Burn

by Julianna Baggott

  It’s an origami swan. “They made contact with you?”

  “Read it.”

  Partridge unfolds a wing and reads Glassings needs your help. Save him. “Who gave this to you?”

  “The tech who came to fix the orb.”

  “Save Glassings from what? Where the hell is he?” he says.

  “This is all I’ve got.” She sighs and then rubs her eyes. “Are you going to open the drawer?”

  “What?”

  “I think you should do it.”

  “I watched my father all my life, you know—how people looked at him and how he was spoken to. I didn’t mean to, but I took it all in, and I think, on some level, I must have thought my father’s life would one day be mine. I mean, he was my father.” He stops abruptly. He draws in a sharp breath. He’s worried that he’s going to cry. “It’s not just that I killed him, Lyda. It’s not just that I’m a murderer.” He rubs his thumb against his fingertips, thinking of his father talking about blood on his fingerprint. “It’s that I’m afraid I’ll become him.”

  “Open the drawer,” Lyda says.

  Partridge isn’t going to argue with her—not now. He puts a finger on the blue lit square on the top desk drawer. It glides open, revealing a stack of folders.

  He picks up the top folder and drops it on the desk. Just like his father said, its label reads ENEMIES. He opens it up. It’s filled with people’s pictures, each with a page of data—suspicious activity, family, friends, affiliations.

  Partridge flips through the stack, and Lyda walks over, close enough to see the faces. He stops when he comes to Bradwell. Lyda gasps, and he knows it’s because she recognizes the background too—the woods where his mother and brother were killed. The picture is of Bradwell shouting, the cords of his neck taut; he’s caught mid-action, and Partridge realizes that this picture was taken from a video stream of one of the Special Forces soldiers who attacked them. This picture was taken minutes before his father killed Sedge and their mother.

  “Go on,” Lyda urges. “Who else is there?”

  He turns to the next photo, and there’s a picture of El Capitan and Helmud from that same place on that same day. He closes the folder and shoves it back in the drawer. “These aren’t my enemies,” Partridge says. It’s a relief. His father was wrong.

  There’s another folder. He reaches in and pulls it out.

  NEW EDEN.

  He opens it and skims plans—handwritten in his father’s loose scrawl—to enslave the wretches as a subhuman class to serve the Pures once the earth is habitable again. “New Slavery for a New Eden,” Partridge says, his stomach twisting. He shuts it.

  The next folder is called REVERSAL. His father usually goes for more symbolic references, so this practical word makes him nervous. He flips it open so he and Lyda both can read together.

  First there’s an official report from a team of scientists and doctors. The list of names at the top of the report is lengthy, but the name Arvin Weed pops out at him. He points to it. “Look.”

  “I saw it too,” Lyda says.

  From the samples collected and the incubation of those samples in a simulated environment, our specimens did poorly overall. Of the twenty, twelve died within the first ten days. Four contracted cancerous tumors that took root almost immediately and seemed to thrive in their healthy tissues. Two of these four were cured of the cancers but died from more growths within the year. The four survivors—one male and three female—have fared poorly overall. Two are sterile. The male has contracted an eye disease, rendering him blind. He and one female have asthma and compromised lungs. We do not expect them to be able to rejoin the general population within the Dome. The male is in a critical-care unit, and the female suffers mental problems and is currently in solitary confinement in the rehabilitation center. The other two are being studied and evaluated. They have been released back into the public with their memories of this study erased.

  In conclusion, we believe that those who survived in the Dome have, by lack of exposure to the outdoors and to disease in general, become more vulnerable over time. If we move into New Eden, we will lose a large number of people within the first year. Those who survive will be far outnumbered by the survivors outside of the Dome. However, the longer we wait to enter New Eden, the more vulnerable our population will be to the elements that will kill us.

  Meanwhile, the original survivors of the Detonations have been weeded out, leaving only those with extreme abilities to adapt and survive. The remaining have superior immune systems. Operation Wretch Purification contains the most detailed information about the survivors of any of our observational studies.

