Fuse

by Julianna Baggott

  The woman stares at the doll head too. “Who are you?” she says but in a tone that almost sounds like she’s asking, What are you? Neither of them has fusings either, as far as Pressia can tell, yet in the light of dawn she sees that these two also have some scars and burns—but that same golden tint to their skins.

  “Let go of me!” Pressia shouts.

  “Kelly?” the woman yells. “Are you okay?”

  Pressia tries to wrench her arm loose. She’s cold and tired. Her muscles burn. The welts on her body ache.

  “Leave her alone!” Bartrand Kelly calls out. “Let her go!”

  The man stares at Pressia’s face for a moment and then loosens his grip. Pressia shoves her way past the two of them, runs down the passageway jaggedly, bumping against the stone walls pressing in on either side, toward the light.

  She hears thudding, the strange braying again. She puts one hand on the stone and steps out into the fresh air, the sun, the new day.

  And there, standing in front of her, is a horse.

  This horse seems like a miracle—its existence alone, its wide barrel of ribs, its dark mane, its long, elegant legs that taper to delicately thin ankles. A wide, dark scar runs the length of its body, which is otherwise covered in velvety fur. Its ears twitch and rotate. Its breath fogs the air.

  The horse is fitted with a saddle but isn’t tied to anything. Pressia walks to it quickly, spreads one hand to its ribs, which are warm. They rise and fall. She can hear the voices inside the tomb. Coming closer?

  She’s never ridden a horse before. Her grandfather told her the story of pony rides at one of her birthday parties, but that was a lie from the life she never had. She thinks of the twisted bodies of the horses on the tilted merry-go-round.

  This horse is a miracle meant for her.

  She grabs a knob at the front of the saddle with her good hand, holds Fignan in the other arm, and hoists herself up. She’s surprised by how tall the horse is, how regal. She picks up the reins and nudges the horse with her boots. “Go,” she says.

  The horse takes a few steps.

  She nudges the horse again more urgently. She leans forward and whispers, “Go! Please go!”

  She hears the voices clearly now.

  She gives the horse a little kick and cries out, “Go!”

  And as the man and the woman, who are propping Bartrand Kelly up between them, emerge from the passageway, the horse starts to gallop. Pressia grips the horse’s ribs between her legs, tries to keep her balance while holding Fignan tightly to her chest. She leans down close to the horse’s mane. The wind in her hair, her eyes streaming tears, she says, “Go, go! Keep going!”

  PARTRIDGE

  LYDA MERTZ

  BY THE TIME THE CAMERAS click on, Partridge and Iralene are sitting on the edge of his bed. Ever since he saw the eye of the doll in his mind—its glassy bead, the fringe of plastic eyelashes, the mechanism of the eyelid caked with ash—he’s seen other things, in sharp, vivid detail.

  A sheep with gnarled and twisted horns.

  Splintered glass covering some kind of map.

  A man carrying another spindly man on his back.

  And Lyda Mertz. He’s sure it was her face, but her head was shaved, her face streaked with dirt, and she was holding a long spear in a bleak, windswept dust bowl, as if he’d really been with her to Nebraska, a version of it blasted to charred prairies. Is this what she looks like now that she’s outside the Dome?

  Each image begins with a flare, like a trick of light—a brilliant glow that funnels down to one small detail. It’s like being in a dark room in a thunderstorm, and there’s that first bolt that illuminates what your eyes are focused on before the light is gone.

  “Take it,” Iralene says, and she shoves the handheld at him, its motor humming. One red light flashes on it like a beacon. Before the cameras clicked on, he told her that he was seeing things now, without context—just jarring images with no sense of correlation, one and then the next. She told him not to let on, not in front of the cameras.

  But now this. He knows what the red light means: a message from his father. His father told him he’d be brought back in soon, in the hope of salvaging his brain’s synaptic firings. But that’s not what he’s going in for. His father wants to kill him.

  “Press play,” Iralene says, trying to sound chipper. “Let’s hear it.”

  He looks up at the cameras and wonders if whoever’s watching thinks that Iralene turned the cameras off so they could be alone. Iralene’s hair even looks authentically messy.

