Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) (36 page)

“Where are we headed?” Partridge asks Iralene.

She glances at the guard, maybe asking permission to tell him.

The guard nods. Iralene has introduced him. His name is Beckley.

She says, “Your father is ready to see you.”

“Really?” Partridge says, feeling a sick jolt in his stomach. “A little quality time with the old man. Where is he?”

Iralene looks at Beckley again.

“His office,” Beckley says.

It’s in the medical center where Partridge was tortured. He doesn’t want to go back.

A door at the far end of the hall flies open. A few boys pile out. They’re younger than Partridge, and he knows only two by name—Wilcox Brenner and Foley Banks. They notice the guard first and then they look at Partridge and Iralene. They recognize Partridge. Everyone has always recognized him. But their reactions are charged in a new way. He can’t read their expressions—fear, excitement, or, more simply, alarm?

They seem to know who Iralene is too. She nods to them, almost regally

One of the boys shouts, “Partridge! Hi!” like he’s a fan or something. Beckley takes a quick step forward so he’s out in front of Partridge, as if the kid is going to charge him.

The others knock the kid around. “Shut up,” they mutter.

Obviously, a story about him has been passed around. Partridge wishes he’d thought to ask Glassings what that story might be.

The boys turn the corner and Partridge asks, “What have they been told about me?”

“Your story has been leaked to the press,” Beckley says. There’s only one newspaper,
The Update
. “Cleaned up a little.”

“You can’t call that propaganda a newspaper. It’s just Dome press releases and society stories.”

“That would make you a society story,” Beckley says.

The guard opens one of the heavy doors to the courtyard. Iralene’s eyes dart around its fake trees and boxy shrubs, like she can’t drink in enough of what’s around her. She’s looking at the world the way a prisoner does when given a short reprieve.

“What’s the story say about me?” Partridge whispers to Iralene.

She ignores him, raises her chin, and looks straight ahead. “Beckley, aren’t we taking a car?”

“The orders were to take you in by way of monorail.”

“They’ll be packed this time of day,” Iralene says nervously

“Yes,” Beckley says.

“I don’t like all those people staring at me,” she says under her breath.

“Why will they be staring at you, Iralene? Why won’t you tell me what’s in the paper?”

“Don’t you remember?” Iralene asks coyly.

“How can I remember what didn’t happen?” Partridge says. “How about Beckley here tells me?” They walk up the stone path to the school buildings that connect to the monorail on the lower floor. Beckley opens the door wide.

“You and Iralene met after a dance and fell in love. And then you
were showing off for her and there was an accident and you went into a coma. She’s stayed by your side all this time. Devoted to you. Rumor has it you’re secretly engaged.”

“Huh. So I never escaped?”

“No.”

“I never risked my life or found my mother or watched my brother get killed or—”

“Hush!” Iralene hisses. The school building is empty, as it’s a Saturday. The hushed halls echo with their footfalls and then Iralene’s low voice. “Your father told me the truth about that girl who dared you to escape to prove your love for her.”

“Lyda?” His father set her up as the scapegoat?

“Yes, her.” Iralene seems irritated by the mention of Lyda’s name. She unsnaps her pocketbook, finds a tissue, and covers her nose with it.

“Is that the secret story my father fed you?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Well, that’s not what happened.”

“You regretted it, of course,” Iralene says. “You were wrecked out there, ruined, nearly killed because of her!” She glances at the cap on his finger. “Your father had mercy on you. People sacrificed their lives to save you!”

He can’t tell if Iralene believes what she’s saying or not. “Seriously, Iralene. You can’t really think that.”

“You could be a little thankful,” Beckley says with a shaming tone. “My cousin is now in Special Forces because of the fallout.”

“The fallout?”

“The secret search to save you and then finding those poor wretches in such dire conditions,” Iralene says. “Special Forces were built up, immediately, to try to help those poor lost souls.”

They head down a flight of stairs. “Special Forces were there to hunt me down. And was it also broadcast that my father ordered robotic spiders that would explode those poor lost souls until I was returned?”

Iralene stops on a landing. “Please, Partridge.” She reaches out and
squeezes his arm. “Don’t say things like that.” She means it. She’s begging him.

