Sparks Rise (2 page)

Beside me, Vanessa manages to cut off her gasp but can’t get her body’s instinctive response under control. To our PSF’s satisfaction, she flinches and looks away quickly, like the sight of the Red alone could burn her.

I don’t need to look around me to know that at least half of our cabin has already figured out what’s happening. Those same girls have already moved on to drawing further conclusions that will take me another week to puzzle out. For all our differences, our Green minds really only function in two ways—my way, the storage locker, or their way—the ability to connect multiple dots of a situation or problem as easily and quickly as breathing. I get the impression we bore them every time we try to talk to them, like they always know what we’re about to say next. In a fraction of a second, they can look at Vanessa’s reaction, see how young the new people are, assess the color of the vest, recognize the uniforms we helped stitch together, and recognize now, in context, that the frustrating number patches were really Psi identification numbers. I can practically feel their minds churning behind me, whipping up a frenzied series of thoughts.
Reds.

If I know them, those girls will be thinking ahead, their conclusions slanting toward the future.
Why are they here? How will it affect me? When will they leave?
But I’m trapped in the past. Do the other girls remember, the way I do, the faces under the caps they wear? They’re blank, so completely vacant that it looks like their features have been painted on their skin.

My stomach begins to turn over itself, the burning taste of sick rising in my throat like acid. How? How did they do this to these kids? I know the first face that we pass along the way to the Mess Hall; I know that girl because she was at this camp. She was here for almost two years before they took the Reds and Oranges out that night. I don’t forget faces, and even though I’d tried cutting the memories up and storing them in a dark, locked place, I can feel them bubbling back up, trying to merge together again. Fires in the cabins. Fires in the Mess Hall. Fires in the wash houses. The sky stained black with smoke. The boy who tried running from the Garden, who fried himself against the fence when his fire couldn’t melt the metal fast enough. That winter, that whole winter, we’d gone without real vegetables and fruit because the only things he’d set on fire that day were our food and himself.

The thing about the Reds was this: no matter how still they were, watching them was like having eyes on a pot of water set to simmer. A small uptick in temperature could set them to boil—it could happen that fast, in a second of carelessness. They were the monsters of our stories, ones who couldn’t bring themselves to lurk in the shadows. And as terrifying as they were, as little as they cared about the rest of us, I never felt so defeated as I did when the camp controllers removed them. Because even if the rest of us were pathetic and too scared to even make eye contact, they were always pushing back, they were always fighting, they never fell into the pattern.

I thought they’d killed them. We all did.

My feet get sucked down into Thurmond’s dark mud; I can’t even feel the cold anymore; panic heats my blood and makes my hands jitter at my side uselessly.

They hold no weapons that I can see—no guns, or knives, or even the handheld White Noise machines. I guess that makes sense. They’re the weapons themselves.

What have they done to them?
How easy would it be for them to do it to the rest of us?

I count twenty along the way to the Mess Hall, spaced out evenly, filling in the gaps where there used to be PSFs. Where there are black uniforms, they’re hanging back off the trails, watching us pass by in clusters, talking to each other and smiling, actually
smiling
about it, the sickos.

It feels like a challenge—like they want to see us shrivel up just that little bit more when we see how helpless we really are. Just when you become numb to the cold running bony fingers up and down your bare skin, when your muscles become too used to the punishing schedule of go, go, go, go, work, work, work, work, when you realize it’s possible to turn a deaf ear on hateful words—that’s when the men up in their Tower know they need to change the rules of whatever game they’re playing with us.

Vanessa keeps trying to catch my attention; I see her nodding toward each Red we pass, as if I could somehow miss that they’re there. The sleet has turned back into rain, and before we get within a hundred feet of the Mess, we’re all drenched, the icy water slicing through our clothes and skin, down to our bones. I can’t give the PSFs the pleasure of seeing me look at each of the Reds. I try to watch them out of the corner of my eye, assessing each face. I recognize about half of them; that makes sense. There just weren’t that many Reds at Thurmond to begin with, and even back then, they tried to keep boys and girls separate at meals and the different work rotations. It was harder to cross paths with them, and it takes me a little longer to dig around for the right memories, but I have them. My eyes shift again, assessing what’s ahead as we come up on the Mess Hall. And then—

I think I’ve been shot.

