Burn (Pure #3)(30)

And then the bright train windows glide on, shiny and dark, the train dragging in the air.

Partridge drops to his knees.

The brakes screech, a delayed reaction; the train comes to a stop down in the tunnel.

Lyda rushes to Partridge’s side. “You tried to save him. You really tried. You did all you could.” She grabs his arm then reaches around his neck, hugging him.

Beckley is shouting into the walkie-talkie—monorail jumper, presumed dead.

*

It’s not real.

Not the scream they hear overhead as they run through the side streets.

Not the scuffle in the alley.

Not the collective whine of ambulances.

Not the next elevator they take inside of Lyda’s apartment building. Not the hallway with its red carpeting. Not the door to Lyda’s apartment. Not Beckley or this new guard who stands by the door.

Not the sofa where Partridge sits or the glass-top table where Lyda picks up the orb.

Not the orb itself.

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.





PRESSIA





TEETH AND HEARTBEATS




It’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?