Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) (37 page)

His father opens his eyes, blinking under the fluorescent lights. His eyes are slightly clouded. The skin on his clawed hand and neck is shiny, as if it’s wrapped in another coating of skin—clear and almost polished looking. “I set up a world for you here. A world where you could travel. A girl. Have you noticed that?”

“You gave me a girl?” Partridge grips his father’s bed rails.

The guard leans forward. “Sir?” he says to Willux.

“It’s okay,” Willux says. “He’s fiery. Just young.”

“Congratulations, by the way,” Partridge says, “on the wedding.”

“Don’t be sullen.”

“You’re a sick man.”

“I’m dying.”

“That’s not how I meant it.”

“Are you going to take”—the machine gurgles—“what’s being offered? You’re a hero here.”

“I don’t want to be a hero.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to be a leader.”

His father pushes another button on the bed rails, and the head of the bed rises. “I’ve been waiting . . . to hear you say these words.”

“You have?”

“Who else would I want to replace me? Who else but you, my son.” He reaches out his good hand and holds it to Partridge’s cheek. His eyes are wet and shining. Partridge has never seen his father cry. Sedge was his father’s favorite, the one destined to do great things.

“Is that possible?” Partridge asks.

“You can be the one to lead them—out.”

“Out of the Dome? Into the New Eden?”

“I won’t make it.”

“You really think I can do it?” Maybe he doesn’t have to kill his father or even wait for him to die. Maybe his father will give it all to him.

Partridge’s father pulls his hand from Partridge’s cheek. “You’ll have to prove your willingness to leave the past behind, to move forward, with us, here in the Dome. Prove it not just to me but also to those in my inner circle, who know the truth of your departure.”

Partridge doesn’t like the sound of this. “How can I prove my loyalty?”

“We don’t have much time.”

“What do you have in mind?”

The metal box around his father’s lungs chugs and then releases a long hiss of air. “Your mind.”

“My mind?” Partridge feels sick. “What do you mean?”

“I want the part that remembers leaving us, that blue-eyed girl, those wretches you were with out there—everything outside this Dome—gone.”

“What?” Partridge says. “No.”

“Aren’t you haunted by the vision of death?”

He rears away from his father’s decaying body. He walks to the far wall and spreads his hands on the cool tile; the cast on his pinky makes a sharp click. “You mean visions of murder.”

“They would be erased too. The bad, the ugly, the dark.”

He sees Sedge’s bloody body, his mother’s face shattering as his brother’s skull explodes. Blood. A thin spray of it like a bursting cloud.
For a moment, he wishes it were gone—that memory—but he can’t give it up, and he refuses to lose everything that means something to him. “No,” he says.

“It’s the only way,” his father says. “It’s the only way I’ll let you in. You want in, don’t you?”

“Think of something,
anything
else.” He looks at his father. He imagines cuffing his throat, bearing down with his thumbs.

“This is the only way,” his father says. “You’ll marry the girl.”

“Iralene?”

“You’ll marry her and prove your loyalty by letting go of those memories, that slim section of your past—and that’s it.” His father closes his eyes.

“And what if I say no?”

His father smiles, some skin on his face cracking. “I’m not a forgiving man.”

Partridge shakes his head. “It’s not even possible. You couldn’t erase memories that specific even if you wanted to. You’re bluffing.”

“Arvin Weed is a boy genius,” his father says quietly, as if he’s almost drifting off to sleep. “He can do almost anything.
Almost
anything.”

Arvin Weed can erase Partridge’s memories of his escape, of meeting Pressia, his sister, of Bradwell and the mothers, of El Capitan and the Dusts, of his mother and his brother, of being with Lyda in the brass bed frame on the roofless house.

But he can’t save Ellery Willux from degenerating, cell by cell. He can’t save his father from death. Not yet, at least. But as these machines hum and hiss to keep him alive, isn’t the race on? If his father dies, he wants Partridge in charge. But the unspoken here is that if Arvin discovers the cure, his father won’t need Partridge to lead. So if his father is willing to hand over the reins, Partridge needs to grab them, quickly.

