Arclight (6 page)

Beyond the narrow orchard lies our garden, where rows of green stalks frame one side of the Common Hall and vines snake up its windowless face. Against the shed that houses our tools, there’s a pile of crates filled with liquid vitamins for the soil. No matter what Dr. Wolff thinks, out here’s where I belong. It’s my favorite place in what’s left of the world, and it conceals the evidence of another rule I’ve broken.

I drop out of the tree to make sure my secret’s still safe.

Camouflaged by an empty crate, a vibrant pink and white flower bush grows where it has no right to exist—like me. I don’t know where the seed came from, if it was dropped by a bird or if it already existed in the soil, but it thrives despite the measures required to keep it a secret. I’m relieved to see it’s still here, welcoming me back. If it’s found, it’ll be destroyed for fear that it came from beyond the light, but for now, it’s mine. Something about it has always struck me as familiar; I can’t help but think that in whatever place I came from, these flowers exist. Maybe I grew them there, too.

I sit with my back against the shed, turning the fragrant dirt in my bare hands, without the gloves we’re supposed to wear outside, and simply watch my flower bush exist. No secret scowls or eyes at my back to make me cringe. It’s a rare moment of freedom, so it’s a surprise to find that I have company.

Small, feathered company.

Stuck between a climbing cage and the tangle of berry vines threading through it, a bird the color of a thundercloud struggles to free itself. It shakes the cage and pulls up hard but can’t disentangle its feet and captured wing.

“Hello,” I say, as though the bird can understand me. “How’d you get in there?”

The bird cocks its head and flaps again—bird speak for “Would you help me?”

I wind my hand inside the cage and pull. Sensing freedom, the bird pecks at the last of the vines with its beak until it spills out of its tiny prison. Delicate and light, it perches in my hand, testing one wing and then the other, shaking itself with an explosion of down feathers.

“Tough little thing, aren’t you?”

It’s not a native bird, like our ducks and chickens or the bright things kept inside with their wings clipped so they can’t pass beyond our border, and the protocol is clear—I should kill it and hand its body over to one of my elders. But I can’t.

What sense is there in ending another life when we’re trying to keep the world from dying? I have to let it go, and that means breaking another rule by sneaking out to the Arc.

On this side of the compound, our boundary is a stone path where everything green and good ends at the mouth of the Grey. In the first days, there were bonfires here, lit and tended around the clock, but they were too easy to put out, and every rainstorm meant calamity. Over the years, the stones were laid so electric lights could be permanently set into the ground, and the fires drifted into memory. The Arc of Light became the Arclight.

Here, lampposts replace brown tree trunks. The bulbs are on standby, in these last moments before night falls, charging for another marathon burn, and leaving the Arc cold, but a faultless guardian to keep the gloom of the Grey from encroaching.

“Get somewhere safe,” I say, opening my hands.

The bird looks at me with intelligent, sharp eyes. Its feathers, sleek now, bear a pattern of steel and white with swirls of black along its head and tail. It lifts off with a smooth beat of its wings and slips above the Arc, but it doesn’t turn the way I expect. It shoots across the Grey, making straight for the Dark.

“Not that way!”

The bird’s gone, and far too high, but trying to stop it comes automatically. My hand slices the space between the lights to disturb the churning, waist-high fog beyond. I stumble back, landing hard in the rocky soil, and stare at the horizon past the Grey.

The Dark doesn’t look like much, out there on the edge of the world, just a smudge in the distance where light goes to die. Shadows shift with the movement of the sun, growing longer and racing away as though they want no more to do with this place than the Arclight wants with them. Hopefully my little bird has the sense not to go so far.

I don’t want to be here anymore, or think that something I saved threw itself into the abyss for no reason. So I stand and turn away, surprised by the sudden appearance of a red glow hovering beyond the compound’s main building. Something’s burning.

Embers float along, dying as they fall, until I have to push through them to find their source. They settle solid on my arms and face, the warmer air becoming thick with smoke the nearer I come to a tramped-down hedgerow that’s ablaze, tended by Honoria and a group wearing security uniforms. This is why no one was patrolling the halls to stop me when I left alone; they’re all out here, guarding the breach until it can be reinforced.

