Arclight

Small, feathered company.

Stuck between a climbing cage and the tangle of berry vines threading through it, a bird the color of a thundercloud struggles to free itself. It shakes the cage and pulls up hard but can’t disentangle its feet and captured wing.

“Hello,” I say, as though the bird can understand me. “How’d you get in there?”

The bird cocks its head and flaps again—bird speak for “Would you help me?”

I wind my hand inside the cage and pull. Sensing freedom, the bird pecks at the last of the vines with its beak until it spills out of its tiny prison. Delicate and light, it perches in my hand, testing one wing and then the other, shaking itself with an explosion of down feathers.

“Tough little thing, aren’t you?”

It’s not a native bird, like our ducks and chickens or the bright things kept inside with their wings clipped so they can’t pass beyond our border, and the protocol is clear—I should kill it and hand its body over to one of my elders. But I can’t.

What sense is there in ending another life when we’re trying to keep the world from dying? I have to let it go, and that means breaking another rule by sneaking out to the Arc.

On this side of the compound, our boundary is a stone path where everything green and good ends at the mouth of the Grey. In the first days, there were bonfires here, lit and tended around the clock, but they were too easy to put out, and every rainstorm meant calamity. Over the years, the stones were laid so electric lights could be permanently set into the ground, and the fires drifted into memory. The Arc of Light became the Arclight.

Here, lampposts replace brown tree trunks. The bulbs are on standby, in these last moments before night falls, charging for another marathon burn, and leaving the Arc cold, but a faultless guardian to keep the gloom of the Grey from encroaching.

“Get somewhere safe,” I say, opening my hands.

The bird looks at me with intelligent, sharp eyes. Its feathers, sleek now, bear a pattern of steel and white with swirls of black along its head and tail. It lifts off with a smooth beat of its wings and slips above the Arc, but it doesn’t turn the way I expect. It shoots across the Grey, making straight for the Dark.

“Not that way!”

The bird’s gone, and far too high, but trying to stop it comes automatically. My hand slices the space between the lights to disturb the churning, waist-high fog beyond. I stumble back, landing hard in the rocky soil, and stare at the horizon past the Grey.

The Dark doesn’t look like much, out there on the edge of the world, just a smudge in the distance where light goes to die. Shadows shift with the movement of the sun, growing longer and racing away as though they want no more to do with this place than the Arclight wants with them. Hopefully my little bird has the sense not to go so far.

I don’t want to be here anymore, or think that something I saved threw itself into the abyss for no reason. So I stand and turn away, surprised by the sudden appearance of a red glow hovering beyond the compound’s main building. Something’s burning.

Embers float along, dying as they fall, until I have to push through them to find their source. They settle solid on my arms and face, the warmer air becoming thick with smoke the nearer I come to a tramped-down hedgerow that’s ablaze, tended by Honoria and a group wearing security uniforms. This is why no one was patrolling the halls to stop me when I left alone; they’re all out here, guarding the breach until it can be reinforced.

Something beyond the boundary catches her attention, and Honoria’s hand goes to the silver pistol she keeps tucked against her back. Whatever it is, it passes quickly or isn’t worth her attention. Her hand goes slack on the gun’s handle, and she throws another bundle of cut brush into the fire.

Thankfully, no one sees me.

The air turns dry and brittle, filled with ash that stings my lungs. I hold my breath to stop the smell from entering my nose and the grit from sticking on my tongue, but that makes it worse. Each time I run out of air, I end up swallowing heat, until I’m forced to flee back the way I came.

I think of Tobin and his stories of the world before. People who walked out into the night because they heard the voices no one else could hear, calling them to a home that never existed. If someone sees me out here, skirting the Grey, they’ll think the same of me.

I follow the curve of the Arc away from the fire, and again, I find I’m not alone. Tobin approaches the boundary cautiously, pausing to scan the area every few feet, and I duck behind the switch box for the external alarm. It’s barely wide enough to hide me, but I doubt he sees me. It’s not people he’s looking for. Not out here so close to night.

Fear flits across his face, followed by an uncertainty he doesn’t know anyone can see as he rubs the back of his neck. He shakes his head and talks to himself, though his words die in the din of the fire and the churlish wind beyond the Arc.

