Pure (23 page)

“What do you know about her?”

“She was smart and pretty. She met my father kind of young.” Partridge picks up the birthday card and fiddles with the raised design on the front of it, multicolored balloons.

“Were they happily married?”

“That’s kind of personal, isn’t it?”

“Everything’s relevant,” Bradwell says.

“I think they were happy at one point. But I don’t remember them laughing together or kissing each other. The air in the house was always, I don’t know, stiff. They were formal with each other. Weirdly well mannered. In the end, I think she hated him.”

“Why do you think that?”

He hesitates. “I don’t know. Parents sometimes hate each other, right?”

“What did your mother do?”

“She was a linguist,” he says. “She spoke tons of languages. My father used to say that she was also fluent in Gestures. No matter what language she was speaking, she was always waving her hands around.” He waves his hands in the air. “Supposedly she took me with her to Asia for a year when I was little. Some kind of work she had there, an opportunity. She wanted to get back into her career. I was just a baby, a one-year-old or so.”

“That’s strange. Isn’t it? Leaving your husband and one of your other kids and taking the baby to Asia to work for a year?”

“My older brother was in kindergarten already.”

“Still…”

“I guess it’s strange.” Partridge sits in one of the armchairs. He shoves himself back in his seat. Is Bradwell goading him? “I don’t know what’s strange and what’s normal, actually.”

“Where’s your brother now?”

“He’s dead.” Partridge says it quickly, as if this will lighten the ache in his chest.

Bradwell pauses a moment. “I’m sorry about that.” It feels like an apology for a lot of things, actually, like thinking Partridge’s life was a cakewalk.

Partridge doesn’t lord it over Bradwell, though, and he knows he could. He says, “It’s okay.”

“How did he die?”

Partridge looks around without moving his head. His eyes rove—the metal walls, the hooks overhead strung with animals, the footlocker. “He killed himself.”

“In the Dome?” He’s incredulous. “How could anyone lucky enough to live in the Dome kill themselves?”

“It’s not really that unusual. There isn’t a strong stigma attached to it like there used to be. With very little death by sickness and the theory of limited resources, it’s still awful, but it’s not seen as selfish. In some cases, it’s almost generous.”

“The
theory
of limited resources?” Bradwell says. “They planned the apocalypse because they wanted the earth to survive, regenerate itself, so once they’ve used up their
limited resources
, they’ll be ready to use the world’s again. It’s a sweet plan.”

“Is that what you really think?” Partridge asks.

“It’s what I know.”

“All I know is that my brother was a good guy, and people admired him. He was of true value, and he was better than I am, really. A better person. There are worse things than killing yourself. That’s all I was saying.”

“There are worse things like what?”

“Why all these questions? Do we have a plan?”

Bradwell pulls out a small knife from his belt. He puts the swan pendant down on the footlocker and kneels in front of it.

“What are you doing?” Partridge asks.

Bradwell raises the butt of the knife and, in one quick motion, slams it down on the pendant. The belly of the swan cracks in half.

Before he can think about it, Partridge lunges and shoves Bradwell to the ground. He pins down Bradwell’s hand with the knife, grabs his other wrist too, and uses it to apply pressure to Bradwell’s neck. “What did you do?” he shouts. “That was my mother’s! Do you know what that’s worth to me?”

Bradwell tightens his neck muscles and strains to speak. “I don’t give a shit what you value.”

Partridge shoves him and then lets him go. Bradwell sits up and rubs his neck. Partridge picks up the two small pieces of the swan. The neck, the jeweled eye, and the hole to thread the pendant onto a necklace are still intact. Only the belly is halved, showing a hollow center. Partridge looks at the two halves closely.

“It’s not just a pendant, is it?” Bradwell says, sitting with his back against the metal wall. “It has a hollow center. Am I right?”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“I had to. Is there something inside?”

Partridge lifts the pendant and sees foreign markings he can’t read. “I don’t know,” Partridge says. “An inscription. I can’t make it out. It’s in a different language.”

Bradwell holds out his hand. “Can I look?”

Grudgingly, Partridge places the two pieces in Bradwell’s palm. Bradwell eyes them closely, holding them up to the bare bulb in the middle of the room.

“Do you know what it says?” Partridge asks, impatiently.