Something beyond the boundary catches her attention, and Honoria’s hand goes to the silver pistol she keeps tucked against her back. Whatever it is, it passes quickly or isn’t worth her attention. Her hand goes slack on the gun’s handle, and she throws another bundle of cut brush into the fire.

Thankfully, no one sees me.

The air turns dry and brittle, filled with ash that stings my lungs. I hold my breath to stop the smell from entering my nose and the grit from sticking on my tongue, but that makes it worse. Each time I run out of air, I end up swallowing heat, until I’m forced to flee back the way I came.

I think of Tobin and his stories of the world before. People who walked out into the night because they heard the voices no one else could hear, calling them to a home that never existed. If someone sees me out here, skirting the Grey, they’ll think the same of me.

I follow the curve of the Arc away from the fire, and again, I find I’m not alone. Tobin approaches the boundary cautiously, pausing to scan the area every few feet, and I duck behind the switch box for the external alarm. It’s barely wide enough to hide me, but I doubt he sees me. It’s not people he’s looking for. Not out here so close to night.

Fear flits across his face, followed by an uncertainty he doesn’t know anyone can see as he rubs the back of his neck. He shakes his head and talks to himself, though his words die in the din of the fire and the churlish wind beyond the Arc.

The closer he comes to the boundary, the more frequent his glances to the side, toward the fire. There’s no way he can get to the breach point unnoticed. And there’s no explanation for being caught at the Arc, other than a desire to cross it. No one’s going to admit to that—not even Tobin. Not even for his father.

He starts pacing, venting his frustration through his feet.

Maybe, like me, he wants to watch the world change hands, and see the sun set, if only to prove life doesn’t end at moonrise. More likely, he’s hoping for a glimpse of something familiar. A figure in the distance, headed home. Walking, staggering, or carried by others, it won’t matter, so long as it’s recognizable as James Lutrell. If I knew what my parents looked like, I’d be searching, too.

Tobin’s hands run up his arms and through his hair. He bends to inspect a large rock wedged between two lamps at the divide between Light and Grey. It looks the same on both sides, which seems strange to me. What good is a barrier if nothing changes once you cross it?

He kicks at the rock until he works it loose, then picks it up, testing its heft in his hand. I hold my breath as he draws back for a throw, but he loses his nerve. It isn’t wise to disturb the silence beyond. This rule he’s not willing to break.

The rock drops with a heavy thud.

A sudden chill curls around the lamps, drawing fog into the perimeter. Tobin waves the misty trails away, frantically; I try blowing on them, hoping my breath will scatter them back to nothing.

The shadows shift again, stretching out, and when they reach their farthest point and join the Dark at the horizon, the Arc’s lamps come on in succession, early enough to change the bulbs or do repairs if one stops working. The lamps below our feet send columns of light into the sky, threading their beams into the horizontal lines cast by lamps on the poles. The ones atop our buildings create a canopy to cover the rest. Together they create a perfect weave, tight enough to beat back even the smallest creatures that might try to drag the Dark across our boundary on their feet and fur.

Anne-Marie says once a raccoon had the misfortune of crossing the Arc as it ignited. There was only a singe line left, and the scent of burnt hair. It’s absurd, but she swears her brother told the story when she was little.

Everything snaps back into view: grass and trees and animals like owls and Anne-Marie’s raccoon who’ve forgotten what it’s like to be nocturnal. A soft white glow bounces back from the building’s walls to match the polished shine of poured walkways set with crushed glass and reflective minerals. Somewhere, the night is black, but not here. Bugs from both sides hit the bulbs and incinerate, sparking and popping as they fall.

This is the time the world is divided, with no Grey in between. This is when it’s dangerous. The lines no longer blur and everything I lost is still out there, almost in sight, but beyond my reach. I rest my hand against the smooth metal of the nearest pole as Tobin leans his head against another. Power hums beneath my fingers and feet. The invisible wall between us falls away, and Tobin finally acknowledges that he’s not alone. His eyes, when they meet mine, have that distant look again, as though they’re not focused on the here or now. They grow stormy, then he turns toward the main building without a word.

