Crimson Rising (2 page)

The skyline beckoned in the distance. It was his only chance. Laws were scarce in the slum lands. In the city, he’d have the protection of a more dignified crowd. Maybe.

He ducked into the nearest alleyway. He’d run until he passed out, if necessary. Anything to lengthen his distance from them. He’d let the city swallow him. It was his only hope.

They’re going to find me. I have minutes, maybe. And when they do, I’ll get the needle again.

Jesse Fisher. He doesn’t look like much, but he’s dangerous.

Jesse Fisher. We don’t understand him anymore. He’s not one of us. Not really. We’ll pretend he is, but not really.

It’s a foregone conclusion. Once the secondary lights cut off throughout the Academy, they’ll know what happened. Kids who should be sleeping will look up from blank screens. Yank at silent headphones. The ship’s control deck will flicker to emergency backup. This—right here in the reactor chamber—is the first place they’ll look. And they’ll find me. I won’t have time to escape.

But if I can just do this one thing, maybe it’ll be worth it.

The thought pins my fingers to the railing. It keeps me traveling up the ladder, rung by rung, each move another treacherous act. By the time I’ve pulled my body onto the warm metal of the platform, it’s too late to talk myself out of it.

I stand in the center of Skyship’s main reactor chamber, the heart of our little operation. But instead of pumping blood, this heart runs on Pearl Power. Without it, the Academy shuts down. The Bridge’ll trigger crisis mode and try to eke out as much power from our struggling solar panels as they can.

It’s okay. We’ll survive. It’s not like there’s a danger of plummeting to the ground. We haven’t been airborne in weeks.

I shield my eyes from the green glow that overtakes the room. A bulky turbine spins several yards from where I stand, stretching from floor to ceiling like an enormous hourglass—an ancient beast of a machine. Each revolution is a struggle. Loud thomp, thomp noises reverberate across the walls as the flaps scoop the air. Beyond that I see the source of the green light. Placed inside the bowels of the tube, sitting there like a treasure ripe for the picking, is a Pearl.

It pulses in my gut. It’s so strong, it’s internal. The energy crackles along the narrow walls of the spherical room. My heart flutters. The Pearl speaks to me. Maybe not the way normal people do, but it’s calling me all the same. Telling me to break it.

I stand at the far end of the thin platform that surrounds the reactor chamber—metal scaffolding that’s been in place long enough to be considered permanent. I step closer to the reactor and look over my shoulder in case I’m not alone. The room is empty, but full of spirit. This is a tomb. Hundreds have died here, sucked dry by the reactor. Thousands more have been killed these past decades.

Back when I was a simple Skyship trainee, we didn’t know what was inside Pearls—that they carried living, sentient beings. It took a chance meeting with Cassius Stevenson, my brother, to trigger my power to break Pearls. And that changed everything. Now every flip of a light switch or click of a button is a kind of murder. Small things. They add up.

Pearl Power runs everything onboard, from the central thrusters to the tiny overhead light on the desk in my room. Every Skyship’s like this. Every Chosen City, too.

After discovering what was really inside Pearls, our technicians upped consumption of solar, biomass, and alternative fuels. We now burn twenty-eight percent less Pearl Power, extending each orb’s lifespan from sixty-eight days to ninety-three. Captain Alkine’s gone through the numbers, but it doesn’t make any difference to me.

Pearls are people. My people. Cassius and I were sent to Earth to break Pearls, freeing allies that would help us fight the invasion that’s to come. But instead of following my parents’ wishes, I’ve been standing by, oblivious, while my own people are snuffed out.

Not anymore.

I wipe the sweat from my forehead and breathe in dank air. My balance wobbles on the platform. I make the mistake of looking down, right through the hexagonal holes between grids of metal underfoot. I’m not entirely sure this scaffolding is strong enough to support anyone for more than a few minutes, even a scrawny 15-year-old like me.

It was a long climb up here, which means an equally long drop if I were to fall. Below me are the docking bays, followed by the engine works, though the chute from the base of the reactor chamber would likely wind past everything until I landed unceremoniously at the very bottom of the Skyship. Pow. Splat. Dead.

I stumble forward, my fear a constant motivation to get this done quickly.

My hands tremble at my sides. I was able to bring a Pearl toward me back in Seattle last spring. I shouldn’t have to reach far. All I’ve gotta do is focus.

