Flashtide Read online

  “Something’s wrong,” he murmurs. “Your wound—”

  I crane my neck to see what has him frozen in shock. A shallow gash, no wider than my palm, bleeding steadily. But as Dram lifts the cloth, my breath stutters. The blood … shimmers. The gash glints with opalescent shades of pink and aquamarine, as if the flash curtain took hold of me and left its handprint behind.

  “It’s spreading,” he says. Iridescent streaks fan from the wound, illuminating my skin in ominous rays.

  As if the sight of it tripped a signal in my brain, I suddenly feel it—pain catches up to my senses, and I scream behind my teeth.

  “Worse than orbies,” I gasp, knowing Dram will understand. Whatever this is, it hurts more than the tiny glowing organisms that chewed through our skin down tunnel nine.

  “Clean it,” Meg says. She leans past Dram with handfuls of conjured water and scrubs at my skin. “It’s still spreading!”

  “Do you think it’s some kind of venom?” Dram asks, his face grim. This, too, he’s familiar with. He drew flash bat poison out of my body twice down nine. A look of resolve crosses his face, and he leans toward my wound.

  “No!” I shove his head back, my body screaming with pain. “You’re not putting your mouth on this thing. This isn’t … flash bat venom.” My voice shakes, but my gaze is steady. I tell him more, without words, the silent communication that saved our lives hundreds of times down the tunnels. Whatever the flash vulture did to me, it’s worse than anything we faced on the other side of the curtain.

  “Cut it out of me,” I say.

  “I’m not cutting it out of you—”

  “Cut it!” I throw all the authority of a lead ore scout into my voice, though my designation means nothing now.

  “You’ll bleed to death!” Dram says.

  “Then burn it!”

  Dram’s wild eyes meet mine. “There’s not time for a fire. The wood is wet—”

  “Flare,” I gasp. And I know, flash me, I know what this pain is like. “It’s making me sick,” I murmur. “Whatever it’s done to me—I can feel it!”

  “I’ll help,” Roran says, kneeling beside me. He holds me steady while Dram yanks a flare from his pocket.

  “Her Radband’s changing!” Meg’s voice.

  I shift to see my Radband glowing pale yellow at my wrist. It darkens as I watch. Dram’s stark gaze collides with mine, then shifts to my shoulder. “What if this doesn’t work? We don’t know what this is—”

  “Dram.” I bite his name out, a brittle command. A moment from now, I won’t be able to speak.

  He lights the flare and sets it to my skin.

  Pain. Burning. Radiating. Like a piece of a star pressing against me. My eyes squeeze shut, but colors explode behind my eyelids.

  Tremors rack my body, the chill of shock on the heels of fire.

  “It’s gone. We got it all.” Dram’s voice shakes. “Breathe, Rye,” he murmurs.

  Air slips unsteadily through my nostrils. Burning flesh. I choke on the smell. My skin burns so badly I fight the urge to vomit. I shake uncontrollably, as if the rest of my skin is trying to escape from the source of pain. I count to five and push up onto my hands and knees.

  “What are you doing?” Meg asks. “Let us tend your wound.”

  “There are at least two more of those vultures out there.” I gasp the words, panting past the pain.

  I clasp Dram’s hand and tell him the rest with my eyes. He nods grimly. We are back to relying on our tunnel talk. I bite back a cry as he tows me to my feet. Blood spatters the snow like cavers’ marks. I think of flash vultures seeing them. This way to an easy meal. If more come now, I’m done. I’m already dizzy from shock.

  “Let’s move, ore scout,” Dram says, tucking his axe into his belt. I didn’t realize I’d dropped it. He scoops snow into his hands and rubs it between his palms, cleaning them of the vulture and Orion blood. “Still with me?” he asks, giving my hands the same treatment.

  “I’m fine,” I murmur. We head toward the camp, my staggering steps no longer quiet. I make it a dozen meters before I collapse against a tree. Dram lifts me in his arms.

  “Tomorrow I teach you to shoot,” he mutters.

  He trudges behind Meg and Roran over snow-covered trails, and I will myself to be lighter, less a burden. At least he’s not injured. Just me—the girl who can’t let go of her caver’s ways. The Westfaller.

