“Yes, but what kind of message would you send? What would it say?” Lyda asks.
“It would be a message that could only be from me.” They keep their voices low.
“A coded message?”
Pressia nods. “I would tell Bradwell that our lives aren’t accidents. This is the beginning, not an end. I’d tell him to do what he has to do. He would know it’s from me and that it was time to bring it all down. Maybe a picture.” She thinks of Cygnus, the constellation, her mother’s followers—her mother is still with her, in some way. “Maybe of a swan.”
“I think I can find someone who can help send it,” Lyda says.
“I’m not sure if it will ever be the right thing to do. It’s just that Partridge seems gone. Just gone…”
“He is gone,” Lyda says. “He is.”
“Partridge told me he has my grandfather, that he’s bringing him back—from the dead. Is that possible, Lyda? Is it?” Pressia’s afraid that Lyda will say yes, and she’s also afraid she’ll say no.
“Is that why you’re really waiting to tell them to bring it down? Your grandfather?” Lyda draws in a shaky breath.
“Is it possible he’s still alive? Please tell me.”
“They can do things here that seem good, but they’re horrible, Pressia. Do you understand me? Horrible.” She starts crying again, harder this time, her ribs convulsing. “Send the message! Send it!”
Pressia hugs her, sways gently. “Not yet. Give me time.”
“Then do me a small favor,” Lyda whispers, her voice shaking.
“What is it?”
“Tell the guard that the orb is broken.”
“The orb?”
“The orbs keep the images in the rooms spinning. I can’t explain it. Just promise me.”
“Lyda, right now we have to concentrate on—”
“Just tell him!” Lyda shouts.
“Okay,” Pressia says as gently as she can. “I’ll tell him. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“I’m so tired,” Lyda whispers. “I can’t sleep.”
“I’m here,” Pressia says. “You’ll be able to sleep now. I’m here.”
PARTRIDGE
BRASS BEDS
Partridge lifts Iralene up, carries her over the threshold into a penthouse suite. This is a honeymoon. He shouldn’t be surprised by the luxury of it all, but he is. The suite is lush—even after all of the luxuries of the day. He sets Iralene on her high heels and together they walk through a living room of leather furniture and a formal dining room, past a baby grand piano and a claw-foot tub in a bathroom as big as a bedroom.
Partridge can’t stop thinking about Pressia. Ever since he saw her, he can’t help but see everything doubly: his perspective and then hers—all the arrogance, wasteful opulence, and cruelty of so much luxury when they both know what’s outside the Dome. He feels choked with guilt.
Iralene drank too much champagne, and he did too—more than he should have because he wanted to drown that guilt. But now he wishes he hadn’t. He’d like to be able to think. He’s got to get to Pressia and Lyda as soon as possible. How?
Iralene runs ahead of him and opens the door to the bedroom. She calls to him, “You have to see this! The bed is as big as a swimming pool!” She disappears into the room.
He walks to the hall but doesn’t go to the bedroom. This isn’t a real honeymoon.
She peeks her head out of the bedroom door and looks at him. “Let’s dive in!” She takes off her shoes.
“Iralene,” he says, “you know it’s all fake.”
“What?” she says. “I can’t hear you.”
He walks to the bedroom door and leans against the frame.
Iralene has climbed onto the canopy bed, its white blanket covered in petals. She turns and falls backward, arms spread wide, the petals bouncing around her. “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” she sings.
Partridge walks up to the bed and holds on to one of its posts, like someone on a boat trying to steady himself.
It is, in fact, a huge canopy bed—with a shiny brass frame.
Like the ruined one on the third floor of the warden’s house where he and Lyda cocooned themselves and had sex—where he told her he loved her.
A brass bed.
“I can’t sleep here, Iralene.”
She lifts her head. “What?”
“You know I can’t. You know why.”
“I thought you meant it. What you said today. What you promised me. I felt it.”
“I think I did mean it.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know what I’m good at, Partridge? You know what my most perfected trait is?”
She props herself up on her elbows. She looks beautiful on the bed surrounded by flower petals. “I have no idea.”
“Patience.”
She’s right. She grew up in-waiting, suspended. She means that she’s going to wait for him to really fall in love with her—her and her alone.
“I’m going to get on the phone and talk to Weed,” Partridge says. “I want him to help Peekins with Pressia’s grandfather. I want him to try to help me break into the locked, unmarked chamber down there. I’ve got to—”
“Do what you have to do, but remember—you still owe me.”
“I know,” he says, but Iralene’s voice is charged in a way that’s unsettling. He heads for the door.
“Partridge,” she whispers.
He stops.
“You might not have meant what you said today, but I did,” Iralene says. “Just so you know. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have to say what people want me to say or what I need to say to survive. Today, though, I meant it. Every word.”
Partridge nods. He closes the door gently and stands there for a moment. Why didn’t Lyda ever return his letters? How does she feel about him now? Does he really want to know the answer to that question?
He walks down the hall into the suite’s living room. He just got married, but for some reason, he feels incredibly lonely. Maybe it’s because he is alone. His mother, his brother, his father—they’re all gone.
