“They’re looking for something or someone.” El Capitan turns to Pressia. “But you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, right?”
Pressia shakes her head. “About what?”
“It’s interesting that they show up the same time you do.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen anything like them before in my life.” Pressia thinks of the Pure standing there in the middle of the street, just the way he’d been described. Is that who the creatures are looking for? “I don’t even know what they are.”
“Somebody’s learned how to take every trait that they want from other animals or things and merge or fuse them with a human,” El Capitan says. “Hyper-brain, hyper-body.”
“The Dome?” Pressia says.
“Yeah, the Dome. Who else? But they know we’re here,” El Capitan says, “so why don’t they kill us? We’re the enemy, right? Or at least worth eating.”
“Worth eating,” his brother says.
Pressia watches the creatures, their sudden bursts of speed, the strange hum—El Capitan was right about that. There’s a buzz in the air.
“See that one there?” He points to the one who seems to be looking directly at them. “That one looked at me like that last time too. He’s got something more human in him than the others. You see it?”
Pressia isn’t so sure. They all seem so completely foreign to her that she has trouble seeing their humanness. “I guess so,” she says.
“They fused them with some nice toys, huh?” El Capitan says. “The guns are state-of-the-art, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some computer chips lodged in them somewhere, smart guns. But there are animals involved. Whatever they merged them with, they became animals on a deep level. Maybe they merged them with wildcats and bears. Maybe hawks for vision. Maybe they even gave them some echolocation sonar like with bats. See how they twist their heads?” El Capitan says. “No matter what, they became bloodthirsty.”
“Bloodthirsty,” his brother whispers.
And at the mention of this word, the three creatures turn in unison and stare at Pressia, El Capitan, and his brother in the brush.
“Don’t move,” El Capitan says.
Pressia doesn’t even breathe. She closes her eyes and thinks of the coat—warm inside it. She thinks, If I die here, at least…
But then some other sound grabs the creatures’ attention and they run toward it. Humming fills the air. They burst off through the trees.
The air goes still.
Pressia turns to El Capitan. “Why did you show me this?”
El Capitan stands up, stares at his boots. “Ingership sent your emergency orders.”
“Who is Ingership exactly?”
El Capitan gives a grunting laugh. “He’s the man with the plan.” He squints at Pressia. “I never got orders like this before—to take some runt and send ’em up to officer, just like that. And a girl at that. Ingership wants to meet you—in person. And then there are these creatures, coming around. It has something to do with you,” he says accusingly.
“But I don’t know how it could have something to do with me. I’m nothing. A wretch, like everybody else.”
“You know something. You have something. They need you somehow. It’s all interrelated,” he says, twirling his fingers in the air. “I just can’t see how. There are no coincidences, right?”
“I don’t know,” Pressia says. “I think there probably are coincidences.”
“Better I make nice with you now, though,” El Capitan says. “For my own sake.”
“For my own sake,” his brother says. And El Capitan glances over his shoulder at his brother, who sits there with his head tilted.
Just then there’s a loud chunk not too far off, a cry, some urgent rustling.
“Caught us something,” El Capitan says.
Pressia closes her eyes for a second, then stands up and follows El Capitan back to the trap.
There on the ground is the crippled boy from Pressia’s room, the only one who’d look at her when she first arrived. He must have been crawling because it’s his upper body that’s caught. The metal teeth have sunken into his ribs. He’s bleeding through his thin jacket. He turns and stares at Pressia. He coughs up blood.
“Well, it’s not really sporting,” El Capitan says. “But you could shoot him just for practice.”
The boy looks at Pressia. His face contorted with pain, his neck cords taut and blue.
Pressia doesn’t say anything. She lifts the rifle, shakily.
“Take a few steps back, at least,” El Capitan says. “So you have to aim a little.”
