Chapter Nineteen #2
If I’d never met Julian and Ezra, I’d have continued to do what I was told with great pride, until someone wanting to save others from harm set my Mission aflame or cut me down in the street.
Maybe I’d have deserved it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the orphans brought to the House.
The little ones. The Generators who had no idea what they were doing.
They deserved a chance to know the truth.
“Yes,” Julian finally agreed. “We have to try.”
When a huge brown hare darted across the path in front of us, it’s not that I consciously decided to kill it. It was that hunger overtook me with such fervor, I didn’t consider that my meal was not yet dead.
Ezra let out a startled shout when I thrust my arm out, my radiance giving off a blinding flash of light. It made a sound like rustling paper.
The rabbit smoked faintly where I’d struck it in the head.
“Is that what you nearly did to me during the train robbery?” he asked, aghast.
“Yes,” I admitted, grateful he’d acted quickly enough to avoid being murdered before we’d ever had a chance to meet.
Julian crouched by the rabbit and drew a large knife from his pack. “If you’ve only now figured out that she’s deadly, I’m shocked you’ve lived this long.”
I wasn’t sure what surprised me more—the swiftness of my own instinct to kill the hare, or Julian making light of my murderous tendencies.
Ezra rolled his eyes and started gathering kindling.
I’d never seen an animal skinned, only the work of a good butcher once all the fur and cuteness was gone. Feeling like I owed the rabbit as much, I watched what it took to make it ready for us to eat. It was a gory affair, but Julian finished quickly, every cut precise.
“You’ve done this before.”
“Of course I have,” he said simply. “More often with fish, though. That’s smellier business, but not as bloody.”
“Show me how, next time.”
Julian glanced up with an approving nod. “I will.” He paused a moment. “You’d have made a fine Transistor. I’m grateful you were not selected. I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t want to face you in that capacity.”
It had not occurred to me until now that as a Transistor, I’d have never met Ezra or Julian or learned the truth about Progress. I’d have been single-mindedly focused on killing resistors. I’d have felt righteous in my wrath, in my duty to defend the defenseless. “Thank you,” I murmured, dazed.
Ezra, tender from their fight, slowly gathered what we needed to make a small fire and fashioned a spit.
We crouched close to the flames despite the warmth of the day, huddled like children around a bag of candy.
Little time passed before the meat began to brown and drip small crackling bits of fat into the fire.
With a surprising lack of refinement, Julian cleaned the meat and handed out portions. He offered a blood-dark organ to Ezra.
“Jo should have it.”
“I am not currently bleeding. You are,” I responded, around the bite I’d already taken with all the manners of a wild dog.
“I am not currently bleeding. I was previously bleeding,” he grumbled, popping the slimy-looking organ into his mouth and chewing with a grimace.
We made fast, greasy work of the rabbit and kicked sand over the fire. It hadn’t been enough to satisfy us, but it was more than we’d eaten in a few days. A warm sense of accomplishment filled me nearly as much as the fresh, gamey meat.
Noting the smile on my face as we walked away, Ezra grinned. “You’re becoming feral right before my eyes.”
“Do you like it?” I asked, intending it to be a joke. Instead, my voice took on an earnest tone that set my cheeks aflame.
“Yes. And I like it when you smile,” he responded softly.
My heartbeat set off fluttering like one of the noisy little birds we scared from the grass. “Don’t be foolish,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended.
“He is incapable of being otherwise,” Julian said.
I started to laugh, the sound like water spilling over a dam. I didn’t realize how tense my shoulders were until that tension eased incrementally.
The trees were already thinning. “It shouldn’t be much farther,” Julian said. “Cascade is on the other side of this forest.”
Here, the wagon trail was well-worn and covered with a soft pine needle bed.
This was the kind of forest I’d seen in picture books, with none of the messy undergrowth that made Frostbrook’s woodlands difficult to navigate.
It made me want to learn the names of the trees.
These ones were taller than any I’d ever seen, the needles a dark, rich green. Julian had called them giants.
“It’s hard to believe you’ve never been here,” I said to him. “It looks exactly the way you described.”
“It feels like I have.” His expression became faraway, as close to daydreaming as I could imagine him in all his practicality.
“I’ve been exchanging letters and research with the Taylors for so long, I feel as if I’ve lived by their sides.
Nikola isn’t much older than I am. I suppose she feels like a sister.
She’s far more intelligent than I am. You would like her. ”
“Wasn’t it dangerous to correspond in writing?” I’d never written a single thing I didn’t want every other girl in our dorm to read—usually out loud with cruel glee. It had taken only one traumatic enactment of a diary entry for me to decide that private notions should never be committed to paper.
“The letters were written in code, of course.”
Of course. Just like his journal. He really was the overachiever we’d all thought him to be back at the House. I considered his messy desk at the Frostbrook Mission. “Is all your research documented in code?”
“Nothing is documented. Even with cyphers, that’s too risky. Most of my research is in my head. And Nikola destroys every previous iteration of her prototype plans.”
Dread washed over me. If someone wanted to stop Julian and Nikola from introducing synthetic radiance to the world, it would simply be a matter of finding them and killing them. “How many people know what you’re working on?”
“In detail? Only the Taylors in Cascade, of course.” Julian glanced aside at Ezra, who appeared to be engrossed in studying the canopy above us, his mouth working through a series of expressions that led me to believe he was likely having some kind of riveting conversation with the trees.
“Ezra is aware of some of my research, despite preferring not to be.”
Julian held the future in his mind. A walking liability to the House of Industry. Just one boy.
It would be nothing for the Elders to eliminate him. His research would die with him.
I brushed my hand against his worriedly. “When you debut synthetic radiance, people are going to want to hurt you.”