  Partridge’s father circled the word Wretch and wrote in the margin two words: Superior Race.

  Partridge lifts the sheet of paper and studies his father’s letters. “My father created a superior race after all, but it happened to be the wrong one.” That’s the irony. His father knew it before he died. He said that he could see the end and that he was trying to save Partridge from it.

  “Did he think we’d have to live here forever?” Lyda asks. “We can’t. The resources are limited. Was he just going to let the Pures die out?”

  “I don’t know.” Partridge flips to the back of the report. The final page is just a bunch of scientific equations—nothing he could ever sort out. “What the hell is this?”

  She says sarcastically, “Like the academy would think it was worthwhile to teach girls science. Keep it,” Lyda tells him. “It could be important.” He folds it and puts it in his pocket.

  Partridge thumbs through a few more folders and then his back goes rigid.

  He pulls out a folder. It’s labeled PROTOCOL FOR ANNIHILATION.

  “What’s that mean?” Lyda asks. “He’s already annihilated everything.”

  “Not everything.” Partridge opens the folder.

  There is a list of instructions explaining how to engage a voice-activated process. A sketch of the room points to a small metal square on one of the walls. They both look up, and there it is, unassuming, the size of a wall socket. With a set of commands, the metal will retract, revealing a button. If pressed, it will “release an odorless gas outside of the Dome.” The gas is “carbon monoxide based,” but more potent. It will “induce sleep” and then compromise the lungs and cause silent mass death. The gas would kill all living creatures within a one-hundred-mile radius. Willux has written that the voice activation knows his own voice only, but then this has been scratched out and Partridge’s name added.

  “He taught the computer to respond to my voice? To kill all living creatures in a one-hundred-mile radius?”

  “But they’re the super race,” Lyda says. “Why would he want to kill them?”

  “Maybe it was my father’s plan B.” Partridge shoves the folder into the drawer and slams it shut.

  Lyda turns and stares at the photographs on the floor. “You and your father are different people,” she says. “You’re not him. You never will be.”

  “I had to do it,” he whispers. “I had to kill him.” He hunches forward, rocking a little. He rubs his eyes.

  “Come back home with me,” Lyda says. “I have a surprise for you.” Is this her way of telling him that she’s not afraid of him anymore, that he hasn’t really changed, that she won’t turn her back on him? She turns to him and wraps her arms around him. They hold each other tight, and he wants to freeze this moment. Right here, now.

  There’s a knock at the door that startles both of them.

  Beckley says, “Sir, the situation’s gotten worse.”

  Partridge doesn’t let go of Lyda. “Worse how?”

  “We need you, sir.”

  Partridge doesn’t feel like a leader. His father’s still calling the shots from the grave. “I don’t know that there’s anything I can do.”

  “There’s a death toll,” Beckley says. “It’s rising.”

  Partridge lets go of Lyda, rushes to the door, and opens it. There’s Beckley. He’s a l
ittle out of breath; his eyes dart between Lyda and Partridge. “People are killing each other?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what?”

  “They aren’t killing each other. They’re killing themselves.”

  PRESSIA

  DUTY

  Fedelma leads Pressia down a long hall with a stone floor. Each door they pass has a small window. Pressia glimpses labs, people curled to delicate scientific work—test tubes, machinery. “What are they doing?” she asks.

  Fedelma stops and looks at her. “You know what they’re doing, Pressia.”

  “No,” she says, “I don’t.” But some part of her wonders if she just doesn’t want to know, if the truth is too chilling, and so she’s shutting out the obvious.

  “Surely you can imagine our greatest challenge and how we might overcome it. You’ve seen the children. You know what we can do with mere vines. You’ve seen the boars in the fields, right? Haven’t you?” She seems angry suddenly. “And me. You know my lot.”

