Burn (15 page)
“Maybe Partridge hasn’t had time,” Pressia says angrily. “Maybe his plan is in the works. Or maybe he has started to make real changes but telling Kelly—an ocean away—isn’t a top priority right now!” She turns to El Capitan. “You believe in Partridge, don’t you?”
“I always doubt people,” El Capitan says. “I’ve survived by not believing in other human beings.”
Pressia understands. She’s someone who’s let Cap down; she doesn’t love him the way he loves her. “What’s your plan? You bring down the Dome and there’s civil war? More blood, more death?” Pressia asks them.
“If you want to side with her, go ahead,” Bradwell says to El Capitan. “How you feel about Pressia isn’t a secret anymore. Do what you want.”
Pressia’s shocked that Bradwell’s said this out loud. She glances at El Capitan. His cheeks are flushed. He coughs into his fist and looks out the windshield. They’re cutting through a bank of clouds.
“You just want to be proven right after all these years,” Pressia says to Bradwell. “You’ll take justice over peace, even if it means people are going to die.”
“I’m not trying to prove I’m right. I am right. There’s a difference. The truth is important,” Bradwell says. “History is important.”
“El Capitan will do what he thinks is right—justice or peace,” Pressia says. “I trust him to make that call.”
“Peace,” Helmud says, giving his vote.
Pressia’s glad that Helmud is on her side. “Good,” Pressia says. “Thanks.”
“Cap?” Bradwell says.
“No,” El Capitan says. “I’m not choosing between you. We’ve got to be united on this.”
Bradwell stares out the windshield, and Pressia can only see his profile, the twin scars running down one cheek. He says, “My mother died gripping my father’s shirt. Her eyes were still open, staring at him, like she’d died begging him to stay alive. But they died Pure—on the inside.” He jabs his own chest. “They died as they were, fighting to get the truth out.” He rubs his knuckles together and says. “And what am I?” His wings twitch on his back. “I’m a fairy tale parents tell their children to scare them into living careful lives. I’m not real.”
Pressia imagines him as a little boy running through the house calling for them, his panic growing. Sometimes she forgets the little boy he once was—the one who was sent to his aunt and uncle’s to live, who ran through the flock of birds when the Detonations hit, the one who found his way back to his parents’ house, to the footlocker in the secured room, who fended for himself for years. She loves that kid. She loves the man he’s become—complex and stubborn. “You are real. You’re the same person.”
He shakes his head. “No. That Bradwell is gone.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“What’s really kept me going all these years is the truth and justice. I could look up at that white Dome, its gleaming cross, anytime, and I had all I needed to survive. They killed my parents. They holed up in their perfect little bubble and destroyed the world. I’m a wretch. That’s what made me Pure. And now? With those chemicals pumped into me, what am I?”
“You’re still yourself,” Pressia says. She wants to say more. She wants to tell him that he’s real, that she loves him. But his back is stiff. His eyes are locked on the sky. He’s cut off. She says, “You have every reason to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. I only wish I could.”
“Look,” El Capitan says, “someone’s got to compromise.”
The cockpit is quiet.
“Here’s my compromise.” Bradwell breaks the silence. “Only over my dead body are the Pures coming out of this as heroes.” He looks each of them in the eyes and then turns and walks out.
Pressia stares at the windshield that held his reflection. It’s now a black screen shuddering with occasional clouds. He let his guard down. He talked about finding his dead parents. She wishes she’d said something different, but what?
She turns to El Capitan’s reflection. He catches her eye and smiles sadly. “Sorry,” he says. “For everything. I shouldn’t have pushed him to—”
“Don’t,” she says. “It’s okay.”
Helmud reaches out and quickly touches her hair then shyly looks away.
She sees her own reflection and thinks of the rhyming game of tag the children were playing in the field.
Look in a looking glass. Look for a match. Find yourself! Find yourself! Don’t be the last!
She lifts the doll head. Who would she be without it? More herself or less? She can’t imagine what it must be like for Bradwell—his body isn’t his own. She thinks of her own DNA, the instructions of how to build her and her alone. Hair, skin, blood.
