He told the truth. People are killing themselves. He couldn’t stop a man from throwing himself in front of a train. Partridge has seen too many people die—his brother, his mother. Their deaths flash in front of his eyes—bright with blood. And his father’s death—his fault; it wasn’t a death. It was murder. “Too many,” Partridge says. “There’ve been too many.”
“Yes,” Lyda says, “too many.”
Will he ever see Glassings? Partridge needs Glassings, not the other way around. He needs a plan. He needs someone to tell him what to do. Is Glassings just a stand-in for his own father? Is Partridge really just a lost kid, an orphan? Where is Glassings? Partridge can’t save him. He can’t save anyone. He says, “They need time to process what I said, right?”
“Yes,” she says.
“They’re going to stop killing themselves. It was just a certain few who were already suffering…”
“You’re not taking back what you said. You still did the right thing.” She smiles at him, but the smile seems fragile, as if it’s already tinged with doubt. She says, “The surprise, remember?”
He barely remembers.
She holds the orb and fiddles with the settings. He remembers the first time he saw it. Iralene held it like an apple—cupped palms. She wanted Partridge to be happy. That’s all.
And then the room grows dark. The air is cloudy. Almost silken.
But then he realizes that it’s not darkness and clouds and silk.
It’s ash.
The walls blacken. The sofa where he sits suddenly seems charred. The windows look as if they’ve been pounded by fists—dimpled and shattered but not broken.
This is the world outside the Dome.
There’s Freedle, flitting through the sooty air.
Lyda curls on his lap. She wraps her arms around his neck and rests her head. He holds her close.
She says, “Remember this?”
“How did you make this? How—”
“I had to have it back.”
The room grows cold. It’s winter, after all. The wind kicks up the ash and dust, swirling it around them. And finally something feels real.
I
t’s night. Pressia can’t sleep. The wild dogs are crying out so sharp and forlorn that Pressia pictures the tightening of their ribs with each howl. Are the dogs growing closer?
It’s been two days since they made a deal with Kelly. Supposedly, the airship is ready, and they leave tomorrow. Kelly gave El Capitan the bacterium in a locked metal box. He will walk them out to the airship, which is already stocked with provisions. Like the wire that once kept the airship tethered inside of the brittle, crumbling Capitol Building, one of Kelly’s men will cut the primary vine and all the rest of the vines will go slack.
They’re heading home soon.
But what is home like now? Willux is dead and everything is different. Partridge is in charge of the Dome. He’s taken over. Was Partridge in a position to order his father’s death, to give some kind of final go-ahead? Or did Willux die in his sleep—a gentle death and one that Pressia can’t help but think he didn’t deserve?
If Partridge really is in charge, will the boundaries between the two worlds—the boundaries of the Dome itself—be dismantled?
They have to get back to save Wilda and the other children. Hopefully the Dome will now work with them. And Hastings is out there too, being taken care of by the survivors who live in Crazy John-Johns Amusement Park—that is, if he’s still alive. He lost a leg and a lot of blood in the process. They have to collect him and bring him with them.
Since the meeting with Kelly, Pressia’s door is no longer locked. Maybe it’s to establish a sense of trust. And, too, where is there to go? Out into the howling night?
A hall light glows under the crack in the door. Caretakers sometimes pass by—it dims then returns. The red alarm lights the wall. She stares at it as if it’s a distant star. The fire in the fireplace is out. There’s just ash, a heap of char, like home. The room is cold, but she cocoons in the covers to keep warm.
Bradwell told her she was selfish, and after all they’ve been through, he wants revenge? She wonders how this change to his body—that massive heavy cloak of wings—has made him foreign to himself. She’s seen it happen before. The people who came to her grandfather to have their flesh mended—they’d already suffered some deformity, some fusing, and had adapted to it. But sometimes it was this second injury—a leg mangled in the Rubble Fields, a hand bitten by a Beast, or some other new deformity—that became too much to bear. It’s as if the soul can shift its image of the body once, even radically, but a second time? A third?
Is Bradwell still the person she was in love with? Maybe she wants to believe he’s changed because it’s easier than believing he’s still the same but simply can’t forgive her—or has fallen out of love with her. There’s a difference.