Pressia steps back and so does El Capitan. Pressia raises the gun, looks through the sight. She takes a deep breath and then lets out just half of it. She stops breathing. But before she pulls the trigger, she realizes that she could lift the gun—up and to the right—and kill El Capitan and his brother. If she’s got this one shot, that’s what she should do with it. She knows it the way she’s always known the most important things in her life. She could shoot and run.
Pressia pinches her left eye and takes aim. She holds the boy’s head in her sight. And then, calmly, just the way El Capitan taught her, she breathes in again, lets the breath halfway out, but she doesn’t fire.
She says, “I can’t kill him.”
“Why not? He’s right there.”
“I’m not a killer,” she says. “Maybe we can carry him back and someone can help him. You have doctors here, don’t you?”
“But that’s not The Game,” El Capitan says.
“If you need to kill someone for The Game, you can kill me. I can’t kill him. I just can’t. He’s never done anything to me.”
El Capitan swings his own rifle around to the front. He tucks it under his arm. And for a moment Pressia thinks he’s taking her up on her offer. He’s going to kill her. Her heart pounds louder, drowning out all the noise around her. She shuts her eyes.
But then the crippled boy on the ground mutters through his blood-filled mouth, “Do it!”
Pressia opens her eyes. El Capitan has taken aim at the boy. She thinks of shoving El Capitan, tackling him, as if she could. But the boy wants to die. His eyes are pleading. He’s asked El Capitan to do it. And so she watches El Capitan’s ribs rise then fall and halfway through the exhale, he pulls the trigger.
The boy’s head skids across the ground. His face is gone. His body goes limp.
And Pressia starts breathing again.
PARTRIDGE
CAGE
TO GET TO THE MELTLANDS, Partridge and Bradwell have to go through the fallen city, and passing by Pressia’s house isn’t much of a detour.
“I want to check in with her grandfather,” Bradwell says. “I know where she lives.”
Partridge is completely covered; none of his skin shows. In fact, Bradwell has told him to stoop his shoulders as if hunched and walk by dragging one leg. They’d normally stick to side streets and underground, but there’s no time for that now.
They’re pushing their way through the crowded market stalls, the more crowded and bustling the easier to fit in, Bradwell explained. On every side, there are people who seem part robotic. Partridge sees exposed gears and wires, pieces of skin melded with glass and plastic. He sees the back of a hand shining with the tin of an old can of soda, a chest made of the white metal of machinery—a washing machine? There’s a bulbous growth on the side of a head, skin attaching an earpiece to an ear. He sees a hand fold open, revealing an embedded keypad. Someone else uses a cane because he has a dead leg that he rolls in front of himself. Sometimes there’s simply fur on one forearm, a hand that’s twisted and small like a paw.
But what surprises him the most are the children. There aren’t many young kids in the Dome. Large families are discouraged, and some aren’t allowed to have children at all, if there are obvious flaws in someone’s genetic makeup.
“Stop gawking,” Bradwell hisses at Partridge.
“I’m just not used to seeing kids,” Partridge whispers. “Not so many of them.”
“They siphon off resources, right?”
“It sounds bad when you put it that way.”
“Just keep your eyes straight ahead.”
“That’s harder than you’d think.”
They walk on a bit farther. “How do you know where Pressia lives? Did you stop by a lot?” he asks, trying to distract himself.
“I met her a week or so before her birthday and later I dropped off a gift.”
Partridge wonders what would constitute a gift here. Too, he wants to see where Pressia lives. He feels guilty for wanting to get a feel for everyday life, like a tourist, but he does. He wants to see how things work. “What did you give her?”
“Nothing that would mean anything to you,” Bradwell says. “Their place is just up ahead. It’s not far.” Partridge is getting used to Bradwell. By this comment, he means, Shut up and stop asking questions.
The alley is narrow. It smells of animals and rot. The houses are built into the fallen buildings. Some are no more than plywood propped up on rocks.