“Why are you so upset, Iralene? Because you know I’m telling the truth or because you think I should just go with the lie? But which lie, Iralene? There are so many to choose from.”

Iralene says nothing.

“And don’t ever say anything like that about Lyda again,” Partridge warns her.

Iralene pulls her hand away quickly. The stairs rumble with the noise of an approaching monorail. They all hurry down the rest of the stairs, making it to the tracks just as it’s pulling up.

She presses the tissue to her nose more tightly. “I hate the smell of this place. Don’t you, Beckley?”

“What smell?” Partridge says.

She looks at Partridge, tilts her head. “Don’t you smell it?”

The doors glide open.

“No, what smell?”

They step inside. The monorail car is packed with people, all chattering. Then, as they turn and stare, the car goes silent. A mother and her two children jump up from their seats, offering them.

“That’s okay,” Partridge says.

But the woman says, “Please! It’s okay! My honor!” If he says no again, he worries she’ll panic. They sit down, Partridge between Iralene and Beckley. The train hitches forward then glides.

Iralene whispers to Partridge, “It’s the scent of humanity, Partridge. It smells like mortality. Death.”

Partridge remembers the stench of ash and death shuttled around on the wind. Blood. The iron-scented air after his brother and mother were killed. That’s death.

People smile and nod, but not just at him—at Iralene too. The tissue is still blocking part of her face, but he can tell she’s smiling back.

“We’re a couple,” Iralene says. “I’m the one who stayed with you through that coma, the first name on your lips when you woke up.”

“Iralene—”

She shakes her head. Her eyes are brimming with tears, but she manages
to smile. “You were right. There are many truths. I can pick and choose anytime I want to. That’s how it can work, if you want it to, Partridge.” And then she slips her fingers into his hand, the one with the capped pinky.

Partridge feels the eyes on him. He can’t pull his hand away. It would be seen as a rejection. Rumors would start flying. It would hurt Iralene deeply. It might even put her in danger. This is her role in life, her mission. And since he’s refused to kill his father, this is the truth that has to stand—for now. What will he say to his father when he sees him?

The monorail glides through the tunnels, stopping at brightly lit platforms. People nod as they leave, and the new passengers are surprised by Partridge and Iralene’s presence. Partridge looks out the window. When the train hits a tunnel, all he sees is his own stunned expression blinking into the glass. He can pretend, for a moment, that Lyda is out there, on the other side of the glass somewhere. He wants to tell her that he’s not betraying her. This will pass. He’ll come back for her.

The train jerks to a stop. Beckley gets up first, as if they need a human shield to get them to the door. Partridge takes his hand away from Iralene. He doesn’t want to have to hold it everywhere he goes from now on.

They walk onto the brightly lit platform and into the fluorescence of the medical center itself. This is the smell that makes him feel sick—not humanity at all, but the astringent antiseptic smell of covering up sickness and the sharp, sulfuric scent of enhancements. He remembers the academy boys escorted to their rooms, where they’d strip down and get into their mummy molds, that feeling of near suffocation, the enhancements coursing through your cells. Afterward, Partridge felt slack with exhaustion, but also filled with a jagged, nervous energy, as if all his organs, tissues, and muscles were spent except for his nervous system, which was charged like a battery.

As they make their way to the elevators, they get the same reaction as in the train. Fortunately, the elevator is empty. Beckley hits the fourth-floor button.

“Why the fourth floor? That’s not where my father’s office is.”

“He’s in a special ward now,” Iralene says.

His father has been moved to the part of the hospital reserved for the seriously ill. The last time Partridge saw his father was on a screen in the communications room of the farmhouse. He looked weak, palsied, his chest was sunken, but his father, Willux, on the contagion floor? It seemed impossible. “He’s that sick?”

“He’s in a weakened state—temporarily, of course,” Iralene says.

Beckley radios ahead that they’re coming.

The elevator is quiet except for a small tune leaking from an unseen speaker. It sounds computer-generated to produce a calming effect, but the fakeness has the opposite effect on Partridge. The manufactured music agitates him.

