Pure (7 page)

That’s the end. No one claps. Bradwell simply turns around and pops the lock on the footlocker.

Silently, they form a line and, one by one, with reverence, they go up to take a look inside. Some reach into the footlocker and pull out papers—some colored, some black and white. Pressia can’t tell what they are. She wants to see what’s in the locker, but her heart’s pounding in her chest. She has to get out. She sees Gorse talking to people in the corner. It’s great that he’s alive, but she doesn’t want to find out what happened to Fandra. Pressia has to get out of here. She walks to the back of the room and pulls on the rickety ladder. It unfolds from the ceiling. She starts to climb up. But there’s Bradwell at the bottom. “You didn’t come for the meeting, did you?”

“Of course I did.”

“You had no idea what it was about.”

“I have to go,” Pressia says. “It’s later than I thought. I made this promise and—”

“If you knew about the meeting, then what’s in the footlocker?”

She says, “Papers. You know.”

He pinches the frayed cuff of her pants and gives a little tug. “Come and look.”

She gazes up at the trapdoor.

“The latch locks automatically, both ways, once it’s shut,” he says. “You have to wait for Halpern to unlock it anyway. He’s got the only key.” He holds out his hand, offering help, but she ignores it and steps down on her own.

“I don’t have much time,” she says.

“That’s fine.”

There’s no longer a line. Everyone is holding the papers and talking about them in small groups, Gorse among them. He looks at her. She nods, and he nods back. She has to talk to him. He’s standing by the footlocker. She wants to see inside it. She walks up to him.

“Pressia,” he says.

Bradwell is behind her. “You two know each other?”

“We did,” Gorse says.

“You disappeared and you’re still alive,” Pressia says. She can’t hide her amazement.

“Pressia,” he says. “Don’t tell anyone about me. Don’t.”

“I won’t,” she says. “What about—”

He cuts her off. “No,” he says, and she understands Fandra is, in fact, dead. She’s thought that Fandra was dead ever since they disappeared, but she didn’t realize how hopeful she’d become since seeing Gorse that maybe she was alive, that maybe Pressia would see her again.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

He shakes his head and changes the subject. “The footlocker,” he says. “Go have a look.”

She steps toward the locker, people on either side of her, shoulder-to-shoulder. She feels shaken. She peers inside. It’s filled with ash-smeared folders. One labeled
MAPS
. Another labeled
MANUSCRIPT
. The top folder is opened and inside there are pieces of magazines and newspapers and packages. Pressia doesn’t reach in. She can’t touch them at first. She kneels down and grips the edge of the footlocker. There are images of people so happy they’ve lost weight that they’ve wrapped their stomachs with measuring tapes; dogs in sunglasses and party hats; and cars with huge red bows on their roofs. There are smiling bumblebees, “money-back guarantees,” little furry boxes with jewelry in them. The pictures have some wear and tear. Some have burn holes, blackened edges. Some are fogged gray with ash. But still they’re beautiful. This is what it was like, Pressia thinks. Not all that stuff Bradwell has just told them. This was it. These are pictures. Proof. Real.

She reaches down and touches one. A picture of people wearing glasses with colored lenses in movie theaters. They watch the screens, laughing, and eat from small colorful cardboard bins.

Bradwell says, “It was called 3-D. They watched the flat movie screens but with the glasses on, the world jumped out at them from the screen, like real life.” He picks up the picture and hands it to her.

When she holds it, her hands start to shake. “I just don’t remember it in detail like this. It’s amazing. I mean.” She looks at him. “Why do you say all that other stuff when you’ve got these pictures right here? I mean, look at these.”

“Because what I said was the truth. Shadow History. This isn’t.”

She shakes her head. “You can say what you want. I know what it was like. I have it in my head. It was more like this. I’m sure of it.”

Bradwell laughs.

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“I know your type.”

“What?” Pressia says. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“You’re the type who wants it all back the way it once was, the Before. You can’t look back like that. You probably even love the idea of the Dome. All cushy and sweet.”

It feels like he’s scolding her. “I’m not looking back. You’re the history teacher!”

“I only look back so we don’t make the same mistakes again.”

“As if we’ll ever have the luxury,” she says. “Or is that what you’re planning with your little lessons? A way to infiltrate
OSR
, bring down the Dome?” She shoves the picture at his chest and walks to Halpern. “Unlock the trapdoor,” she says.

Halpern looks at her. “What? Does it lock?”

She looks over at Bradwell. “You think that’s funny?”

