Pure (48 page)

Ingership’s skin burns brightly, the scratches flaring. He looks at El Capitan, Bradwell, Partridge. “Well?” He expects them to do something.

They look at one another.

Bradwell shrugs. “Well what? They gave you their answer.”

Ingership says, “Well, I won’t let their ugly stubbornness derail us.” He turns on the stairs and begins to climb, taking each step one at a time. At the top of the stairs, he unlocks a door with a key on a chain in his pocket.

They step into what first seems to be a large, sterile operating room. Under the windows there’s a counter of metal trays, small knives, swabs, gauze, and a tank of what must be anesthesia. They all pack in around an operating table. Pressia imagines that this is where they must have taken her to install the bugs and the ticker. She remembers none of it—except maybe the wallpaper. Pressia puts her doll-head fist up to it for a moment, keeping the pills close to her skull. The wallpaper is pale green with small boats. They look strangely familiar. Is this what she saw when she came to for a moment on the table, small boats with puffy sails?

“You perform a lot of surgeries in here?” Bradwell asks.

“Some,” Ingership says.

The soldiers look anxious; they keep their eyes on Ingership and El Capitan, unsure who might bark an order at them next.

“Go collect my fine wife,” Ingership says to one of them.

The soldier nods and disappears. There’s a knock down the hall, voices, scuffling. A door being closed. He returns with Ingership’s wife. Her hands and face are still covered with the full-body stocking, stitched to expose only her eyes and mouth and a full wig of honeyed hair. She’s wearing a long skirt and white high-collared blouse stained with blood that’s seeped up from her skin through the stocking and onto her clothes, like dark waterstains. Her body stocking is ripped on one hand so that her fingers are poking through. Some of the fingers are bruised bluish as if freshly twisted. This may be how Ingership got his scratches. The stocking is also torn on one side of her jaw, revealing pale skin, a dark bruise, and two welts that look almost like fresh burns. Pressia tries to remember exactly what Ingership’s wife said to her in the kitchen.
I won’t put you in harm’s way
. Did Ingership’s wife help Pressia? If so, how?

Ingership points to a small leather stool in a far corner. His wife scrambles quickly across the room and takes a seat. Once she sits, Pressia thinks she looks like a dummy wrapped in a stocking, the kind used for effigies of Pures. Kids like to do that sometimes, setting them on fire. But her eyes are very alive, flitting and blinking. She looks into all of their faces. Her eyes catch on Bradwell’s face, as if she recognizes him and wants him to recognize her. But he doesn’t seem to. She then looks at Pressia, fleetingly, and lowers her eyes again.

Pressia nods to her, unsure how to read her expressionless features.

She nods in return. And then she quickly lowers her gaze, keeping her eyes locked on her exposed fingers. Is Pressia supposed to save her?

“Was this once a baby’s nursery?” Lyda asks quietly, perhaps to break the tension.

“We are not to reproduce,” Ingership says. “Official orders. Right, dear?”

Pressia is confused. Official orders? Then Partridge and Lyda exchange a glance. They would know the rules well enough. Pressia figures some are allowed to reproduce, others are denied.

“The box?” Ingership says to his wife.

She stands and picks up something near the surgical instruments, a small circular metal container with a metal switch on hinges. It’s connected to a long trail of wires fitted into an outlet in the wall. She sits on the leather stool again, holding it in her lap.

Bradwell lunges forward. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

The sudden movement frightens Ingership’s wife. She clutches the switch to her chest.

“Steady now,” Ingership says. “My sweet wife is skittish these days.” He waves his hands near her and she flinches. “See?” She cowers like the dog that used to live near the lean-tos, the one Pressia used to feed sometimes, that was shot by
OSR
.

“We have what you want,” Partridge says. “Let’s just stay calm.”

“Where do you think you’re going to go from here?” Ingership asks Partridge. “This is what I don’t understand. There is no future out here, but you could still go back, you know. You could do penance. Your father would return you to the fold. He’d have no use for these others.” He waves at the rest of the group dismissively. “But you, you could have a life.”

“I don’t want to be brought into a fold. I’d rather die fighting.”

Pressia believes him. She’s underestimated him, maybe mistaking his lack of experience in this world for weakness.

“I bet you get your wish!” Ingership says lightly.

“Just disarm it, Ingership!” El Capitan shouts.