  Pressia glances at Fedelma’s stomach and now she understands: Fedelma hasn’t chosen to be pregnant. It’s her duty. How many children has she had? How long will this go on? “I didn’t go to school,” Pressia tells her. “All I know is what my grandfather told me. He was a flesh-tailor, a mortician. How would I know what’s going on in labs?”

  “You came here for a formula. You had one of the most potent vials of bionanotechnology known to man. Do you expect me to believe you don’t understand what we’re doing here? This is child’s play compared to what you dug up.” She starts marching down the hall again.

  Pressia reaches out and grabs Fedelma’s arm. “I don’t know. I swear.”

  Fedelma’s eyes search Pressia’s face. She still doesn’t completely believe Pressia, but she says, “Willux saved Newgrange, the holy site. He gave Kelly word that it would be spared. Only thirty of us made it inside of the mound in time.”

  “But there’s all this land, this building, and labs, right? What about all of that?” Pressia wants to know how advanced these people are. Can they repair an airship and get it off the ground?

  “Willux spared a three-mile radius. And you must know how the Detonations worked. You can’t play dumb on that score.” She glances at Pressia’s doll-head fist. “You lived through them, didn’t you?”

  “I barely remember,” Pressia says. “But it comes to me in flashes. I know there were massive cyclones of fire that swept through. And the ash blew in and there was black rain. Did anyone outside of Newgrange survive?”

  “Another twenty survived that, making fifty, but with disease, we dwindled again.”

  “And what did Kelly do then?”

  “Everything he could.”

  “This place,” Pressia says, “it’s not like where we come from. The ash eaters, for one thing. He’s invented all kinds of things, hasn’t he?” The more information that Pressia can get out of Fedelma, the more she has to share with El Capitan and Bradwell. If she wants Bradwell to forgive her, maybe the first step is making him see that she’s valuable, that they still need to rely on each other if they’re going to make it back.

  “Well, he had a background in the genetic engineering of plants and molecular-level cloning. He created agrifacture, which is why our vines work as a defense team.”

  “Cloning.” She knows what this means, in a general way. Replications. Copies. “How do you do it?”

  “We use our DNA to create clones,” Fedelma explains. “But each embryo still needs a womb to develop inside of. All of the women do their part. I will carry babies to term until, eventually, I can no longer do it; even if I die in the process, it’s worth the risk.” And then she adds, defensively, “We can’t risk dying out!”

  Pressia feels a chill spike up her backbone. Look in a looking glass. Look for a match. Find yourself! Find yourself! Don’t be the last! The children meant it literally. Find a match; find a copy of yourself. Pressia has slowed her pace. She’s thinking of the children’s faces—the ones that were nearly mirror images. Finally she stops walking altogether.

  Fedelma turns around. “Are you judging us? We all make sacrifices. It’s the only way to be of worth!”

  “I’m not judging you. I understand sacrifices,” Pressia says. She thinks of Bradwell. She wasn’t willing to sacrifice him, though that’s what he wanted. “The boars…” she says, trying to piece it together.

  “Some gene splicing, yes. They’re engineered to be domesticated like cattle but vicious too. If need be, they will attack on our behalf.”

  “Attack who?”

  Fedelma walks up close. Though no one is around, she lowers her voice. “You have to be careful. Beyond the three-mile radius, the territory we have marked with the vines, there are those who want in—who’d kill for what we have here.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They’re not unlike what you have in your part of the world.”

  Pressia says, “How do you know what we’ve got in our part of the world?”

  Fedelma whispers, “He spared us. He knows we’re here. He keeps tabs on us, and probably others.”

  “Who? Willux?”

  “We’re lucky to be alive at all.”

  “Willux and Bartrand Kelly are still in contact? They’re still…friends?” Pressia squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “Willux knows you’re here! Alive!”

  “Shhh,” Fedelma says. She takes Pressia’s hand and places it on her stomach. Pressia feels a thump from within. “We have the future to protect. You understand, don’t you?” Fedelma says.

  Pressia pulls her hand away. “Where’s Bartrand Kelly?”