T
HROUGH THE FENCE
, Pressia spots an old merry-go-round, offkilter but still sound. Its roof of bare spokes attaches to the horses’ poles. The circular parade of horses is frozen and warped, their bodies partially melted, their muzzles contorted. A white horse bares its teeth, but its neck and mane are lank and twisted. There are torqued hooves and chopped tails. But worst of all are their eyes: still and wide, some melted down the slopes of their faces. Once upon a time, this merry-goround was pristine—innocent and whimsical—which makes it all the worse now.

“You can’t come in,” Fandra says. “They’ve seen
him
.” She nods at El Capitan and Helmud, who’s resting his chin on his brother’s shoulder.

El Capitan is standing next to Hastings, whose bleeding has slowed but whose face is contorted with pain. “Me? What’s wrong with me?” El Capitan says.

“Me?” Helmud says, clearly insulted.

“You rule the OSR,” Fandra says to El Capitan, suddenly overtaken by rage. “You’ve killed people we’ve loved. Do you think we could ever forget it?”

“Oh.” What could he say, really? He was a vicious and cruel leader.

Pressia tries to step in. “He’s changed,” she says, but she knows it will
do no good. She sees the set of Fandra’s jaw. “He saves lives now. He helps people.”

“It doesn’t matter. The only reason he hasn’t already been shot”—she glances over her shoulder at the top of the roller coaster’s broken neck—“is because he’s with a prophet.”

“A prophet?” Pressia asks.

“Bradwell,” Fandra says.

Bradwell looks a little stunned. “Well, I’m no prophet—”

El Capitan interrupts. “Look, hate me if you want and love him, but we’ve got a soldier who needs help.” Hastings.

“They’ll take the dying one,” Fandra says. “They take in the dying. It’s how I came to live here.”

This small mention fills Pressia with hope. The survivors who live here aren’t just those who escaped the OSR in the city. There were people already in place who survived the Detonations. Maybe there are more groups like them—and her father could be among them.

Just then, there’s an electrical buzz. The gate opens. A few scrawny survivors appear, carrying a handmade stretcher constructed from a sheet wrapped around two metal poles.

“I need to know about my brother,” Fandra says, looking at Pressia and Bradwell. “The last time I saw Gorse was during a bloody battle. Did he make it back?”

“He did. He’s fine,” Bradwell assures her.

“I knew he’d make it. I
knew
it.”

It takes all the survivors who’ve stepped out of the gate to lift Hastings onto the stretcher. The plinking music is still blasting through the PA system to ward off the Dusts. The survivors keep their eyes peeled, and they all steal glances at Bradwell, obviously awed by him. A prophet.

“Wait,” Hastings mutters. “You need the destination.”

“And your behavioral coding won’t let you give it to us,” Bradwell says. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Hastings shakes his head. “No.”

“Put him down a minute,” El Capitan says. The survivors ease him to the ground.

“No, what?” Bradwell says.

“You were right not to trust me. It wasn’t the behavioral coding that wouldn’t let me give it to you. I’ve got the strength to override it.”

“Then why didn’t you?” El Capitan asks.

“If I told you, it’d be one less reason to keep me around. I don’t want to be expendable.”

“Tell us now,” Pressia says.

“Fignan,” he says. “I want to tell Fignan. He’ll understand the information I have.”

Bradwell unstraps the box from his back. Fignan lights up.

“Thirty-eight degrees, fifty-three minutes, twenty-three seconds North, seventy-seven degrees, zero minutes, thirty-two seconds West,” Hastings says.

Fignan whirs while accepting the data and blinks a green light when he’s got it.

“Wait—tell us why this airship is different. Why isn’t it with the others and heavily guarded?” Pressia says.

“All I know is what I heard,” Hastings says. “It has sentimental value for Willux. I don’t know how or why. And it’s not guarded because Willux doesn’t think a wretch could ever make it there alive.”

“Oh,” Pressia says.

“Sorry,” Hastings says. “You wanted the truth.”

They lift the stretcher again and start to carry Hastings into the amusement park.

“You’re going to take good care of him?” El Capitan calls to Fandra.

“We’ve got some medical supplies and an EMT who was here the day of the Detonations with his kids. He knows what he’s doing.” The fence closes behind Hastings’ stretcher with that same electrical hum.

