Burn (Pure #3)(17)

Partridge shakes his head. He can’t believe what’s just happened. “I don’t want people to shut up like that,” he says. “I want people to be able to speak their minds, even if they disagree with me.”

“Not much you can do about that,” Beckley says.

A woman in a white jumpsuit with a bucket walks up, kneels, and without a word, scrubs the man’s blood from the ground, making a bleached white stain. Partridge thinks of Bradwell. His lessons in Shadow History—how fast the truth is washed clean.

A car pulls up then—not a golf cart like most people use but a navy blue sedan. Its doors open. A new set of guards file out, flank Partridge, and guide him into the car.

“Take me to Lyda’s,” Partridge says as he sits in the back seat, wedged between two broad-shouldered men.

“You think this is a taxi?” Beckley says from the front seat.

Doors shut. The car rockets forward, bumping a curb and driving through a public park, over soft turf and past fake trees.

“Where are you taking me?”

“We’re on lockdown protocol. You’re going to the war room.”

“The war room?”

“Your father had to have a secured facility in the Dome,” Beckley explains. “The war room is it.”

“You really think the people are that angry? You think they’re dangerous?”

Beckley keeps his eyes straight ahead. “You forget these are the people who elbowed their way into the Dome, sir. Nothing sweet about them, down deep.”

One of the guards makes a very soft bleating noise. “Baa, baa, baa.” It’s so soft that Partridge isn’t sure he really heard it. Did he imagine it or is one of them making fun of his speech—how he called them sheep?

“Who has access to this room?” Partridge says gruffly, trying to maintain his dignity.

“Your father held meetings there, but within it there’s a chamber that was only for him. The most secure place in the entire Dome. It’s been retooled so that only you can enter it now—retinal scans, fingerprints.”

“A war room,” Partridge says. “My old man had a war room with a chamber just for him?”

“And now you have one,” Beckley says.

“A real old-fashioned hand-me-down,” Partridge says. He sees his father’s face just before he died, his eyes widening as he realized Partridge was killing him. “Why didn’t I hear about this before? A room just for him? If there was an attack, was he going to come to get me or just leave me at the academy?”

Beckley doesn’t say anything. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to tell Partridge the truth.

Partridge remembers his winter holidays with the Hollenbacks. If the survivors had risen up and attacked, is that who he’d have died with? “I want Lyda Mertz to be able to enter it too. Retool it again.”

“Lyda Mertz? Are you sure, sir?” one of the guards asks.

“Dead sure.” She’s the only person he can really trust. If anything happened to him, she could still get in. He won’t have a room that only he can enter. He won’t be that person. “Get someone to bring Lyda to the war room. I have to see her.”

“Yes, sir,” Beckley says.

They’ve come out the other side of the park now. People have taken to the streets. Some wander aimlessly. Others charge through the crowds as if looking for someone they’ve lost. They shout and cry. One woman stands stock-still, tears rolling down her face.

A few fights have broken out. One woman grabs another by her arm, twisting her bare skin. Two young men are on the ground, pummeling each other.

“Hopefully they’ll wear themselves out,” Beckley says.

Partridge isn’t so sure. They’ve held on to a lot of guilt and anger and blame for a long time. “What if this is just the beginning?” Some guards jog down an alleyway in tight formation. More appear on the other side of the street. “I don’t want this to get bloody,” Partridge says.

“Did you really think that you could do what you did without bloodshed?” Beckley says.

“I want peace, Beckley. That’s what I’m after. In here and out there.”

“And that’s usually paid for in blood,” Beckley says.

Partridge recognizes some of the faces here and there—not anyone he can attach a name to, but there are only so many faces in the Dome. They circulate and become familiar. But maybe it’s hard to place them now because they look different—desperate, helpless, lost.

A few people spot the long dark car and assume there’s someone important inside of it, so they run after it for a block or two, gesturing wildly and angrily. One boy is fast. He jumps onto the back of the car, pounding it with one fist. “Slow down! There’s a kid on the car!” Partridge says.

“You want him to climb inside?” the driver asks.

“I said slow down!”

The driver slows the car but then fishtails enough that the boy jerks backward and then falls to the ground, stunned.

Partridge stares out the back window—the boy is on his back, kicking the ground, while others are running and shouting and brawling. Amid the chaos, there’s an older man, wearing a necktie, standing in the middle of the street. Partridge knows this man. Tommy. That’s all he has—a first name. Tommy was his father’s barber. He got dressed up for the broadcast. His sport coat is folded over his arm. His chin tucked to his chest, he rubs his eyes. Is he crying? He then staggers a little and stares straight up as if expecting to see the sky.