  Snowflakes whirl down from the heavy blanket of sky so thick I can watch their lazy descent. It makes a hush fall over everything, and I imagine it helping us, covering our tracks, shielding us from the Congress’s trackers.

  Then, a glint of silver through the flakes—and I blink the snow out of my eyes to look harder.

  Beyond the sounds of their footfalls, the creature calls, Mew, mew, keow. Dram heard it too; I can see it in the tensing of his jaw. I’m suddenly too aware of my hair, dangling past his arm, and Meg’s braids—wound like the nest this monster would use them for.

  Mew, mew, keow, the tunnel gull calls again. I slide my knife free and grip it tightly, eyes fastened on the sky above us.

  I will learn to shoot tomorrow.

  TWO

  40.2 km from flash curtain

  THUNDER RUMBLES THROUGH camp, and I’m grateful for our conjured tree shelter. Most nights, Dram and I sleep under the stars, but the winter has brought snow. And snow, this close to the flash curtain, can be deadly.

  Particle snow exposes us to radiation as surely as a breath of cordon air. It shouldn’t reach us here—we’re camped beyond the flashfall—but I feel a shift in the atmosphere, as if it’s pushing past boundaries along with the vultures and gulls.

  Another rumble, and I give up on sleep. Usually I sense the approach of a flash storm, the deepest parts of me awakened to the curtain’s particles. A bead of sweat trickles down my back, and I realize it’s not a storm that woke me, but a premonition, a tingling sense of dread I can’t ignore.

  I push up my sleeve, and my Radband casts a glow on the woven branches on either side of us. My eyes water from staring at the indicator. It turned yellow while I was imprisoned by King in Cordon Three. Even then, starving and half mad with fear, I marveled that it wasn’t red after the days I’d spent in the cordons, so close to the flash curtain I could feel its song pulse through my body. My father’s compound saved me, preserved my life long enough to get him the elements he needed to create a cure.

  But no one’s heard from him in weeks.

  Dram stirs, and I glance down to find him studying my face. He gently clasps my wrist, blocking the light of my Radband. He despises the biotech all Subpars wear from birth—indicators of approaching death by radiation.

  But we’re safe from that now. So long as we don’t get close to the curtain again. And as long as we take shelter from any storms that carry its radioactive particles to us. I weave my fingers through his, and our callused palms press together, hands scarred from years of mining and fighting the creatures down tunnel nine.

  Tension creeps into his eyes, and I turn up the lantern before he has to ask. I need the sky above me, and Dram needs light in dark spaces. We both carry demons from Outpost Five. He sits up and gently checks my wounds. I didn’t need stitches after all. He trails his finger beside a row of butterfly bandages.

  “You in pain?” he asks.

  “No. Looks worse than it feels.” I pull my shirt back over the angry red gash marking my ribs.

  “Glenting vultures,” he mutters.

  “Glenting out-of-practice axe skills,” I say.

  He grins ruefully and draws me into his arms. “What’s got you flighty, ore scout?”

  Lately, Dram speaks more and more like the Conjies who’ve taken us in. I feel the rings on his fingers as his hands move over my skin—another bit of Conjie adornment, like the matching cuffs we both wear. But the rest of him is all Subpar. His lips brush mine, and I lean into his kiss, weaving my fingers through his dark hair. My hands skim his shoulders, the hard muscles tha
t mark him for the caver he was, the boy who climbed down tunnels every day after me.

  “Orion?” He senses my tension, like there’s a line stretched between us that he can feel when it pulls too tight. But how do I tell him what I’m uncertain of myself? “Is it the curtain?”

  Four words that state perfectly the nature of our existence. If we Subpars live, it is because the curtain stayed far enough away, that it yielded enough of its cirium to provide a shield, but not so many radioactive particles that it killed us. If the curtain reaches toward us through winds or storms, though … we become flash dust the Congress can use to fuel its weapons.

  Is it the curtain?

  When you live this close to the flashfall, it is always the curtain. But Dram knows there’s more to it for me.

  “I feel it … pressing,” I whisper.

