Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (31 page)

The night fades. Hints of red on the horizon remind me of blood. But does this place even have a horizon? No, it’s a bubble. A confined space. It’s tricking me into thinking I’m actually outside, actually free. What if I walked the entire structure, then what? Nothing would change. I’ll still die here alone, wallowing and lost, cowardly and stupid.

I stand up and start walking with the river. My feet crunch in the gravel. The sound fills the gaps in the rest of my mind. There’s a lot. But it doesn’t fill all the gaps.

The screens lighting up the dark, spherical room. My nightmares henceforth, what little I’ll have time for, will always have that grainy, hidden-camera look to them. Distorted like a fisheye lens. I can see them running. And the lights. And the ashes.

Every step feels like a mile, but my legs insist on moving. Rivers always lead somewhere. This one tapers out into several streams and a wide, shallow stream bed. Morning’s cold light makes everything look fake.

Far off, the trees clear. The river dries up. Grassy plains dominate the hilly landscape. And then there’s an orchard. Not like the orchard at home. Not brown skeletons. As I move towards it, I can see the small fruits. Yellow and red and growing in comfortable little bunches.

They’re cherry trees. Fat fruits cling to the branches and sway in the artificial breeze. I know by this point I should be hungry, but what kind of dead person needs food? Looking at the cherries, I see Alessandra leaning against the trunk, explaining how the dome works, like it was yesterday.

‘We grow them,’ she said. And here they grew, waiting to feed those that’ll never come. I can remember the first dome, finding hope for the first time, picking those cherries. How sweet, how right it felt. The weight of several cherries in my pocket....

I reach into my jacket pocket. My last trail of thought spins into blackness. I pull out a small black book with a pen tucked into a clip on the side. I grip its cover with both hands and it starts shaking.

I still have it.

And then, like a flash flood, I lose all control.

17
• fool’s paradise

[Dev]

My knees meet the soft ground and I press my forehead against the small, rough journal, the last shred of everything I love. The cover of the journal is spotted dark with tears.

The constant desire to not be alone, and the constant realization of the truth hits me over and over.

I grab the journal in one hand and throw it at the cherry tree. My arm pulses and tingles. Lifeless, the journal hits the tree and then the ground, pages splayed and mingling with the grass. Perfectly anonymous.

The fake sun warms up. Its heat prickles on my bare back. After it rises to the middle of the sky, I get to my feet and pick the journal up. It’s slightly bent out of shape from lying in the grass but I manage to right it. It hangs half-open in my hands.

You’ll be the first to read it when it’s done.

I force the cover closed. The scrawled, ‘ASH’, in the cover stares back at me.

Ashton, why do you need to write your name on it? We all know it’s yours.

Yeah, you’re right. It just felt right, I guess. ‘Ash’ is good enough.

My legs take control and push me forward over again and keep me moving until hunger grabs with greedy fingers around my gut. “Guess that’s it then.” Hearing my voice is like touching your leg when it’s asleep— you know it’s yours, but you can’t feel it, so you can’t be sure. I reach for the fruit and eat enough to keep me going. There’s no taste.

Every time I look at my hands, I see Jules’s face. Every time I close my eyes, there’s the screen and the fish-eye lens. But then the visions stop. Maybe my imagination got shut off, my mind’s last-ditch effort in keeping me alive. Pointless.

The dark leaves of the cherry trees rustle as they pass around me. When I reach the end, the sun is glaring and hot. Isn’t it supposed to be autumn by now? Why’s it so warm?

A little down the way, stretches of white streak across the landscape. I crest a small hill, step over a rusted barb wire fence, and look down into a valley. White strands of houses like in the miniatures stretch like a ribcage down the valley. The ribs stretch into the distance, fading to grey and blue, only the hint of a shape as they curve up and over the dome. Between the ribs jut out the anomalies—bodies of water. Towers made of platforms, like leaves, topped with green. Lookout posts.

