Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  And yes, everything was thrown at him when he came back into the Dome—Iralene was part of a package. It wasn’t his fault. Lyda believes him but sometimes wonders how hard he fought for her. Iralene is undeniably beautiful in a way that Lyda always wanted to be but fell short of.

  “Are you going to turn it on?” Boyd asks again. But she ignores him.

  She leans in close to the screen and sees her own reflection. Her face has grown just a little plump, and her lips are fuller—as if her body knows what’s coming.

  There’s the humming of the air filtration system and yet it feels airless in the Dome—she feels like she can barely breathe. And she’s still nauseous sometimes. The bookshelves are stocked with books about pregnancy and childbirth. She’s not Lyda. She’s the vessel carrying a Willux.

  “I can turn it on without sound, Boyd. Is that a compromise you can live with?” Partridge told her what’s said at these services for his father, and she can’t take the outpouring of adoration.

  “I really think we should—”

  She glares at him. She still carries the fierceness that the mothers taught her—something she’d always had but never tapped into.

  “Fine,” he says. “Okay.”

  She turns on the television and there’s Partridge, shaking hands, accepting condolences. A broadcaster is giving a narration of who’s standing in line, how they’ve served the Dome or their relationship with Willux. She hits mute. “Can you reprogram the orb?” she asks Boyd.

  “What do you mean? Why would you want to do that?” He looks around the room, and she knows he’s searching for surveillance cameras. Partridge assured her that all recording devices were forbidden here. Still, Lyda—and surely Boyd—has doubts.

  “I want you to add a world. Can you do that?”

  “If the algorithms have been invented, yes. There are lots of shortcuts. It’s actually been made so that a layperson can choose between different options pretty easily. Willux wanted these to be made affordable and user-friendly for everyone. They’re still a little too expensive to just hand out like candy, but they’re getting closer. Where do you want it to take you?”

  She imagines wind pushing ash, the cool shadows that she felt right at the edge of the stunted forest, and snow. God, yes—gray snow sifting from the sky. “I want out there.”

  Boyd stops. His hands freeze. “Out there?” he says in a sharp breath.

  She narrows her eyes, looking at him. “Yes.”

  “But why?” He looks down at the orb and then glances at the television as if the faces there can see him in this room, can hear this conversation. Lyda looks too. A little boy is saluting Partridge. His beautiful hand, his perfect face—so clean and sleek, it seems almost unreal. “What’s it like out there?” Boyd asks in a hushed voice.

  “Hard to explain,” Lyda says. “I didn’t really remember the Before so I was shocked by the air, how quickly it spins things. The real sun—it’s cast-over but amazing. And the moon too—like a bright bulb in the sky. The people, the Beasts and Dusts, the deformities, the grotesque… You can’t imagine what beauty there is in their lives. Everything’s dirty and real. There’s nothing fake or sterile. It’s…life. You know what I mean?”

  Boyd has started crying. Two tears streak his cheeks. He doesn’t wipe them away. He says, “I remember it. I’m a little older than you so…yes. I know what you’re talking about. I used to climb trees. I even fell out of one once and snapped a bone in my hand.” He clenches his fist. “Sometimes, when I lie down at night, I remember what it was like to fall through the air and land hard on the muddy ground. I couldn’t breathe. All the wind had been knocked out of my lungs. But I just stared up at the blue sky. There were clouds—big, fat, white clouds that seemed to be moving really fast across the sky.” He shakes his head. “Goddamn it.”

  Lyda walks over to the table and puts her hand on his. “I want the detonated world. I want the truth of it,” she says. “Will you make it for me? Wind, ash, dirt, dark clouds, everything burned and charred and broken.”

  “I don’t know,” he says, glancing at Foresteed on the TV screen. He’s just finished his address and is stepping off the platform. “I don’t think I’m supposed to…”

  “I think you’re supposed to do what I tell you to do,” Lyda says. She’s not sure if this will work. Is this repairman above her social standing because she’s ruined, or is he below her because the baby is a Willux? The hierarchies of the Dome are strict, but this is uncharted territory for her. She flattens her voice, trying to make it sound more detached, less shaky. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who’s in charge?”