“And you,” Ingership says. “You with the retard on your back. What will happen to you? You’ll never win. Nothing you believe in actually exists. Your soldiers aren’t even your own soldiers! It’s the Dome’s world still, wherever you look, as far as you can see.”

El Capitan glances at the two soldiers. “Don’t lose sleep over it, Ingership. You know I’ll be fine.”

“Fine,” Helmud says.

“My wife has been acting up ever since your visit, Pressia. Very uppity. A cruel man would have sent her out to fend for herself in the wilds and die. But I was kind. I simply administered penance. And look at her now—so civil. If I told her at this moment to flip the switch, she would. Even though she’s a very delicate creature by nature, she’s obedient.” He looks at his wife imperiously. This is all a show, but Pressia’s not sure if it’s for their benefit or the Dome’s or if it’s something more personal, playing out publicly with a captive audience.

Ingership steps toward Pressia, who tightens her grip on the pills held to her head. “What if I told you they’re coming. They’re on their way. Special Forces. Reinforcements. And not just half a dozen. No, a full platoon.”

“You’re lying,” Lyda says. “If Willux wanted them here, he’d have brought them in already.” Pressia isn’t sure if she’s right or not, but she admires Lyda’s conviction.

“Are you speaking to me?” Ingership says. He walks to Lyda and slaps her with the back of his hand. She spins and grabs the wall to steady herself. Pressia feels a wick of fury light within her stomach.

Partridge reaches out and grabs the lapels of Ingership’s uniform. “Who do you think you are?” His grip is so tight that it’s cutting off Ingership’s oxygen.

Still, Ingership stares at Partridge coolly. “You’re on the wrong side,” he grunts. Without looking at his wife, he says, “Flip the switch.”

“Don’t!” Bradwell shouts.

Ingership’s wife’s fingers touch the switch lightly, nervously—the way a delicate creature would.

“She’s still young,” Bradwell says softly. “She’s just lost her mother. Imagine. A child without a mother.” Pressia understands what he’s doing. Ingership’s wife isn’t allowed to have children. But once, they were expecting. Weren’t they? Why else wallpaper a room the way one would a nursery? He’s playing on this memory, this softness. “Have mercy on her. You can save her.”

Ingership manages to shout one last time, “Flip the switch!”

She looks at her husband and then does as she’s told. She flips the switch. Pressia draws in a deep breath, and Bradwell tackles Ingership’s wife, knocking the box to the ground, where it shatters. Everyone in the room stiffens. There’s no explosion.

Inside Pressia’s ears, she hears a dull tick—just one in each ear—and then her ears are no longer so muffled. The lenses in her eyes go blank for a moment, and she sees nothing. But it doesn’t last. Before she can even cry out, her vision is back and clear—no longer clouded.

Partridge releases Ingership, shoving him into the wall.

“What happened?” Partridge says.

“I’m alive. I can see and hear clearer. In fact, everything sounds loud—even my own voice.” Pressia lets her hand with the pill bottle drop to her side.

Ingership’s wife stands up. “I never activated the ticker. I switched the wiring. If anyone flipped the switch, it would only deactivate the bugs. I said I wouldn’t put you in harm’s way. I promised.” She turns to Pressia. “You must take me.”

“They’ll kill us for this,” Ingership shouts at his wife. He’s breathless, slouching against one of the walls. “Do you know that? They’ll kill us!”

“For now, they think she’s dead,” Ingership’s wife says. “We have time to escape.”

Ingership stares at his wife in total shock. “You had this planned?”

“Yes.”

“You even dithered before flipping the switch while I was being choked so they would think you didn’t want to kill her.”

“I’m a delicate creature.”

“You disobeyed me! You betrayed me!” Ingership shouts.

“No,” she says, her voice sounding distant and airy. “I saved us so we could have time to escape.”

“Escape into what world? To become wretches?”

Ingership’s wife seems dizzy. She reaches for the drapes above the counter and hangs on to them for support. Her face contorts beneath the stocking. She lets out a cry.

Pressia looks at Lyda, a red mark and a cut on her cheekbone from Ingership’s ring. “She saved me,” Pressia says.

Ingership throws himself at the counter and pulls out a gun from the low cabinet. He stands, training it on Partridge. “I could kill you and now, without the eyes and ears, your daddy would never know.” He shouts at his soldiers. “Grab them!”

