t open the lid. One day, if someone digs it up, she wants it to play for them. It’s what the music box was meant to do. It may be too corroded to work by then, but she wants it to have that chance.

  Freedle lands on the ground beside her. Is she trying to bury Partridge in some way too? No. That’s not possible. He’s still with her, no matter what. She’ll always hold on to some part of him.

  Burying the music box means that she’s stopped hoping he will come back for her. She can’t live that way anymore. She has to get used to the idea that she’ll fend for herself and her child. She’ll make it, alone.

  She pushes it deep into the hole, covers it with the clods of dirt, and presses the dirt down, tamping it with the trowel.

  PARTRIDGE

  SEVEN SIMPLE TRUTHS

  “I’M SUPPOSED TO WALK YOU to your door,” Partridge says, “if we’re going to be traditional about this.”

  “And kiss me under a porch light,” Iralene says. They’re back in the hallway, standing in front of the locked door to Partridge’s room. Iralene holds the key and looks at Partridge expectantly.

  He sticks his hands in his pockets, sending the message that he’s not making a move. “I wonder what the room is set for. Do you know?”

  She slips the key into the lock. “If you don’t like it, I can change it to anything you want.” She opens the door, but before Partridge walks inside, Iralene says, “That goes for me too, Partridge. I can change. I can be the person you want me to be.”

  “Iralene,” Partridge says.

  “Thank you,” Iralene says, looking down at her hands, “for saying yes to all of this. For pretending in front of all those people that you actually want to marry me. Thank you for all of it, Partridge. I know that this night didn’t mean much to you, but for me . . .” She looks up at him and smiles, but the smile is fragile.

  “Where do you go,
Iralene, to sleep?”

  She says, “Downstairs, silly.”

  “Iralene,” he says. “Downstairs is a mirage. It doesn’t exist. Where do you go?”

  “You know where I go,” she says. “Don’t make me say it.” And then she laughs as if she’s kidding around, as if this is all fun and games.

  “It’s not good for you,” Partridge says. “It can’t be good for you.”

  “Preservation,” Iralene says. “There’s nothing better for your longevity.”

  “Do you have dreams in those capsules? You can’t. Your brain is too slowed down, like all of your other cells. You can’t dream in there.”

  “Are you inviting me in?” Iralene says. “They’d like that, even if you took advantage.”

  “I wouldn’t take advantage.”

  “If you don’t think I should be in a capsule,” Iralene says, “then invite me to stay with you tonight.”

  He’s not sure what to say.

  “It’s okay, Partridge. I’m used to suspension. I’m one of the lucky ones!” He thinks of Mrs. Hollenback in the kitchen. Lucky us. If Iralene is lucky, who’s unlucky?

  “Stay,” he says.

  She smiles and bows her head shyly. “Thank you.”

  They walk into the bedroom. It’s rustic, with a patchwork quilt on the bed, faded flower-print curtains, a view of a moonlit prairie.

  “I can turn off the cameras, you know,” Iralene says, “for the right reason.”

  Partridge glances up at the cameras perched in the corners of the room and then back at Iralene. She’s pretty. That’s the honest truth. But he can think only of Lyda and feels an ache every time. His fingers remember the feel of her skin. He has to have faith that Arvin has a plan that will save him from the operation tomorrow. He can’t lose Lyda. But also he wants the cameras off. He wants to think, even for a short while, that his life is his own. Maybe if he’s not being watched, he can think more clearly. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s turn ’em off.”

  Iralene walks up close to Partridge. She leans in so close that he can feel the heat of her body. She whispers, “For the right reasons,” her lips brushing his ear.