The closer he comes to the boundary, the more frequent his glances to the side, toward the fire. There’s no way he can get to the breach point unnoticed. And there’s no explanation for being caught at the Arc, other than a desire to cross it. No one’s going to admit to that—not even Tobin. Not even for his father.

He starts pacing, venting his frustration through his feet.

Maybe, like me, he wants to watch the world change hands, and see the sun set, if only to prove life doesn’t end at moonrise. More likely, he’s hoping for a glimpse of something familiar. A figure in the distance, headed home. Walking, staggering, or carried by others, it won’t matter, so long as it’s recognizable as James Lutrell. If I knew what my parents looked like, I’d be searching, too.

Tobin’s hands run up his arms and through his hair. He bends to inspect a large rock wedged between two lamps at the divide between Light and Grey. It looks the same on both sides, which seems strange to me. What good is a barrier if nothing changes once you cross it?

He kicks at the rock until he works it loose, then picks it up, testing its heft in his hand. I hold my breath as he draws back for a throw, but he loses his nerve. It isn’t wise to disturb the silence beyond. This rule he’s not willing to break.

The rock drops with a heavy thud.

A sudden chill curls around the lamps, drawing fog into the perimeter. Tobin waves the misty trails away, frantically; I try blowing on them, hoping my breath will scatter them back to nothing.

The shadows shift again, stretching out, and when they reach their farthest point and join the Dark at the horizon, the Arc’s lamps come on in succession, early enough to change the bulbs or do repairs if one stops working. The lamps below our feet send columns of light into the sky, threading their beams into the horizontal lines cast by lamps on the poles. The ones atop our buildings create a canopy to cover the rest. Together they create a perfect weave, tight enough to beat back even the smallest creatures that might try to drag the Dark across our boundary on their feet and fur.

Anne-Marie says once a raccoon had the misfortune of crossing the Arc as it ignited. There was only a singe line left, and the scent of burnt hair. It’s absurd, but she swears her brother told the story when she was little.

Everything snaps back into view: grass and trees and animals like owls and Anne-Marie’s raccoon who’ve forgotten what it’s like to be nocturnal. A soft white glow bounces back from the building’s walls to match the polished shine of poured walkways set with crushed glass and reflective minerals. Somewhere, the night is black, but not here. Bugs from both sides hit the bulbs and incinerate, sparking and popping as they fall.

This is the time the world is divided, with no Grey in between. This is when it’s dangerous. The lines no longer blur and everything I lost is still out there, almost in sight, but beyond my reach. I rest my hand against the smooth metal of the nearest pole as Tobin leans his head against another. Power hums beneath my fingers and feet. The invisible wall between us falls away, and Tobin finally acknowledges that he’s not alone. His eyes, when they meet mine, have that distant look again, as though they’re not focused on the here or now. They grow stormy, then he turns toward the main building without a word.

A persistent plea of “Go” rattles around my brain, but there’s no answer when I ask it where I’m supposed to go to. Nothing lives beyond the Arc but death. There’s no way back to wherever I came from.

“I thought we had a deal.”

I cringe, knowing exactly who that voice belongs to. I’m an idiot. I’m not the one Tobin ran from.

Mr. Pace stands behind me, arms crossed. Trailing him, Honoria approaches with half of her patrolmen from the fire, ready pick up the slack of our weakened perimeter. They’re going back to their assigned places for the night, still wearing the exhaustion that comes from working through the day.

“You were supposed to stay in your room until first meal,” Mr. Pace says. “Not wander out to the boundary and set off the proximity alarms.”

I’m going to kill Tobin for picking up that stone; he must have tripped a sensor.

“I promised I’d stay out of sight, not in my room,” I say weakly.

“What’s she doing out here?” Honoria asks, ignoring me, as though I can’t answer for myself.

Hateful and hard, she snaps her fingers toward Mr. Pace and draws him away, pointing to me and then to the switchbox I’d used to hide from Tobin.

She thinks I was going to run; I can see it in her face.

