Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) (31 page)

“Wait.”

All Partridge wants is a few more minutes with Glassings, just the two of them sitting in this room like father and son. He just wants to stall. He says quietly, “First, just tell me about the beetles. Just . . .” His hands are shaking. He clasps them together. “The beetles,” he says. “One thing at a time.”

“Okay,” Glassings says. “We sent out thousands of them. Other insects too. They’re cyborgs really. They give us information, and we can control them from afar.”

“Are they traceable?”

“Nope. That’s the beauty Of course, Willux’s people have brought him a few. He knows there are people against him. He feeds off it, in fact. But he doesn’t know where they’re coming from or what they’re looking for.”

“You’re crazy!” Partridge blurts out, and then he remembers Glassings was once his teacher and he apologizes. “Sorry, sir, but really, my father would find a way to trace them. He’d never knowingly allow forces against him to have their own surveillance.”

“He hasn’t gotten us yet,” Glassings says. “We’re careful. People like us have to be to survive.”

“And the man and his wife who got me into and out of the elevator?”

“There’s your proof. Our network is solid, and we can help you do what you need to do.”

Partridge sits back in the chair. This is it.

Glassings’ eyes look suddenly soft and weary. He’s older than
Partridge remembers him. He says, “You need to assassinate your father.”

Partridge shakes his head. “No.”

“Listen,” Glassings says quickly. “We’d set it up. We have a pill. It works fast. The poisons are untraceable. And you could get in close enough. You’re his son.”

“I won’t do it.” He feels sick.

Glassings doesn’t say a word. His expression is grave, unmoving.

“I’m not killing my father. If I become a murderer, then I become my father. Don’t you see that?”

“What if it’s self-defense?” Glassings looks at him angrily. “You’ve done some damage out there, haven’t you?”

“You have to do things you wish you didn’t have to out there. It’s filled with Beasts and Dusts and Groupies and now Special Forces.”

Glassings stands up and walks to the back of the chair. He holds it tightly with both hands and says, “This isn’t about retribution. We want to stop your father. He’s still a very dangerous man.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Wouldn’t you kill someone if you knew that they were just going to keep on killing others?”

Partridge wants to end this once and for all—his father’s brutality, the legacy of death. He could get in close, all right. He’d want his father to know just a split second before he died that Partridge had done it. Partridge imagines that momentary flash of terror in his father’s eyes. He can’t give in to it. “I have to try to lead from within the right way.”

Glassings sits down again. He presses his knuckles together. He doesn’t look at Partridge. “He has big plans for you.”

“What plans?”

“I’ve been told that he wants you to settle down, to prove your stability.”

“He remarried. Did you know that?”

“It was a quiet affair.”

“Iralene is my stepsister. He wants me to settle down with her.” Glassings jerks his head back. “That’s a little incestuous, isn’t it?”

“Not technically, but yeah, it’s crazy.”

“He likes to keep everything very closely knit.” Glassings looks at Partridge keenly. “What about Lyda?. . . Is she still alive . . . out there?”

How could he know about Lyda? “You know she was taken out of the Dome?”

“As a lure to pull you in. Yeah, we had people in the rehab center. Even the guard who escorted her out is one of ours. Is she okay?”

“I hope so.” He thinks of her singing on the stage—this stage, the one just above their heads—the music coming from deep within her.

“Maybe you can just play along with Iralene.”

“What? I’m not using her like that.”

“What if it worked to her advantage as well? It wouldn’t be good if you ignored her, would it?” He knows Glassings is right. “The word is that your father is going to show you how he runs things and then hand over the reins. Next in line in the Dome, right now, is Foresteed.”

“Foresteed, right. I’d forgotten about him.”

“He’s become the face of the Dome’s ruling body since your father’s gotten older, weaker. But your father would prefer you.”

“Why me?”

“You want the truth?”

Partridge nods.

“He thinks he can manipulate you.”

“But haven’t I proven that he can’t really . . .”

Glassings tilts his head, raises his eyebrows. “Review the facts,” he says. It’s one of his catchphrases as a World History teacher.

Partridge thought he’d escaped the Dome, only to find out that’s what his father wanted and planned. Willux wanted Partridge to lead him to his mother, and he did. And now Partridge is back because his father threatened to kill people until he returned. “Shit,” Partridge says.

