When Copper Suns Fall (2 page)

Outside the hospital, a bullhorn sounded
three times. It was 3 o’clock.

Dr. Van Meter placed a hand on my shoulder. I
fought an urge to fling it off. I’d seen the Tribunal’s research
patients before: rail thin bodies, tubes extending from every nerve
point, jagged teeth and nails caused by who knows what. No, this
wasn’t going to happen to my brother. We connected with each other
today. The dream I had was the key in some way. I vowed to save
him.

“I don’t believe you. Father would never
agree to do that.” When I tried to raise the door’s metal bar, Van
Meter placed his hand over mine, pushing it back down as he moved
closer to my ear.

The scent of garlic on his breath made my
stomach retch a bit. The mirror on his head reflected an image of
me with a distorted face, and his fingers reminded me of soy links
for some reason. I imagined them lodged in between the door and the
jamb, making him feel a tinge of the pain he caused me each time I
visited Micah. At first, he gave me an uneasy look, as if he could
read my mind.

Then he gave me an empty smile. “Think about
what I said, Miss Prizeon. Both you and your brother have the same
type of…” He hesitated as if waiting for the signal to continue.
“The blood running through your veins is unique. Others affected by
the glutovirus would immensely benefit from you both submitting to
certain studies. Think most carefully. It would be such a shame if
Dr. Prizeon lost credibility among the people because he was
somehow seen as a peace breaker.”

The exaggerated smile on his dry lips made me
think of snakeskin. Before all this happened, Father had taught us
how to identify poisonous snakes. Van Meter was one of them, the
human kind, the dangerous kind. One that knew Micah and I belonged
to an exiled group. He wanted to use that secret. But how?

“Sorry, Dr. Van Meter, I try not to do a lot
of that these days. Too much thinking messes with my rare blood
levels.” I shoved past his arm just before a strong wind pushed the
door closed behind me.

Chapter Two – City of Falling Lights

Addendum to Essential Archive
Section#HT-0710 Concerning violations to the Identification
Code

An identification tattoo, badge, or vest will
show evidence of membership in the appropriate class of gifted
citizen. Violation of this requirement will be fully punishable
according to the suitable Article of Establishment.

* * *

Twelve medicine factories stood in the Nation
of Corunum. I was assigned to lead outcast kids from the Dim Cities
through the gardens surrounding the largest one. I answered a
million questions as I led them around. They came for costing
week’s kickoff event, the Falling Lights Festival. But I think what
they actually wanted was a chance to pick on a Castle Hayne
girl.

Costing week was a time when people living in
the city entered a lottery to win extra medicine and food. While
outcasts, people living outside the city, entered a competition and
fought for a slot in the lottery. It was my job to evaluate and
assign them to a Castle Hayne family for the week. Any other day, I
welcomed challenges, lived for them even. But today, the only thing
on my mind was Van Meter’s words about Father agreeing to Micah’s
removal.

Before long, I had dry eyes, dry mouth, numb
feet. Sure, I agreed to take Jalen’s shift. I was a sappy pushover
when it came to my friends. He’d sworn they wouldn’t expect
anything more from me other than directions to the bathroom. I
would assign them a foster home for the week, and leave. Yeah
right. They hit me with difficult questions and wanted long, but
quick answers. Just enough to get me arrested if I gave the wrong
one.

“How do we even know you’re gonna put us in
the right group? You seem kinda scatterbrained to me,” a boy
wearing a dingy white shirt buttoned up to his chin said. He was
truly testing my goal to become a more patient person.

“Well, let’s see. I’ve only had like a ton of
guide training,” I said, my ears heating.

He scoffed and glanced around at the other
fifteen kids in our group. “You’re a kid, too. What makes you so
much better than us? Why do you get to tell me if I can stay in
your city, or not?” The other kids mumbled.

Last thing I wanted was to create a riot. The
border guards trailing our group like silent drillmasters waited
for things like that to happen. Plus, it would take forever to
explain how being a guide was a pre-career passed down from my
mother.