Right now he misses Sedge most of all. Sedge would have been his best man. He would have maybe even had some advice for him. Partridge doesn’t even have a memento of his brother.
Then Partridge remembers the field trip that Glassings took his World History class to—the Personal Loss Archives. All of the academy boys walked the aisles lined with alphabetized boxes, each containing the personal effects of someone who’d died.
He opened his mother’s box, where he found some important clues to her existence—clues that had been planted for him. But he never opened his brother’s box. He hadn’t had the courage. He wishes now that he’d seen what was inside.
And then he realizes that he doesn’t need permission to go to the Personal Loss Archives. He’s in charge.
He wants to go. Now. He misses his brother and wants to see what’s in that box.
He realizes that he seems crazy and maybe drunk, but who cares?
He walks to the door of the suite and pulls it open. There, standing at attention, is a guard. Not Beckley. He’s still with Pressia and probably now Lyda. This is a guard he doesn’t know well at all—Albertson.
“Sir?” Albertson says.
“I want you to escort me somewhere.”
“I can’t just do that, sir. I’d have to get clearance. I’d have to make calls.”
“To Foresteed?”
Albertson looks away.
“It’s my wedding day, Albertson. How about as a wedding gift, you don’t make any calls. Okay?”
“I don’t know,” Albertson says. “I’m just not sure.”
“C’mon, Albertson. You know it’s the right thing to do. Just a little trip. You and me.”
“Now, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I want to visit my brother.”
EL CAPITAN
&nb
sp; HELL YES
El Capitan feels great pressure on his chest. He’s on the ground in the bank vault, the safety deposit boxes a blur along the wall. It’s dark, except for a few flickering lanterns. Helmud’s panting breathlessly on his back. “What’s this?” El Capitan says. His head is pounding. The air is filled with the smell of biodiesel.
A hand grips one of his wrists and then the other, and as he feels them getting tied behind his back, he bucks and jerks. “What the hell is going on?”
But now someone is pinning them to the floor.
A man’s voice says, “We’re ready to haul them up, Frost.”
The man on his back, Frost, mutters, “Okay.”
Where’s the bacterium? Helmud’s pushing against him, and he can’t feel the sharp edges of the box. “Check it,” he grunts at Helmud.
Helmud doesn’t answer.
“Check!” El Capitan shouts again. “Check!”
Still nothing. And El Capitan knows it’s gone. He’s a failure. He’s lost the one thing that could bring down the Dome. It’s over.
“Bradwell?” El Capitan shouts. “You here?” He lifts his chin, scraping it across the floor, and turns his head. God, he doesn’t want Bradwell to know it’s gone.
Bradwell’s sitting on the floor, already gagged with a cloth, his arms bound behind his back. Two men are standing next to him, one on either side. Bradwell must have fought pretty hard. He has a gash on his head, blood curving down his temple. He jerks his head and cuts his eyes to the wall of boxes behind him. El Capitan can’t read the gesture.
He spots the can of fuel near the bank vault’s two-foot-thick circular door. What the hell are they doing with that down here? Can’t be good.
Gorse’s face suddenly appears as he bends on one knee. He’s holding an old OSR rifle. “You thought I could forgive and forget all of that business with the OSR, huh? You thought all of us would see some shiny new version handing out food and warm coats, and everything else would just fade away?”
“Why did you tie up Bradwell? He’s on your side.”
“Is he? Seems he’s lost his way, taking up with you.”
El Capitan glances at Bradwell. He feels bad for getting him roped in. Bradwell shrugs his heavy wings—a kind of forgiveness. “But I’ve really changed,” El Capitan says.
“Have you ever paid for what you did?” Gorse says. “Have you?”
He doesn’t have to think about this long. The answer is no. He hasn’t really paid. He’s doled out a lot of death and is still alive. “What are you going to do with me?”
“With me?” Helmud whispers.
“Justice will be served,” Gorse says, and then he looks up at Frost, who has El Capitan and Helmud muscled to the floor. “Go ahead and gag both of ’em.”
“Gorse, wait!” El Capitan shouts. “I thought we were friends!”
“Now you know better.”
“But we found your sister!”
Gorse stands and points the rifle at El Capitan’s head. “Don’t ever talk about my sister again. Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she’s alive. But the fact is I thought she was dead all these years because of you. How many did you let die in Death Sprees? How many froze to death in your cages? How many did you hunt down and use for target practice? Did you keep count? Huh?”
El Capitan tries to fight the ropes again. If he can’t get loose, he’s a dead man. He and Helmud both. Gorse kicks El Capitan in the ribs. He folds in half. He wheezes on the ground, crunching around the pain, while Frost wraps a rag around his mouth, making it even harder to breathe.
Justice, El Capitan thinks. That’s right. “Kick me again,” he grunts into the rag. “Do it!” This is what he deserves. But he can hear Helmud’s squeals of protest suddenly muffled. El Capitan won’t let Helmud pay. He’ll fight for Helmud, for himself. It’s who he is. He’ll fight all the way.
“Blindfold?” Frost asks.
