Flashtide Page 10

  Then I think of mining flash dust. The burning sand. Suffocating air. Bearing the attack of flash vultures, some with the curtain in their bites. Of watching cordon winds rise up and steal away someone you love until they are nothing but dust in your pail, and I think, Yes. There are worse things than Tempering.

  “You know what Graham would say, don’t you?” Dram asks.

  I look at him, lying with his arms pillowed behind his head. I smile because he’s right: I know exactly what our old mentor would say. But I miss Graham with a piercing ache, so I don’t answer, just so I can hear his words again, even if they come from Dram.

  “You can’t do his climbing for him,” Dram says.

  I’m facing Roran, but what I see is the second ledge beneath tunnel eight, stretching into darkness beyond the glare of my headlamp. I see my blistered hands, knuckles bent, struggling to maintain a crimp hold.

  I can’t do your climbing for you, girlie. Graham’s words echo through my memories. You’re going to have to keep going, keep reaching. Just step in my steps.

  I climb up to Roran’s bunk. “Hey.” He doesn’t look at me. “Bade and Aisla know where to find Arrun.” I lean closer, lowering my voice. “Help is coming.”

  “I believed you the first time you said that. So did the other people you abandoned.”

  “Rora—”

  He twists the pulleys and forms his appendage into a crude gesture.

  “Clever,” I mutter. I set rations on his blanket. “Don’t use up all your energy hating me.” I tear open the nutri-pac with my teeth, giving him a hint as to how he might do this later, on his own. His wrists are swollen over the edge of the appendages, and sweat sheens his face. “I’ll ask Dram to come help loosen your appendages, then you can tell him to go flash himself too.”

  I drop to the ground and give Dram a look. “Roran needs help, but he’d rather die than admit it. His anger might kill him before the cordon does.”

  Dram lifts a brow. “I don’t think anger is fatal.” He climbs up past me. “You’re still alive.” I give him the same gesture Roran gave me.

  I dig through my pack and find a set of clean clothes, then stride to the back of the barracks, into one of the shower alcoves. I step into the pod, and water shoots from a mechanized arm that revolves around me. A scent lifts on the steam, as a cleanser mists my hair and body. Water streams over me, and I will it to wash away some of my anger, too.

  The lights suddenly flicker and fade. I duck my head outside the shower and the water cuts off. In the half-light, I can just make out the bare outlines of bunks and tables and gear.

  “What’s happening?” I call.

  “The lights are set with atmospheric sensors,” Reuder says. “They change to night-dim as a warning.”

  That sounds ominous. I drag on clothes without bothering to dry off.

  “A warning for what, exactly?”

  “Flashtide. Happens most nights around midnight. You don’t want to be without shelter when it comes.”

  I wring the water from my hair and twist it into a knot. I step from the shower and run into half-dressed, dripping Dram. I look up at him, just as a shadow peels away and leaps toward us. It throws something—a blanket?—over Dram, and two more squad members grab hold of him. I jump toward them, my hands claws, prying at their arms.

  A blanket drops over my head, pulled so tight my neck bends. I thrash, but arms clamp me around the waist and jolt me off my feet. I yell, my voice muffled. Dimly, I’m aware of Roran’s hoarse shouts.

  “This will be over soon.” Reuder’s voice. “The Overburden is different from the cordons of Westfall. Air currents bring the flash curtain’s particles to us in ways you never experienced. I could tell you what happens to the air here after midnight, or I could just show you.” The person holding me grunts as one of my kicks lands. I’m hauled up the stairs.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Initiation.” The blanket is whisked off me. A girl with more talismans than hair clamps my arms with her appendages. “We all did it.”

  Roran is yelling, spitting threats at the Dodger carrying him up the steps.

  “The night-dimmed lights are the only warning you get. You have to learn to feel the danger.”

  They push us out the door and bar the entrance.

  “Don’t let it kill you,” Reuder calls.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever smelled the flash curtain. Ribbons of orange spiral down from the sky, as if they’re unwinding from a roll suspended in the stars. We stand transfixed; even when Roran tugs at my arm, I’m helpless to do anything but watch. The smell is so strong I taste it, like ammonia on the back of my tongue.