The Tribunal, our governing body, assigned
all Castle Hayne kids to a task once we turned fifteen. It was a
way to make sure we had a head start toward being useful citizens.
In my eyes, we were no different from the robotic dogs placed
throughout the gardens, protecting the apples, grapes, yarrow, and
ginger-root crops used to make the ale-medicine.

“Are you even listening to me?” The boy waved
a hand annoyingly close to my nose.

Which one of the five classes of gifted
citizens would I assign him to for the week?

My friend Lucia Sanchez was a Healer. People
in her group could detect a depressed person’s symptoms or a nerve
disease like the glutovirus in someone even before the doctors ran
the tests. They only wanted me to refer patient kids. She would
pound on me if I sent this guy into their circle of peace makers.
So...scratch that group.

Next up was the Illusionists: magicians,
photographers, and entertainers assigned by the Tribunal. Suit Boy
wouldn’t make it a day in their horror house initiation. They’d
probably make him disappear on purpose. Another X.

The Trackers, kids like my best guy friend,
Jalen, welcomed junior geniuses, people who could understand Castle
Hayne’s automaton technology. They frowned on questionable
behavior. Translation- they refused people that asked too many
retarded questions. They preferred the “listen before speaking”
type. Yet another X.

I lived with a Historian, the teachers and
keepers of the Essential Archives. Would Suit Boy be able to keep
quiet about valuable historical records without questioning Father
to death? Um, no.

And the Thoughtmasters, the oddest group,
made up the most powerful governmental agents next to the
Historians. They taught mind arts, defense, and mentored Borough
kids identified as a threat to Corunum’s rules. I wasn’t going to
suggest a group that would probably throw him into a shark pit.

None of them seemed right for him. So I
checked the box beside unclassifiable.

With each question, my mood worsened. It was
as if a disease were carving a path through me, damaging each cell
with its sickness. My mind was filled with Dr. Van Meter’s words,
his recommendation for Micah and me to be used in his
experiments.

How did he know about the celestial blood in
us?

Even though he hadn’t come right out and said
the words, his hint at others benefitting from our unique blood
meant he suspected it, anyway.

After being driven back to the entry by
border guards, I walked in a daze toward our lead, Sam Wiggins’s
office. It was a cabin-sized gray building sitting across from the
main gates. Sam was on a call in the back room, so I placed Jalen’s
folder and timecard on the chair.

A feathery feeling crept up the back of my
neck.

I turned around, walked to the door, and
scanned the area in front of the office. Dressed in white, a girl
around my age stared at the building as if she’d been placed in a
trance.

Her clothes were clean, and her hair was too
perfect. She was nothing like an outcast. I didn’t remember seeing
her among the other kids in my group. Curly blonde ringlets framed
her face, highlighting thin ruby lips.

“I lost my little doggie. Have you seen him?”
she said in a voice as airy and light as her looks.

She reminded me of a doll studying me with
blankness. “No. But I’ll tell my boss that you’re looking for him,”
I said, feeling a bit swoony.

“That would be great.” She broke into a smile
so bright she appeared to be glowing. I should feel all warm and
happy inside after seeing a smile like that. Instead, an iciness
prickled my skin, lighting my nerves up with a dizzying chill.

What was in her expression? Happiness?
Insanity?

Did I even want to know?

Why were a girl and her dog hanging out in a
medicine garden, anyway? “Wait here. I’ll go get something to write
with,” I said.

A wind gusted through the windows behind me,
moving a bunch of folders to the floor. I managed to move them into
a decent pile, grabbed a pen, walked back to the door, and scanned
the area. The girl had moved on. Strange. Only a few border guards
shuffled around the parking lot, loading into unicars as they
prepared to head into town for the festival.

I rushed out of the gardens and headed toward
the bus stop across the street. The airbus glided up at the exact
time written on the schedule. Steam warmed my ankles just before I
stepped up on the first tread of the gunmetal colored box.

Jalen agreed to meet me downtown near
Gargoyle Park, where I intended to pound the real reason he
couldn’t complete his shift out of him. Something about my best
girlfriend, Lexa, and some new boy she wanted to meet was the only
information I’d been given. The boy was friends with Jalen, who was
playing matchmaker for them at my expense, which was okay, I
guess.