She’ll turn me out to die in the Dark, or lock me up so the others can forget I ever disturbed their routine. If she’s decided that those lost to the Fade really did die in vain because of me. . . .

I bob from one foot to the other, giving the Arc a long glance and struggling not to give in to the voice telling me to leave and never look back. If I run, no one would follow.

No! Such thoughts are madness. Whatever Honoria decides, it’s not worth venturing into certain death to escape.

Finally, it ends. She jabs the air with an insistent finger, sending Mr. Pace back toward me.

“Sorry,” I whisper to my teacher. “I wasn’t running. I don’t hear voices like the people before.”

Honoria hasn’t taken her eyes off me, so I shift my attention to my feet.

“Is she going to make me leave?”

Mr. Pace steps sideways, turning his body into a blockade. “Marina, even if you did hear voices, that wouldn’t happen. Those who left in the first days weren’t tossed aside; the people here tried to keep them. Why were you at the switchbox?”

“I wanted to see what was burning, but then the sun started to go down and . . . I got scared, so I hid.” It sounds better than the truth.

“The fire’s nothing to worry about,” he says, and tries to smile.

“People only say that when they mean the opposite.”

“Not me.”

“It’s where they broke through, isn’t it?”

Mr. Pace hesitates, checking over his shoulder to see what Honoria’s doing. Once he’s sure she’s occupied with inspecting the switchbox, he answers.

“Yes.”

“How’d they get so close?” If Tobin and I were enough to trigger a sensor, they should have, too.

“Most people think of the Arclight and Dark as rings, with the Grey between them.” He drops to the ground and draws three concentric circles in the dirt. “But there are places where the Dark comes so close that the Grey’s almost gone.”

He nods in the direction my little bird disappeared and wipes the drawing away to make another. A tiny circle in the center, with an amorphous blob surrounding it. The band that separates the two grows wide on one side, and nonexistent on the other.

“Our territory is shrinking, while the Dark is always growing wider, consuming the terrain around it. Another decade, and we may not have the luxury of going outside at all.”

With his finger, he drags the blob’s line closer until it touches the rim of the Arclight’s circle.

“That’s why the boundaries are forbidden for you and the others who are too young to appreciate the danger.”

Danger isn’t something to be appreciated; it’s something to be avoided. And if he thinks I don’t understand that, then he’s not half as smart as I give him credit for.

“So long as the lights are on, the Fade can get close, but not cross over,” he says.

“But last night—”

“We pulled too much power too fast,” he says. “They hit the barrier from three sides, overloading the system by tripping all the main sensors simultaneously. Most of the lights dimmed, but the ones at the fire point shut off completely.”

“You mean they just walked through?”

He nods.

“It was a worst-case scenario. Circuits for the Arc are supposed to be isolated, but if things happen in a certain order, the base grid defaults to its original programming, glitches included. The system couldn’t tell the security lights from the room lights.”

“Do you think—”

I can’t bring myself to ask him if it was someone taken during my rescue who told the Fade how to get past our security.

“I think they got lucky,” he says. Mr. Pace puts a hand on my shoulder, but removes it when I flinch. “They’ve always tested us. It was only a matter of time before they found a way in.”

“That’s the difference between us, Pace.” Honoria invites herself into our conversation. “I don’t expect the Fade to find weakness. What I expect is that the people who live here will stick to their assigned places.” She turns her temper on me. “Keep away from the power boxes, they can kill you.”

“I didn’t touch the box,” I say. “I was only hiding behind it.”

“From what?” she demands. “Did you see something?”

“The lights startled me. It was the closest thing to hide behind.”

“Well at least you kept your head. . . .” She never finishes the halfway compliment. Instead, she snatches my burnt wrist up to eye level. “Where’s your bracelet?”

“She got burned in the run,” Mr. Pace says. “I told her to put it on her other arm until she healed.”

I hold up my left arm so Honoria can see the alarm’s really there. Thankfully, she doesn’t test the latch.

“You should have gone to the hospital.”

“I gave her some salve, and told her to keep an eye on it,” Mr. Pace says. “Doc had his hands full. He’d have done the same thing.”