  The hairs on the back of my neck lift, then along my arms. I feel all at once breathless. More ribbons descend, clouds of luminescent amber and orange, the color of Dram’s Radband. The sight mesmerizes me, even as I begin to feel the sting, like an emberfly landing on my arm. Waves of orange aural bands collide against yellow and citrine—shades of flashfall I’ve never seen, never knew existed. They undulate in waves that break over the horizon and cascade toward the cordon like pieces of exploded stars.

  Flashtide.

  I sense it pulling me, drawing me across the cordon sand. It’s a lure, bait at the end of a hook—I realize that on some level, even as it reels me in.

  “Scout!” Roran shouts. I hear him, distant. The flashfall performs its dance over the horizon, reaching as high as the flash curtain, and winding down …

  … down—

  “SCOUT!” Roran screams in my face, and I’m pulled from the orange spirals. His brown eyes are glassy with tears—anger, fear. They pull me from the curtain’s hook, and I stumble with him toward the barracks. He shoves me toward the door, his appendages unyielding against my particle-abraded skin.

  I falter down the first couple of steps, gripping the railing so I don’t pitch forward. Roran has his appendages grasped around Dram, pulling him toward our refuge. He shouts Dram’s name, then a curse, and one of his appendages snaps off at the buckle. They crash into the barracks, barreling down the steps ahead of me. I slam the door and drive the bolt through. All of me shakes. So hard. And over all of it, that odor, like the strike of a match. I make it to the bottom of the stairs and glare at our squad leader.

  “That ritual just saved your life,” he says. “You needed to fear it. To respect its power. Up there, we could’ve pulled you back in.”

  “I notice you didn’t.”

  Reuder shakes his head. “If you thought I’d be willing to die for you, you’d be wrong.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “I warned you.”

  “Not enough.”

  “Hard to explain the flashtide’s … draw. Techs in Alara compare it to a fish that lives deep in the ocean. A fish that illuminates a light in order to draw its prey. It consumes them while they’re still dazed by the light. Can you imagine scientists giving that kind of animalistic intention to the flash curtain?”

  “To what?” I ask. “Consume living matter?”

  “Or defend its existence.”

  “You’re talking about a solar anomaly. It doesn’t have survival instincts!”

  “The flashtide didn’t start happening until Delvers began placing devices beneath the curtain. The Congress developed ways to control the flash curtain, and it laughed at us all.”

  “You speak like a free Conjie. Not everything on earth is alive.”

  “Then give me another explanation for what just happened to you.” He opens a case and withdraws three syringes. “I give you your first dose, but after this, you’ll go to the prickers.” He administers the serum, one of us at a time. “Each day, when you return from the cordon, you’ll file through a tent where you will be given a dose of treatment to prevent radiation sickness.”

  My father’s compound. He succeeded, but instead of freeing us, it’s the most successful bondage Congress has ever had over us. We serve, we live. Just like in the cordons. Only … my gaz
e flicks to the door, and I consider what we just experienced on the other side of it. Flashtide.

  The Overburden isn’t as bad as the cordons I crossed on the other side of the flash curtain.

  It’s worse.

  TWELVE

  6.9 km from flash curtain

  WE WEAR ARMOR, like we’re going into battle. I can’t guess why they didn’t equip us like this in the cordons of Westfall, unless they just wanted us for flash dust. Here, it actually feels like they want us to live.

  Some of us, anyway.

  They march the Brunts before us, men and women, a mix of ages. They don’t wear armor, though many have tried to fashion protection from pieces of wood and rope—even bits of glass. They hold long spears. The ones with hands, anyway. Most are Tempered Conjies, their cirium-stumped arms still swollen from processing. Others have been fitted with crude appendages, blunted, forklike tines that resemble fingers and thumbs.

  I can’t tear my gaze from the Brunts. Most are young men; there are a few women, and someone really short, heaped beneath layers of piecemeal armor. Fire, I hope it’s not a child. I think of Winn trembling beside me in Cordon Four, wearing Graham’s too-big suit over hers for extra protection. There was never enough protection.

