Fuse (Pure Trilogy 2) (30 page)

“Do what?” Partridge says, glancing at Glassings.

But Vinty scurries up the stairs, shutting the trap door behind him.

“My mother told me some things before she died, that you were
planning for me to take over from within. Is that what Vinty means? All that time, you were waiting for a sign that I was ready? I had no idea.”

“Are you ready now, Partridge?”

“How am I supposed to lead from within?”

“It won’t be easy.” Glassings looks down at his hands, and Partridge feels like Glassings has something to tell him but can’t quite bear saying it.

“How can we start a revolution in the Dome?” Partridge asks, hopeful that Glassings has a plan.

“A revolution?” Glassings wags his head and looks up at him. “Did you listen to any of my lectures, Partridge?”

“No offense, but you were always going on and on about ancient cultures. None of it seemed to apply to my life.”

“Without setting off any alarms, I was trying to prepare you. I chose my words carefully. I wrote lectures specifically for you.”

“What did I miss about revolutions? Tell me that.”

“Revolutions are usually started by people who are hungry. Sure, there are ideological revolutions, but, again, people rise up because they feel that the alternative is no longer livable. They have to be desperate.”

“Are you saying that the people here aren’t desperate? I think you’re wrong.” Iralene is one of the most quietly desperate people he’s ever met. “I think they are and they just don’t know it.”

“Oh, they’re desperate, all right, but so desperate that they’re clinging to what they have.”

“If they knew the truth,” Partridge says, thinking of Bradwell. He wishes Bradwell were here with him now. “If they could see what I’ve seen out there, if they really knew all of what my father did to the world, they’d rise up against him. They would. I know they would.”

Glassings sits back in the chair. Now that Partridge looks at it, he can tell that it’s not just a wingback. It’s a prop of a throne. “You don’t get it, do you?” Glassings says.

“What?”

“All the adults in the Dome already know the truth,” Glassings says. “The things we teach in the academy are bedtime stories. We all know the truth, Partridge. We all carry it with us.”

B
RADWELL IS ASLEEP
and Fignan is resting by the small heater, soaking up energy, but Pressia is working on the spiders. Each was created with incredible explosives. She’s taken them apart and reworked them into small hand grenades. She’s written instructions on a new stone and has built three prototypes.

In the morning they’ll head out, following the maps in Hastings’ head, to find the airship. But she wanted to leave these instructions behind. The lawn of what used to be the boarding school is crammed with tents, filled with people who, with proper education, can take all the robotic spiders dislodged from survivors’ bodies and produce a lot of these munitions. Why not put them to work? Plus, she was having trouble sleeping, so she put herself to work too.

Bradwell thought El Capitan and Helmud should stay, and El Capitan thought Bradwell should. Just before El Capitan and Helmud left with Hastings for the night, they fought about it.

“They need you to be here in charge,” Bradwell told him.

“You could play that role. You’re not healthy enough for this trip.”

“I’m not sitting this out.”

“Neither am I,” El Capitan said.

“Neither am I,” Helmud echoed.

“If you find that airship, you’re going to need a pilot,” El Capitan told Bradwell.

“A pilot,” Helmud said, some surprise in his voice.

“My father got a psych discharge from the air force and disappeared,” El Capitan said, “but I spent my childhood learning everything I could about flight and playing those simulators. I don’t have a single memory of my father, but I know we’ve got two things in common. Flying and being crazy.”

“Crazy,” Helmud said.

“A crazy pilot? That’s not exactly optimal,” Bradwell muttered.

“Seriously,” Pressia said, “what are the chances that the airship is going to work like an old flight simulator you played as a kid anyway?”

But El Capitan refused to listen. “Better to have someone who knows
something
about flying. It’d be a shame to find the airship and not know the starboard from the aft. Maybe Fignan will help too. As copilot.” Fignan whirled his lights proudly.

As El Capitan said good night and started walking Hastings up to the dormitories, Bradwell yelled to him from the cottage door, “So we all head out together! See you in the morning!”

El Capitan just waved a surrender without looking back, and that was that.