  Partridge is going to speak now. He’s going to give his remarks, which will end as they always do: I hope we can all move into the future with confidence and hope. Lyda helped him with those lines. She might have to point this out to Boyd. She walks to the television and turns up the volume.

  But Partridge isn’t saying what he usually says. He’s telling the people that his father’s a mass murderer; he’s calling them sheep. No—not sheep. Audience members. He’s telling them they’re complicit. He wants them to acknowledge the truth. How else can we move forward into the future? Lyda’s heart starts thrumming in her chest. We owe the survivors…ourselves. We can do better. He’s still talking—about New Eden, being forgiven… The screen goes blank.

  Lyda can barely breathe. Partridge did it. He told the truth. She’s thrilled and stunned. This is a vindication. She wants to tell the mothers and all of the wretches outside of the Dome. She wants to shout to Bradwell, Pressia, and El Capitan and Helmud, He did it!

  But, too, she’s scared. This means change—huge sweeping change. The future. She spreads one hand on her stomach. She’s started into her second month of pregnancy. She feels puffy, the first hint that her body’s going to start to swell. The future, the world their child will live in—it just shifted into a new shape.

  She walks back to the table and looks at Boyd. “Did you…?” She can’t finish the sentence. She just wants to make sure that she has a witness. She hasn’t gone crazy.

  Boyd says, “Yes.”

  “Everything’s going to change,” she tells Boyd, though in the pit of her stomach, she isn’t sure if it will change for the better or for the worse. “Can you believe it?”

  Boyd stands up. He looks uncomfortable with his height, his lanky arms. He covers his mouth with his hands and shakes his head.

  “What is it, Boyd?”

  He doesn’t move.

  “What is it?” He’s a stranger, but still she reaches up and grabs his wrists and pulls his hands from his mouth. “Tell me.”

  He closes his eyes slowly and then opens them. “It was too soon,” he whispers. “We weren’t ready.”

  “We?”

  He reaches into his pocket with his right hand and then shakes her hand, as if they’re just meeting. She feels the pressure of something he’s pushed into the center of her palm. She takes it, hiding it in her folded hand, and then sits down in one of the dining room chairs. She hunches over slowly, and through the glass of the tabletop, she sees a small piece of paper—an origami swan.

  She looks up at Boyd. He’s one of them. He’s part of the revolutionary movement on the inside, the sleeper cells that were aligned with Partridge’s mother—those who wanted to take down the Dome. It’s as if some silent prayer has been answered. She feels connected to something larger than just her and Partridge, alone.

  She closes her hand over the small paper swan. She thinks, Too soon? We weren’t ready? Has Partridge just made a terrible mistake? She feels shaken.

  “But it’s good,” she says. “He’s going to tell them about us too. This is what he was supposed to do. He had to tell the truth.”

  Boyd looks down at her hand in her pocket.

  She’s scared of the swan now. She turns it over in her hands, and sees the edge of a word under one wing. She unfolds it. And there’s a message. Glassings needs your help. Save him.


  Isn’t Glassings the one who’s supposed to be helping Partridge? Partridge has been hoping to get in touch with Glassings. He needs Glassings, but now he’s going to have to save Glassings first? The network that, just moments earlier, seemed like it could help them now feels fragile.

  Lyda says, “He promised me that he was going to…” tell everyone about her and the baby. He promised that they would be able to be together—publicly. But she knows that everything’s changed now. He told the truth—it was too soon. But was there ever going to be a good time to say what he had to say? She’s angry now and scared. What’s happened to the future?

  Boyd doesn’t ask her to finish her sentence. He knows there’s nothing he’d be able to do to help.

  Lyda puts the swan in her pocket. She looks at Boyd. “I’ll take care of this when I see Partridge again, but you have to do something for me in return.”