“This is it,” Bradwell says. He walks to a window that looks newly broken. There are still small shards of glass sticking out from the frame. They both look through it into a small room, a table, an upended chair, a bundle of cloth on the floor that might be a kind of bed. Along the back wall there are cabinets, the doors all opened wide. He sees the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign on an interior door. “What kind of shop was it?”
“Barbershop, but that’s blasted. The back office is all that’s left.”
Partridge spots a birdcage on the ground, its bars dented on one side. There’s an empty hook overhead. “Looks abandoned,” Partridge says.
“It’s not good,” Bradwell says. He walks to the door and knocks lightly. The door isn’t shut all the way. Bradwell’s knock causes it to ease open.
“Hello?” Partridge calls out. “Anyone here?”
“He’s been taken,” Bradwell says, walking around the room. He opens and closes the cabinet, walks to the table. He sees something hung on the wall, walks closer.
“Maybe he’s just out,” Partridge says, walking up beside Bradwell.
Bradwell doesn’t say anything. He’s staring at a picture that’s been framed with uneven strips of wood and hung on the wall. “People wearing sunglasses in a movie theater?” Partridge says, lifting it from its small hook for a closer look.
“Three-D glasses,” Bradwell says. “She loved this picture. I don’t know why.”
“Was this the gift you gave her?”
Bradwell nods. He looks shaken.
Partridge turns the picture over and, on the back, there’s another piece of paper. It’s creased with old fold marks and ash-gray. He can barely read the words. “We know you are here, our brothers and sisters. We will, one day, emerge from the Dome to join you in peace. For now, we watch from afar, benevolently.” He looks at Bradwell.
“The Message,” Bradwell says, glancing at the small piece of paper. “An original.”
Partridge feels a chill on his arms. His father okayed the Message. This was part of the plan, from the outset. Brothers and sisters. He places the frame back on its hook. His stomach churns.
“They took him,” Bradwell says, and he walks to the window ledge. The floor is littered with glass and small broken pieces of metal and wire, some white cloth. Bradwell picks something up and cups it in his hands.
“What is it?” Partridge asks.
“One of Pressia’s creatures,” Bradwell says. “She makes them. Her grandfather showed me some. He was proud of her.”
Now Partridge can tell that it’s a butterfly with gray wings and a small windup tab on its wire ribs.
“She bartered with them in the market. Her grandfather might have tried to save them. There was a struggle.” He’s right. Partridge can imagine it now with the busted window, the cage knocked from its hook, the overturned chair. “This is the only one left.”
Partridge walks to the dented birdcage on the ground. He lifts it by a small ring attached to the top and puts it back on the hook.
“Whatever was in this cage is gone now,” Bradwell says.
“Maybe it’s better off,” Partridge says. “Let loose, freed.”
“You think?” Bradwell says.
Partridge isn’t so sure—to be in a cage or set loose into this world? This is a question that he should be able to answer. Does some part of him wish he was back in the Dome?
LYDA
FINGERS
LYDA IS AT THE SMALL RECTANGULAR WINDOW, looking out. What else is there to do? Sit on her sitting mat? It’s a mix of every color, a hideous mishmash. She’s hidden it under her covers because she can’t stand to stare at it.
The fake window shimmering on the wall is filled with late-afternoon light. It flickers as if leaves are creating a dappled effect. Is it the same projected window in every cell? There’s something about the window that makes her feel deeply manipulated. Cut off from any real bearings, it seems as if the asylum now controls the sun itself. And even within the Dome, they rely on the sun as a true measure of day and night. Without it, she feels even more lost and alone.
Lyda’s room sits at the end of the hall. She has a view of the rectangular windows in the doors on either side of the hallway. All of the windows are empty now. Some of the girls may be in therapy sessions. There is a communal meal that some of them are escorted to. Others are on their beds or pacing or thinking about their own projected windows.
But then someone appears, down the row of windows. The redhead. Her face is soft and pale. Her eyebrows are so fair that they’re barely there. It gives her a blank expression. She stares at Lyda with her eyes full of worry, that same, strange expectant look she had in the craft room.