Gravity tugs me down the valley. At its base, by the first rib of houses, A small glass-framed plaque on a stand meets me. The Stem Inc. logo sits above the message:

If you are reading this, then congratulations. You are one of the few minds hand-picked to live in the Stem Inc. Ecodome. This dome is one-hundred percent self-sufficient. Our patented ecosystem, day and night cycle, and artificial weather are all guaranteed to perfectly imitate the surface for the foreseeable future. Here you may live life anew among the finest minds of the human race.

The future is yours; we’re just helping it along.

The text fades into an idyllic painting of several humans standing on a hill overlooking a sunset. I wonder how surprised its author would be to see the likes of me reading it. A broken, bloody, discarded piece of biological engineering. The last one on the planet.

If Heydrich hadn’t shown up, it might be different. If I had stopped him before he... ‘cleansed’ them. Would they be happy? They might congratulate me for beating him, for saving them, for helping get them into the dome.

Might. But didn’t.

The entire structure feels like it’s breathing around me. Alessandra said it was as big as Rhode Island, and I can feel every inch of it pressing in on me. The ribs compressing like lungs of a giant. This place has so much potential to be the perfect home. A new hope for everyone, especially my friends.

Ashton always said how we were too stubborn to die. Those words feel like they’re meant for a stranger. There’s no way he could have been referring to me, this shell of a person, the one that wishes the gaping hole in his chest would expand and swallow him whole. The same person that wishes he had saved just one last bullet. Too stubborn to die?

“More like too weak to die.” I look down at the anonymous black journal still held in my hand like a vice grip.

“What did you know, anyway?” I walk the smooth path along the ribs.

Most of the doors, just smooth faces on the rounded homes, are locked. I really should have known better, but I check every door anyway. I don’t know why. The windows are blacked out. Even the staircases to the towers are blocked. The whole place, vacant, closed until further notice.

It wasn’t meant to be.

I wander through a green spot between two prongs of ribs. Simple grass. Green, perfect, lush. Surrounded by white metal shapes, I sink into the grass, staring up at a cloudless sky, faint bluish shapes of the dome’s skeleton burning their way into my retinas.

Sleep takes me by force.

I don’t even remember closing my eyes. I sit up and the light is different—it’s cool. Dim. Must be dusk. How long did I sleep? I didn’t dream. In fact, it felt like I fell asleep and woke up an instant later. That never happens.

Is knowing the truth about the revolt what put my mind at peace? Because I know why, does that make it all okay? I woke up so many times in the past, fearing for my friends’ lives, not wanting them gone— and now that they are, the dreams don’t come. What a damn useless thing I am.

The cold air feels soothing on my burned body. It feels good to feel again, past the constant throbbing and aching.

“I wish you were here to see this.”

Past the field lies a short path between metal tubs filled with plants. Some ripe with red fruits. Some rotten ones lie on the ground, swarmed by insects.

The little journal is silent. It offers no answers as I walk through the garden. The plants almost completely cover me—I wish they would smother me. I want to be tiny, insignificant, to disappear in the green. 

What would they think if they saw me right now.... There Dev is, alone in an overgrown garden, talking to a journal. No hope, no will. He was tethered to his companions and when they died, he died with them, but his body doesn’t know when to give up.

“How pathetic.”

But... I just lost everything. How can I be pathetic? That isn’t fair. None of this is. Jules is dead. Vinder and Peregrine. Alessandra: dead. Cain left us. All those humans back home are going to starve in the wastelands.

And Ashton.

Nothing hurts as much as knowing I’d never see that kind smile, those easygoing strides, his thoughtful expression when writing.

I grab at a fruit growing near me. I take a bite out of it. I’ve never had an actual tomato before— sour, bitter, acidic. I throw the rest into the tall grass.

There’s life here. Fresh life, lots of it. The soil isn’t spent and dusty like it is on the surface. There’s no drought here. Things are actually growing. And without anyone’s help, too.

And what about
them
? The fifty some-odd people left behind, trusting Alessandra to bring them here. What are they thinking? Have they moved on and accepted we’re all dead? They’re not far from the truth.