  A bird with a metal beak and hinged jaw A black car in a cloud of dust.

  His father’s face, looking raw and shiny as if covered in a thin membrane of fake skin.

  The memories come in clusters, unpredictably, in flashes, and then stop as abruptly as they started. He remembers the coding sessions—how they threw strange memories at you—but these are more like attacks. They don’t feel familiar at all—except Lyda Mertz. Yes, he remembers her from the girls’ academy, but not like this—not dirty and armed. Yet that’s the image he wants to return. Lyda with a shaved head and a spear. He wants to linger there. Does he love her? Is that the source of his lovesickness? Lyda Mertz? He’s supposed to go back and save her. But this image isn’t of someone who needs saving.

  “Play it,” Iralene says, guiding him along with simple instructions.

  He hits the red button. His father’s voice fills the room. “We’ll need you at the medical center bright and early at seven a.m. It’s good news all around, Partridge. They’re sure that they can do a lot of quick repairs. It’s a tune-up. You’ll have to be put under, but it will be fast and painless. I’ll be there when you wake up. I look forward to being reunited with you, son.”

  “Well,” Iralene says, “there you have it! Isn’t this great news?” Partridge nods. He tries to muster some kind of enthusiasm. Even a smile would help. But he can’t. “I’m tired,” he says. He wishes he didn’t have the pill, didn’t know it existed.

  “It’s late. I’ll let you rest,” Iralene says.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep.” He’s afraid of the memories that might bubble up, mixed with dreams. If he could order dreams, he’d ask for Lyda Mertz—her and her alone. But he knows that’s not how the subconscious likes to play things.

  “You should try to sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day. You’ll want to be ready for it.” Iralene stands up. She reaches into a pretend pocket and lifts her hand. “I offer you a pocketful of sweet dreams!”

  He lifts his hand and she pretends to tuck the sweet dreams into it, but what she means is, The pill is in your pocket, the one that can kill your father and end all of this. She means, Use it.

  EL CAPITAN

  VINES

  EL CAPITAN HAS BEEN staggering, falling, calling Bradwell’s name in the darkness surrounding the airship for what seems like hours. No response. Bradwell is out there, somewhere, but all El Capitan has heard is the occasional rustle of leaves and, now that it’s dawn, the chatter of birds.

  His head throbs. Twice, he’s thrown up. With the dim glow of sunrise, he can finally search the ground for tracks. He’s on his hands and knees, looking at the dirt, hoping to find an imprint of a boot sole. Helmud feels heavier on El Capitan’s back than ever before—even when El Capitan was just a boy still covered in burns from the Detonations, when he was barely able to hold Helmud up for much longer than a few minutes at a time. His vision blurs then doubles.

  He blinks hard and squints. He knows why he’s out here searching for Bradwell and why he hasn’t given up. He doesn’t want to tell Pressia that Bradwell’s dead. He doesn’t want to break her heart like that. He saw them in the underpass. He knows the way she looks at Bradwell. She might love him and she’ll never love El Capitan, but El Capitan loves her and couldn’t stand to see her suffer another loss. He imagines the look on her face upon telling her the news. It breaks him. He has to keep searching.

  “Helmud,” he says. “Tell me what you
see.”

  “You see,” Helmud says.

  “There’s no time for that shit now, Helmud!” El Capitan says. “I need you.”

  “I need you,” Helmud says.

  They need each other. They always have and always will. Maybe he should just be happy with that fact. Not everyone gets to need someone and to be needed permanently, forever. He should let Pressia go. He shouldn’t have ever hoped for her to begin with.

  He crawls toward trees. The spastic shadows of flying birds skitter across the ground. There’s cawing overhead. He thinks, If Bradwell’s dead, I’ll have to tell Pressia and then I’ll have to comfort her. It’s a cruel thing to imagine, but there it is—her head on his shoulder. He strokes her hair.

  “No,” he mutters aloud. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t,” Helmud says, as if he can read his mind.

  “You’re right, Helmud,” El Capitan says, but some adrenaline has already kicked in. It’s like his body has already started to wish Bradwell dead and gone, and there’s nothing his conscience can do about it. He keeps on crawling. His elbow buckles and he falls but then slowly straightens up. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he says. “Don’t stop looking.”

