Burn (32 page)
He doesn’t listen.
She wriggles loose her doll-head fist and punches as hard as she can. He doesn’t flinch. She tries a few more times. Nothing.
Finally, she finds the meat of his bicep and then the finer skin of the inner arm and she bites it as hard as she can. She tastes blood.
He arches and lets her go.
“Thank you,” she says breathlessly.
He rubs his inner bicep. His hand comes away bloody.
She turns toward the Dome.
“Stay straight,” he says, “and you’ll meet the first in a series of doors.”
She nods and looks back at him. “Tell El Capitan and Helmud, tell Bradwell…” She chokes up on Bradwell’s name.
“What?”
“Tell them that I made it this far.” She turns and starts running. The ground hisses with wind. Sometimes whirls of dirt rise then scatter and disappear.
She can see the door straight ahead, just as Hastings told her. She speeds up, but then her foot catches on the ground and she falls. She turns back to see what tripped her. Matted hair—a head crowning from the ground. A hand reaches out and snatches her ankle. She kicks it with the heel of her boot while fumbling for her knife. She reaches forward, jabs the knife into the wrist. Its fingers flex. She pulls her knee to her chest. The head raises itself up and there’s a face. Two bright eyes. A row of teeth.
She gets to her feet and runs to the door as the soldier tugs his bloody wrist loose. She raises both fists and bangs on the door. She wants in. “Help!” she cries. “Help me! Let me in!” Her knuckles ache, but she keeps knocking—sharp and quick.
The soldier is on his feet, and he’s lumbering toward her. She’s breathless. She tries to flatten herself against the door.
And then she hears a clicking noise—a pop like a seal has broken. The door gives. The air inside is cool and clean.
A uniform. A guard.
She says over the wind, “I’m Partridge Willux’s half sister.”
A man’s voice says, “We know who you are.” He grips her wrist, pulls her in against the current of the wind.
She glimpses the soldier one last time, his hand bloody and limp.
The guard closes the door. He’s armed and has one hand on the handle of his gun—not yet drawn, but ready.
She’s in a chamber, quiet and still, locked between two doors—one to the outside and the other leading into the Dome.
For the first time in Pressia’s life, she’s on the inside.
P
artridge is in one of the greenrooms of what they call the cathedral-gym-atorium. It’s the site for the wedding, and moments after it will be quickly transformed into a banquet hall. It’s been used for every major event in the Dome that Partridge can remember—politics, religion, entertainment. He listened to his dad’s speeches here—Foresteed’s too. He’s seen the Nativity performed here as well as entertainers dressed in strange costumes lip-syncing the words to pop songs on the sanctioned list. The crowd screamed like they were real and not impersonating anyone at all.
Partridge reminds himself that he’s impersonating himself.
Beckley says, “You ready or what?”
Partridge looks at himself in the full-length mirror—a mirror his father looked into many times. He thinks of his father just before he died, how he grabbed Partridge’s shirt with one clawlike hand and told him that he was his son.
You are mine.
Murder was the thing that finally bound them together. Partridge looks at himself standing there in his tuxedo, and he knows he’s a killer about to become a father too—and now a husband.
“Is anyone ever ready for something like this?” he asks Beckley.
“Yeah,” Beckley says, wearing a tux of his own, his gun wedged in the back of his pants. “I think it’s something people are compelled to do, actually.”
“You sound like someone who’s been in love.” Partridge realizes he doesn’t know much of anything about Beckley.
“I was in love once,” he says.
“With who?”
“It doesn’t really matter anymore,” Beckley says. And Partridge is sure that this means the one he once loved is dead.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
And there it is. Beckley was old enough to have fallen in love before the Detonations.
“You think you’ll fall in love again one day?”
He straightens Partridge’s bow tie. “I sure as hell hope not.”
There’s a light knock at the door.
“It’s time,” Beckley says. “This is it.”
Beckley opens the door that leads to the stage or the altar or the trophy platform—depending on how someone sees it. Partridge can hear all of the voices talking at once.