  “Of course.”

  “Program the orb the way I asked you to,” she says to Boyd. “Will you do that for me?”

  “Yes, Ms. Mertz,” he says, “of course. I’ll do what you tell me to do. That’s my job.”

  PARTRIDGE

  CONTAGION

  Partridge feels the change immediately as he steps onto the street. Everything is different. The air is charged in a way he’s never felt before. The noise of muffled voices rises behind the windows of all of the apartment buildings. Most windows in the Dome are sealed shut—the buildings are temperature controlled. Why open a window ever? Frankly, it only invites people to jump, and suicide rates in the Dome are high enough.

  Still, he can hear yelling and shouting—muted, yes, but it’s everywhere at once. And Partridge knows why. He’s taken away their lie—the one that allowed them to function in the world around them. If you rob them of their lie, they’ll self-destruct, Foresteed had warned. Was that true? Or are they angry at him? Surely, there are the sleeper cells, the Cygnus, who’ve seen the footage and are rejoicing. Some of this noise could be joyful, right?

  As he rounds the corner, Beckley and the two other guards are in step, surrounding him. “Where are you going?” Beckley asks.

  “I’m going to Lyda’s,” Partridge says. “I need to see her.”

  “I think that might be a bad idea.”

  Partridge pulls his tie through his collar. He balls it up and shoves it in the pocket of his suit jacket. “If I want your opinions, I’ll ask for them.”

  They pass by Smokey’s Restaurant. Some people must have gathered there to eat brunch and watch the broadcast together. Someone spots Partridge through the window and shouts, “There he is! He’s right there!”

  Partridge doesn’t like the hostile tone. He and the guards keep a fast pace, but people pour out of Smokey’s double doors and start to follow him.

  “Why are they coming after me? What do they expect to happen now?”

  “You’re the one who called them sheep,” Beckley says.

  One of the younger guards says, “I’m requesting backup.” He pulls out his two-way radio and gives the name of the upcoming cross street.

  “Backup? We’re fine,” Partridge says, trying to laugh. “It’s just some people who had brunch.”

  The small crowd has gotten the attention of others stepping out of shops: a tearoom, a gym, a bank. One teller stands behind a caged window, staring at Partridge. Most of them are silent, as if they’re waiting for another speech. But a few call his name.

  “Just keep walking,” Beckley says calmly.

  “Really? Just ignore them?” Partridge says.

  “Yes,” Beckley says firmly.

  Partridge stops. He thinks about doing nothing, but that just doesn’t feel like a real option. He turns around quickly and raises his hands in the air.

  The crowd stops too. Some turn and walk away, but most just freeze. “I’m not sure what you want, but I gave my speech. I’m not giving any more today.”

  They turn and stare at each other as if each one is hoping someone else will talk first.

  Finally, a young mother holding a baby says, “Partridge, what should we do?”

  “About what? The truth?” Partridge says. “You can try to accept it.”

  A man in a dark gray suit says, “Say it’s not true!”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Beckley says in a low voice.

  Partridge looks at the man in the gray suit. “What I said is the truth. And I’m not taking it back. In fact, I’m going to lead us into the future with that truth.”

  “But we’re Pure,” an older woman says, clutching a crocheted pocketbook to her chest. “That’s the truth. We are Pure. We deserve what we have.”

  The woman with the baby says, “God loves us. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Yes,” Partridge says, “but…”

  Another man steps forward. He has a thick belly and broad jowls. He’s wearing a dark suit with a button of Willux’s face on it, as if Partridge’s father were running for some kind of reelection. “You called your father a murderer, you little punk.” He spits at Partridge, a white splotch landing at Partridge’s shoes, and the crowd suddenly looks like it could turn on him.

  The guards move swiftly. One pops the man in his thick gut with the butt of his rifle. He falls to the ground on all fours, huffing.

  “Stop!” Partridge says.

  “Let them do their job,” Beckley says.