“You have to think long and hard about your father, Partridge, and what’s best for the greater good.”

“Murder?”

“Just tell me you’ll think about it.”

Partridge grips the arms of the chair. “Where do I go from here?”

“You’ve got to find your father, get in close with him. You can’t do anything if you don’t have his trust and get information.”

“Are you going to turn me in?” Partridge asks.

“If I’m the one who brings you into your father, it’ll shine a spotlight on our relationship.”

“But it would prove that you’re loyal to my father.”

“I don’t want any kind of spotlight whatsoever.”

“What, then?”

“One of the other teachers here maybe. Did you have a bond with any of them?”

“Hollenback.” Partridge’s science teacher. “I stayed with him and his family over some of the Christmas breaks.”

“Hollenback is perfect. He toes the line. He’ll make the call as soon as he sees you. He’s the one who handed Arvin Weed over to them so they could get at Weed’s scientific genius.”

“I saw Arvin,” Partridge says, “when they were
Purifying
me.”

“Arvin is crucial, Partridge. He’s the one Willux has pinned his hopes on. He thinks that he can come up with a cure. He’s working that kid to death.”

“Isn’t Arvin on our side?”

“He was. But Willux has great pull. I’m sure he’s made him promises. Who knows if Arvin will be strong enough?” Glassings looks at Partridge. “It’s why you have to be careful.”

“I’m not going to get pulled in by my father and I’m not going to kill him. So where does that leave us?”

“If you change your mind . . .”

“But we can’t even communicate.”

“We’re around.”

“I guess I should go.” Partridge stands up and walks to the ladder.

Glassings rises too. “You know,” Glassings says, “I don’t have a son, Partridge. I probably never will have a child, what with the regulations. But if I did, I’d want him to be like you.”

Partridge’s throat is too tight to speak. He looks down at his shoes and then his eyes catch Glassings’, who smiles at him—a smile tinged with both sadness and pride.

Partridge smiles. “
Beautiful barbarism
—you said that once during a lecture about ancient cultures. It still applies to us now, doesn’t it?”

Glassings nods.

“See, I was listening to your lectures. Some of it stuck.”

“Be careful out there.”

Though it makes no sense, Partridge gives him a salute.

Glassings salutes back.

Partridge climbs the ladder, opens the trapdoor, and climbs back up onto the stage, closing the trapdoor behind him. He walks quickly farther backstage, following exit signs. He finds a door, pushes it open, ready to breathe the cold air.

And then he’s outside.

But that’s just it. No one’s ever really outside here.

I
N THE BLACK SEDAN
that once belonged to Ingership, courtesy of the Dome, they’ve made their way through the Deadlands teeming with Dusts. El Capitan is driving, hunched toward the wheel, Helmud perched on his back, busy whittling a bit of wood. Hastings, as navigator, sits beside El Capitan, his long legs crammed in tightly against the glove box. It turns out that Willux owns a fleet of airships built to survive the Detonations. Hastings is taking them to one that doesn’t have high levels of security. Hastings didn’t say why it isn’t highly protected; maybe he doesn’t know.

Dusts fan cobra-like hoods, arch spiny backs, lift claws and teeth from the earth itself. El Capitan plows into them. It pains him to kill the Dusts this way but only because he loves the car so damn much. He groans every time it takes a hit, which makes him an emotional and erratic driver. Pressia and Bradwell, in the backseat, grip the headrests, the doors, the seats. Twice, their elbows brush each other when the car jerks to one side. She can’t stop wondering what would have happened if she’d let him finish telling her why he was going on the trip. What if she’d walked around the table to meet him on the other side? Would he have kissed her? She let the moment go. At the time, it felt like a relief, but now she wants the moment back; and at the same time she wants
this gnawing in her stomach to stop. What is this gnawing? Love or fear or both?

Pressia has placed Fignan between her boots. He’s now sampled the DNA of El Capitan, Helmud, and Hastings—stealthy pinpricks. He didn’t share the results; they weren’t anyone he was looking for.

Bradwell and Pressia keep their guns pointed toward the shut windows, ready to use them. The cracking of the Dusts’ bodies and the sand, dirt, and soot that then explode and pelt the car are deafening.