He pulls Beckley back. “Tell me I should do it.”
“I can’t do that.”
“But would you do it, Beckley?”
“I’m not you.”
“But if you were…”
“I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be you, Partridge.”
Partridge wonders if Beckley hates him. Does he resent him for everything he’s been given or is it something else? It’s the kind of thing Partridge has gotten good at picking up on, but he can’t quite read Beckley. “Still, you understand me on some level, Beckley.”
“Do you think that’s really possible? Don’t you know the trade-offs by now?”
“What? I can’t ever expect anyone to understand me—just because of who my father was and the life I was born into?” He thinks of Bradwell and El Capitan. Were they ever his friends? Probably not. They hated Partridge on some level too.
“Do you want people to like you just for being you? I’d have guessed you’d have outgrown that by now.”
Partridge feels sucker punched. He likes Beckley because he’s honest—but that honesty’s a double-edged sword.
Beckley opens the door wide and holds it open.
Partridge has no choice. He steps through it, and the large hall is filled with shushing. It reaches all the way to the back, and suddenly it’s quiet. Partridge moves to his spot in the middle of the altar and then turns to face the audience.
My God
, Partridge thinks. Everyone is here. He sees a few rows of academy boys, his neighbors from Betton West, Purdy and Hoppes with their families, Foresteed, Mimi wearing a large jeweled hat and staring at the altar, and even Arvin Weed, who gives a nod. Maybe he’s forgiven him for the punch.
Partridge scans the sea of eyes staring back at him. People are gazing, smiling, already pressing tissues to their damp cheeks. They love him again. He glances at Beckley, who’s standing a few feet away, stiff and tough jawed. He wants Beckley to admit there’s something about this outpouring that isn’t just about who his father was. There’s something personal about it. How else could you explain these faces, these tears, this gazing?
He keeps searching the crowd, realizing that he’s looking for Lyda. Is she out there somewhere? Would she actually come to this event? She approved of it. In fact, she pushed him to do it. But would she even be allowed to be here? If Lyda isn’t here, is she at home? The cameras are poised on him. The bright lights are hot overhead. He looks into one of the cameras. He wants to tell her something. He wants her to know this isn’t real.
I’m an impersonator impersonating myself
, he wants to say. But he can’t. So he gives a wink and a small wave. Will she know that it’s meant for her?
The crowd notices the wave and they collectively sigh.
Beckley reaches forward and claps Partridge on the back. An apology or a consolation? Partridge isn’t sure.
And then with little warning, the faint background music that he hasn’t even really noticed fades, and for a few seconds, all is silent.
Then organ music pours triumphantly from the ceiling. The audience stands in unison and turns.
At first Partridge only sees the camera flashes bursting madly, and then Iralene comes into view, emerging from all the popping lights at the end of a long white carpet that leads to the altar—to him. Her face is lost behind a white veil.
For a minute, he thinks it could be Lyda under that veil.
But he can tell by the poised way that she walks, the lift of her chin, and the measured steps that this is Iralene. This is the moment she’s been groomed for.
As she steps up to the altar, attendants perfecting her train, Partridge can see her face behind the white veil. She’s beautiful. There’s never been any denying it, but today she looks even more beautiful, if that’s possible.
The minister starts to talk, and Partridge is surprised by him. He must have stepped onto the stage while Iralene walked down the aisle.
Partridge knows he won’t remember what the minister’s saying. The lights are suddenly overbearingly hot. Partridge curls his shoulders forward and then rolls them back, as if he’s hoping to stretch the cloth of his jacket a little. His bow tie and cummerbund are both too tight. Why did the tailor have to cinch everything up?
He glances at Iralene, but she’s gazing at the minister, a middle-aged man with a gray-tinged moustache and crowded teeth.
How the hell did I get here?
Partridge wonders. He can smell all of the flowers now. They’re overpowering. He glances at Beckley. Doesn’t he notice how hot it is? How strong the flowers smell?