She knows that he’d never go through any process—especially something created in partnership with the Dome—to remove his wings. It was crazy of her to even bring it up in the barn, but she’d meant what she said. He shouldn’t decide for other survivors.
She turns to the wall and closes her eyes and tells herself to dream. Her dreams have been filled with shifting cinders, as if some part of her, deep down, is homesick.
But in a few minutes, a distant alarm sounds—a rising whine. She rolls toward the door. Footsteps are running down the hall.
Another alarm sounds. This one is closer—on the same floor.
The dogs are no longer howling. What’s happened to the dogs?
Pressia gets out of bed and dresses quickly.
As she pulls on her boots, Fedelma opens the door. “Now!” she says. “There’s an attack. You have to leave now!”
“Leave?”
“All the way. To the airship.” She’s holding a small backpack.
“But maybe we can stay and help.” Pressia rushes to the door.
“They’ve gotten to the children. Three are missing. You can’t help us. You need to go.” Pressia sees a bright glint at her side—a knife in her other hand. Fedelma lifts it and gives her the handle. “Take it. The vine is marked—red. The one you need to cut.”
“How will I see it?”
“Someone has given the brothers a flashlight.”
“El Capitan and Helmud?”
“They’re waiting at the bottom of the stairwell.”
“And Bradwell?”
“He went on alone. It wasn’t wise, but there was no stopping him. We have our own troubles.”
Fedelma reaches into the small backpack and pulls out a metal box like the one that Kelly had to hold the bacterium, but this one’s thinner and longer. She pops it open quickly and shows Pressia the vial—the only remaining sample of Pressia’s mother’s lifework, the powerful concoction that she injected into the birds on Bradwell’s back, the vial rescued from her mother’s bunker. It sits in a groove of velvet lining, a small folded piece of paper beside it.
“The vial and formula!” Pressia says.
“Yes,” Fedelma says, and she shuts the box, snapping its clasp. “You didn’t think we’d keep them, did you?”
Fedelma puts the box into the backpack and hands it to Pressia.
Pressia slips the straps over both shoulders and slides the knife between her belt and pants.
“Thank you,” Pressia says, “for everything.”
“Be careful out there. Don’t wear your fear. They’re drawn to it.”
“Who?”
“We had so many dead. So many. And Bartrand Kelly thought he could create a force for good, a breed that would go out and kill the violent creatures who came after us again and again. But he built and bred them with a hunger that was too strong. Yes, they killed the others, but now the once-dead have turned on us. Be careful.” Fedelma opens her arms and hugs Pressia quickly and roughly and then pulls away. “Especially watch for the fog. Sometimes it has a heartbeat.”
A heartbeat. “The once-dead? He used the dead. He built and bred them…”
“They snatch our young. Watch for teeth in the darkness.”
“And the fog has a heartbeat…” Pressia’s scared and confused.
“I can’t explain them any better than that. Go on.”
Pressia runs to the stairs and takes them two at a time. At the final landing, she finds El Capitan and Helmud standing by a door, waiting, the flashlight in El Capitan’s hand.
“You ready?” El Capitan says.
“Did you hear about what’s out there?”
“I heard enough,” he says.
“Enough,” Helmud says.
“I’m ready,” Pressia says.
“I miss my guns,” El Capitan says. “I hope they put ’em back in the airship.”
“I hope we make it to the airship,” Pressia says.
El Capitan pushes out the door.
The fog has a heartbeat
.
Watch for teeth in the darkness
.
People with flashlights roam the fields, call for the missing children. “Carven! Darmott! Saydley!” Some of the calls ring out from within the woods. Their own flashlight glides across the fields and into the nearby thickets and forests.
“We’re not supposed to show fear,” Pressia says. “The ones who took the children—they sense it.”
“Like dogs.”
“Where did the dogs go?” Pressia asks. “They stopped howling.”
“I don’t want to know, do you?” El Capitan says.
“I don’t want to know,” Helmud says.
“Bartrand Kelly made these creatures,” Pressia says. “The ones that have taken the children.”
El Capitan nods. “Then Kelly deserves what he gets.”
“Not necessarily,” Pressia says.