I crouch and close my eyes, extending my hands in front of my chest like I’m ready to catch a baseball. I let the energy speak to me, connect to the whispers inside. Suddenly I feel heat, like I’m standing in the Fringes. Back in America. It’s the Pearl.

The tips of my fingers twitch, shoved around by the force of the energy. Glass shatters in the distance. So much for the reactor’s containment shield. I open my eyes and watch the Pearl fly at me—a stringless yo-yo heading straight for my waiting fingers.

The moment it connects with my hands, I feel complete again. There’s no downplaying the sensation. It’s as if a missing limb has reformed itself. Nobody in the world knows this feeling. Nobody in any world. There’s only one Pearlbreaker.

Me.

I hug the swirling sphere of green closer to my tingling body. The hairs on my arms stand on end. My skin warms, coursing up from my hands and into my chest. I stare into the Pearl’s seemingly endless abyss of energy and listen to the whispers. A language. One I can’t even begin to comprehend, but mine all the same. The language of my ancestors. My history.

We huddle on the scaffolding for a moment like this, me and the Pearl. Connected.

The clicks and pops of broken transformers echo through the room as the ship’s power begins to fail. I watch the reactor’s turbines slow as lights shut down. Soon the glow of the Pearl is the only color I see.

I should break it as fast as I can. They may not be able to see me, but every waking soul onboard our ship knows what’s happened. The night guards might assume it’s an attack. Families will be alarmed. Blackout. No power. No light except for the stars and moon. There will be punishment. The only question is, how long do I have?

I stand, clutching the Pearl tight to my chest. This could be the one that holds my mother or father. Of all of the thousands of Pearls that have fallen on Earth since the Scarlet Bombings, this could be it. And there’s only one way to find out.

The clatter of boots on metal breaks me from my thoughts. I spin around to watch a bulky figure pull itself onto the darkness of the scaffolding.

Too soon. No way they’re this early.

I stagger back, forgetting the flimsiness of the ground. The metal shudders underfoot. I pull the Pearl tighter, like it’s a child I’m trying to protect it. Hell, it could be a child.

“Fisher.” Captain Alkine spits my name. I recognize his gravelly voice from the shadows, even before his weathered face moves into the green light. He’s taller than me by a foot, and still carries the frame of a soldier. Of course it would be him. “Put it down.”

I take another step back. “No.”

He scowls. “Listen to me. You’re sabotaging us. You’re hurting your friends … your family.”

This is where it gets tricky. He thinks this is going to sound rational. But there’s no way it will, not when I’ve got two families and one is dependent on snuffing out the other.

I shake my head. Alkine knows his argument doesn’t affect me. In another second, his words will give way to brute force. It’s the only advantage he’s got over me. He grits his teeth and stares me right in the eyes. His voice becomes a whisper. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

I extend my right arm to my side. With it the Pearl hovers in the air, held aloft by the force of the invisible energy coursing from my hands. Alkine watches its trajectory with slit eyes before focusing on me again. “Jesse, I understand how difficult this is for you, but you have to think.”

I shake my head. I’d been thinking about this all night. I’d been thinking about it so much that I couldn’t sleep. It’s the one overriding struggle that’s consumed my thoughts these past four months, ever since that day in Seattle when I found out who I really was.

I close my fist. The Pearl explodes.

Alkine’s eyes widen and he falls to the ground in anticipation of the force. A shockwave of green energy shoots in every direction. It connects with the walls, warping them before flowing into the circuitry of the Skyship. Power surge. Lights will be flashing in the dorm rooms tonight.

I feel the energy flow through the chamber and turn my head to watch the body of a Drifter shoot out from the nexus of the explosion. Drifters, Alkine calls them, like he’s hoping they’ll just drift back out into the cosmos where they came from and leave us alone. But it’s not as simple as that. I’m a Drifter. An alien. And aliens deserve to live, too.

The figure soars into an open vent above the chamber before crashing down again and disappearing below us, flying in a blind panic. It’ll likely find the chute to the nearest open docking bay and escape. It’s not the best of scenarios. I don’t have time to make out features or details or even tell if it’s male or female, but the Drifter will live. And if it has any relation to me, I’ll have done something good. We’ll have a chance to find each other.