“I didn’t want you to go,” Bradwell says. “Is that so wrong?”

She walks quickly to the ladder, and Bradwell does too.

He says, “Here, take this.” He holds out a little piece of folded paper.

“What is it?”

“Have you already turned sixteen?”

“Not yet.”

“This is where you can find me,” he says. “Take it. You might need it.”

“What? In case I need a few more lectures?” she says. “And where’s the food anyway?”

“Halpern!” Bradwell calls out. “Where’s the food?”

“Forget it,” Pressia says. She pulls the ladder down.

But as she puts her foot on the first rung, he reaches up and slips the piece of folded paper into her pocket. “It can’t hurt.”

“You know, you’re just a type too,” she says.

“What kind?”

She doesn’t know what to say. She’s never met anyone like him. The birds on his back seem restless. Their wings shiver under his shirt. His eyes are brooding, intense. She says, “You’re a smart boy. You can figure that out.”

As she climbs the ladder, he says, “You just said something nice about me. Are you aware of that? That was a compliment. You’re sweet-talking me, aren’t you?”

This only makes her angrier. “I hope I never see you again,” she says. “Is that sweet enough for you?” She climbs high enough to give the trapdoor a shove. It flies open and cracks against the wood. Everyone in the room below stops and stares up at her.

And for some strange reason, she expects to look into the room overhead and see a house with flowers stitched into the sofa, bright windows with wind-swelled curtains, a family with measuring-tape belts eating a shiny turkey, a dog smiling at her in sunglasses, and outside, a car wearing a bow—maybe even Fandra, alive and combing her fine golden hair.

She knows that she’ll never forget the pictures she saw. They’re in her mind forever. Bradwell too, with his mussed hair, his double scar, and all the things that poured from his mouth. Sweet-talking him? Is that what he accused her of? Can that even matter now that she’s heard the Detonations were orchestrated, that they were left to die?

There is no sofa, curtains, family, dog, or bow.

There’s only the room with the dusty pallets and the barred door.

PARTRIDGE’S
ROOMMATE
,
SILAS
HASTINGS
, walks to the mirror attached to the back of the closet door and slaps his cheeks with aftershave. “Don’t make this one of those things where you have to study right up to the last minute. It’s a dance, for shit’s sake.” Hastings is a clean-cut kid. He’s bony and way too tall, and so he’s all arms and legs and always looks oddly angular. Partridge likes him all right. He’s a good roommate—fairly tidy, studious—but his one flaw is that he takes things personally. That, and sometimes he’s a nag.

What’s made things tense is that Partridge has been avoiding Hastings, saying he has to study more, complaining about pressure his dad’s put on him. But in reality, he’s been trying to find time alone—when Hastings is shooting hoops or goofing off in the lounge, things Partridge used to do with him—so that he can study the blueprints from the photograph taken in his father’s office, the one his father sent to Partridge’s academy postal box. Sometimes he winds up the music box and lets it play itself out. The music is the tune to a little song his mother used to sing about the swan wife, the one she taught him on that trip to the beach. Could that be just a coincidence? He feels like it means something more. This is what he’s hoping to do for a few minutes once Hastings is gone, listen to the song and study the blueprints while all the other boys are arriving at the dance.

Right now Partridge is stalling. He’s still wrapped in a towel, his hair wet from the shower. He’s got his clothes laid out. Partridge blew up the picture of him and his father so that he could see the details of the blueprint. He found the air-filtration system, fans built into tunnels at twenty-foot intervals. After lights-out, he illuminates the blueprints with the small dim bulb that sits on the top of the special pen his father gave him as a gift for his birthday. It came in handy after all.

He’s been blowing Hastings off too because his father made good on his threat. There have been lots of tests, batteries of tests, just like Partridge’s father said there would be. Partridge has become a pincushion. He has a new understanding of what that means—he feels perforated. His blood, his cells, his
DNA
. His father has scheduled a test so invasive that Partridge will have to be put under—another needle in his arm that will be taped down and made into a shunt, connected to a clear bag of something that would render him unconscious.

“I’ll be there eventually,” Partridge says. “You go on.”

“Have you looked out on the commons?” Hastings asks, leaning up to the window that overlooks the grassy lawn dividing the girls’ dorms from the boys’. “Weed is sending messages with his laser pen to some girl. Can you imagine that dork asking out a girl dork via laser-pen messages?”