And then she remembers the hairbrush in her room, how it never had a strand of hair in it the next morning. Did they take her DNA? Will there be replicas of her—out there—one day? The idea terrifies her in ways she doesn’t understand.
Find yourself. Find yourself.
She doesn’t really even know who she is. Neither does Bradwell. Does anyone?
El Capitan says, “We’re over land.”
“Land,” Helmud says, as if commanding his brother to bring the airship down. “Land!”
Pressia pulls the backpack off and holds it to her chest. She looks out the windshield at the rugged horizon. From here, it looks peaceful and calm. But she knows it’s teeming with Beasts and Dusts. The land itself is alive—hatefully alive. Maybe vengefulness is part of all of them.
H
is mother’s voice. “Partridge! Your friend is here!”
He opens his eyes.
His mother’s voice? No—it can’t be. She’s dead. And yet she used to call to him like this when his friends showed up at the house. He remembers his childhood home—his bed sheets with small trucks on them, the clock in the shape of a baseball, a set of connectable blocks teetering on the floor.
And his mother, appearing in the doorway—the swing of her hair, her smile.
It’s not his mother’s voice, and it’s not Lyda’s either. This is his bedroom in the apartment he grew up in while inside the Dome. He sleeps on the bottom bunk. Sedge used to sleep on the top bunk. He didn’t like it when Partridge would cry at night. Sedge would tell him to shut up. Their mother was gone, presumed dead. He should have been allowed to cry anytime he wanted to.
His father’s bedroom is empty. He doesn’t go in there—ever.
Partridge killed him.
This thought jerks him fully awake.
The door opens and it’s Iralene. “Arvin Weed’s here,” she says. “Should I make you two something to drink? Refreshments?” She’s twising her engagement ring.
“What time is it?” He sits up.
“You slept and slept and slept,” she says. “It’s tomorrow already!”
After he got home and Iralene hugged him, he told her that he wasn’t feeling well and thought it’d be good to talk to Arvin Weed, who’s now his doctor. Really, he just wanted to grill Weed again about Glassings and the people who are still suspended, and also to show him the sheet of scientific equations Partridge found in his father’s war-room chamber. After Iralene told him she’d set up a meeting with Weed, Partridge walked to this bedroom, lay down, and after days of not sleeping, fell into restless nightmares. He used to dream of finding his mother’s dead body everywhere—under bleachers, in the academy science lab—but in this dream, he was going about his day in some mundane way when he came across a pile of bodies. One or two twitched, bleeding but still alive, and they got up and staggered toward him. They spoke with the voice of the man who jumped in front of the train—Eckinger Freund, the authorities confirmed. And these dying people called him a liar, but Partridge couldn’t tell whether they hated him because of the truth he told about his father or this new lie—marrying Iralene.
“Are you coming to talk to Arvin?” Iralene says. “Should I chat with him to give you some time?”
He rubs his eyes and lies back in the bed, his hand spread on his heart. He’s still fully dressed. He feels sick. “No, that’s okay. I’m coming.” She starts to leave the room, but he says, “Wait.”
She turns back to him, smiling. “I love the way you look when you first wake up.”
“Iralene, we’re alone,” he says. “We promised not to…” He asked her not to be romantic with him except for show, in public.
“Can’t a girl practice?”
He sits up. “Did the death toll go up any since the press release went out?”
She takes a deep breath. The suicides scare her. Her face goes stony. “Beckley reported that there were no cases overnight.”
“Good.” If he’s going to give up his freedom like this, and a good measure of the truth, it had better be saving lives. “Tell Arvin I’ll be there in a minute, okay?”
“Sure.” She smiles and shuts the door.
Partridge changes his clothes. He shouldn’t be nervous about seeing Arvin. He was once just some academy nerd, a distant friend who’d sometimes let Partridge copy his notes. But Arvin isn’t here as a friend. Arvin helped Partridge regrow his pinky, and he seemed to be in charge of the team that swiped Partridge’s memory—both his father’s orders. And Arvin most likely would have been the one chosen to perform the brain transplant. Would Arvin have gone through with it?
Partridge will never know. Instead of an operation, Arvin performed his father’s autopsy, telling the leadership that his father’s death was due to Rapid Cell Degeneration while, publicly, people were told that he’d struggled valiantly against a genetic disorder.