“Don’t we deserve what we get, Helmud?” El Capitan says. “Don’t we reap what we sow?”
“We reap,” Helmud says. “We sow. We reap. We sow. We reap…” El Capitan doesn’t tell Helmud to shut up. He lets him keep going, over and over, which isn’t like Cap.
But Pressia doesn’t tell him to stop either.
We sow. We reap. We sow. We reap.
It’s a singsong enchantment. Maybe it’ll keep them safe. At the very least, it gives a rhythm to their steps that keeps them moving at a quick pace.
They head into the woods where the vines start to appear. The vines still scare Pressia. She keeps her distance from the areas where they grow thick and twisted. The shadows on either side of the path are dark. The voices calling Carven and Darmott and Saydley are now farther off. Were they identical—the three of them? What’s it like when you’re with living, breathing mirror images of yourself—down to your DNA? Are they still alive?
Pressia listens for the children too, just in case they’re out here, simply lost.
“Did you hear what they look like?” El Capitan says.
“The children?” Pressia asks.
“The children? What? No. Kelly’s creations. His dead and bred.”
“We reap. We sow,” Helmud keeps on. “We reap. We sow.”
“No,” Pressia says, tightening the straps on her backpack. “I don’t know what they look like. Should’ve asked.” She thinks of telling him that the darkness has teeth and the fog a heartbeat, but she’s embarrassed that she knows these stupid things yet didn’t get a description, which now seems such a practical and obvious thing to ask.
They walk uphill. The airship isn’t far off. In fact, El Capitan raises the beam of the flashlight through the trees, lighting the clearing where he and Helmud and Bradwell almost bled to death in the vines.
“We reap, we sow, we reap, we sow,” Helmud says, faster now.
They trudge through the final trees and start across the clearing. The fog has rolled in.
The fog has a heartbeat.
The flashlight’s sharp glare strikes the misty air.
On the other side of the clearing, they hear a cry. Human? It’s hard to tell. Childlike? Carven and Darmott and Saydley—Pressia imagines finding them out here, wrapped in vines.
El Capitan douses the light, and darkness seems to rush in all around them. Then Pressia feels El Capitan’s hand in hers. It’s rough and calloused. He says, “This way.” She hears Helmud shifting nervously on his back.
There’s another cry.
Her eyes slowly adjust to the moonlight.
They step into a stand of trees and stop. El Capitan lets go of her hand, and she misses the feeling of his sure grip.
“They’re here,” El Capitan says.
“No fear, remember?” Pressia says. “No fear.”
“Reap, sow,” Helmud whispers.
Pressia nods, but she can’t control her own fear. No one can.
“We can slip past them,” El Capitan whispers. “The airship is fifty feet away. We can do this.”
“What if they have the children?”
“We have more people to save back home than three lost kids.”
“But where’s Bradwell?”
“Hopefully he’s already there.”
“And if he isn’t?”
El Capitan doesn’t answer. “We’ve got to move quickly,” he says.
“Let’s go,” Pressia says.
El Capitan starts running. Pressia pushes off a tree and follows him. It’s hard to navigate the trees with such little light, but soon Pressia—breathless and quick—can just barely see the rounded orb of the airship, pinned down tightly with rooted vines.
She hears another cry and turns.
Nothing but thickening fog and trees.
Then a quick shadow.
She faces forward and keeps running but trips and falls. She looks back and sees a wild dog, dead and mutilated.
El Capitan hoarsely whispers her name. She scrambles to her feet. She can’t see him through the fog. In just seconds it’s gotten so dense that she’s surrounded by white.
Another sharp cry and then another, as if replying.
She starts moving as fast as she can—harder now with such little visibility. She has to hold out her hand and the doll head to feel her way from trunk to trunk.
I’m the prey now
, she thinks as she skins her palm on the rough bark. She has to protect the metal box in her backpack. She has to get to the airship.
She hears a footfall behind her. She whips around, but nothing’s there. She keeps her eyes wide open, as if this will help her see, but it doesn’t. White. All around her. White.
She pushes through the trees, but then something brushes her backpack. She lunges forward—away from it. “Cap!” she calls out. “Cap!” Fear. She’s showing fear.