Ashes of Twilight (30 page)

“Where is the boy?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” It’s not a lie. I know where I hope he is, but at the moment I honestly can’t say.

“I don’t need you to find him, you know,” he says. “I have his mother and I hear they are very close. I am certain he will trade himself for her if he knows it will save her life.”

“The opposition has principles,” I say. “How convenient for you.”

”How many other people know?”

“Everyone. Didn’t your friends tell you what I was doing when they caught me?”

“They did.” He shakes his head in agreement. “It might have worked had your audience been larger.”

“Word has a way of getting around,” I say. “Soon enough everyone will know.”

“Why is it so important to you that everyone knows?”

“Because I want out.”

“But you are safe here. We all are.” He says it as if he’s talking to a child.

“No, we are all slaves here,” I say so there is no mistaking my intent. “Slaves to the royals and their way of life.”

“Ahhh. So now we get to the heart of the matter. You don’t want to be a coal miner.”

“Why is that a surprise? Why shouldn’t I want more for my life than what was dictated two hundred years ago?”

“Because you were born to a purpose, just as the rest of us were.”

“What if my purpose is to do something more? What if my purpose is to free everyone from the dome?”

He laughs. He laughs long and he laughs hard. I know he’s mocking me, but I also think that perhaps I might have scared him a little. Not enough to let me go, but enough to make him think. To make him doubt his purpose. I know I succeeded in that when he rises and walks to the windows. He folds his hands behind his back and looks out at the view.

“Will you join me?” he says after a moment.

I do. By now I know I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And my curiosity about him is boundless. As I come to the window I realize that we are in the tallest building in the dome. From here I can see all the way to Park Front even though there is a slight haze. Of course the fans on the royal side of the dome are still running. The royals will have the best until the very last. Light is fading with the day. I am closer to the top of the dome than I’ve ever been, even when I was on my rooftop. Lights blink along Park Front and the elaborate homes of the royals.

The office he occupies is arranged to have the best view. The wall behind us hides the industrial side. The ugly side. From these three sides everything is beautiful. Everything is perfect. We stand there, side by side, and gaze at the world within the dome. At the efficiency of it. A well-oiled machine still running after two hundred years. But the parts are wearing thin and some will soon be broken beyond repair. It’s only a matter of time. It is something that I have to make him realize.

“Beyond those walls is a horrible place.” He says it quietly, as if he’s talking to himself. Or maybe he’s just sharing a secret with his daughter.

“Have you been there?” I don’t have to look at him. We can see each other’s reflection in the glass. He, tall, straight, and clean; me, looking as if I’ve rolled in dirt and blood after being severely beaten. It is very seldom that I’ve worried over my looks, but this is one time I do. I wish I was clean and my hair neatly brushed and I had on the blue dress. I wish my hands weren’t dotted with scars and my nails rimmed with coal. I wish I looked my best so he would look at me with pride. Or love. Or regret.

“Yes, I have been outside many times.”

“What is it like?” I can’t help but ask. I want to know. I want to know everything about it.

“It’s very beautiful. As if the fire purged the earth of all the ugly things and it began anew. But if you look closely, you can still see the remnants of what was.”

“And?” I look up at him. He’s taller than I imagined, although I can’t really describe what it was I expected. As tall as, if not taller than, Pace.

“We are not the only ones who survived. The ones who did, who live out there, are ruthless. They want what we have. They want in. And we have no way of fighting them. The weapons they have can kill a man at one hundred yards or more. We have nothing to compare with it. When this place was built, all the weapons were left outside. Our makers thought we would have no need of them.”

“You have weapons. I saw them.”

“Yes. We used it on one of your friends. The one who wasn’t Pace Bratton. Did he survive?”

“I don’t know. He was alive the last time I saw him.”

“It was a brave thing you did. Sacrificing yourself so the others would get away.”

“Are you saying you’re proud of me?”

“I suppose I am.” He turns from the window and walks back to the desk. I follow as I have no place else to go. The height has made me dizzy and my head still pounds.