Pressia stands up, stretches her back, and runs over the things in her bag again. She unwraps the swaddled vials, lays them on the table, and holds each of them up, one by one, catching the light. They swirl, bright and amber. She can’t help but think of her mother—a scientist, a brilliant one. But what good did her mother’s logical mind do her? Ivan Novikov kissed her. They were likely dating when he died. Somehow, maybe playing on her grief, Willux—Ivan’s murderer—won her over and she married him. Did she figure out, as Walrond eventually did, that Willux killed Ivan? Maybe that’s what led her to Imanaka, Pressia’s father. Pressia is sure of one thing: Her mother didn’t always do what was rational and logical. She was driven to make choices because she listened to her heart, not her head. Eventually, those decisions killed her.

Pressia refuses to make the same mistakes—no matter what it felt like to lie with Bradwell in the forest.

Right now, she has to protect her mother’s legacy. Without these three vials, there will be no cure—for anyone.

The cloth Partridge gave her to bind the vials doesn’t seem thick enough for a journey as dangerous and possibly deadly as this one. She cuts a rectangle of wool from a blanket and uses it as extra padding before rewrapping them in the cloth.

“You’re up,” Bradwell says, his voice rough with sleep.

“Did I wake you? Sorry.”

“No, no.” He sits up and rubs his head.

“What should we do with Partridge and Lyda’s maps of the Dome?” she asks.

“We should leave them here, I guess, where they’ll be safe.”

“I guess so.”

Bradwell looks out the window. “Do you ever think about Partridge?”

“I hope he’s not getting too comfortable,” Pressia says.

“He’s a Pure. I can look past that, but still there’s a gulf between us. I don’t know if we could ever be able to really read each other.”

“And what about me?” Pressia picks up the vials and gently secures them to her body.

“I trust you.”

“But do you think you can read me?”

He smiles. “No.”

“What’s funny?”

He plumps his pillow and rests his head on it. “This dream I just had. You were in it.”

“What was it about?”

“A flying dream. I used to have them all the time when I was little, during the Before.” He thinks for a moment. “I guess I haven’t had a flying dream since I had birds in my back, actual wings.”

“How did you fly in the dreams when you were little?”

“I could hold my breath and levitate, little by little, and then eventually I was high enough that I could open my arms so the wind would catch them and I’d just sail.”

“And in this dream?”

“I didn’t have any birds in my back, but I wasn’t a boy either. I was myself now but . . .”

“Pure?”

“I guess so. Maybe that’s why I woke up thinking of Partridge in the Dome . . .”

“How did it feel?” Pressia’s never dreamed she could fly.

“I felt . . . younger. I was my age, but I didn’t feel the way I do now. It was like I could fly because I wasn’t weighted down with everything. I knew, in the way you know things in dreams, that my parents were alive. And there were fields beneath me and streams, and it was lush. Like the Detonations had never happened.”

“And I was in the dream?”

“I saw the river, the one we crossed, and you were in it. I could see you, struggling.”

“You mean drowning.”

“That’s what I thought. And as I went down to save you, it was that night again. That cold night.” She nods quickly, blushing at the thought of it. “And I knew that to get to you, I had to remember that my parents were dead and that the world was an ash pit. And once I did that, I started to fall. I landed in the river. I plunged down deep, and I saw you there underwater. And I was myself again—birds in my back, my scars. And . . .”

“Did you save me?”

He shakes his head. “I started to tell you the dream because it’s an example of how I
can’t
read you.”

“Right.”

“You were with all these girls—all these faces lining the walls—and you could breathe underwater. In fact, you could sing. You were all singing. The song moved through the water. I could feel the song on my skin; the notes vibrated.”

She thinks of his skin on hers, the snow coming down like bits of lace. “And?”

“You didn’t need saving at all. I thought you were drowning but you were fine. You looked at me in this way I can’t describe.”

“What way?”

“Kind of ferocious. I couldn’t tell if you were angry at me or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Nothing. I can’t read you, even in my dreams. That’s the point.”

She looks inside her bag as if she doesn’t have its contents memorized. “There’s a dream reader in the market. Have you ever seen her?”

“I don’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“I do. Sometimes at least.”

“Are you going to read my dream?” He sits up and puts his feet on the floor.