“I’ve spent years teaching myself Japanese. My father was fluent and his research contains a lot of translation work. I don’t speak it. But I can read it a little.” Partridge huddles next to him under the bulb. “This here,” Bradwell says, pointing to the first two characters: 私の “This means ‘my.’ ” And then he moves his finger to the next group フェニックス. “And this is a word that I would know anywhere. It means ‘phoenix.’ ”

“My phoenix?” Partridge says. “That doesn’t make sense. My father didn’t speak Japanese. I never heard him call my mother by any pet names. He wasn’t the type.”

“Maybe it’s not from him,” Bradwell says.

“What does
my phoenix
mean?” Partridge asks.

“I don’t know who it’s from, but it’s loaded. It means your mother and whoever gave her the pendant knew a lot,” Bradwell says to Partridge. “Maybe she knew everything too.”

“Everything? What’s that mean?” Partridge says.

“Operation Phoenix,” Bradwell says. “It’s the name of the whole mission.”

“The Detonations.”

“Armageddon. New Eden. Your father’s baby. A new civilization would rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Clever name, right?”

Bradwell stands up. He coughs. His neck is red. Partridge feels a little guilty now for having choked him. Bradwell hands Partridge a metal bin, probably once used for holding entrails. “Put your clothes and your mom’s things in here. We’ve got to light ’em up. Kill any chips.”

Partridge feels dazed. He hands Bradwell the small bundle of his clothes and his backpack, though he’s taken all of his mother’s things out of it already. “What if I just pick her things clean,” he says. “I’m sure they’re fine.” He fiddles with the raised design on the front of the birthday card, looking for chips. He feels a small hard nub. He wets his fingers with his tongue and rubs the front cover of the card. The paper rubs off, disintegrating. And there is a very fine chip—thin as a slip of paper but hard, white plastic, a tiny sensor. “Shit,” Partridge says. “Is this card even real? Did my mother really write that?” He paces a quick circle. “Glassings got permission to go on this field trip,” Partridge says. “My World History teacher. Maybe they wanted me to steal the stuff. Maybe they knew I would and they planted it all.”

“But the card could be real. The chip added later.” Bradwell holds out his hand, and Partridge drops the chip in his palm. “We’ll send them on a chase.” Bradwell fixes the chip to a wire, using some kind of strong-smelling, homemade epoxy in a jar. He unlatches the cage holding the two rat-like creatures. He cups the one-eyed rat and cradles it to his chest. The rat squirms while Bradwell wraps the wire around its middle, twisting the wire ends together to keep it in place. He then carries the rat to a drain in the floor, flips off the drain’s cap, and shoves it in. Partridge hears the rat hit the floor and skitter off.

Bradwell pours a strong-smelling liquid on the clothes in the metal bucket. Partridge picks up the music box and winds it one last time.

Bradwell lights the bucket. A blaze flares.

When the song plays out, Partridge hands him the music box. Bradwell drops it in. They stand there watching the flames.

“Where’s the photograph?” Bradwell asks.

“Really? Even that?”

Bradwell nods.

Partridge doesn’t take it out of its protective pouch. He can’t look at it again. He consoles himself with the fact that he has the image burned into his mind. He holds it over the bucket, lets it fall, and looks away. He doesn’t want to see the flames peel away his mother’s face.

Partridge then holds up a piece of the pendant that still has the loop intact where it’s attached to the necklace, the part of the pendant with the blue gem. “What if Pressia comes back here?” Partridge says. “I want her to know that we’re looking for her, that we haven’t given up on her. We could leave half of this pendant for her. We’d take the half with the inscription. She’d have the half with the blue stone.”

Bradwell walks to the spot where the weapons are hidden. He kneels down, removes the bricks, and pulls out knives, cleavers, hooks, and a stun gun. “I don’t know about that.”

“I can’t burn this,” Partridge says. “I just can’t.”

Bradwell is sorting weapons. “Fine. Keep half, leave half. Heat it enough to fry chips. We’ve got to move fast now. The more time we lose, the less chance we have of getting to her.” He fits a butcher knife and a hook into straps in his jacket and in his belt loop.

“Where are we going?” Partridge asks, lowering the necklace into the flames.