“May I have some water?” I ask.

He retrieves my glass from the desk and fills it from a pitcher on the table with the other liquids. He hands me the glass. This time I examine it. I am amazed at how light and delicate it feels in my hand. Almost like holding Pip in my palm. Almost the way I feel when Pace holds me. I raise the glass to my lips and drain it. He pours me another and I take my time now. Sipping it. Enjoying the feel of the cool liquid on my parched throat.

“How did you get the weapons?” I ask.

“We traded for it.”

“What did you trade?”

He smooths my hair back from my face in a motion so much like Pace that it makes my heart hurt. “We traded girls like you,” he says. “And a few boys,” he adds so easily that I want to hit him.

He returns to his desk and moves a few papers around. Straightens a pen and a letter opener. Sits down and adjusts the sleeves of his jacket.

“I have been charged with a duty. A duty I take very seriously. As seriously as you take your tiny little rebellion.”

I want to speak, to tell him that my rebellion is not tiny, that it is important to me, and not only to me but to several others like me. That people have died because of it. That I’m willing to die for it as well. That I’ve already consciously made that decision and proved it by sacrificing myself to save Pace. But I don’t because I know that he won’t really listen. In his mind, his agenda is much more precious than mine.

“The bloodline must be preserved at all costs. It’s a line that goes back thousands of years. They are the nature of our race, the very foundation. And until we can protect them from what is outside, no one is going out.”

“You’ve made this decision for everyone? Including the royals?”

“I have.”

I think of Jilly. “Have you ever thought to ask them what they want? What any of us want?”

“That isn’t up to them. It’s up to me.”

“You’re wrong,” I say. “It is up to all of us. The people you are protecting, that you are sacrificing the rest of us for, aren’t the foundation. We are. The shiners and the rest of the workers that keep your royals’ perfect little world running. And I’ve got more news for you. The coal is running out. It has been over a year since we’ve found a new deposit. So what are you going to do when it is all gone? Let everyone boil beneath the dome?”

“By then we’ll have enough weapons that we can fight them. By then we will have an army that will know how to use them. How to beat them.”

“And until then the rest of us are sacrificed to the royal gods.”

“I see you understand.”

“I understand this is what you believe. I don’t. I believe in a higher power. And I believe that he has a different purpose for us. That he gave us this life to thrive and to strive for better things. That he gave us this world to live in. That if life has returned out there then he wants us to live it. That he gave us this place so that we may survive and return to the earth and grow once more. Not lie stagnant beneath the glass.”

“Those are powerful words, Wren. Words that I cannot allow to be spoken outside this room.”

“You can’t change what I believe. And I’m not the only one who believes it.”

“No, but I can change what people perceive. Just as I did with your friend. What was his name … Allan?”

“Alex,” I correct him. “How did he get out?”

“Through the tunnels. Beneath the fans. It’s amazing how quickly he slipped through. He was outside before my men even realized it. If he’d kept on running he’d be free now, possibly dead at the hands of those outside, but most definitely free of this place. But he didn’t. He wanted to come back. He wanted to show some girl…”

“Lucy.”

“Yes, Lucy, that there was a world out there. He couldn’t understand why my men didn’t agree with him. He kept screaming something about the sky.”

“‘The sky is blue.’”

“Yes. It is. A most extraordinary shade of blue.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I’m going to give you exactly what you want. I’m going to show you the world outside the dome.”

27

My father.
It is a hard word for me to comprehend. My life in the past few hours feels as if it is happening to someone else. As if I’m not living it, but just watching it unfold. The pounding in my head and the ache in my heart assure me that everything has actually happened. The fact that I have finally met my father is not any stranger than anything else that has happened to me in the past week. Has it only been a week? Has it been longer? I find that I can’t even identify the day, much less how many have passed since it all began.

My father summons the guards from the hall. “Take her and the other one to trade. Get as much as you can for them.”

Just like that I’m gone from his presence. No one but the two of us knows that he is my father. As far as he is concerned, no one will know. To him I am nothing more than a means to an end. Something to be traded for weapons.