  Dram turns from his place with the Dodgers, following my gaze, like he’s reading my thoughts. He glances back at me and lifts his rifle. He’ll do his best to protect them. And me—I’ll find the dust as fast as I can so we can collect it and get the hell out of the Overburden.

  As we pass beyond the fence, some of them murmur anxiously, but most are silent with terror. Greash said they’re tagged with transmitters. I think of the devices I saw in the prison cordon. The towers that drew the emberflies with some sort of tech. Congress adapted that tech to people, to attract cordon creatures and give the Dodgers steady targets to aim at.

  I’m in the back of the procession with the other Miners, seven of us assigned to this quadrant. My collection pouch sways with every step. I feel once more like the lead ore scout of Outpost Five, guiding my caving team to the only element that earns us freedom. Only, there was never any freedom then, and there isn’t this time, either. There’s just exposure in the Overburden and dust that buys us refuge from it.

  We trudge across the desolate ground, silent but for our heavy footfalls, and the occasional murmuring voices. A ragtag army come to steal from the flash curtain. I trip over scrub brush that pokes up from cracks in the ground, dead-looking bushes with thorns as big as my fingernails. If we’re not careful, they’ll tear holes in our suits and leave us exposed to the elements. It’s like everything that survives in the flashfall is hostile—even the plants. The Miners don’t watch the skies. I’m scanning for flash vultures, but they’ve barely lifted their heads for the past kilometer.

  “Is it all like this, Kara?” I ask the girl next to me.

  “Like what?” She doesn’t lift her eyes from the sand.

  “Covered in these thorny plants.”

  “The plants?” She looks at me, startled. “Who cares about the glenting plants?”

  My gaze darts over the land stretching before us, to the Dodgers just ahead of us, all with their heads bent. “Then what is everyone looking for? There’s no flash dust here.”

  “I’ve got movement!” Reuder shouts. “Dodgers up! Protect the Miners!” A wall of armored bodies hems us in.

  “What’s hap—”

  They come up through the ground.

  It’s so unexpected that, at first, I can’t make sense of the ridges of sand streaming toward the Brunts like underground bullets the size of my fist.

  “Cordon rats!” Kara shouts.

  I stare, openmouthed, as the creatures burst from the sand, fast as a dust storm, and launch themselves at the Brunts. Their thick tails are barbed, like spiny branches, and they swing them into their targets, latching on. Brunts scream, kicking and beating at the creatures with their makeshift weapons.

  The furry brown beasts are everywhere, clambering up from the sand and attacking the nearest Brunt. They make a squeaking sort of cry as they tear through the thin layers of clothes, rooting for flesh. Soon I can’t hear the rats anymore, just the Brunts crying out.

  I step forward, and Kara clutches my arm. “Stop,” she hisses, and I can see tears welling in her eyes. “This is how they serve Alara. This is how we stay alive.”

  “Move on!” Reuder calls.

  Dram raises his rifle.

  “No!” Reuder commands. “Save your ammo, Subpar. There’s nothing to be done for them. The tail barbs are poison, a toxin that paralyzes the prey.” Even as he explains, the Brunts stagger, and two more fall to the ground, limbs jerking. “Mark the coordinates, Kara,” he orders. She types into a screencom on her wrist.

  “Why?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

  “You know why,” she says.

  “I need you to say it.”

  “We mark the location so we can collect the flash dust tomorrow.”

  I’m falling down a well of despair so deep, I feel like I’m folding in on myself, my soul collapsing until it disintegrates. I stand in my squad, a dutiful servant of Alara, watching four Brunts writhe on the ground, tossing up cordon sand as they flail, covered in cordon rats. One man’s face is bleeding, and as a rat nibbles close to his mouth, he bites it, crushing it with his teeth even as he cries in agony.

  I slide back my face protection and vomit. I thought I knew fear in the cordons of Westfall but this is something I didn’t know existed—terror that drives you to paint a target on someone else’s back.