“There’s only one person who I know for certain isn’t controlled by the Dome,” Bradwell says. “She lives in the Meltlands, which are vast. She’s the only person who’s got power and who we can trust.”

“If the Meltlands are vast,” Partridge says, “how do we find her?”

“That’s not the way it works,” Bradwell says, handing Partridge a meat hook and a knife. “We don’t find her. She finds us.”

NOW
PRESSIA
SITS
ON
THE
EDGE
of her cot and waits. For what? She doesn’t know. She has her own green uniform. It fits. The pants have pleats and cuffed hems. The cuffs brush the boots just right when she walks. The boots are heavy and stiff. She wiggles her toes in them. The socks are wool and warm. She doesn’t miss the clogs. She’d never tell her grandfather this, but she loves these boots, tough ones that stay on your feet.

She’s embarrassed to admit that it all feels so good—clothes that are warm and fitted. Her grandfather told her that her parents took a picture of her on the first day of kindergarten, dressed in a school uniform, standing next to a tree in the front yard. This uniform makes her feel solid, protected. She’s part of an army. She has backup. And she hates herself for this undeniable feeling of unity. She hates
OSR
. She does. But her dark secret, one she’d never admit to anyone, especially not Bradwell, is that she loves the uniform.

Worse still, the band tied around her upper arm has a magical hold over the other kids in her room. It has a black claw emblem stitched on it, OSR’s symbol, the same kind that’s painted on their trucks, their notices, anything official. The claw means power. The kids stare at it as much as they do her doll-head fist, as if the two cancel each other out. She hates that the uniform doesn’t let her hide her doll-head fist. The sleeves stop right at her wrist. But she’s so powerful because of the black claw armband that she almost doesn’t care. In fact, she has the inexplicable desire to whisper to them that if they, too, had doll-head fists, they’d be lucky enough to get the claw band on their arms. It’s all a twisted mix of pride and shame.

Another thing that shames her is that she’s eaten so well. Her dinner last night and early breakfast this morning were brought in on trays. Both times it was a soup of some kind, dark, oily broth, and there were some pieces of meat floating in it, onions too. A greasy whirl to it all. And two heels of bread, a fat wedge of cheese, and a glass of milk. The milk was fresh. Somewhere around here there’s a cow that gives milk. The eating strikes her as a kind of giving in, betraying all she’s believed in. If she’s going to get out, though, she’ll need her strength. That’s how she rationalizes it to herself at least.

The other kids got only bread, thin cheese wedges, and cups of cloudy water. They eyed her with suspicion and jealousy.

None of the recruits says anything. Pressia can tell that they’ve gotten punished for it. But she’s wondering if there isn’t a different set of rules for her. It’s the first time in her life she’s ever felt lucky.
Lucky you!
That’s what El Capitan said.
Lucky you!
She knows not to trust it. Not to trust anything. The special treatment has to do with the Pure. There’s no other explanation, right? Otherwise she’d be a live target, probably dead already. But what, exactly, they expect from her isn’t clear.

After the guard looks into the room and strolls on, Pressia feels bold and breaks the silence. “What are we waiting for?”

“Our orders,” the cripple whispers.

Pressia doesn’t know where he got his information, but it sounds official. Pressia is waiting to roll into training. Officer training.

The guard appears at the door, says a name, Dirk Martus, and one of the kids gets up and follows her.

He doesn’t come back.

The day stretches on. Pressia thinks about her grandfather sometimes. She wonders if he’s eaten the strange fruit the woman used to pay him for his stitching. She thinks of Freedle. Has her grandfather oiled his gears? She thinks of her butterflies on the sill. Has he used them in the market? How many are left?

She tries to imagine Bradwell at his next meeting. Will he think of her at all? Will he at least wonder what became of her? What if one day she’s the officer who stumbles on one of those meetings? He never came for her, and this would be her chance to turn him in. She’d let him go, of course. He’d owe her his freedom. Most likely, they’ll never see each other again.

She listens to the gunfire in the distance and tries to establish some loose pattern that it might follow, but she doesn’t find one.

She thinks about food, of course. She hopes there’s more of it. It’s disturbing how much she longs to be taken care of. If she can keep things going here, she might become an officer and be able to get protection for her grandfather. She could save him still, if she can save herself.