Lumière (The Illumination Paradox) (44 page)

The machine zaps and crackles.

Sparks fly.

Electricity jumps.

The conductors overhead sizzle.

A flash of lightning slinks snake-like up the sides of the metal toward the top of the structure. If it jumps from the bolts to the tip of the Crookes tube, it’s over. We’re all goners.

I can’t let that happen.
Won’t
let that happen.

Snaggled wires wince and seethe.

I turn and race for the stairs of the Core, fling open the door, and fly down them, bursting into the back room, the floor bouncing beneath me, the Illuminator quaking.

Another arc of lightning cracks, shooting through the holes in the domed ceiling, up the structure toward the conductors.

I sprint for the machine, voltage jumping beneath my skin, and lunge at the controls. Wrapping my hands tightly around the lever, I pull with all my strength.

Nothing happens.

The lever’s stuck.

It doesn’t even budge.

Anchoring my feet, I try again, throwing all my weight behind it. “Please,” I shout at the sky, arcs flashing all around me. “Help me, please.
Don’t let this happen.”

The giant Crookes tube tilts slowly into position, and I gasp. Arcs jump all around. I hold my breath and release the lever. It’s too late. I can’t stop it now.

Unless
—

If there wasn’t any Crookes tube—

It would produce a harmless flash!

I abandon the lever and race up the stairs, out of the Core, and back through the beam.

“Bertie!” I shout over the howling machine. “Bertie!
Come quick!
”

F
ifty two

Urlick

I see Eyelet disappear through the beam, running toward the Core.
If anyone can stop this, she will.
Smrt connects with my jaw.

I stumble backward, my boots teetering over the edge the ravine. The heat of the Embers burns at my back. Smrt winds up in front of me. He catches me with a quick clip to the jaw, and wrenches my neck to one side. “You’ve outlived your usefulness,” he sneers, crushing my windpipe with his thumb. “It’s time for you to die.”

“After you,“ I hiss, prying his fingers from my neck. I wrap my hand around his. Hate bulges from his beady black eyes as I strengthen my grip. “One thing you should learn about me. I
never
give up.”

I throw a jab to his gut and he buckles to his knees.

“Hand over the vial.” I breathe through gritted teeth.

“I’ll die first,” he gurgles.

“You’ll die, all right.” I curl up my fist, delivering another right to his cheek. His head bobs left then right. Blood splatters in a trail to the very brink of the ridge.

“Hand it over.” I shake him, hauling him up by the scruff.

“I can’t.” He spits blood through his teeth. “I haven’t got it.”

A sinking thought pours over me. Perhaps he lost it in our scuffle. Perhaps Flossie made away with it, too. She couldn’t have. There wasn’t time.

“You lying bastard!” I shout, pounding him again.

Smrt leans to avoid my blow, stumbling sideways, the heel of his shoes hooking on a rock. He tumbles backward, falling hard to the ground, landing on his rump. The vial pops from his breast pocket.

It skitters across the dirt, heading toward the lip of the ridge.

I lunge, grasping for it, falling over Smrt. He dives beneath me, reaching for it as well. The vial bounces past me, dancing on his fingertips.

My heart stalls in my chest.

“Noooo!”
Smrt screams, as the vial trickles through his fingers, over the side, tumbling length over length into Embers.

All the blood in my body turns to ice.

I hover over him, frozen.

Sparks fly up from the ground all around us. Lightning bolts snap overhead.

Adrenaline pulses through me like a drug. I clutch him by the throat and drag him to his feet, suspending him in the air.

“No,
please!”
he rasps, kicking his feet, clawing at my wrists like a frightened animal. “I can help you. We can make more!”

“I don’t need your help!”

“Are you sure?” A wicked light burns in his eyes. “Don’t be stupid. Don’t cost Eyelet her life.”

“Which life?” I seethe. “The one you would have gladly taken from her?”

I tighten my grip and swing him out over the ridge, my arm trembling under his weight.

“No!
Please,”
he wheezes, clinging to my wrists. “I beg you.
Spare me!”

“As you spared so many others?” I shake.

“Tell me”—my eyes narrow—“how does it feel to be on the wrong end of power?”

He gurgles, feet twitching.
I close my eyes. Let out a breath. And release my grip.

Cringing as he slips through my fingers...

His haunting screams ratchet up my spine,

As he sinks below the mist,

Spiraling to the bottom,

The endless bottom.

Of the nothingness,

The
Hell,

That lurks below.

F
ifty three

Eyelet

A boom shakes the earth. The ground snaps out from under my feet like an unruly child’s flicked a blanket. I’m tossed in the air like a rag doll. I land meters away in a bruised heap. Heart pounding, I hike up my skirts and stumble forward, trying to remain upright in the aftershock.

“Bertie!” I scream. “ Bertie, please! Hurry!”

He races up, and I jump aboard. “I need you to fly!” I shout above the roaring machine. “Like you’ve never flown before!”

Bertie shudders as I dive on the pedals, bursting through the glowing green rim into the center of the Core. I circle, trying to amp up our speed. Then using the door of the Core as a ramp, I yank up on the handlebars and deploy the wings, praying.

Bertie sputters. His wings slap the ground first before he catches any wind. He flaps furiously, working hard to pull us up.

“Higher!” I shout, as we circle the structure. Bolts of lightning graze his wing tips. “Hurry, Bertie! Hurry!” I shout as he climbs. The whir of the giant glass plates pushes him around. He fights against the friction, his hydrogen stores plummeting. The gasket gasps. The needle falls. The canister reads near empty.