“Why are you out here?” Honoria’s fingers are rough on my ragged skin as she prods the burn and new scrapes.

“It started to bother me, so I put some cold water on it. Then I couldn’t go back to sleep. I smelled the fire, and—”

“From inside?”

I stare back, hoping my expression is as blank as everyone claims. I don’t know what to say, and thinking quickly usually ends with me tripping over my own tongue.

“Her room’s on that side of the building, Honoria,” Mr. Pace says.

“Get that wrist treated before it gets infected,” she says. “And have her window resealed. I won’t tolerate another weak point on this facility, especially not on a priority target.”

Priority target . . . no way is that a good thing.

“And next time you take a stroll outside, wear your gloves. You’ll have a harder time scraping your hands.”

I dig my bare toes into the dirt, thankful she doesn’t look at my feet.

Honoria stalks past us. Mr. Pace gives a heavy sigh.

“You didn’t smell the smoke inside, did you?”

“I could have,” I offer lamely.

“The burn’s been going for hours. If it had bothered you inside . . . please tell me you haven’t been out here for hours.”

Yes, I’m definitely going to kill Tobin. This should be his lecture, too.

“Marina, I know it’s technically safe inside the Arc, and the sun’s only just set, but after last night—”

“Nowhere’s safe.”

“That’s not what I meant.” His hand falls heavy on my shoulder, but this time he doesn’t move it. “The Arclight is safe. Last night was an aberration, but it still happened.”

“Will it happen again?”

“We’re doing what we can to make sure it doesn’t, but we’ve stagnated on drills so long that we forgot the Fade aren’t simply monsters in some children’s story, easily overcome because they’re on the wrong side. They don’t move in the ways most convenient to us. They’re intelligent, and they can plan. Last night, their plans proved superior to ours. Next time we’ll have to be better. And that will be easier if you stay where you’re supposed to be.”

This wasn’t what I had in mind when I left my room. All I wanted was air and open space, not to cause more trouble for people who’ve already given too much to protect me.

“Where’d I come from?” I ask, nudging the edge of his dirt diagram with my toe. “Which side?”

“The short side,” he says. “We found you hiding in the Grey.”

“In the water?”

“Yeah,” he says. “There’s an old boat platform out there. You’d gotten into the water behind the pier supports. We almost missed you.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. We weren’t the only ones who couldn’t find you.”

He heads toward the main building, stopping when I pause to collect my shoes and socks. It’s a harder decision to follow him than it should be. There shouldn’t be anything out here daring me to stay, but there is. An itch I can’t quite reach kicks in every time I turn away from the horizon.

I wonder if this is what it was like for those who came before, if that itch is the first hint of hearing the call to join the Dark.

But I won’t. Not ever.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“I’ll have to scrape it before I can bandage it,” Dr. Wolff says after examining my arm.

Mr. Pace abandoned me promptly upon delivering me to the hospital. I suspect his quick exit had something to do with Dr. Wolff’s dirty looks and muttered promises of unspecified pain for those who thought they were better equipped to treat his patients.

“Hold still” is the only warning he gives, and when he’s done, tiny dots of blood glisten on my skin where he scraped away more than one layer of flesh. But unlike Honoria, Dr. Wolff tries for gentle. “That wasn’t too bad, I hope.”

I grit my teeth, determined not to let the tears show.

“How’s your inhaler?”

“Why won’t it work on anything but my headaches?”

“What else would you need it for?”

“My leg,” I say, kicking it for emphasis.

“You pushed it too hard last night, didn’t you?” he asks.

I shrug. Dr. Wolff isn’t intimidating in the least when he’s not armed with medical instruments, but my throat threatens to close up every time I come here.

“Does it hurt now?” he asks.

“It’s a little sore,” I lie. The echo of pain from my nightmare has plagued me since I woke up.

“You didn’t break the wound open?”

“No,” I say quickly, afraid he’ll decide he needs to examine it again, which will only lead to more questions and a longer stay.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dr. Wolff eyes me suspiciously for the too-polite answer, but I imagine he’s seen plenty of people acting strange since last night.

“How’s Jove?” I ask, redirecting him.

