The Earth Dwellers

I jam my thumb into the button marked 55. It lights up blue.

What am I doing? I’m being reckless. But this could be my only opportunity to get a close look at Lecter, maybe even kill him right here and now, and it’s not like the war is going to wait for me to slowly gain the trust of my employer. And I’ve got a card to play, one I can only play once.

The elevator whirs to life and climbs, climbs, climbs, shuddering every now and then. The doors open and I half expect Lecter to be sitting in front of me, his silvery hair set atop his fake smile. No, it’s just a lobby, with stark white walls like everywhere else in this city.

The door begins to close automatically and I block it with a hand, peek out to the right. There is a set of glass doors with a desk behind them. A woman is rummaging through a cabinet, momentarily distracted. Two guards are on either side of her, but they’re looking away too, talking to her. One says something lewd about how she should wear shorter skirts to work. The other just laughs. Do I have time to slip through the doors and past her? There’s no way I’ll make it with my cart.

I glance to the left to find a single door. Will my cart fit through? This is my one shot, I remind myself. Grabbing the handle, I pull the cart over the bumpy transitional bits from the elevator to the lobby floor, cringing when a few cleaning bottles rattle against each other. The lady is oblivious as she tries to find whatever she’s looking for, and the soldiers only have eyes for her backside.

Heading to the left, I pray the door’s unlocked. I turn the handle, feeling the satisfying give as the door opens. Pull my cart through…

Crap!

The sides of the cart slide along the sides of the frame and then stop. It’s wedged. Past it, the woman pulls something from the cabinet, scans it, and then starts to turn…

I wrench the cart sharply, trying to force it through the doorway. It makes a nasty scraping sound, but then it’s through, rattling ten times worse than before as it follows me into a hallway. The door closes behind me. Did the woman or soldiers see it? Did they hear it? I’m not sticking around to find out.

Heart thudding like a bass drum, sweat trickling down my back, I push the cart hard down the hall, just under jogging speed. Turn a corner and—

—bright light blinds me, seeming to go straight into my eyes, into my brain, and

—even as I slam my eyelids closed I can see the fiery red of the sun through them.

Fu

Ever so slowly, bit by bit, I open my eyes, shielding them with a cupped hand. A wall of glass stands before me, angling sharply, creating the building’s pointed top. The panes face the rising sun, letting in an extraordinary amount of light. And above me and around me and everywhere, is the Dome, impossibly enormous and almost glowing as the morning sunlight pours through it.

Beneath that, spreading out in every direction, is the city, the buildings’ dwarfed by the larger presidential offices. It’s a spectacular sight, and yet…there’s not a splash of color anywhere, and I might as well be back in the gray oblivion of the Moon Realm.

I tear my gaze away and turn back to my cart and I’m about to move on, when I hear a voice. “Failure is not an option!” it roars, muffled as it cuts through glass and wood to reach my ears. And although the voice is different, angry, not in the least bit constrained like how I heard it before, I know without a doubt who the voice belongs to:

Lecter.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Siena

Grunt’s stumbling every few steps by the time night falls on the desert. I almost want to go over and let him lean on me, but I don’t wa

Unfortunately, that ain’t happening, ’cause if we wa

As the day has trudged on, there’s been less and less talking. Even I shut up eventually, stamping out the urge to drink half my water skin with each step. I’m still holding Circ’s hand, but Feve’s moved up ahead to walk with Wilde and Skye.

Long after the sky turns completely black and littered with starlight, we stop to rest. Half the group, including Grunt, just drop where they stand, falling asleep without eating or drinking anything. Grunt must be awfully tired, ’cause it ain’t like him to miss a meal, even one as unappetizing as dried ’zard and raw prickler.

Me and Circ lean up against each other, the sand warm and rough beneath our bare legs. Chew slowly, drink slowly, listen to each other’s heartbeats. Forget ’bout why we’re here and where we’re going and who we’re fighting. Just exist, as one, like so many times ’fore.

A familiar voice shatters the silence, one I haven’t heard in a long time. A voice from the past, tossed through two sets of bars, comforting in the dark. “We’re almost there,” he says.

I turn to see Raja, still as ski

“You—you look better,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says. “Hey, Circ.”

“Raj,” Circ says, passing him the water skin. Raja takes it and presses it to his lips.

He hands the skin back. “Fightin’ the good fight, eh?” he says.

“Searin’ right,” I say.

“You know, we ain’t that far from…you know,” he says.

“Where?” I say. Somewhere north…ice country? No, not that far yet, but close. Confinement. We ain’t that far from Confinement.

Raja must see it click in my eyes, ’cause he says, “Wa

No, I think. But I wouldn’t mind going to see good ol’ Perry. I should be sleeping already. “Yeah,” I say. “Be back soon.” Circ gives me a look but doesn’t try to stop me.

Me and Raja weave through the sleeping bodies, out into the dark of the desert, his torch freezing ’zards and burrow mice in their tracks ’fore they scamper outta our way.

“Wooloo, isn’t it?” Raja says.

“What?”

“How things change so quick, like they’s strapped on a bolt of lightning, or the wind, or the back of a Killer.”

“Yeah,” I say, blinking back the reminder of what happened to the Icers. “But everything stays the same too.”

“How so?” Raja asks, holding his torch up to see my face.

“We’re still friends, ain’t we?”

“Guess yer right,” he says, and we stop to let a brambleweed tumble past.

“Can I ask you something, Raj?” I say when we get moving again.

“Me sayin’ no’s never stopped you ’fore.”

I laugh. Ain’t that the truth. “We’ve both been in a hopeless place ’fore. Like hopeless hopeless, where we thought the world could end and we mightn’t even care or notice. But we pulled through, didn’t we?”

“Is that the question?”

“No,” I say, thinking of Skye. “I’m just asking whether we got lucky. I was never the strongest person ’fore, but then I found something inside me I didn’t even know I had. And I got through it. You did too. Do you think everyone’s the same like that? The strong ones, the weak ones, the in-betweens. Or will some of ’em stay stuck down in that hole, seeking out revenge and death?” What I don’t ask is: Will Skye stay stuck down in that hole? If Lecter dies, will she be satisfied? Or will she be angry all the time, boiling from the inside out, like a ’zard egg in bubbling water?