As the energy dissipates, I turn back to Alkine. Without a word, he jumps from the ground and rushes at me. I don’t have time to react before he grabs me by my shoulders, spins me around, and pushes me into the wall. I collide hard with the metal, helpless against his superior strength. His hands dig into my shoulders. I can barely look at his face.

“Now you’ve done it,” he rasps.

I look to the side. “So what? Are you gonna kill me now?”

“Of course not.”

“But it’d be easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

His grip tightens. “You need to calm down.”

I meet his eyes for the first time. “Calm down? That could’ve been my mother in that thing! It could be my dad!” “That doesn’t give you the excuse—”

“I don’t wanna hear this again,” I say. “Just pull out the gun and get it over with.”

Alkine shakes my shoulders. “You’re selfish, Fisher. That Pearl’s the only thing that’s keeping us operational. It’s the only thing that’s keeping us safe!”

“It’s murder,” I mutter.

“You’re being irrational.”

“Yeah, well, you’re being a murderer.” My lip shakes. “You promised and you … you lied and—”

“I can’t talk to you like this.” He moves his hand to my chest, pushing hard. The other hand heads for his belt, retrieving the gun. I know this without even looking.

I keep my fists at the side, pushed against the wall. “Of course not. Never talk. God forbid we should talk—”

“You want to endanger the lives of my people? You deal with the consequences.” He grits his teeth. I watch him bring the piercing gun to the side of my neck. I feel the cold metal of the muzzle against my skin. “You’re not the only one on this ship, Jesse.”

I swallow. “Last spring, after my first training mission, you said you wanted me to think of you like a father.”

He moves closer. I feel his breath on my face. “I saved you in Seattle. I’ll always save you.”

I latch onto his eyes. I’m not scared, and he has to know that. “You’re a hypocrite. You don’t know what you’re saving.”

He sighs. I can’t tell if it’s out of frustration, sadness, or anger. Maybe it’s a little bit of all three. “Go to sleep, Fisher. This isn’t you. This isn’t right.”

A sharp pain strikes my neck as the needle’s shot through my skin. The serum only takes seconds to work. Before I know it, I feel myself slump into Alkine’s arms. My eyes shut. The energy in the room fades. Ghosts. That’s all it is now.

I wake in a gray room. My face is pressed against the thin fabric of a too-tiny couch, its cushions sunken and hard. There’s no table to go with it. Only one small, dirt-stained window on the unadorned, scratched walls.

This is how it is these days. I’ve woken in this room before—punishment for stealing a Pearl from Dr. Hemming’s science lab, punishment for my last midnight adventure to the ship’s core reactor two months ago. I’ve had time to study this room, from the crack in the corner of the ceiling to the one floor tile that sticks up a little more than the rest. This is where they put troubled people to cool off. Half holding cell, half observation chamber. They could never hurt me, but that doesn’t mean they have to listen to me.

It all happened so fast, four months ago. After my chance meeting with Cassius in the Fringes, the Unified Party came after me. But it was Madame, head of the party’s Chronic Energy Crisis Commission, who knew the truth all along. Cassius and I were more than brothers. We were the first Drifters to land on Earth, and the means of unlocking every one that came after us. Her cover-up cost more lives than I can imagine, and it continues to this day.

Cassius is out of the picture now, laying low in Canada. And I’m stuck here in Eastern Siberia. Chukotka. That’s what they call this bare eyesore of a peninsula. I personally never imagined a life where I’d know a word like Chukotka, but that kind of stuff happens now that the Academy’s on the run from not only Madame but the entire fraggin’ Skyship Community as well. After Alkine illegally crossed the International Skyline into Unified Party territory to rescue me, we were forced to leave our perch above Northern California and head across the Pacific Ocean. There’s too much uncertainty. Too many reasons for the Skyship Tribunal to find us guilty of sedition. That’s the word Alkine uses. Basically, we screwed up big time. Skyshippers and the Unified Party are already on the brink of war, fighting for elusive Pearls, oblivious to the truth. The Tribunal doesn’t know about my power. If they found out what really happened in Seattle, who knows what they’d do? Pearls are too precious. The fact that I can break them makes me dangerous, too. A liability, or a weapon. Either way, I’m a trigger for fullblown war. So we wait in tundra and mountain. It seemed the smart idea at the time.