Several beds are curtained off, so I assume he’s behind one of the partitions, but I’d sort of like to know that what Anne-Marie and I did last night made a difference. It would be nice to be the answer to a problem for once, rather than the cause.

“He’ll be all right,” Dr. Wolff says. “I understand he has you to thank for that.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“Not many people would have made the choice you did.” My face must show my confusion because he explains. “You and Annie kept him from going to into shock. It takes a great deal of compassion to offer aid after someone’s hurt you.”

Somehow I don’t think he’d appreciate my saying I was more concerned with keeping Anne-Marie from losing it than keeping Jove comfortable.

“Jove was scared,” I say. “He thought . . . you know . . . that his mom was one of them. He thought she’d come with the Fade to take him back to the Dark.”

“And he blamed you?”

“He always has.”

“Do you think his opinions have changed?”

“I doubt he can tell me. I’m pretty sure his jaw was broken.”

“Dislocated and fractured,” Dr. Wolff corrects. “But it should heal good as new.”

He picks up an empty syringe. I’d hoped we could skip the blood sample this visit, but the man is nothing if not consistent. I roll up my sleeve and give him my arm, watching the tube in his hand as it fills.

“Have you given any consideration to where you’d like to focus your studies once you age up?” he asks.

“It sort of slipped my mind.”

Along with everything else that wasn’t “run for your life or die trying.”

“Well, should it happen to slip back in, I hope you’ll consider what I’ve said. There are some things a person’s born to, whether they want to believe it or not,” he says. He removes the needle and taps me on the head with my hospital file while I bend my elbow to stop the bleeding.

“You might as well let me refill your inhaler while you’re here. If you’ve been using it for your leg, you’ve probably depleted it. I’m surprised you haven’t overdosed.”

I pull the cord over my head and hand it to him without mentioning that most of my inhaler usage was in a dream.

“It’ll be a minute or two; the new batch isn’t mixed.”

Dr. Wolff disappears into the back room where he keeps his supplies locked up, leaving me to wait alone. He wasn’t exaggerating the need for healers when he spoke in class. In all the time I’ve spent in this room, I’ve seen maybe a dozen people wearing patches that denote medical service, and none are here consistently. They only come when called to assist.

I close my eyes again, straining for sounds to give the moment depth. Pinging machines, or the whoosh of air from the overhead vent, even my own heartbeat. Often, finding that faint layer beneath the usual clamor or quiet is the only way I can function. Absolute silence terrifies me.

I’m counting the ticks of a wall clock when I hear footsteps approach from the door on the opposite side of the hospital, stopping behind the curtain next to my bed.

“I’m sorry, man.” It’s Tobin, talking to Jove. “I know you can’t hear me, but I’m sorry.”

I should tell him I’m here, but I already know I won’t. I can be very still when I want, and right now, I’m grateful for it. He’d never talk like this if he knew I could hear him.

“And don’t think I’m only apologizing because Annie threatened unspecified yet terrifying retribution if I didn’t.”

He pauses every few words, but no matter how hard I listen, there’s never a response. He must be filling in Jove’s half of the conversation with his own imagined answers.

I do that—imagine conversations with Tobin. I apologize for his father’s death and he accepts, or I apologize and he curses me; it depends on my mood. I don’t have to pretend with Jove or the others, because I know where I stand with them, but Tobin won’t even acknowledge that his dad’s dead. Somehow my offense seems greater with him, like it’s worse because his father was the one who made the call to save me over the rest.

“And Mr. Pace didn’t make me come, either. I just wanted to apologize. I’ll do it again when you’re awake, okay?”

Tobin’s words may be friendly and familiar, but his voice comes thin and hurried, punctuated by bouts of swallowing.

“I’m probably rambling you into a deeper coma, but I haven’t slept, so it’s not my fault. I doubt anyone slept after last night. Well, maybe Annie.”

He laughs; I put my hand over my mouth so I can’t. Anne-Marie can sleep anywhere. I’ve even seen her do it standing up when we were in formation too long. She dropped her forehead onto Jonah’s back and started snoring.

“And, when you wake up, we’re going to talk about Marina. You have to step off. You can’t keep—”