The car’s body is rutted with long scars, deep pocks, dings, a few old bullet holes. The front fender was already kinked from ramming Ingership’s porch and pummeling through Dusts, and now it’s mangled. The back bumper is gone, the front grille corroded. Each Dust they hit scours the chrome and the paint job. Pressia says, “Maybe if you didn’t slam into every Dust, the car would have a better shot of holding up.”

“If this car dies, each dead Dust is one less that’ll kill us,” El Capitan says defensively. “You want to drive?”

“Up ahead!” Hastings shouts. “See them?”

“Yeah,” El Capitan says. He smashes through a small herd of Beasts with lean faces, dark eyes, and gaping maws. The creatures are stronger and stranger the farther they get from the Dome.

The car hits a bump and the tires find a remnant of highway—gravel pinging the undercarriage. It’s enough of a road to cut off the Dusts. A few snap at the edges and then slowly retreat into the earth.

“Where are we headed?” El Capitan asks Hastings.

“Northwest.”

“Can you get a little more specific than that?” Bradwell asks.

El Capitan shakes his head. “There’s a little problem with our navigator . . . ”

“What’s that?” Pressia asks, leaning forward.

“Hastings and I sat down last night to work out the route and we hit a snag. He’s got full programming—a knowledge of maps, internal compass, highly developed sensory perception, full automatic weaponry—but also behavioral coding. His strand of loyalty coding will allow him to give us only so much.”

“Loyalty,” Helmud says.

“Do you mean that Hastings can’t tell us the actual location of the airship?” Bradwell says.

“I can’t give you everything you need,” Hastings says. “I can fight my coding only so much and lead as far as I can.”

“No offense, Hastings”—Bradwell leans over the front seat, and Pressia knows that he’s about to say something offensive—“but how do we know that your loyalties aren’t still with the Dome and you won’t turn on us?”

“Turn on us?” Helmud says.

“You don’t know,” Hastings says.

“Your coding is strong,” Bradwell says. “It’s probably drilled into your cortex, the stem of your brain, imprinted on your cells.”

“Easy now,” El Capitan says.

“Cap, if he decided suddenly to open fire on all of us out here, who could blame him? He’s been programmed to hate us, to see us as the enemy, right?”

“He’s going to get us there, one step at a time. He’s fighting for it. It takes willpower to overcome that coding,” El Capitan says. “We should be thanking him, taking what we can get.”

“What we can get,” Helmud says.

“I think it’s smart to admit that there’s a risk,” Bradwell says. “I’m not saying I don’t trust him. It’s just—”

“That you don’t trust him,” Pressia says.

“I don’t trust the Dome. I think it’s stupid to underestimate them.”

“Maybe it’s stupid to
overestimate
them too,” Pressia says. “Maybe that’s how they get away with so much. Hastings might be a good example of why we shouldn’t overestimate them.”

Hastings shoots her a look, as if insulted.

“I mean, it could be that the human part of him is stronger than the Dome thought. Maybe emotions are a real force. Maybe there are some things you can’t alter.”

Bradwell looks like he wants to say something, but then Hastings says, “Don’t trust me. Will it change anything?”

Hastings is right. They’re already about six miles into the Deadlands. They need him.

“I can tell you,” Hastings says, squinting in concentration, “for one thing, this airship works in some ways like old-world airships.”

Bradwell lifts Fignan, asking him to fill them in. Fignan explains how old-world airships worked on the principle of filling a balloon, or something like it, with a gas, usually hydrogen or helium, that’s lighter than air. The crafts, in fact, floated.

“Airships,” Helmud says wistfully.

El Capitan scratches his head. “But Willux must have known that after the Detonations no one would have access to those gases for fill-ups. It can’t work that way.”

“It doesn’t,” Hastings says. “They created an extremely thin, lightweight material that was rigid and strong enough to hold something approaching a one hundred percent vacuum without being crushed by the air pressure around it.”

Fignan searches his data. “Endohedral fullerenes.”

“What are those?” Bradwell asks.

Fignan lights up a quick video. “Fullerenes,” a narrator explains, “are complex, variously shaped molecules of carbon, sometimes called buckyballs. Both terms were named in tribute to Buckminster Fuller, scientist, inventor, futurist.”