  And then Helmud tightens his arms around El Capitan and says, “Stop looking.”

  El Capitan freezes. He stares down at the muddy, ivy-covered dirt and sees a waxy leaf smeared with blood. He pinches the stem of the ivy leaf and holds it up. The thin coating of blood is almost dried. “Where the hell is he?”

  “Where the hell is he.” Helmud points across the rest of the field into the stand of trees.

  And now El Capitan can see the boot tracks, skidding through the dirt, trampling the ivy. He sees the outline of Bradwell’s body, the shape of it, wound in vines. His face is expressionless—asleep? Dead?

  El Capitan struggles to his feet and tries to run, but the forest tilts. He looks up at the sky to get his bearings. The birds, flushed from the trees, scatter across the sky. One spreads its wings and pinwheels, downward, or is that his vision? El Capitan falls hard on his shoulder. “Bradwell!” he shouts. “Bradwell!”

  He breathes hard and gets up on his knees. One foot on the ground, he stands and walks—a zigzag path. He sees Bradwell’s body. His vision jumps and stutters.

  As he makes his way to him, he sees that the ivy is wrapped tightly around his arms and legs, strapped around his chest and throat. And barbed. My God, who did this to him? And how? The thorns have cut into his skin. There’s been a slow and steady loss of blood. Bradwell is pale. His eyes are closed. His rifle is a few feet away, covered in vines too. Maybe he had no knife.

  El Capitan falls to his knees. He puts his hand on Bradwell’s face. It’s cold. The thought appears in his mind: He killed Bradwell. He imagined him dead and now he’s dead. It’s his fault. “I didn’t mean it,” he says to Helmud.

  “Mean it!” Helmud says.

  And Helmud’s voice is so angry and strong that it makes El Capitan’s head jerk up. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” And he regains his composure. He reaches under the ivy circling Bradwell’s throat and tries to find a pulse.

  At first, nothing. But then he pushes harder and he feels it—slow and weak. He’s alive! “Come on, Bradwell!” He lifts Bradwell’s heavy head. Bradwell coughs and then his eyes open.

  “Cap, Helmud,” he whispers. “My brothers.”

  “That’s right,” El Capitan says. “Your brothers are here.” He reaches for the knife in his belt loop, but it’s gone. Where is it? Back in the airship? Did it come loose when he fell? Did Helmud disarm him when he was out cold? “Helmud,” he says, “I need a knife. I need a goddamn knife?”

  “My knife,” Helmud says, “my goddamn knife.” He pulls out his whittling knife and hands it to El Capitan.

  “Yes,” El Capitan says. He’s glad he gave Helmud a knife, that he trusted him with it. He wants to look his brother in the eyes. It’s not easy to do. He says, “Thank you, Helmud,” and he means, Thank you for everything—not just for giving him this knife, but also for cutting the spider from his leg, for tending to him in the airship, for being his brother—always there.

  “Thank you,” Helmud says, and El Capitan is sure that Helmud’s thank-you means as much as El Capitan’s does.

  El Capitan starts to cut the vines—first the ones around Bradwell’s neck. But as soon as they snap loose, they seem to grow again, quickly. They dig their thorns into Bradwell’s skin, fresh punctures, and claw their way back into place. Bradwell is so dazed that he barely winces. His eyes are now distant, his breath coming in short pants.

  Dizzy and exhausted, El Capitan keeps cutting, but it seems to do more harm than good—each new thorn creates a new perforation, a new trickle of blood. Feeling helpless, he lets the knife fall to the ground. He props Bradwell up, shoulder-to-shoulder, wraps his arm around his ribs, which are encased in vines. He can see Bradwell’s birds wrestling the confining weave across his back. “We won’t leave you,” he says to Bradwell. “We’re here together.”

  And that’s when he notices the first tickle of a vine slip over his wrist; then it cinches like a tight cuff, the thorns pricking his skin. El Capitan doesn’t jerk away, doesn’t have much fight left in him. “We’re staying with you,” he says again.

  “Staying with you,” Helmud says.

  Bradwell blinks twice. His eyes close and his chin dips to his chest.