When the elevator doors open, they’re met by techs holding white coats, paper slippers, masks, plastic caps, and gloves.

Iralene and Beckley stretch out their arms for the white coats, raise their hands for the gloves, and bow their heads for the caps, obviously used to the drill.

But Partridge says, “Don’t touch me. What’s your problem?” The techs stand by stiffly as he dresses himself. He can’t reach the ties in the back of the white coat, so one of the techs steps forward and does it for him. For some reason this is incredibly embarrassing, like he can’t tie his own shoes. He feels stupid in the puffy plastic shower cap. The gloves cut into his wrists. He starts to walk but the slippers are, in fact, slippery. He feels emasculated, childlike. His father is so deeply manipulative that Partridge wonders if this is part of his plan.

Herded by half a dozen techs, they walk through automatic doors, passing two heavily armed guards. They turn onto a wing of empty rooms. Only the nurses’ station buzzes with activity. This wing obviously has only one patient—Ellery Willux.

The technicians stop before they get to the door at the end of the hall. One says, “There’s a guard inside, but otherwise he’s requested to see you alone.”

Everyone is watching now—the technicians, the doctors, the nurses, Iralene and Beckley, even the two heavily armed guards on the other side of the glass doors.

Partridge nods. “Fine by me.” He starts to walk into the room, but
Iralene touches his elbow. He turns and she kisses him on the cheek. Everyone sighs as if this is the sweetest thing they’ve ever seen. Iralene doesn’t seem to notice that he’s bristled. Instead she reaches up and touches his nose—ever so lightly—like it’s a playful secret sign. He looks around at all the staring faces.

Iralene whispers, “Good luck!”

He puts his hand on the door, but before he opens it, he suddenly has this incredibly optimistic hope—he’ll open the door and there won’t be a hospital room at all, but instead a little living room. His father will be healthy and sitting next to Partridge’s mother, and Sedge will be standing by a window. They’ll tell him it was all just a test, some kind of coming-of-age ritual that’s been passed down for generations. “We’re a family again,” his mother will say. And Lyda will pop out of a side door.

But he knows that this is jaggedly insane.

He pushes the door open and steps inside.

The guard is there, as the tech said. He stands at attention beside the bed, which is covered by a clear, rectangular tent. The plastic tent shivers inward then puffs a little as if the tent itself is breathing. There are various pumps, chuffing and hissing. Machines chirp and beep; the only one he recognizes shows the rhythm of his father’s heart.

These machines are trying to stall death, but it’s here in this room.

For a minute, he thinks of his father, the man who held him as a baby who tucked him in some nights, who’s always been in his life. No matter how evil he might be, even if he’s a mass murderer—on the greatest scale in all of history—some part of Partridge will never forget that he’s his father. Your father can be the person you most hate and most fear, yes, but deep down you expect that he’ll be the one to save you. Partridge feels weak. He remembers what Lyda told him—he still wants his father to love him.

And then Partridge hears his father’s voice. “Partridge.” And Partridge’s cheeks burn, his heart beats hard. This is the man who killed his mother and his brother. Partridge won’t ever forget that either. He steps closer to the tent. He sees the red oval ofhis father’s face, the raw skin. But now his neck and one hand are blackened, as if the skin is completely
dead. The hand has atrophied and looks like a claw, curled on his chest as if guarding his heart.

His father presses a button on the side of his bed. The plastic tent retracts on one side. His father’s eyes are closed, but his chin is crimped, as if he’s about to talk. His chest is enclosed in a large metal contraption, which is making the chuffing and hissing noises. The box must contain some instrument pumping his lungs. Oxygen tubes are screwed into the box on either side and run up into his nostrils. Partridge imagines pinching the tubes. It’s a floating image. But he can’t deny picturing it in sudden and vivid detail—his father gasping like a fish, his mouth gaping, stretching his cheeks until they’re taut and ready to rupture.

“Partridge,” his father whispers as the box on his chest draws air. “I knew you’d come back.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say I volunteered,” Partridge says.

“You came back . . .” His lungs compress and expand in the box. “Because you don’t hate me. Tell me that you don’t hate me.”

“Are you going soft on me after all these years?”