Partridge looks down at his pinky and flexes his hand. The pinky curls and extends right in sync with the others. All in all, it’s incredible work. While here, Arvin will probably want to test the nerve endings and the re-formation of Partridge’s memory too.
Partridge finds the sheet of scientific information where he hid it and slips it into his pocket.
He goes to the bathroom, splashes water on his face, and dries it with a hand towel. He stares at himself for a moment, and he’s not sure who exactly he’s supposed to be. He feels like a fraud. He knows he’ll give himself over to this lie. He’ll do it because Lyda whispered,
No more blood on your hands. No more.
But he knows that the blood has just begun.
And Lyda? And his baby? How long will they have to live this hidden life? After the meeting at Foresteed’s office, they asked for a few minutes alone together. They held each other. She said, “Partridge, this is the right thing to do.” Then she quickly added, “I’m scared.”
He told her that he was scared too. And now he misses the feel of her warm body as they huddled together under his coat with the swirling ash, like black snow. He misses the way she looks at him, which always feels honest. He loves how Lyda seems both fragile and tough. On the one hand, the delicate work of making a human being is going on within her. On the other, she’s hardened in a way he can’t explain.
The truth about his father. This one truth. How many lies will he have to offer up as a sacrifice to appease the people of the Dome? How many?
He walks out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into the living room. Arvin is looking at Iralene’s folder of bridal gowns. “I think that’s a really beautiful one,” he says, pointing to an open page. “Not that it matters.”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Iralene says, hurt.
“You’d look good in anything,” Arvin says. And here’s a perfect example of Weed. He might have meant he really doesn’t care, but he recovers with a compliment. Or does he mean what he’s saying? It’s true that Iralene would look good in anything. She’s perfect. It’s why she’s here.
And suddenly it hits him: They have him where they want him. He’s playing out the life his father designed for him. Iralene, with her shiny hair and her bright smile, is preparing for their wedding. Partridge is going to walk down the aisle cowed by guilt. He tried to lead, and it was all stripped away.
And then his suspicions start up. Have the suicide numbers really been as dramatic as he’s been told? The angry crowd, the noise of sirens, the man who jumped in front of the train—it all felt real. In fact, it felt spontaneous—like the most unplanned thing he’s ever witnessed in the Dome. And yet, he can’t trust Foresteed, who would see the disruption as an opportunity to guilt Partridge into submission. Foresteed might not possess much of a conscience, but he surely would see it as a weakness in others—one he could exploit to his advantage. How real is any of it? Is it a conspiracy to get Partridge to toe the line? Is Weed in on it?
“Sorry to interrupt,” Partridge says.
Arvin and Iralene look up. Arvin sticks out his hand and shakes Partridge’s. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better.”
Iralene scoops up her bridal packets and says, “I’ll let you two talk.” Partridge imagines training sessions that Iralene has been put through—lessons on when to be visible and when to politely disappear.
“Let’s talk over here.” Partridge leads Arvin to the sofas. They sit down across from each other.
“So, the pinky,” Weed says. “Any heat, numbness, itching?”
“Nope.”
Weed reaches across the coffee table between them, pokes Partridge’s finger and bends it. “You feel all this pretty well?”
“Yep. Although sometimes, I still imagine it’s gone. And then I look down and it surprises me.”
“People who lose a leg say they can still feel it; their nerve endings continue to send messages to the brain that it exists. It’s called a phantom limb.”
“So I’m feeling the phantom of the phantom?”
“Regrowing parts of the body is all new science. Maybe this will become a commonplace observation.”
Partridge wonders if Arvin is talking about Wilda, the girl who was kidnapped, taken into the Dome, and Purified. She no longer has scars or marks or fusing or even a belly button, and she could only say what she was programmed to say—a threat from Partridge’s father. “You expecting to regrow a lot of limbs, Dr. Weed?”
“I’m one of the good guys, Partridge,” Arvin says. “You know that.” His eyes shift away from Partridge and glide around the room.
“Do I?” Partridge says.
Arvin laughs and leans back in the sofa.
“What’s so funny?”