  “We’re more than thirty kilometers from it,” Dram says. “Beyond the flashfall.” I can’t stand the tension drawing his brows together. I should tell him that I barely sleep at night, that in my dreams the curtain rolls and undulates in waves, an iridescent sea of pink, green, and violet—and it moves. Toward us. Toward me, as if I am tied to it so strongly I have the power to bring it with me wherever I go.

  I shiver, and Dram slips his blanket around my shoulders. “Talk to me, Rye. What’s going on?”

  Something. Something bad. But since I don’t have any answers, I clasp him around the neck and kiss him. He makes a soft sound of surprise, but then a moment later, his arms wind around me. We fled the cordons, found our way to the freedom of the mountain provinces, but this is our true escape—the places we find together where fear can’t follow.

  Thunder shakes the ground, blocking out the sounds of our breaths, our soft words. Not thunder.

  Engines.

  “Dram!”

  He shoots up, letting go of me to reach for his guns. Outside our shelter, Conjies shout, a child cries.

  “Weapons and warmth,” Dram commands, shoving his feet into boots. “The cold can take us as fast as their flash weapons.”

  We snatch up every weapon that’s not already strapped to us, and he tosses me my coat.

  A Conjie ducks inside our shelter. “Inquiry Module at the edge of camp—”

  We follow him, gliding down a conjured slide to the ground. I gasp. Particle snow. I sense it even before I touch the fresh white powder.

  In the feeble dawn sunlight, Conjies flee from the earthen shelters they’ve conjured; others leap down from the woven branches of tree forts. None of it offers sufficient protection from the Congress’s trackers. The orbs swarm in the distance, their sensors glinting with light. If we can’t evade them, they’ll bring the Inquiry Modules racing to collect us.

  Our band of Conjies is small—twenty-six men, women, and children. Fewer than half have fighting experience—but they know how to hide. Trees twist up around us, sending snow and pine needles cascading. Conjured rock juts from the ground, and Dram grasps my arm before I collide with the sudden barrier.

  “Camo-cloth,” Dram says, digging his cloak from his pack.

  I yank mine over my head and thrust my arms through the sleeves. We thread through the trees, blending with the snow whipping up around us.

  A Conjuror sends a wall of snow flurries arcing over our camp, shielding us from view of the Inquiry Module approaching from the east. We don’t have the kind of weapons necessary to take down one of the unmanned hovers. Bade’s the only Conjie I know who can make fire in his hands and throw it, but he’s not here now.

  It rumbles, nearing, and the Conjies still. They are suddenly tree or rock, nothing but elements the Mod’s roving sensor won’t see. It drones above us, so low it knocks snow from the treetops.

  Buzzing metallic cylinders drop from its hold.

  “Pulse trackers,” Dram murmurs. These don’t need to see us to find us. “Everyone—get wet—they track body heat!”

  “The spring’s a half kilometer—”

  “Get in the snow!” I shout.

  They look at me, eyes wide, deciding which danger is worse. If the Congress captures us, we’ll be processed and sent into the cordons. The particle snow might not kill us—not right away, anyway.

  With Bade away, everyone looks to Dram. And right now, he’s looking to me.

  His brow creases beneath his cloak’s hood. He doesn’t want to ask me to take the risk—but he’s never had to. I tug my glove off with my teeth and crouch. My heart hammers in my chest, urging me to stop. I thrust my hand into the fresh powder, closing my eyes to better sense the—

  Burn. Like paper taken by flame, the way the fire curls the edges before it turns black … I breathe past the pain, wedging my hand farther, into the deeper layer of snow. My hand freezes, numb with cold, but that is all.

  “Is it safe?” Dram asks.

  My eyes meet his, and he curses. “Flash me. How bad, Rye?”

  “We need to get deep,” I call. “Don’t let the fresh snow touch your skin.” We’re resistant to the curtain’s radioactive particles, but not immune. And it’s the recent snow the curtain has gifted with its particles, brushing our camp like a radioactive caress.

  The pulse trackers whine toward us, drawn to our body heat.

  “Get under the snow!” Dram calls.

  We burrow, digging ourselves under blankets of fresh powder. The cold soaks through, and I shiver, burrowing deeper. I lie back, gasping when wet droplets snake down my collar. The trackers hum above us, whistling through the air. Roran lifts his hands, cupping dirt, and snow flurries lift from his palm, giving us cover.

