All Light Will Fall (2 page)

The officers pushed through the crowd. They were close.
There was nothing I could do. I held my breath, and then it happened. The
ground shook and a burst of fire rocked the bridge. Smoke filled the air. I
couldn’t see. There was only screaming.

The officers turned from the intersection and raced towards
the explosion. I pushed forward through the crowd. It was a vicious wave, the
way people crashed and trampled over each other. The smoke thickened. The
screams grew louder and louder.

Away from the attack, the crowd had thinned, and I was able
to reach Alta Zeda just before the doors closed. The shuttle was crowded as
usual. I had expected chaos. It happened often, the attacks. It was the
Defiant. They were born of violence. All of the Ardent feared them, and soon
the whispers would follow, the quiet speculation, and the terror.

As I stood there, pressed firmly against the glass, I was
sure the panic would arise. But I was wrong. All was quiet, except for the hum
of the shuttle’s engine. It was like that after the Trinity Wars. People seldom
spoke to each other. They hardly looked at one another. I suppose we had run
out of things to say and reasons to care.

I worried over Ellis the entire ride home. Did he get
arrested? Was he caught in the explosion? My mind was spinning, and I couldn’t
keep my hands from shaking. I was shocked at myself. When the explosion
happened, I wasn’t even afraid. Being that close to death, wasn’t that
something to fear?

I left the train when the metro reached Marx Avenue. I
wasn’t far from Darway Centra. Several more blocks and I would be there. I had
lived on Darway Centra all my life. It was an assigned residency. We could live
nowhere else. The Nazar made it clear: there was a place for everyone and
everyone was in their place. Adventuring beyond your place called for punishment.

By the time I reached Marx Avenue, it was past curfew. The
streets were empty, ghostly almost. Fog filled the air. I heard footsteps in
the silence. A figure appeared, the tall shadow wavering back and forth.

“Corrine, is that you?” a voice called. I sighed in relief.
It was Ellis.

“Ellis, it’s me,” I whispered.

I went to meet him. The cold air whipped around me. I was
wild as the wind as I ran, with the fog in my breath and the sound of freedom
in my steps.

All of a sudden, something lashed out from the dark. I
crashed, head first, into it. “Corrine!” The quiet was no longer quiet, and
that sound of freedom fled as I hit the ground.

“Corrine! Hey, let go of me!”

Ellis was in trouble. I had to get up. I had to move. I
rolled over on the concrete, my head spinning. Heat swelled in my right eye,
and I found myself unable to see for a moment.

“Look what we have here.”

I shivered at the stranger’s voice. It was disturbingly
smooth.
He must be a civil order officer
, I thought. He flashed a light
in my eyes, and I looked up at him. I couldn’t see his face. He was but a
phantom in the fog, and so were the other dark shadows standing behind him.

“Get her up, gentlemen,” the man ordered.

The officers yanked me to my feet. I stood hostage between
them, listening to Ellis struggle from afar. “It seems we finally caught the
dynamic duo. Beauty,” he flashed the light on Ellis, “and the Defiant.”

“He is not a Defiant,” I uttered. The officer drew the light
from my face. I could see him clearly now. He was handsome by my standards, and
perhaps too young looking for one so cold.

The man took a step forward and leaned into me. “Do you
honestly believe we don’t know what’s said behind closed doors? Don’t be
foolish. We know all your truths, so save yourself the trouble of the lie...
Corrine.”

My heart stopped. They knew me already, and as I thought
about it, they probably knew me long before I even knew myself.

The officer smirked. “Ah, now you understand. Then I don’t
have to explain the severity of the crime you two have just committed.” He
waved his hand, and the officers holding Ellis drug him forward.

“I wonder what the punishment should be?” the officer
taunted. He reached out and caressed my face.

“Get your filthy hands off her, you bastard!” Ellis snapped.
The officer smiled. He turned and used his flashlight to strike Ellis in the
face. I struggled against the officers.

“Ellis!” I gasped.

“There now,” the officer said, “I hit her, so it was only
fair to make things even.”

Ellis glared at the man. He spit the blood in his mouth near
the officer’s boot and grinned. “You hit like a little bitch,” he growled.

The officer raised his flashlight again, but instead of
aiming for Ellis, he raised the weapon towards me. I flinched and closed my
eyes. The pain never came. “Enough of this, sergeant,” a voice demanded.

I opened my eyes, the hilt of the flashlight inches from my
face. One of the officers had halted the attack, holding the sergeant by his
arm. “We are a civilized people. There is no need for this kind of violence.”

“I beg to differ, captain. We caught them trespassing in the
Z-Zone. That’s a Class A crime punishable by death. Not only that, they’re
suspects in that terrorist attack near Alta Zeda.”

The captain raised his hand and silenced him. “The first
offense is always let off with a warning. And as far as I know, those terrorist
could be anyone. If we need them for questioning, we know just where to find
them.” He looked at me. “There will be no mercy if you defy the law again.” He
glanced at Ellis next. “Do you understand?”

Ellis nodded. “Good,” the captain said. “Escort them home,
sergeant.”

“Sir, if the higher-ups find out about this we’ll be…”

The captain snatched the man by his collar. “I said, escort
them home,” he hissed.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. He waved his hand,
ordering the officers to release us.