A persistent plea of “Go” rattles around my brain, but there’s no answer when I ask it where I’m supposed to go to. Nothing lives beyond the Arc but death. There’s no way back to wherever I came from.

“I thought we had a deal.”

I cringe, knowing exactly who that voice belongs to. I’m an idiot. I’m not the one Tobin ran from.

Mr. Pace stands behind me, arms crossed. Trailing him, Honoria approaches with half of her patrolmen from the fire, ready to pick up the slack of our weakened perimeter. They’re going back to their assigned places for the night, still wearing the exhaustion that comes from working through the day.

“You were supposed to stay in your room until first meal,” Mr. Pace says. “Not wander out to the boundary and set off the proximity alarms.”

I’m going to kill Tobin for picking up that stone; he must have tripped a sensor.

“I promised I’d stay out of sight, not in my room,” I say weakly.

“What’s she doing out here?” Honoria asks, ignoring me, as though I can’t answer for myself.

Hateful and hard, she snaps her fingers toward Mr. Pace and draws him away, pointing to me and then to the switchbox I’d used to hide from Tobin.

She thinks I was going to run; I can see it in her face.

She’ll turn me out to die in the Dark, or lock me up so the others can forget I ever disturbed their routine. If she’s decided that those lost to the Fade really
did
die in vain because of me . . .

I bob from one foot to the other, giving the Arc a long glance and struggling not to give in to the voice telling me to leave and never look back. If I run, no one would follow.

No! Such thoughts are madness. Whatever Honoria decides, it’s not worth venturing into certain death to escape.

Finally, it ends. She jabs the air with an insistent finger, sending Mr. Pace back toward me.

“Sorry,” I whisper to my teacher. “I wasn’t running. I don’t hear voices like the people before.”

Honoria hasn’t taken her eyes off me, so I shift my attention to my feet.

“Is she going to make me leave?”

Mr. Pace steps sideways, turning his body into a blockade. “Marina, even if you did hear voices, that wouldn’t happen. Those who left in the first days weren’t tossed aside; the people here tried to keep them. Why were you at the switchbox?”

“I wanted to see what was burning, but then the sun started to go down and . . . I got scared, so I hid.” It sounds better than the truth.

“The fire’s nothing to worry about,” he says, and tries to smile.

“People only say that when they mean the opposite.”

“Not me.”

“It’s where they broke through, isn’t it?”

Mr. Pace hesitates, checking over his shoulder to see what Honoria’s doing. Once he’s sure she’s occupied with inspecting the switchbox, he answers.

“Yes.”

“How’d they get so close?” If Tobin and I were enough to trigger a sensor, they should have, too.

“Most people think of the Arclight and Dark as rings, with the Grey between them.” He drops to the ground and draws three concentric circles in the dirt. “But there are places where the Dark comes so close that the Grey’s almost gone.”

He nods in the direction my little bird disappeared and wipes the drawing away to make another. A tiny circle in the center, with an amorphous blob surrounding it. The band that separates the two grows wide on one side, and nonexistent on the other.

“Our territory is shrinking, while the Dark is always growing wider, consuming the terrain around it. Another decade, and we may not have the luxury of going outside at all.”

With his finger, he drags the blob’s line closer until it touches the rim of the Arclight’s circle.

“That’s why the boundaries are forbidden for you and the others who are too young to appreciate the danger.”

Danger isn’t something to be appreciated; it’s something to be avoided. And if he thinks I don’t understand that, then he’s not half as smart as I give him credit for.

“So long as the lights are on, the Fade can get close, but not cross over,” he says.

“But last night—”

“We pulled too much power too fast,” he says. “They hit the barrier from three sides, overloading the system by tripping all the main sensors simultaneously. Most of the lights dimmed, but the ones at the fire point shut off completely.”

“You mean they just walked through?”

He nods.

“It was a worst-case scenario. Circuits for the Arc are supposed to be isolated, but if things happen in a certain order, the base grid defaults to its original programming, glitches included. The system couldn’t tell the security lights from the room lights.”