Burn (Pure #3)(40)

“Good.” If he’s going to give up his freedom like this, and a good measure of the truth, it had better be saving lives. “Tell Arvin I’ll be there in a minute, okay?”

“Sure.” She smiles and shuts the door.

Partridge changes his clothes. He shouldn’t be nervous about seeing Arvin. He was once just some academy nerd, a distant friend who’d sometimes let Partridge copy his notes. But Arvin isn’t here as a friend. Arvin helped Partridge regrow his pinky, and he seemed to be in charge of the team that swiped Partridge’s memory—both his father’s orders. And Arvin most likely would have been the one chosen to perform the brain transplant. Would Arvin have gone through with it?

Partridge will never know. Instead of an operation, Arvin performed his father’s autopsy, telling the leadership that his father’s death was due to Rapid Cell Degeneration while, publicly, people were told that he’d struggled valiantly against a genetic disorder.

Partridge looks down at his pinky and flexes his hand. The pinky curls and extends right in sync with the others. All in all, it’s incredible work. While here, Arvin will probably want to test the nerve endings and the re-formation of Partridge’s memory too.

Partridge finds the sheet of scientific information where he hid it and slips it into his pocket.

He goes to the bathroom, splashes water on his face, and dries it with a hand towel. He stares at himself for a moment, and he’s not sure who exactly he’s supposed to be. He feels like a fraud. He knows he’ll give himself over to this lie. He’ll do it because Lyda whispered, No more blood on your hands. No more. But he knows that the blood has just begun.

And Lyda? And his baby? How long will they have to live this hidden life? After the meeting at Foresteed’s office, they asked for a few minutes alone together. They held each other. She said, “Partridge, this is the right thing to do.” Then she quickly added, “I’m scared.”

He told her that he was scared too. And now he misses the feel of her warm body as they huddled together under his coat with the swirling ash, like black snow. He misses the way she looks at him, which always feels honest. He loves how Lyda seems both fragile and tough. On the one hand, the delicate work of making a human being is going on within her. On the other, she’s hardened in a way he can’t explain.

The truth about his father. This one truth. How many lies will he have to offer up as a sacrifice to appease the people of the Dome? How many?

He walks out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into the living room. Arvin is looking at Iralene’s folder of bridal gowns. “I think that’s a really beautiful one,” he says, pointing to an open page. “Not that it matters.”

“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Iralene says, hurt.

“You’d look good in anything,” Arvin says. And here’s a perfect example of Weed. He might have meant he really doesn’t care, but he recovers with a compliment. Or does he mean what he’s saying? It’s true that Iralene would look good in anything. She’s perfect. It’s why she’s here.

And suddenly it hits him: They have him where they want him. He’s playing out the life his father designed for him. Iralene, with her shiny hair and her bright smile, is preparing for their wedding. Partridge is going to walk down the aisle cowed by guilt. He tried to lead, and it was all stripped away.

And then his suspicions start up. Have the suicide numbers really been as dramatic as he’s been told? The angry crowd, the noise of sirens, the man who jumped in front of the train—it all felt real. In fact, it felt spontaneous—like the most unplanned thing he’s ever witnessed in the Dome. And yet, he can’t trust Foresteed, who would see the disruption as an opportunity to guilt Partridge into submission. Foresteed might not possess much of a conscience, but he surely would see it as a weakness in others—one he could exploit to his advantage. How real is any of it? Is it a conspiracy to get Partridge to toe the line? Is Weed in on it?

“Sorry to interrupt,” Partridge says.

Arvin and Iralene look up. Arvin sticks out his hand and shakes Partridge’s. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better.”

Iralene scoops up her bridal packets and says, “I’ll let you two talk.” Partridge imagines training sessions that Iralene has been put through—lessons on when to be visible and when to politely disappear.

“Let’s talk over here.” Partridge leads Arvin to the sofas. They sit down across from each other.

“So, the pinky,” Weed says. “Any heat, numbness, itching?”

“Nope.”

Weed reaches across the coffee table between them, pokes Partridge’s finger and bends it. “You feel all this pretty well?”

“Yep. Although sometimes, I still imagine it’s gone. And then I look down and it surprises me.”

“People who lose a leg say they can still feel it; their nerve endings continue to send messages to the brain that it exists. It’s called a phantom limb.”

“So I’m feeling the phantom of the phantom?”

“Regrowing parts of the body is all new science. Maybe this will become a commonplace observation.”

Partridge wonders if Arvin is talking about Wilda, the girl who was kidnapped, taken into the Dome, and Purified. She no longer has scars or marks or fusing or even a belly button, and she could only say what she was programmed to say—a threat from Partridge’s father. “You expecting to regrow a lot of limbs, Dr. Weed?”