It happens that fast; the pain slices clean through me, and I imagine the bullet hits my heart at an angle. There are snipers on the roof of the Control Tower. They are always watching, always adjusting their aim. It’s intolerable. The hurt takes away my breath. Sinks my feet in place.

But I’m not bleeding. I touch a hand to my chest, just to be sure.

Sammy.
I can hear him say it even now. I’ve fought so hard to keep the sound of his voice from disappearing.
Sammy
Sunshine.

I’m not dying. Hallucinating, maybe. Because I think I just—I think I just saw—

Vanessa is the one that ultimately moves me forward again, driving her knee into the back of mine. The sting of it eases as I convince myself I imagined it. My fingers curl and uncurl into and out of fists and I feel like I’m somehow running inside of my own skin. I can’t settle myself. I’m going to scream. The only way I can keep it from escaping is to press a fist against my mouth.

By the time we’re inside the cloud of warm air drifting out from the open Mess Hall doors, the urge to look again is like a rubber band snapping and snapping and snapping against my skin. I wish I had resisted, not looked up at the boy posted at the door, his hands clasped in front of him, his stance steady and strong. Our eyes meet and dart away, and I hear his stiff black gloves creak as his fingers tighten around each other. The Mess is heated, yes, but it feels only lukewarm compared to the heat that’s coming off him. A twinge of dread-stained recognition creeps down my spine, bone by bone, until I think my legs will dissolve under me. I recognize him the way you know the feel of sun on your skin after spending too long in the shade.

My mind doesn’t let me forget faces. Sometimes it feels like a tiny miracle. A blessing. Others, a curse, some kind of punishment for all those times I disobeyed my parents and ran wild around the neighborhood. Good kids go to heaven; bad kids need to be rehabilitated. Now I know that must be true; I know that someone, whether they’re up in paradise or down here in this little slice of hell, is trying to break me. I am being tested.

The years between us have thinned out his round face, made good on the promise of inheriting his father’s chiseled features. Dark eyes sit below dark brows, thick dark hair. The rest of us are so drained of life after a sunless winter, we may as well blend into the snow, but he is lit from within. He is the best thing I have ever seen in my life. The worst thing.

I can’t—I swallow the bile, try to shove away the last image my mind’s preserved of him. Ten years old, calling up the singsong password to get into our imaginary castle in Greenwood—that secret kingdom he invented in the thick cluster of trees behind our houses. His hair shines like a raven’s wing as he climbs up the rope to the tree platform his father had helped us build, takes his seat on the pillow we stole from one of their couches, and starts to read the story of the lost prince of Greenwood and a young knight—me—setting out to find him. He’d spent all day in school writing it; it made my chest tight to picture it, one arm wrapped around the notebook, protecting it from the cruel eyes of the boys sitting around us.

If I could, I’d spend my days locked inside the fantasy of our stolen time there, but I’d never been able to disappear so completely into my imagination the way he could. It was stupid to be so hung up on it now. Even then, we should have been too old for play like that, or at least old and clever enough to name our magic land after something other than our neighborhood street. But it hadn’t mattered then, and it didn’t matter now, and what surprised me, more than almost anything, was how badly it hurt to realize by our own rules I would be denied access to Greenwood, anyway—the requirements were kindness and goodness in your heart, and I barely know what those words mean anymore. I think of them and I see
him
. So how did they do this—to the boy who’d struggled not to cry when we found the overturned nest of eggs in Greenwood?
They didn’t even have a chance,
he’d said.

I want to cry, I want to cry so badly, but the helpless fury that’s been threatening to choke me for years has finally burnt through the last soft part of me. I want to give up.

Even in another life—another world—where everything was good and sweetly normal, seven years would never have been enough time to forget the face that belonged to Lucas Orfeo.

We won’t be fed again until dinner, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat a bite of the soggy mashed potatoes or the vegetable stew. We’ve been eating the same tasteless crap for weeks, so it wasn’t like I was missing much. I just didn’t trust my stomach not to send it sailing right back up as soon as I managed to swallow it down.