  Fedelma sighs. “He wants you to wait for him.” She continues down the hall.

  Pressia follows her. They turn a corner and stop at the door to a small room. Fedelma says, “Here. You’ll wait.” She pulls open the door.

  Pressia’s stomach flips. Will Bradwell be here? Is he going to speak to her? Will he even look at her? She tries to think of something to say to him but can’t imagine where she’d even start. She steps inside.

  The room is small—just an oversized closet really. No furnishings. El Capitan is there, leaning against the wall with Helmud resting his head on his shoulder. One of El Capitan’s eyelids is puffed and red—the early shades of a black eye. El Capitan straightens up and says hello in a formal way. Helmud smiles. “Hello,” he says.

  She’d been so afraid to see Bradwell she’d forgotten that everything between her and El Capitan is strained. He professed his love for her and kissed her. Where do they go from here? She feels stiff and shy. El Capitan glances at her and then quickly away.

  “Hi,” she says. She feels flushed. What El Capitan did was so dramatic, so full of emotion. It was brave. This is what she admires about him—and that he’s tough and yet has a tender heart. She still remembers the kiss.

  “Kelly will be here directly,” Fedelma says, and she shuts the door.

  “Bradwell isn’t here. I don’t know where he is,” El Capitan says, as if she’d only want to see Bradwell and not him.

  “I’m glad to see you two,” Pressia says. “You’re not bleeding to death. It’s a real improvement.”

  “And we’re all golden,” El Capitan says, “like movable statues.”

  “Golden,” Helmud says.

  “Yeah,” Pressia says, looking at her arms.

  “It looks good on you,” El Capitan says and then looks down at the floor.

  “Cap,” Pressia says, though she’s not sure what she should say next—I hope it’s not strange between us? I hope we can still…

  But then the door opens again. Pressia knows it’s Bradwell before she turns. The deep rustling of his wings is noisy. She hears Fignan beeping at his boots.

  “I’ll wait out here.” It’s his voice.

  She turns and sees his quick dark eyes, his wind-struck cheeks, the gold tinge to his skin too. The wings are long and ragged—but also muscular and beautiful.

  “
No room for me in there,” he says to a caregiver at his side, a nervous young man. “Can’t you see that?”

  “Sorry, so sorry,” the caregiver says. “I’ll wait with you out here.”

  Before the door swings shut, Bradwell looks at Pressia like he wants to say something. She opens her mouth to ask him how he’s doing. But he turns before she has the chance. The door closes and he’s gone.

  EL CAPITAN

  BACTERIUM

  Boars!” Bartrand Kelly says as he walks across the fields. “I’ll want to start with the boars!”

  Pressia glances at El Capitan who shrugs.

  “Boars!” Helmud says.

  El Capitan elbows his brother behind his back. “Shut it,” he whispers.

  Bradwell walks a few paces behind them with Fignan alongside him. He’s all shoulders and ribs—bigger and broader than anyone El Capitan’s ever seen, aside from Special Forces. The birds in his back must be large, though they’re hidden by their thick, broad wings, which are so big they hunch up around his neck and trail behind, frayed like old, worn hems. Every once in a while Bradwell’s wings arch from his back, revealing the thick angular overgrown bones and dense feathers of the birds. El Capitan feels for him. He knows what it’s like to haul something around on your back forever. Still, Bradwell’s got it easier than El Capitan, right? At least his birds don’t talk back.

  Kelly is the one talking now. He’s backtracked from boars and is giving a lecture about Ireland from the Before—its monuments, its fertile earth, its rich history, its poets. El Capitan isn’t interested in a tour of the past. He wants to know where Kelly’s taking them and the status of the airship. When he and Helmud were found in the cockpit, El Capitan put up a fight. It turns out the guards didn’t want to kill him. They just wanted him out of there. They beat him up enough to subdue him and then marched him back to his room. He asked them about the airship—if they’d fixed it, if it could fly—but they refused to answer.