Pressia already has read the dream. Bradwell is coming on this trip to watch over her, to protect her. But maybe there’s some part of him, deep down, that doubts she needs his protection. She picks up her bag and sets it by the front door. “You’re still holding on to your promise to my grandfather. Even in your dreams, you’re being good to your word. And you’re willing to sacrifice a lot to do it—even the idea that your parents could be alive.”

“Maybe you can read me better than I can read you.” As soon as he says it, she realizes that she wishes he’d argued with her. She doesn’t want him to still be carrying that old debt. She doesn’t want to still feel like a burden. It’s quiet a moment. Pressia isn’t sure what to say. She looks at the girls’ faces—in particular the one who looks like Fandra, her old friend.

Pressia turns and stares at him. “Why are you coming on this trip?” she asks him. “No survivors have ever really made it far away and back again.”

“Why are you?”

“For Wilda. If we can find the formula, there’s a chance we can save her.” This is true, but it’s only part of the answer. Pressia can feel the truth itching inside her, clawing, wanting out. “And I want to see if there are others out there. Maybe they made it out and didn’t want to come back.” She walks to the table and picks up the kitchen knife she used to cut the wool. She touches the edge of the knife—still sharp. “My father. The tattoo of his pulse was still beating on my mother’s chest. He’s still alive. Out there, somewhere.”

“But Pressia . . .” Bradwell stands up and walks to the table that sits between them.

She carries the knife to the chopping block. “I know, I know. The chances of finding him are almost nothing. But you wanted an answer, and that’s what I’ve got.” She’s surprised that she’s said all this aloud. It’s been lodged in the back of her mind—for how long? She couldn’t admit it, even to herself, because it sounded too selfish and childish. She sets the knife down.

He puts his knuckles on the table and leans closer. His eyes are still tired, but he seems to be squinting through the fatigue as if he’s trying to see her clearly, and as if he’s trying to read her right now.

“You’re wrong about the dream,” Bradwell says.

“Really? How?”

“I’m not going because I still want to protect you. Because of some old promise.”

“Then why?” Pressia asks.

“I’m coming on this trip because . . .” He leans toward her. “Pressia, because I—”

“Stop,” she says. “It’s suicidal to care about someone out here.”

“Then maybe I’m suicidal.”

Her heart is pounding so loudly in her chest that she presses her hand to it in the hope of steadying it. She stares at him, not sure what to say.

And then Bradwell’s expression softens. He raises his finger and whispers, “There it is. Right there.”

“What?”

“The look you gave me in the dream. The one I can’t read.”

T
HE ROOM IS QUIET
except for the beetles clicking in the glass terrarium. Partridge can’t speak, stunned by the enormity of the betrayal. All those years, he believed the bedtime story. And then outside the Dome, he thought his father and a few high-level types had duped them all. But they’d always known—all the people who were old enough before the Detonations to weasel their way into the Dome: his teachers, coaches, barber, the women who came to clean the apartment every week, the lab technicians, the dormitory monitors. “All of them?” Partridge utters.

“All of them.”

He shakes his head. His plan to tell people the truth and let them choose a better way of living—it won’t work. “It’s not possible. How could they live with themselves?”

“Many can’t live with themselves. That’s why we’ve had to accept suicide as socially acceptable, which turned out to be convenient. It keeps the populations in check, and each suicide opens a space for someone to have a baby—a baby who doesn’t have to ever know the truth, someone to feed the new story to.”

Partridge squeezes his eyes shut. “They knew . . . all along . . .”

“There will be no revolution, Partridge. The ones who were capable of leading a revolt were murdered before the Detonations or died in them.” Partridge thinks of Bradwell’s parents. “Except for a few.”

“Cygnus,” Partridge says, opening his eyes.

“We were led by your mother. We’re not the toughest or the bravest. We’re the ones who could live double lives, who could know the truth and keep moving on. We’re the ones left. There are few of us, but we’re growing stronger, bolder.” Glassings props his elbows on his knees. “Partridge,” he says in a voice so solemn that Partridge knows this is the moment he’s going to tell him something awful, something that will change his life forever. He can feel the enormity of the unsaid in the air. He can see the darkness of it clouding Glassings’ face. “There’s something I have to—”