  The other guard cracks his gun over the man’s back. Partridge realizes that the guards are likely coded to do this to any aggressor.

  Most of the people turn and walk away quickly, back into storefronts, down alleyways. But some stand their ground.

  The man on the ground, now on his side, looks up at Partridge defiantly. His lip is cut; he starts to cough, flecking the ground with blood.

  One of the guards pulls the man’s arms behind his back and cuffs him with plastic ties that cinch tight. Two guards yank the man to his feet. His teeth are smeared red.

  Beckley pulls out his gun, two handed, steady, and levels it at those who remain. “We’re asking you all to disperse. Please do so now.”

  The rest spin off.

  “Let’s go,” Beckley says.

  Partridge shakes his head. He can’t believe what’s just happened. “I don’t want people to shut up like that,” he says. “I want people to be able to speak their minds, even if they disagree with me.”

  “Not much you can do about that,” Beckley says.

  A woman in a white jumpsuit with a bucket walks up, kneels, and without a word, scrubs the man’s blood from the ground, making a bleached white stain. Partridge thinks of Bradwell. His lessons in Shadow History—how fast the truth is washed clean.

  A car pulls up then—not a golf cart like most people use but a navy blue sedan. Its doors open. A new set of guards file out, flank Partridge, and guide him into the car.

  “Take me to Lyda’s,” Partridge says as he sits in the back seat, wedged between two broad-shouldered men.

  “You think this is a taxi?” Beckley says from the front seat.

  Doors shut. The car rockets forward, bumping a curb and driving through a public park, over soft turf and past fake trees.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re on lockdown protocol. You’re going to the war room.”

  “The war room?”

  “Your father had to have a secured facility in the Dome,” Beckley explains. “The war room is it.”

  “You really think the people are that angry? You think they’re dangerous?”

  Beckley keeps his eyes straight ahead. “You forget these are the people who elbowed their way into the Dome, sir. Nothing sweet about them, down deep.”

  One of the guards makes a very soft bleating noise. “Baa, baa, baa.” It’s so soft that Partridge isn’t sure he really heard it. Did he imagine it or is one of them making fun of his speech—how he called them sheep?

  “Who has access to this room?” Partridge says gruffly, trying to maintain his dignity.

  �
�Your father held meetings there, but within it there’s a chamber that was only for him. The most secure place in the entire Dome. It’s been retooled so that only you can enter it now—retinal scans, fingerprints.”

  “A war room,” Partridge says. “My old man had a war room with a chamber just for him?”

  “And now you have one,” Beckley says.

  “A real old-fashioned hand-me-down,” Partridge says. He sees his father’s face just before he died, his eyes widening as he realized Partridge was killing him. “Why didn’t I hear about this before? A room just for him? If there was an attack, was he going to come to get me or just leave me at the academy?”

  Beckley doesn’t say anything. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to tell Partridge the truth.

  Partridge remembers his winter holidays with the Hollenbacks. If the survivors had risen up and attacked, is that who he’d have died with? “I want Lyda Mertz to be able to enter it too. Retool it again.”

  “Lyda Mertz? Are you sure, sir?” one of the guards asks.

  “Dead sure.” She’s the only person he can really trust. If anything happened to him, she could still get in. He won’t have a room that only he can enter. He won’t be that person. “Get someone to bring Lyda to the war room. I have to see her.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beckley says.

  They’ve come out the other side of the park now. People have taken to the streets. Some wander aimlessly. Others charge through the crowds as if looking for someone they’ve lost. They shout and cry. One woman stands stock-still, tears rolling down her face.

  A few fights have broken out. One woman grabs another by her arm, twisting her bare skin. Two young men are on the ground, pummeling each other.

  “Hopefully they’ll wear themselves out,” Beckley says.

  Partridge isn’t so sure. They’ve held on to a lot of guilt and anger and blame for a long time. “What if this is just the beginning?” Some guards jog down an alleyway in tight formation. More appear on the other side of the street. “I don’t want this to get bloody,” Partridge says.