Partridge glances out at the lawn. He sees the small sharp zigzags of a red pinpoint moving through the grass. He looks up at the lit windows of the girls’ dorms. Someone over there knows how to read this stuff. It’s amazing how inventive they have to be to get a chance to talk to girls. “Everybody’s got to have an angle, I guess,” Partridge says. Hastings has no angle with girls so he’s really in no position to judge Weed on this one, and he knows it.

“You know,” Hastings says, “it breaks my heart that you can’t even walk down to the dance with me, your compadre. Little by little, you’re killing me.”

“What?” Partridge says, trying to play dumb.

“Why don’t you tell me the truth, huh?”

“What truth?”

“You’ve been blowing me off because you hate me. Just say so. I won’t take it personally.” Hastings is famous for saying that he won’t take personal insults personally, and he always does.

Partridge decides to tell him a little truth, just one, to appease him. “Look, I’ve got a lot weighing on me. My dad is bringing me in for a special mummy mold session. All the way under.”

Hastings touches the back of his desk chair. His face goes a little pale.

“Hastings,” Partridge says. “It’s me. Not you. Don’t take it so hard.”

“No, no.” He flips his hair out of his eyes, a nervous habit. “It’s just, you know. I’ve heard rumors about these kinds of sessions. Some of the boys say that this is how you get bugged.”

“I know,” Partridge says. “They can put lenses in your eyes and recording devices in your ears and you’re a walking, talking spy whether you know it or not.”

“These aren’t just your typical chipping devices so some high-strung parents know where their kid is at all times. These are high-tech. The sights you see and things you hear are monitored on full-color high-definition screens.”

“Well, it’s not going to be like that, Hastings. No one’s going to make Willux’s kid a spy.”

“What if it’s worse?” Hastings says. “What if they put in a ticker.” A ticker is supposedly a bomb that they can plant in anyone’s head. It’s controlled via remote. If you suddenly become more of a risk than your value, they flip a switch. Partridge doesn’t believe in the ticker.

“It’s just a myth, Hastings. There’s no such thing.”

“Then what do they want to do to you?”

“They just want biological info.”

“They don’t need to put you under for info.
DNA
, blood, piss. What more could they want?”

Partridge knows what they want from him. They want to alter his behavioral coding, and for some reason they can’t. And it has to do with his mother. He’s told Hastings more than he wanted to. Mainly, he can’t tell anyone that he’s planning to get out. He knows how to get out of the Dome. He’s done the research, the calculations. He’s going to go out through the air-filtration system. There’s only one more thing he needs, a knife, and he’s going to get it tonight. “No need to panic, Hastings. I’ll be fine. I always am, right?”

“You don’t want a ticker, man. You do
not
want that.”

“Look, you’re all dressed up, Hastings. Don’t worry about it. Go have fun. Like you said,
It’s a dance, for shit’s sake!
”

“Okay, okay,” Hastings says and lopes to the door on his long legs. “Don’t leave me alone down there forever, okay?”

“If you’d stop bugging me, I could go faster.”

Hastings gives a salute and shuts the door.

Partridge sits down heavily on his mattress. Hastings, that idiot, Partridge says to himself, but it doesn’t help. Hastings has freaked him out, talking about the ticker; why would officials want to off their own soldiers? He could have told Hastings that he should watch out for himself. Hastings’ behavioral coding has probably already been altered a little. It might even be one of the reasons why he doesn’t want to be late for the dance. Punctuality is a Dome virtue.

Partridge can’t imagine how it would feel to start acting differently, just in the littlest of ways. “It’s just like growing up. A maturation.” That’s what parents think of the behavioral coding—for boys at least. Girls don’t get coding, something about their delicate reproductive organs, unless they’re not okayed for reproduction. If they aren’t going to reproduce, then brain enhancements can start up. Partridge doesn’t want to change at all. He wants to know that what he does comes from himself—even if it’s wrong. In any case, he has to get out before they find a way to mess with his behavioral coding or else he’ll never do it. He’ll stop himself. He might not even have the impulse to get out anymore. But what’s outside the Dome? All he knows is that it’s a land filled with wretches, most of whom were too stupid or stubborn to join the Dome. Or they were sick in the head, criminally insane, virally compromised—already institutionalized. It was bad back then; society was diseased. The world has been forever changed. Now most of the wretches who survived are atrocities, deformed beyond human recognition, perversions of their previous life-forms. In class, they’ve been shown pictures, stills frozen from ash-fogged video footage. Will he be able to survive out there in the deadly environment among the violent wretches? And it’s possible that once he’s out, no one will come looking for him. No one is allowed out of the Dome for any reason—not even for reconnaissance. Is this a suicide mission?