  We are cold enough that the machines don’t register our body heat, but parts of us are on fire. Beside me, in a hastily dug trench, a little girl whimpers.

  “Where does it hurt, Briar?” I whisper.

  “My hands,” she says, shivering. “They burn.”

  Particle snow. At this elevation, we experience it more than we did down in the outpost. Like the rains and wind that herald a flash storm, they carry with them the deadly particles of the curtain. We should be far enough from the flash curtain to avoid any of its fallout. More proof of what I fear.

  “This isn’t right,” Roran says, shifting in the snow. “It shouldn’t burn like this. We made camp ten kilometers from the boundary marker. We’re beyond the flashfall.”

  “Maybe you read the marker wrong—”

  “I didn’t read the glenting marker wrong, Meg!”

  “Then why is there glenting particle snow burning my arms?”

  “Quit scrammin’ or we’re all slayed!” Dram hisses.

  “It’s shifting,” I announce softly. In the hush that follows, I hear wind whining through bare branches. They know I have a connection to the curtain, even if they don’t understand it. These are Conjies—people so tied to nature they can transform it at will. They don’t question my scout’s senses. But it doesn’t make them any less afraid.

  “What do you mean, it’s shifting?” Newel asks.

  I try to think how to describe what I’ve been sensing for days. I close my eyes, letting the snow around me numb all outside distractions—shut out the rational side of me that wars with my instinct.

  “Pulses,” I whisper, and my blood—my Subpar, adapted blood—seems to echo the sentiment. I sit up, and the Conjies watch me like I’m a creature they haven’t yet named. “Pulses of energy, like it’s testing for holes, pockets of energy that have dissipated. That’s why it’s worse at night—when the Earth’s turned away from the sun. Like it … frees the curtain, to stretch, to reach…” I’m babbling, I realize, throwing out half-formed theories in an effort to help them understand how much danger we’re in. Their wide eyes fasten on me like I’m something that came from the flashfall, something feral.

  I did come from the flashfall. And I am more a creature of the caverns than they will ever understand.

  “Trackers are gone,” Dram announces. We dig ourselves from the snow, wet and shivering. “No fires,” he says. “Dry clothes and p
ack up. We need to leave within the hour.”

  The Conjies set about their tasks without further instruction. This is how they’ve evaded the Congress for generations. One hour. They will be ready in half that time.

  I don’t go to collect my gear with Dram. Instead, I jog to the base of the nearest ridge and start climbing.

  * * *

  Rock scrapes my palm as I reach past the ledge. My injuries throb, and a sheen of sweat makes my hands slip. I don’t have to climb anymore—I’m no longer the ore scout the Congress forced me to be. But I need to see the flash curtain, need to know why its song started humming through my veins again.

  I shove my fingers into a shallow crack, scraping the back of my hand. I repeat the action with my other hand and lever my body higher. If I were a Conjie, I’d just weave a vine from rock and pull myself up. But that is not how the curtain affected my people.

  How it affects me.

  My breath hitches, and the scent of pine winds through my senses, reminding me that I’m beyond the ash of Outpost Five. I let the memories linger as I climb, until the ghosts of the cavers I loved propel me past my limits.

  I reach the top, grasping tree roots to hoist myself up.

  I have to do this before Dram leads us farther east. He doesn’t look back—only forward. He doesn’t ever look west beyond this perimeter of mountains, toward the flash curtain. From this vantage, I can make out shifting violet and green hues, stretching like a wall of light from the ground upward as far as I can see. Rivulets of aquamarine shimmer down, as if an artist dripped paint over a canvas. The colors bleed together as I watch.

  The sight of it, after two months of living beyond the flashfall, steals my breath away. Back at Outpost Five, I’d climb the Range and stare out over Cordon Five, catching glimpses of the curtain beyond the sulfur clouds. It strikes me suddenly that I’ve missed the view.

  I have never hated myself more.

  This thing destroys everyone I love. It is killing Subpars and Conjurors forced to mine the burnt sands, even as I perch here, safely beyond its reach. And yet … it hums a tune inside my soul that I recognize.