“I know that,” he said, infuriatingly calm. I didn’t understand how he could be so nonchalant. He wasn’t like me—he wasn’t a killer. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself if the House came after him.
“We have to get more people on your side,” I said. “You’ll be safer when we have more allies. Especially other Children of Industry who can protect you.”
Julian hummed. “It won’t be easy. Think about how comforting rules are. How good it feels to follow them.”
Spoken like the House of Industry’s most decorated pupil.
“Even you stopped following the rules,” I pointed out.
“Because I craved knowledge more than order,” he said simply.
“Julian thinks he’s above rules,” Ezra added.
“Let’s agree that neither of you is particularly good at doing what’s expected of you,” I said, exasperated.
Ezra snorted. “Says the girl who jumped off a perfectly good train.”
I grinned despite my worry, glad to be here in the woods with two strange rule breakers, as opposed to back at the House of Industry, trying to explain my failings to the Elders. Or working hard at a Mission, my eyes clouded and my radiance poisoning the land and the people around me.
“What if all of us stopped?” I asked. At Julian’s questioning look, I added, “Stopped using our radiance. Altogether.”
Julian and Ezra exchanged a look. I recognized it as another ghost of a conversation that had happened long before I’d ever come to Frostbrook.
Julian frowned at some distant point in the forest. “I tried to stop.”
I stared at him, unable to imagine the House of Industry’s top student refusing to use his own radiance.
“It made him sick,” Ezra volunteered, sounding pleased to have the opportunity to disclose a secret.
“You did it in Frostbrook?”
“Of course,” Julian said. “I had freedom to experiment with no oversight. That’s why I requested a transfer to the Frostbrook Mission. That along with the relevant proximity to Cascade.”
“So, if we all quit releasing radiance, what?” I asked. “We’d get sick? Surely that’s better than killing people.”
Julian adjusted his pack. His knuckles were pale where he held the straps.
“He almost died.” Ezra no longer sounded pleased. “He would have died. From what I could tell, his organs began to shut down. He didn’t get better until I convinced him to end his foolhardy endeavor.”
“Admittedly, it wasn’t one of my more thoughtfully considered experiments,” Julian said.
I shivered, trying to imagine my radiance killing me from the inside. “Why didn’t they tell us about this at the House? Don’t they know?”
“I’m certain the Elders know. But I’m not sure everyone else knows.” Julian’s shoulders rose and fell with a quick sigh. “Professor Dunn never mentioned it.”
A pang of longing surprised me. I missed Professor Dunn. If she were here, she’d probably be able to tell all of us exactly what to do. “Why would she have mentioned it?”
Julian smiled faintly. “It was Professor Dunn who connected me with Maggie Taylor in Cascade.”
“With a scientist?” I asked, startled. “Did she know you were … that you’re like this?”
“Rebellious?” Julian asked with a small smile. “She did.”
Be yourself, Professor Dunn had told me. Had she known me better than I’d known myself? The thought warmed me, the smallest ember of hope in my chest. I smiled, touching the hollow of my throat where I’d worn my apprentice scarf before casting it away.
Julian swung the pack from his shoulders and crouched to fill the water pouches at a shallow stream. “I don’t know how many other Children of Industry we can sway. But I believe we’ll have Professor Dunn’s support when we present our research next year.”
My mind buzzed at the thought of Professor Dunn working against the Elders in secret, working to support Julian. “How did you manage to get top marks if you didn’t even believe in what you were doing?”
“Top marks?” Ezra laughed once. “You must have been insufferable.”
Julian ignored him. “I knew that I needed to leave the House in excellent standing. Success gave me access to opportunity. I knew it would make me an unlikely suspect if anyone discovered efforts to undermine the spread of Progress.”
Even if I’d had an ulterior motive, I’d never have been able to position myself as a stellar student. The longer I was away, the more I could acknowledge that I’d hated the House of Industry.
Now that I wasn’t alone, I understood how lonely I’d been.
“My success at the House doesn’t matter now,” Julian went on absently, “No one can accuse a dead man of heresy.”
Ezra stiffened so noticeably that both of us looked up at him. “I smell smoke,” he said.
“Someone’s made camp nearby?” I asked. Surely that wasn’t worth the alarm. It could be anyone.
“I don’t smell it,” Julian said with a twinge of irritation—as if unaccustomed to not being the first to notice something.
Ezra frowned, looking almost apologetic. “Julian, I don’t think it’s a campfire.”
“Cascade,” I exhaled.
Julian scrambled to his feet. He tucked his journal into his pocket and left his pack behind, hurtling off at a headlong run.
I followed as best I could, not nearly as long-legged as he was.
A quick glance verified that Ezra was able to keep up, no longer favoring his side at all. The forest had been good to him.
We ran too quickly to talk, stopping every so often to catch our breaths and silently confirm that no one had dropped off. In less than an hour, we spotted the bright edge of the forest. Julian sprinted ahead, quick as a squirrel.
I doubled over, retching with exertion.
Ezra rubbed my back urgently. “Almost there. Only a bit farther.”
I choked on fear as noxious as the smoke thickening in the woods. I’d allowed myself to trust this plan of Julian’s, the scientists who knew more than I did, these people who believed we could change the future for the better.
If something had happened to them, what would we be left with?
Gasping, I made myself keep running, Ezra at my side.
When we emerged from the forest, we found Julian leaning against a bale of hay, his chest heaving.
At the far side of the pasture, gray smoke billowed from a line of flames.
As the wind caught the smoke and thinned it briefly, I saw the high wooden fence of a compound, a farmhouse beyond it, the towering shape of a silo, and several livestock paddocks.
It was burning.
All of it was burning.