Pressia is trying to remember her grandfather’s explanations about amputations—the angles the sawing should take, how best to keep the bone shavings away from the wound, the best dressings and the uses of certain oils to keep the wound from adhering to the dressings, the elasticity of woolen socks, even pressure. “Tell him that you don’t want to let up on the arteries. Every drop of blood is a great loss. If they add up, that’s how you’ll lose him.” Her grandfather lost one once. A young girl
with a crushed leg who bucked on the table, loosening the tourniquet. Her grandfather tried to get it back on, but the girl’s thrashing and the slickness of the blood made the tourniquet hard to grip.

“I’ll tell him,” Fandra says, and then she lowers her voice and whispers to Pressia, “I’m so glad you two are together. You found someone to love who loves you back.”

“What?” Pressia says. “Who are you talking about?”

“You and Bradwell,” Fandra whispers, surprised Pressia doesn’t know.

Pressia shakes her head. “No, we aren’t together.”

Fandra smiles. “I see how he looks at you.”

“It’s going to get dark,” Bradwell calls to Fandra. “Is there any place safe enough for the night?”

Fandra points into the distance. “There’s a stone underpass from an elevated train track. You’ll be okay if you take turns standing guard.”

“Thanks for helping us out there,” Bradwell says. “Without it, we’d be dead and buried.”

“We owe you,” Fandra says. “You know that, Bradwell. So many of us here owe our lives to your lessons in Shadow History, the underground, and you. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Bradwell says, obviously choked up.

“I imagine you all have set out to do something important?” Fandra says.

“Or maybe just crazy,” El Capitan says.

“Go on, then,” Fandra says. “And keep going!” She steps away from the fence.

Pressia misses her already, and not only Fandra but her childhood, the tents of sheets
—pup
tents—called home.

“We’ll see each other again,” Pressia says.

Fandra nods and then runs off back into the depths of the amusement park, and she’s gone.

Set against the sky in one direction, there’s the bare stalk of a tower, with the charred frames of chairs dangling from it. Pressia imagines for a moment what it would have been like to be there when the Detonations hit—the air filled with light, the force of the heat, and, if you
survived at all, to be suspended in midair, dangling above the earth, seeing the hysteria and destruction in every direction. She looks at Bradwell. Fandra thinks they’re together, that they found each other—
someone to love who loves you back
. And then it’s as if she is being spun by one of these rides. Her stomach flips. Bradwell, his clothes ripped in places, dotted with blood, his muscles riding beneath his shirt. His ruddy cheeks and dark lashes. Bradwell.

They start walking, but she has to look back at the roller coaster, black and bony against the darkening sky.

A
FTER WALKING FOR AN HOUR
or so, they find the stone underpass. It’s beaten but standing. They sit on the ground, eat from the provisions El Capitan has brought—heavily salted meats. When they’re finished, El Capitan offers to take the first watch. He walks up the incline and sits on the tracks.

Bradwell says, “We should snug up, backs to the wind.”

Pressia nods. They lie down together, him curled around her, his arm wrapped around her waist. Her heart is thudding in her chest, but it’s countered by this gnawing in her stomach—that same old gnawing that she’s named fear.

“What do you think Hastings meant about the airship having sentimental value?” Pressia asks him.

“Willux is a romantic, according to Walrond. Aren’t romantics sentimental?” Is Bradwell a romantic, deep down? Isn’t his footlocker, filled with memorabilia of the past, sentimental?

“You know what I’m sentimental about?” Pressia says.

“What?”

“The things I don’t remember—stuff I’ve only heard about.”

“Like what?”

“Like fireflies,” Pressia says. “During the Before. Do you remember them?”

“The yards had too many chemicals for lightning bugs to survive, but farther out, in the unmown fields, they used to crawl up the grass at dusk and flash a little yellow light. My father took me out to the country once to see them. They blinked off and on and we chased them, caught them, and put them in glass jars, poking holes in the lids.” She can feel his warm breath touching the edge of her ear. “But I thought you wanted to know about the Detonations, not the Before.”

“I’ve remembered things now. A few.”

“There were other kinds of insects just after the Detonations.”

“What kind?”

“They were fatter than lightning bugs, more like glowing blue butterflies that flashed and then disappeared into thin air. They were beautiful. After I left my aunt and uncle’s house, people were dying everywhere, but some of the ones who could still walk tried to catch these phosphorescent things—little flames, that’s what they were like, these quick little darting flames. I almost went with them, remembering my father and the unmown fields, but this woman grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t follow them,’ she said. ‘They are drawn to death.’ She shouted warnings too, but they didn’t listen.”