The airbus eased to a stop on Market Street,
part of Castle Hayne closest to the shoreline beside the Great Wall
surrounding our city. The festival was loaded. People filled every
space. Still upset and feeling a bit nauseous, I wasn’t looking
forward to getting lost among them. Three blocks later, I came to a
place where the main streets ended and the side alleys filled with
souvenir and automaton wire shops began.

I stepped on to the Metalwalk, a three-mile
long side street running between the downtown area’s main roads and
the souvenir shops lining the shores. Fewer festivalgoers were
using the side streets leading toward the main attraction, an
amusement park with the fastest rides ever built. I walked about
seven more blocks, stopping in the area that faced the park.

I sucked my breath and stared at the place
where my brother had been pushed from a flight simulator almost a
year ago.

The Tainted did it. I was sure of it.

And I intended to find out why.

* * *

I stared at the flight simulator, a ride
called the Gravity Drop. A gut-wrenching feeling consumed me, and
jumbled voices whispered in my head as if teasing me with the
answers I needed to know. I closed my eyes, waiting for the moment
to pass the way it usually did. The voices were strong, hissing in
my ears. Was I getting closer to finding their magical box of truth
and fears? If said box were in that park, and could help me find a
cure for my brother, I was going to somehow get it.

No one ever admitted Tainteds caused Micah’s
fall, because no one wanted to believe people related to fallen
angels existed anymore. That would be like saying the Tribunal
didn’t take control over the outcasts living in the Dim Cities.
People in Castle Hayne wanted to say Micah tried to commit suicide.
He was a reckless kid, a spoiled government runt.

After the accident, Micah became sicker as
the glutovirus took over his central nervous system, and he fell
into a coma. Pointing fingers were a safe way for people around us
to handle the news, rather than face the oddness in our society. A
society touched by hidden fears of an old war, a battle between two
celestial groups of humans related to angels.

Father taught Micah and me as much as he knew
about the war between the Caduceans and the Tainted, names for the
nephilim demon slayers(aka, good guys) and the descendants of the
fallen angels(aka, bad guys). It was a time when Corunum was called
America. He said the way the exiled groups used alchemy to fight
one another had caused a shift in the earth’s three largest fault
lines. Both groups were a secret in those times, and a threat
marked for extermination these days. Almost 60 years later, most
people chose to believe it was all mythology. We were supposed to
act as if the angel-blooded humans never existed. But I knew the
truth.

Micah and I weren’t myths. Our mother
belonged to a different level of angels. A group Father had never
said was good or evil. If we managed to keep our identities a
secret, then so had others.

It was time for me to learn more about
myself, to understand our unique purpose and the angel-blood in us.
I had a feeling that was the best way to help Micah.

But where was I supposed to start?

I rushed across the street, headed toward the
park’s entrance gates. On the way in, I collided with a girl
walking in with me. My friend Lucia Sanchez.

She wore her trademark outfit—a brown tee,
black pants with lace around the ankles, and a sky blue vest to
prove she recently received the Healer’s badge. Her sandals
violated the dress code, but that was our Lucia. And things like
this tended to be overlooked during costing week. With her skills
and certification to match, she could probably get away with
walking around naked.

“Hello, my friend. Should’ve known that was
your ‘I hate you because your hair is so gorgeous’ floppy do,”
Lucia said. She flipped her thick, dark mane to one side.

“Are you headed into the park?” she asked
with a questioning look on her face. All my friends knew how much I
hated Gargoyle Park. After Micah’s accident, I promised myself that
I would never step foot in there again. But promises to me were
made for one true thing, the breaking-them monster.

I shrugged. “I might. I’m waiting for
Jalen.”

Steve, who was busy looking me up and down
like a rare gem said, “You’re that Chela girl, the one who used to
be instructed at home, right?” I gave him an uncomfortable smile
and nodded. They’d never let me forget the home instruction thing.
Never mind I was headed into my second term at Ashley George Third
Academy of the Arts and Nosily Gifted kids.