But the soldiers don’t move. They look at El Capitan, and then at Ingership.

El Capitan says, “They don’t really respect you, Ingership, even with a gun. Do they?”

The soldiers are still frozen.

“I’ll kill you myself, one at a time,” Ingership says. He points the gun at Bradwell’s face. “You think he doesn’t know who you are?”

“What are you talking about?” Bradwell says.

“Willux knows everything about you and the people you come from.”

Bradwell’s eyes narrow. “My parents? What does he know about my parents?”

“Do you think he’s going to let a son of theirs challenge him?”

“What does he know about them?” Bradwell takes a step toward Ingership and the muzzle he’s pointing at Bradwell’s chest. “Tell me now.”

“He wouldn’t mind adding you to his collection. Little relics. I know that I, for one, would prefer you dead.”

“His collection?” Partridge says.

Ingership’s wife pulls too hard on the gauzy curtains. They pop loose from the hooks. She jerks back, nearly losing her balance. She turns behind her husband’s back, seemingly trapped in the white gauze, cocooned, but there’s something bright in her hand.

A scalpel.

She steps forward, the curtain dropping like a dress to the floor. She drives the scalpel into her husband’s back.

He cries out, dropping the gun. It slides across the tile. Ingership arches and falls to the floor. Lyda picks up the gun and holds it steady, aimed at Ingership, who’s writhing, the scalpel dug into his back. He smears his own blood.

Bradwell kneels next to him on the floor. “What about my parents? What has Willux told you about them?”

“Wife!” Ingership screams. But it’s unclear whether he’s calling desperately for help or out of anger.

“My parents,” Bradwell shouts. “Tell me what Willux has said about them.”

Ingership clenches his eyes shut. “Wife!” he calls again.

She reaches her fingernails into the rip in the stocking by her jaw and tears it from her face. A loud cry bursts from her chest. She pulls away the wig, showing her fine, matted, russet hair. Her face is covered in old scars, yes, but also fresh bruises, more welts and burns. Pressia can tell that she was once beautiful.

Ingership, on the bloody floor, shouts out, “Wife! Get the pills!”

“They’re worthless,” Partridge says.

Ingership rocks on one shoulder. “Wife, come here. I need you. I’m burning!”

Ingership’s wife lurches to the wall. She rests her cheek against it and lightly touches the wallpaper, just one boat, just one.

For a moment, this seems like the dizzying end of everything. Bradwell stands up and looks down at Ingership. His eyes blink and stare off. He’s dying. Bradwell won’t get any information about his parents now. He walks over to Pressia and pulls her to him. She tucks her head under his chin. He holds her tightly. “I thought she’d killed you,” he says. “I thought you were gone.”

Pressia hears Bradwell’s heartbeat again. It’s like a soft drum. He’s alive and Ingership is dead now; his eyes have gone blank. She thinks of her grandfather’s work as a mortician, and she feels like she should say a prayer over the dead body, but she doesn’t know any prayers. Her grandfather told her that they used to sing prayer-like songs at the funerals he oversaw. He said that the songs were for the mourners, to help heal them. She doesn’t know any of those prayer-like songs, but she thinks of the song her mother used to sing to her—the lullaby. There’s something about the nursery with no baby in it that makes her think of her mother, the image she saw on the screen, the recording of her voice. And Pressia opens her mouth and starts to sing softly.

Pressia’s voice doesn’t surprise Partridge. It’s as if he’s been waiting to hear it for many years. Her voice lilts with sadness, and it takes Partridge a moment to place the tune. But then he does. It is a song his mother sang to them at night. A lullaby that wasn’t a lullaby at all. It was a love story. In Pressia’s voice, he hears his mother’s voice. She sings about a screen door that slams, a dress swaying. He remembers the night of the dance, the feel of Lyda’s breath beneath the tight fit of her dress. She must be struck by the song too, because she fits her hand in his, the one wrapped in gauze, missing half a finger. He knows this isn’t the end of the battle, but for a moment he can pretend it’s over. He leans over to her and he says, “Your bird made of wire—did it ever go up in Founders Hall on display?”

Lyda is about to ask him what will happen to them now. Where will they go? What’s the plan? But all her words are stuck. All that’s in her mind now is the wire bird. It’s a lonesome bird that swings beautifully in a wire cage. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m here now.” There is no returning.