My trip from my father’s office is much like my trip to it. Except this time the lift goes down a level. I am relieved to see Jon sitting in a cell. He looks much the same as he did when I last saw him. Jon is taken from his cell by another pair of bluecoats and we are marched down a hall to a door, then up a flight of stairs and to a wagon. I cannot tell if it’s the same one we arrived in or not.

“What did they do to you?” Jon asks.

“Asked me questions.” There is no need to tell Jon who I talked to or about what. The result is still the same. “You?”

“Nothing. They just put me in that cell. Do you know what they plan for us?”

“We’re to be traded. For weapons.”

“Traded to whom?”

“Whoever they are afraid of that lives outside the dome.”

Jon looks at me incredulously. “What?”

The engine starts and the wagon vibrates and jerks as the doors swing open and we pull out. The dome is dark except for the streetlamps that light the promenade. I look out the small barred window, hoping to see a sign of someone we know, but the streets are deserted.

As we ride I tell Jon what my father told me. The reasons we are lied to and the reasons we are still kept prisoner inside the dome.

“Those must be the weapons they used when they got us from the filchers,” Jon says.

“And on David. I’ve never seen anything like it. One minute he was fine and the next he was bleeding. It happened so fast. There’s no time to react or defend yourself.” I recall the moment the filcher that held me was killed. “Whatever it is, it’s accurate,” I say. I’d hate to think that the bluecoat with the weapon was counting on luck to get me through.

“Do you think there are people out there? Like us?”

“What else could they be? They survived the comet. They’ve been living out there all this time while we’ve been locked inside.”

“So what are the bluecoats so afraid of?” Jon asks.

“Losing control.”

“Aren’t we all,” he says as the wagon turns a corner.

We are back where it started to all go wrong. The roar of the fans beats against the wagon and the large square building that houses the furnaces looms into view. We drive behind it and once more doors close behind us.

“I guess we’re luckier than your friend was,” Jon says as we come to a stop. “We’ll just be more on the list that have simply disappeared.”

I’m still trying to decide if that is true. My mind is racing, trying to catch up with everything that has happened in the past few hours. Trying to come to the realization that I’m about to go outside and not really believing it. I am expecting something horrible to come, just like it did for Alex.

The bluecoats haul us from the back of the wagon. Everything that has happened catches up with me. My legs are weak and my body trembles. I don’t know if I can walk but I’m determined not to be weak. Our hands are tied, but this time they do it in front instead of behind. The bluecoats lead us into the furnace building.

We are on a catwalk that takes off in several different directions. Below us are the furnaces. They are huge, with fire blasting from open ports. Men are around them, stripped down to their undershorts. Their arms and backs are great with muscle and their skin glistens with sweat. They shovel coal from a large pile that sits in the middle of the floor. A cart, much like the one that almost ran over us earlier, dumps a load from our level onto the pile. The chunks are getting smaller. The strike had a quicker effect than any of us imagined.

Jon and I are herded around the exterior of the catwalk to a set of stairs that run behind the furnaces. The heat hits me like a wall, pushing me back while the bluecoat behind me shoves me forward. I raise my hands to my face to protect it as it feels as if my skin will melt away. We go down several flights of stairs that are slick from the heat. Jon and I both hang on to the rails to keep our feet from sliding out from under us. We come to the bottom and another set of doors. One of our guards beats on the door and we hear the rattle of chains. It opens to reveal a set of guards, both of them with the weapons. Jon can’t help but stare at the weapons as we are pushed on down another hall.

The heat is above us now. I look up to see the ceiling is a metal grid and large square metal pipes that cross over us and go through a wall. They carry the heat that powers the fans.

We travel on through the tunnel. My legs feel like they are made of rock. I’m not sure how much longer I can go on. I just want to lie down and forget everything that has happened. I want the world to go on without me for a while. I want to go back to the cave by the river with Pace and pretend like everything is good and fine and no one wants to kill us. I want to lower myself into the water and let the river carry me away.