“No,” Gorse says. “I’d like him to see this.”
Frost yanks El Capitan to his feet. The two men, both with twisted faces and metal pocking their arms, as if they’d been at the same place during the Detonations and are lucky not to have been fused together, lift Bradwell up too. They walk back through the dented bank vault door into the crumbled remains of the bank lobby and up through a hole dug in the rubble—not easy to do with his hands tied behind his back, under his brother’s weight.
Above ground, the wind is cold and sharp. He drank too much; he feels sick. His head’s killing him, and he feels a little dizzy. He’s almost happy that Frost has such a strong hold on his upper arm; otherwise, he might fall over.
They’re surrounded by a dozen people or so, including a few clumps of Groupies. He tries to make out all of the faces to see if there are any friends among them.
Then he hears a voice he remembers well. “Greetings, El Capitan!” He sees the Dome worshipper who found Wilda out in a field when she was first delivered back from the Dome, Purified, as it were. He remembers the bulbous, braided scar running down one side of her face. Margit. She hates him.
Margit walks up close, fits her fingers under his gag, pulling it to the dip in his chin. “What say you?”
“Shit,” El Capitan says, shaking his head.
“Not happy to see the likes of me?”
“Last time I saw you you’d been hit by a spider, locked in. So, you didn’t blow up?”
“I was spared. By God.”
“A gift from the Dome, I’m guessing, to be spared like that.”
“And they’re not happy with us, El Capitan. They are not happy at all.”
“But they wanted their son to be returned to them and he was! What could they possibly want now?”
“They must want another sacrifice,” she says.
El Capitan nods slowly. “I’m guessing that it won’t be a self-sacrifice.”
“Me? No. I want to be here when we are called to join them in the heaven of the Dome. Not to be ash in the wind.”
“I see.” El Capitan knows what the biodiesel’s going to be used for now. Burning to death—not his preferred way to go. “But I’m asking you a kindness.”
“What’s that?”
“Spare my brother,” El Capitan says. “He’s an angel. He’s good. Spare my poor brother.” He can’t help the fact that there’s an ironic edge to his voice.
“Now how would we spare him and not you, foul man?”
“I guess you’d have to go light on me.” El Capitan raises his eyebrows. “You can’t let another good soul die, could you?”
Margit lifts her clenched fist and knuckle punches El Capitan in the head. It reminds him of his grandmother who would rap him on the head when he got underfoot. “Maybe that’ll be the best part—you knowing your sins caused your brother’s death.” Margit turns and says to Gorse, “We should beat them good and solid first then set the brother on his back afire so El Capitan gets to hear his cries.”
Gorse likes the idea. “Hell yes!” he says, mocking El Capitan from the night before. “Hell yes!”
And before El Capitan can spit out something else, Margit shoves the gag back into his mouth.
PARTRIDGE
GUNSHOT WOUND
Within a half hour, Partridge is standing next to Albertson at the entrance of the Personal Loss Archives. They knock and wait. It’s the middle of the night. Will anyone be on duty?
A woman’s pale face appears in the small rectangular window beside the door. She’s startled to see Partridge. He waves. She freezes for a moment and then holds up a ring of keys. She disappears. The locks are clicking open.
She opens the door wide. “Can I help you?” She’s a small woman with a sharp bob.
“I was hoping for a few minutes. There’s someone I want to look up,” Partridge says.
She glances behind her and then says, “It’s after hours. We don’t usually have visitors, but in your case,” she says, flustered. “Come in.”
“Thank you.”
“You know your father d
oesn’t have a box yet.”
“I’m not here for my father.”
Albertson says, “I’ll give you your privacy.” He looks at the clerk who nods quickly.
She locks the door. “Perhaps you know your way.”
“I do.”
“Okay then. I’ll check on you in a few minutes.”
As Partridge heads down the aisle, he feels a strange sense of calm. The last time he was here, he was a thief. He stole the contents of his mother’s box. His father knew he would. He was played.
This time, he’s aware of his father. In fact, at this moment, he feels closer to his father than at any of the memorial services—or is it that his father is closer to him? Closing in?
He finds the alphabetically correct aisle at the end of the room and heads down it. His heels hit the tile floor—quick, sharp knocks as if there’s someone at a front door in the cold, waiting to be let in. He’s afraid for a second that he won’t have the nerve to open his brother’s box—just like last time. But the feeling is fleeting. He will open the box, but he’ll never know if what’s inside of it is what his brother actually left behind or if it’s something his father planted in the box for Partridge to find. That’s the thought that slows his footsteps. He doesn’t want to have anything more to unravel about his father. Leave me alone, he wants to say to the old man.
He runs his eyes over the names on the fronts of the boxes as quickly as he can. Under the names, there are the lists of causes of death. He’s looking for Willux—Sedge Watson Willux. He walks past the Vs and into the Ws, and then he stops.
Weed.
Marta Weed. Victoro Weed. Arvin’s parents’ names. They were on his mother’s list. Partridge asked Arvin about his parents. He said they were fine, that they had colds, but that was it. They’re dead?
Their causes of death read, simply, CONTAGION.
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