Mother was horrified when I came home under guard. The
officers scanned my id marker, then shoved me into the apartment. I really
hated those damn things. At birth, every Helio Tellus citizen had them
surgically implanted on the right side of the neck. They tracked you
everywhere. If you boarded a shuttle, it was tracked. If you entered a
building, it was tracked. If you left your residency, it was tracked. With one
simple scan, it could tell a civil order officer all they needed to know;
biological background, blood type, heart rate—anything. This was life in 2100,
this was life in our era of promise. Everything was monitored in Helio Tellus,
everything but the ruins of Sion.

“You will be fined under trespassing charges,” the officer
said. There will be no more warnings. If we catch you again, the consequences
will be dire.”

The door slammed shut moments later. Mother chastised me
long after they left. She sat me at the kitchen table and placed a healing pad
over my eye.

“How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of
trouble!” she scolded. “Do you know what will happen if people start getting
suspicious?”

As she rambled on, I couldn’t think of a single excuse. What
was I to say, that Ellis had talked me into it? Of course not, she would forbid
me to see him. My mother loved Ellis dearly, but not enough to allow me to
suffer capital punishment on his behalf. That’s why I wouldn’t tell her about
the explosion. She would never know I was there.

“You need to stop this, Corrine,” Mother begged. “If they
take you away, if I lose you... what will I do?” She buried her face in her
hands and sighed. I hated that I caused her so much grief, but it couldn’t be
helped. I wasn’t obedient and sheltered like my mother. I was curious of that
hidden truth Ellis often spoke of. I was curious of everything.

Fern suddenly emerged from the back of the apartment.
“What’s going on?” she said quietly. We had to be careful that our voices
didn’t echo against the walls. All of Helix City was steel and glass. It served
as a way to keep the residents quiet. Domestic quarrels and other disturbances
were punishable by law.

“Your sister nearly got herself arrested again, and worse,”
Mom said.

Fern sighed and came to sit beside me at the table. “We were
scared to death, you know. I heard that if they take you, there’s no coming
back. Did you know that they wouldn’t even tell us?” Fern shook her head. She
was almost in tears. “Mom and I would just sit here without any idea of what
happened to you. They can do that. And they have the right to do it too.”

I looked at her. Her eyes were wide with fright. I had no
words for her, no promises that I would never again endanger my life. It would
have been a lie, and I couldn’t lie to her. I pressed the healing pad back
against my eye and stood from the table. “I’m going to bed,” I said.

Mother and Fern were quiet as I left. I felt guilty for
worrying them, but not guilty enough to end my curiosity. All the things that
Ellis told me made sense. What if the greatest lie of Helio Tellus was that
there were no lies? What if the world was shifting, and I didn’t even know it?
What if I was just some naive child, oblivious to everything around me?

I woke late in the afternoon with a sharp ache in my eye.
Each throb of pain was a reminder of last night’s incident. The sergeant’s
voice was a continuous echo in my head. “
We know what’s said behind closed
doors, Corrine. We know all your truths... save yourself the trouble of the
lie... Corrine.”

As I got out of bed, I felt a mysterious presence fill the
room. They were following me. Whoever
they
were, I knew they were there.
Before last night, they didn’t exist. Before last night, I could eat and sleep
in peace. Things were different now. Everywhere I went, their shadow lingered.
They were everywhere; in the kitchen, under my sheets. They were even there
when I looked in the mirror. I was them. My ignorance confirmed it.

I walked through the apartment in the dark. The television
was on in the living room. Fern sat crisscross in front of the halo-screen,
entranced by the bright flickering pixels.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

“The authorities, they’re stopping the investigation on
yesterday’s attack,” she said.

“Oh,” I mumbled, “why’s that?”

“It was a one man suicide, cased closed.”

I didn’t like the way she spoke. She said it so simply, so
sweetly that it sent a chill running through me. “I wish they’d stop taking
about it. I really want to see the rotation,” Fern said.

There is was again, that terrifying tone of hers. How could
she speak of death like that, like it was the wind blowing on a rainy day? How
could she speak of it so calmly? “Did you know Neptune will fall out of orbit
soon?” she asked. “They think it will crash into Uranus.”

That’s right. How could I forget? Anything that wasn’t the
sky or related to it in some way was just another fact of life to Fern. She was
amazed by the sky, utterly obsessed with it.

For years, the galaxy has been shifting. Planets and stars
go in and out quite often. Some return. Others journey far out into space and
vanish completely. We fear Earth will do the same. So far, we have been
fortunate. The moon still shines. The sun still rises. At least, that is what
we are told. Seventy years have passed since the Trinity Wars and the sky is
still covered in gray. I have never seen the stars. I have never seen the sun.
It is a wonder we survive.

“My friends hope the debris reaches Earth so they can
collect the pieces,” Fern continued. “I told them it would be impossible. The
energy field will keep it from landing in the city.”

“It is impossible,” I said.

“They want to sneak past Norris Tower.”

I crossed my arms. “As long as you don’t get any ideas.”

“I’m not stupid,” Fern said. “Besides, I just want to see
Plymouth 2.”

“You’ve seen it plenty of times.”

“I know, but it gets closer every time, and you can see the
entire planet glow. It’s almost not a planet at all, but this fireball of
color. And the waves of light go in and out like the whole thing is breathing,
like it’s alive.”