Electricity lashes around my head, whipping to the top of the structure.

I tear at my clothes. The heat’s unbearable. It radiates off the structure in an endless burning wave. I wince as the hide bubbles from Bertie’s bones.

My skin feels as though it’s melting. Wires snap at us like angry dogs.

“Just a little farther,” I push Bertie. “We’re almost there!”

The Crookes tube glistens in its stand to my right. The point hovers close to my hand.
If only I could...
I reach out, my fingers brushing the glass. “Closer! Closer!” I shout.

Bertie balks, caught in a gust of wind. I lurch to one side.

“Hurry, Bertie! We’re running out of time!”

He recovers, throwing himself into a turn. Tightening his rotations, he circles the structure, tipping his wings toward the tube. His hydrogen tank whisks dangerously close to the electric fire snaking around the structure.

A spark hits his wing, burning a hole in the hide. The elephant skin bursts into flame.

“Ten. Nine. Eight…”
a countdown begins.

The Crookes tube shudders in its stand.

“Now, Bertie!” I shout. “It has to be NOW!”

Bertie swoops, making one last circle around the neck of the glass.

I reach, pulling up onto my knees on the seat.

Everything is suddenly too loud, too bright, too charged with energy.

An arc leaps beside me.

“Five. Four…”

I let go of the bars.

Lean out over the seat.

And hurl myself at the Crookes tube.

A flash ignites at my back, knocking the breath from my lungs. The palms of my hands meet up with the smoothness of glass—the Crookes tube topples from its stand.

I fall, spiraling through the center of the structure, my back to the earth, shards of broken glass bouncing up all around me in a twinkling storm, my eyes fixed on something glorious—

“Three...Two…”

Through the cone of green light parting the clouds, I see another world—another universe—floating on the wind. A series of tiny islands—chunks of land all tethered together by plank-and-rope bridges. Each one kept afloat by a huge spinning paddlewheel. On top of each island sit the most glorious two-story thatch-roofed houses I’ve ever seen, on carpets of green grass, surrounded by white picket fence. Waterfalls spill clean water into private ponds. A yellow sun shines in a blue, blue sky, dotted with white cottony clouds. I close my eyes and open them again, expecting it to be a mirage. But it isn’t.

Limpidious.

It has to be.

It’s everything Father described and more.

The flash begins to fade.

The ground comes heavy and fast at my back.

I close my eyes and think of Urlick,

His image spinning with me,

And I brace myself for the crash.

F
ifty four

Eyelet

Something appears out of the darkness. Feathers strike softly against my skin. The voice of a raven chattering pulls me to the surface.
Where am I? What’s happened?

I reach up, pushing the gasmask from my face. How did I end up with this? My eyes spring open. Ravens loop in circles over top of me.

“Archie?” I try to sit up, but I can’t. My limbs are too heavy. My mouth is dry. My tongue is thick, as if I’ve been drugged.

I run my hands over the makeshift bed of twigs I’m lying in. My head rests on a pillow of leaves. I’m still in the forest. But I’m not sure if I’m at the Core. The structure, it’s gone.

I look around, for the remnants of the building, but the cloud cover’s too thick for me to see. The Turned. Have they taken me? Am I one of them?

Is this what my life is to be?

Archie spreads his wings, cawing over his shoulder, and I panic, thinking he sees the Turned. Instead, the rest of the flock arrives in a dither, swooping and circling, their chatter playing as musically as a zither in my head.

I sit up dizzily. The ground spins like a top. “Where am I, Archie? Am I dead?”

Archie shakes his head and caws—ridiculously loudly—and I wince from the pain.

This much I do remember: the sulfurous taste of the wind. The sound of the crashing glass at my back as I fell through the towers. And Limpidious.
Yes.
I remember seeing Limpidious.

If that was real?

“The towers?” I turn to Archie. “Where are the towers?” I look around. “Where did the structure go?” I try again to get up, but the ground refuses to let go of me. Archie hovers close.

I squint across the clearing in front of me, seeing two giant tears in the earth. A fire smolders in between. “It’s gone, isn’t it? Did it burn? Or has it sunk back down into the Core?”

Archie squawks, then flaps his wings as if to lift off and leave me. “No, wait! I need to know what’s happened! Where’s Pan? She’ll tell me. Where is she, Archie? Where is Pan?”

The flock divides, circling, and my heart drops heavy as a stone. The birds double back then part in the center, revealing a single settled bird. She sits atop the newel post of an old, broken-down gate. Her beak glints red through the grey spiraling cloud.

“Pan!” I breathe. “It’s you!” I leap to my feet, nearly toppling over. The birds rush in, assisting me, steadying my arms with their beaks.

Regaining my balance, I reach up and find a goose-egg-sized bump on the back of my head—the cause of all my wooziness. I squint, trying to realign my eyes as Pan springs from the gate.

Her wings spread, she struts toward me through the amber grass, gradually increasing in both size and dimension. With every step her gait widens, grows more innately human.

I blink wildly. Is my brain playing tricks on me?

A blast of silver light bursts from her beak. I raise a hand to shield my eyes. It spins, silver streaks whirling through a black dust-deviling cloud. Feathers sprinkle off into the wind. A red steam twists, ribbon-like, through the cloud’s middle.