  And as the vines wind up El Capitan’s arm and start to encircle his legs, he knows this is how he and Bradwell will be tied together, forever, with thorns and vines and blood. This is a kind of brotherhood that El Capitan understands. To be bound. He looks through the trees, across the field back at the airship—lolled heavily on its side. His head is impossibly heavy. He rests it on Bradwell’s shoulder, and Helmud rests his head on El Capitan’s shoulder as the vines keep curling around them, faster and faster, like being woven into a barbed web. He imagines Pressia seeing them, at first, from a distance—upright and together. She’ll assume that they’re alive, sitting at the edge of the field, like three brothers, talking—maybe talking about her. She’s the one who binds them.

  The thorns begin to feel like teeth, offering a sharp, gnawing pain. The vines are alive, carnivorous. They’re being eaten.

  If they’re dead when Pressia reaches them, at least she’ll know they died together.

  Helmud bucks and jerks on his back as if he’s just now understanding that this is the end. “Stay here?” he says. “Stay?”

  “We can’t leave,” El Capitan says.

  “Leave!” Helmud shouts.

  “No, Helmud.” El Capitan is sure that they aren’t going to make it. He says, “We’ll die here.”

  “No,” Helmud says.

  “This is it for us,” El Capitan says.

  “No!” Helmud says breathlessly.

  And then El Capitan sees a speck on the horizon. Some creature charging toward them. He thinks for a moment that it’s Death. Didn’t it gallop toward the dead and steal their souls? His grandmother told him stories about Death. His grandmother, who pressed flowers in books.

  “Death is coming,” El Capitan says, “to steal our souls.”

  “Steal our souls?” Helmud is shaking.

  El Capitan closes his eyes. “Steal our souls,” he whispers, as if it’s his final order. “Steal our souls!”

  And then as everything goes dark, he hears a voice—clear and sweet as an angel’s voice. It is his brother, singing the way he used to sing for their mother, the beautiful voice that made her cry. Maybe Helmud is an angel after all. Maybe that’s who he’s been all along.

  LYDA

  JUMPSUIT

  LYDA COMES TO when the water hits her. It’s cold at first, maybe meant to wake her up. She’s in a white stall as small as a closet, with nozzles pointed at her—dozens of them. There’s a silver door handle in front of her. She reaches for it, but slips. She’s naked. She sees the bloat of her tender stomach. It isn’t obvious, but maybe they’ve done te
sts on her while she was knocked out. Her inner arm feels bruised. Do they know she’s pregnant?

  The nozzles spray foam that smells strongly of the academy swimming pool, rubbing alcohol, and other acrid chemicals. She coughs and gags. Her eyes burn.

  And then the water turns hot. The small room fills quickly with steam.

  When the nozzles finally shut off, she reaches for the door handle again. As she suspects, it’s locked. A drawer opens from the wall. There’s a white jumpsuit from the rehabilitation center and a head scarf. She’s back where she started.

  She picks up the clothes, starts to put them on. As she zips the jumpsuit, she imagines her stomach growing round and taut, filling it up. What will a child conceived out there amid the wretches look like? Maybe she’s a wretch now too. Dome officials wouldn’t let a child of hers be born in the Dome, would they?

  The handle turns. The door opens. A voice says, “Step outside.”

  But there is no outside. She steps out of one small enclosed space into another enclosed space. The air has no motion at all. It’s sterile and static. The Dome is the real wasteland. She remembers telling Partridge about the snow globe—she’s trapped again, except there isn’t even the watery swirl of fake, wet snow.

  PRESSIA

  PROMISE ME

  PRESSIA’S GOTTEN USED TO the horse’s stride, its pounding hooves, its snorting breaths. As Fignan gives directions, she tugs the reins and the horse responds immediately. It feels like she was meant to ride this horse. The formula in her pocket, the two remaining vials pressed close to her skin, she feels strong and powerful.

  She sees the airship first. In broad daylight, it looks worse for wear. Toppled and rocked to one side, the ship’s tanks look fragile and exposed. It hits her with full force that it might not matter if she has the formula and the vials—not if they can’t get the airship back into the air. They’ll be stuck here forever.