  Kara tugs my arm. “We have to keep going, or it will be in vain.”

  We march onward, and the cries fade to whimpers as we pass. I stumble over a rocky bit of ground, not looking where I’m going, the stale taste of vomit stinging the back of my throat. I think of the cages in the prison cordon, the machines that moved us toward the curtain and forced us to mine dust for Congress. Machines don’t work in the Overburden, so Congress made one out of people.

  I see the squads now for what they are: cogs in Congress’s wheel, gears in a flash dust factory. I wonder morbidly what hurts worse—the tails or the teeth.

  Dram maneuvers himself to my side. A glance at his face tells me he’s riding his own waves of shock.

  “If that happens to me—” I begin.

  “It won’t.”

  “But if it does…” I touch his shoulder before he can argue again. “I need to know you have a bullet in there for me.” I nod at his rifle.

  “They won’t fire at a human heat signature.”

  “Then use your knife,” I answer.

  He holds my gaze, brows lowering. “Same,” he says, and I nod. Teeth and tails won’t matter for us.

  His gloved hand catches me behind the neck, and he tugs me close, our headgear pressing together. Then he’s gone, jogging back to his squad, his place in the machine.

  We’ve promised each other death without suffering, and it’s a sign of just how bad things have gotten that I now feel like I can breathe again.

  * * *

  The hours wane, and in the absence of sunlight, I gauge the passing of time by my body’s reaction to radiation exposure. It starts with the heaviness in my chest, like I’m breathing with a boulder pressed to my rib cage, then the dryness that travels up my throat until my mouth feels like I’ve swallowed sand. I probably have—tiny particle dust that leaks past my headpiece. We put on eyeshades, but I feel myself squinting behind them, even closing my eyes, walking blind for moments at a time, just to spare my burning retinas.

  “Just ahead,” Kara announces, consulting her screencom. “Twenty meters.”

  My stomach grows hollow, but this is our third collection site. I thought they would need me to help scout for flash dust, but all they need are Brunts and cordon rats.

  A small flag whips in the wind above the spot. “Fire,” I curse beneath my breath. The Congress loves its glenting flags. And cirium cloth, too. They’ll use precious metal f
or a marker flag, but not as added protection for people. I yank the flag from the sand—somehow I got tasked with this odious job—and jab it into my pack. I wonder if all the teams function this way. Lead people out to die, mark with flag. Collect flash dust from unfortunate Brunts, retrieve flag.

  I collapse to the ground and sit cross-legged as my squad of Miners holds our position and the Brunts move into place. A few of them limp, having pulled barbed tails from their legs before the venom could take full effect. They lumber over the collection site, visible now as tattered clothing and shoes, scrap pieces of armor and sticks—whatever the curtain failed to consume in the evening’s flashtide. There are a few bones, some ashes. And flash dust.

  The Brunts move on, strapping on whatever useful bits they scavenged, taking their places as lures to keep the flash curtain’s horrors occupied while the rest of us do our jobs.

  The Dodgers fan around us as we scurry in with our collection pouches and sifters, scooping the sand on hands and knees, an eye on every shifting line of sand, lest it belong to something with teeth. But this time we need little effort; there is so much dust. I try not to think about how many died here and how their deaths give us another day of living.

  The Dodgers keep their rifles angled upward, scanning the sky for vultures. Dram moves so that he stands at my back, a couple of meters away. A knife gleams at his side, and though he’s lifted his gun, his eyes trace the sand around me.

  The buzzer sounds in the distance.

  “Move out!” Reuder calls.

  I shove to my feet, securing my ore pouch and sifter as we trudge back toward the camp. An anxious voice carries from the front—the pack of Brunts. I can barely breathe through the shield protecting my face, I can’t imagine using my energy to form words. But as I watch, a Brunt pulls away from the cluster and stoops to lift the smaller one I saw earlier. It is a child. A boy, younger than Roran.

  Oh, flash me.

  The man staggers, trying to hold on to the child I assume is his son.

  One of the heavily armed Dodgers stops and stares at me. Dram. Waiting to see if he’ll need to hold me back.