Fear followed us into the Mess Hall, coating the silence, expanding until I thought it would eventually push the walls out of alignment. It multiplied faster than the weeds in the Garden. This is what makes it so hard—well, one of the many things that puts this place at the corner of bleak and misery. There’s never an explanation. Not for the way we’re supposed to behave, not for why they do the things they do. When they first began work on the Factory, Ruby said—

No. That wasn’t right. Ruby wasn’t here when they began turning the dark dirt over, burrowing down into earth. She hadn’t been the one to wager the guess that the camp controllers were finally going to take care of the problem of us—permanently. Put us where no one would ever be able to find us.

I braced my forehead against my hands, trying to rub away the throb of pain behind my temples. I blinked again, and the image of a little dark-haired girl was gone, replaced by a panicked kind of anger. It grated on my nerves. Sent my heart galloping for no reason at all.

I was thankful for it, though, because the anger was the only thing strong enough to distract me from watching Lucas. The Reds, the five we’d seen before, had entered the Mess Hall and had made steady passes up and down the rows of silent wooden tables and benches. I wondered if they’d sensed as clearly as the rest of us had, that they were still being watched, even as they’d been clearly elevated to watch us. The PSFs clustered in the corners of the large room, heads bending toward each other as they picked and tore apart the firestarters’ every stiff movement. Part of me wondered if they were more afraid of the Reds than we were.

Lucas passed by our table twice, once behind me, once in front of me. Each time I looked away before he could catch me watching him, taking in every inch of his appearance, searching for my friend in him. Trying to convince myself I wasn’t drowning myself in some kind of desperate delusion. It was like not realizing you were starving until a feast was laid out in front of you.

Older, taller, harder Lucas. Lucas with the dimple in his chin.

Red.

The word ran circles around my mind as we walked over to the Factory, a single word that somehow encompassed a whole dark cloud of thoughts.
Red, Red, Red, Red.

I’d thought about it, you know, wondered if the two of them were still alive, if they were in a camp like mine. My first few weeks here, I’d daydream about seeing them from across the Mess Hall or Garden, get hit with the false high of warm recognition despite it all being in my head. I clung to the possibility of it, even as the years marched on. Lucas would be Green, like me. I just wouldn’t see him because they kept the boys and girls separate. Mia would be Blue, which would also explain why I hadn’t seen her. They didn’t let the colors mix unless we were in the Garden. I nursed that little hope for years, shielding it, keeping it close to me like a candle in a rainstorm.

And maybe some part of me remembered that story—Sir Sammy, fair knight, off to find and rescue Prince Lucas from the outcropping of rocks that doubled as a dungeon and fortress depending on the day. I’d sing, and he’d answer with a shout, I’d sing and he’d answer again, over and over until we were tired of the game or were called in for dinner. I always found him where I knew he’d be. It was the searching that was the important part.

Eventually, you grow up and you stop pretending. This place beats every last dream out of you. It clears your head of such stupid things. The truth was simple, not a glossy fairy tale. Lucas was a year older than me and three years older than his sister, Mia, but neither had been hit with IAAN in the time I’d known them. They moved away a few months before I realized I’d already been affected by...the virus, the disease, whatever it was. Their parents had both lost their jobs and headed a ways north to try to find work in a bigger city.

Bedford was a small town made even smaller by the economic crash and the bottomed-out markets that the people on TV couldn’t shut up about. My parents hadn’t let me say good-bye to the Orfeos—they’d never liked their “influence.” They’d whisper that word like it was the devil’s own name.
Influence.
They didn’t like how I acted when I finally came home, zipping through the rooms, trying to recreate the carefree way we’d run around their house and outside in Greenwood, smacking each other with plastic swords. They didn’t like it when I told them about Mrs. Orfeo giving us snacks, or when I repeated something she had said. It took me a while to understand that when you don’t like someone, nothing they can say or do will ever seem right. Something as harmless as giving a kid a cookie becomes something aggressive, a challenge to their authority.