Beckley looks at him, concerned. He whispers, “Bend your knees a little. You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I’m fine,” Partridge whispers. But he does as Beckley says because he does, in fact, feel light-headed.
Jesus, don’t pass out in front of all of these people
, he tells himself.
Don’t pass out.
And then it’s time for them to exchange vows.
Luckily, the minister feeds Partridge his lines, which are traditional vows—the ones his parents probably said to each other and then broke.
I’m an impersonator
, he reminds himself,
impersonating myself.
“To have and to hold,” he says, repeating the minister, concentrating on each word so he doesn’t mess up and the words blur until he gets to the end. “Till death do us part.”
Death do us part. Death do us part.
This echoes in his head.
Iralene says her vows too. Her lips are red, her teeth perfect and white. She looks at Partridge. “For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…” And Partridge realizes that Iralene is the one who got him here. Without her, he’d be lost. Without her, his father would have killed him. He hears Beckley in his head.
Do you want people to like you just for being you? I’d have guessed you’d have outgrown that by now.
What Beckley doesn’t understand is that people never outgrow wanting to be liked for being who they truly are, especially when they’ve grown up in the limelight or its shadowy edge. It’s all Partridge has ever wanted. Iralene wouldn’t be here if he weren’t Willux’s son, but Iralene loves him. There isn’t anything he’s more sure of in this moment than that. Glassings asked him if he loved her, and he couldn’t answer. People have died because of him—innocent people, ones who could have helped make real changes for good. Gone. What if there’s love between him and Iralene, and love can save them? Isn’t that what’s happening?
But now the minister tells him he can kiss the bride, and as he lifts Iralene’s veil, his heart swells at the clear sight of her face—her beautiful face and the way she’s looking at him in this moment. The music starts up again, and he kisses her and she kisses him back. He then touches her cheek for a moment, and then weirdly, everything seems to stop—all the people, the noise, the lights, the music—and he says, “Thank you.”
“For what?” she says.
“You got me here,” he says. “Where would I be without you?” It’s the truth. Lyda didn’t want to follow him into the Dome, but Iralene’s been by his side every step of the way. She is lovable and deserves to be loved. Is this the next good thing to do after all? Is this what Glassings meant?
Iralene’s eyes fill with tears, and she grabs his hand. “Should we wave to the people now?”
He says, “Let’s wave to the people.”
And together they turn and wave. The crowd is on its feet, shouting and cheering so loudly Partridge feels his ribs vibrating. In this moment, he knows it’s no longer an impersonation. This is real. Undeniably real.
Y
ou’ve got good timing,” the guard says, “but we’ve got to go fast.”
A series of doors gust open; the guard shuttles Pressia through each one, and they glide closed behind them. She grips the straps of her backpack—the vial, the formula—so close now. Everything is shiny and polished. The air smells of some strange chemical mixed with something acrid and sweet. “How did you know I was coming?”
“We saw you in the eyes of a dead soldier. He planted a tag.” She reaches up and feels the spot where she’d felt the strange pinch and noticed the rip. He was tagging her? “We’ve been watching your approach while scrambling your whereabouts as they get reported to Foresteed.”
“Foresteed?”
“He oversees military operations.”
“So Partridge didn’t order the attacks. Foresteed did?”
He nods.
Pressia is flooded with relief. She was right. Partridge would never do that.
“We need you in here,” the guard says. “We want you to talk to Partridge.”
“What do you want me to say to him?”
“Tell him he has to do this the hard way.”
“Do what?”
“Start over.”
“And he’s doing it the easy way?”
“There is no easy way. This will be bloody. He has to let it be bloody.”
He leads her into a small room filled with nozzles, as if she’s going to be sprayed to death.
“Clothes stacked for you. Change fast.”
“Wait. Who are you?”
“We’re Cygnus. We can get you to your brother.” He shuts the door.
Cygnus? Like the constellation? The swan. This all ties back to her mother. She feels, strongly, for just a brief moment, that her mother is with her.
And she is on the inside. This is it. The Dome. She’s stunned. She touches the white tile, leaving a smear of ash.