Lyda feels guilty now for having told her to shut up. The girl was only humming, only trying to pass the time. What was so wrong with that? She decides to make amends and raises her hand to the window, waves.
The redhead lifts her hand too, but then presses the fingers of that hand to the glass. Starting with her pinky, she lifts and presses each finger, one at a time, in a row, to a rhythm. She’s crazy, Lyda thinks, but since there’s nothing else to look at she keeps watching. Pinky, ring, pause. Middle, index. Pause. Then quickly, thumb, pinky, ring. Middle, index, pause. Thumb, pinky, pause. Then quickly again, ring, middle, index, thumb, pinky. Then in threes, ring, middle, index, pause, thumb, pinky, ring, pause, middle, index, thumb, pause, pinky. This is when Lyda realizes that it’s a song. But it isn’t that she’s playing the notes on a piano, only the rhythm of the song.
And Lyda knows what song it is. That horrible, awful, stick-in-your-head-and-drive-you-insane “Twinkle, Twinkle.” Disgusted, she rolls away from the window and, with her back to the wall, slides to the floor.
What if this is her life forever? What if relocation orders never come? She looks up at the fake window. Has it turned to dusk? Will she one day know the most minute shifts of fake sun, from morning to night?
She crawls to her mattress and pulls the sitting mat out from under her covers. She rips the plastic strips apart. She’ll redo them. She’ll make something pretty. She’ll do and make. This will ease her restlessness. She sorts the strips by colors and tries to think of a design that would make her happy. She’d love to stitch a message into the sitting mat. Save me, that’s what she would write. I’m not crazy. Get me out of here!
But who would ever see it? She’d have to hold it up to the window and hope that one of the other girls could read the message. And that’s when she thinks of the redhead. What if she isn’t crazy? What if the song holds a message?
She runs all of the words to the song over in her mind. Up above the world so high. Like a diamond in the sky? She starts weaving the plastic strips—blue, purple, red, green, creating a checkered pattern. The song is in her head now and meaningless. Just stuck there. It loops, wordlessly, and then as her fingers mo
ve back and forth, finding a rhythm, the words to the song return. But they aren’t “Twinkle, Twinkle.” They’re the alphabet. She’d never noticed before that the two songs share a tune.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G… Letters, language.
She stands up, letting the remaining plastic strips for the sitting mat fall to the floor. She runs to the window, and there is the redhead’s pale face, waiting for her.
Lyda presses her fingers to the window. She runs through the alphabet to the rhythm of the tune until her finger lands on H, and then she runs through it again, stopping on I.
The redhead smiles and this time, she waves.
It’s dusk. Lyda is losing light. She makes a question mark on her window. What does the girl want to tell her so badly? What is it?
The girl starts to spell. It’s a slow process, and Lyda nods each time she gets a letter. She whispers the letter under her breath, to help her remember where she is in a word. At the end of each word, the redhead draws a line on the window.
She writes, M-a-n-y/o-f/u-s. /W-e/w-i-l-l/
A guard patrols the hall. They both leave their windows. Lyda lies down in bed under her covers, pretends to be asleep. We will what? Lyda thinks. What?
She listens to the guard’s shoes retreat down the hall, returns to the window. The redhead isn’t there, but after a few moments, she reappears.
She writes: O-v-e-r- Overcome? Lyda wonders. Will she overcome this imprisonment? Is this a message of hope for all those who are stuck here, feeling lost forever?
No. The redhead’s message goes on. She spells out, t-h-r-o-w. We will overthrow? Who will they overthrow?
Lyda taps her letters as quickly as she can, g-u-a-r-d-s. She makes another question mark with her finger on the window.
The redhead looks at her with her blank face, and shakes her head vehemently. No, no, no.
Lyda writes a question mark on the glass. Who? She needs to know.
It’s nearly dark in the room. Lyda can only barely make out the redhead’s finger on the window. The redhead taps out four letters. D-o-m-e.