“But, I’m still alive.” Barely. Maybe I can make it to them. If I can just let them know about the Ecodome, that it’s up and running and real, maybe that would set things right. They, at least, would get something out of this place. Because we sure as hell aren’t. A shell of a man—but not even a man, man’s creation—and a book full of memories. Some token of the human race we are, and a lot of good we’d be doing, living here. It’s better off without us.

But not without them. They can make this place worthwhile. If I got them here and died afterwards, that’d be fine. Maybe then I’d have died for a reason. I could make it up to Ashton and Alessandra, all those people who trusted me to do something right.

I can make this right.

My legs push me forward. I slide the journal back into my pocket. I feel naked without it in my hand, and I feel myself unconsciously reaching for it as I walk, to make sure it’s still safe.

Hear that, Jules? I’m going to make something happen. So there.

“Now where the hell am I....” I walked along the center path... I remember the orchards, and the cherries. The river. The stones. Maybe I can make it.

Don’t think about how many winding trails it’ll take to get there, not to mention how I have no way of defending myself. If, like at the stadium, I got attacked by anyone, I’d be a goner. More of a goner than I am now, if that’s possible.

But maybe I’d die out there knowing I at least tried to help. I guess that’s good enough.

My body aches like I’ve been walking for days, but it refuses to stop. Each step and every jump feels like the last, but I have to keep going. I clamber over massive rock piles, over small streams bubbling through the crevices, and I stand on the very top. Far in the distance the fields fade into forest and surround a small grassy clearing. Where Heydrich’s body is. It brings no satisfaction.

I trudge through the thick woods, stepping over fallen and rotting logs and ducking under low-hanging branches.

There are lots of problems to work out.

Food. The people at CadTech said we can subsist on little or no food for much longer than a normal human, however long that is. Water, I’ll find that along the way. Shelter, whatever. This thing might actually be doable. I’m not doing it for me, not even close, but I know Ashton and Alessandra and everyone else would be happy. It’s the only thing I can do. One foot in front of the other.

The hill and wire fence behind me, the orchard too, now the first clearing lies ahead. But before I come to it, something disturbs the plants ahead of me.

It’s definitely something. Footsteps, then the halting of them and hushed breathing. It hears me and has stopped to listen, too. Neither of us do anything for a time. I move forward, curious, wondering what it is. Was it an animal? Animals had to live here, it’s a perfect ecosystem. There are moths and insects, after all. I keep having to brush flies off my face and chest. I move out into the grass clearing. But it’s no animal.

It’s human shaped. The sun rises behind it, though, so I can’t make out details from the glare.

“Always thought ghosts were more... ethereal,” I say.

“Ghosts?”

I look at it quizzically. It isn’t transparent, glowing, bluish, or anything ghost-like. But it has his voice and its legs are like his. Maybe ghosts are more real-looking than how they’re described in books. I move closer.

Everything feels like slow motion, like a dream. Maybe I’m dreaming, maybe I never woke up from that dreamless sleep.

The idea doesn’t seem too far-fetched, especially when the ghost comes closer and folds its tangible, warm body around mine and has a too-familiar smell. A voice I recognize says, “God, I’m so glad I found you, you never came to meet us. I ran ahead, thought maybe you were here....”

“What?” I say blearily, pushing the ghost’s body away from me so I can see it clearer.

And there he is, as clear as day. In the cool morning light I see his face, smiling, his hazel eyes not straying from me, his hands gripping my shoulders. My brain is slow to realize, but he doesn’t stop. He looks at my chest and the smile fades.

“What... ugh, what happened to you? Dev, are you okay?”

“I’m...” I start to say, but I can’t look away from his face. I recognize it. I pull the journal out of my pocket and hold it out. “Don’t worry, I didn’t read it.”

I’m pressed against him again, held tightly, and I may never be let go. My arms return the gesture. “We thought you were dead,” he says in a staggered breath. “I thought you were gone.”

I close my eyes and have no intention of going anywhere. The shivering forest moves around Ashton and me.

And once more, I’m whole.