Perfect Ruin (24 page)

I stand on the tips of my toes and bring my face close to his. “No I won’t,” I say. “Because you’re here. You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”

I kiss him. The back of his neck is warm when I touch it.

He stoops to set the debris on the floor, and then he’s touching the sides of my face, his hands as soft as air. His eyes have changed, gone hazy the way they do when our bodies are close. I like that I’m the only one that does this to him; I’m the only one who gets to see him this way. “Never,” he murmurs.

He gathers me up and I’m weightless before he sets me on the railing that overlooks the next level. He’s the only thing keeping me from falling back, out of the reach of daylight. I’m not afraid of falling. I don’t fear the sky beyond the train tracks like I did before. I can go anywhere just so long as it’s with him.

He has one arm around my back, while his other hand bunches my skirt up to my hips.

Say it,
that voice is telling me again.
Say that you love him.
But what I say is, “I’ve never seen you like this.”

All I want to do is kiss him under these windows that are full of sky.

His mouth tastes the same as it did that afternoon when he told me he would follow me to the edge. We’re both still wearing our uniforms, which have been laundered and made to smell of soapberries, but there’s a familiarity to them.

“I don’t care if it’s in the sky or on the ground,” he says against my neck. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“Even without the decision makers?” I say, drawing back.

“Especially then,” he says. “It wouldn’t have mattered whether or not we were paired up. It’s always been you, Morgan.”

I push forward so that my nose and forehead are against his, and I’m smiling so wide it hurts. “You’d choose an irrational like me?” I say. “Without being forced.”

He kisses me. “Yes.”

“A girl who’s terrible with math—”

“Yes.”

“A shameless daydreamer—”

“Yes.”

“Who’s brought you nothing but trouble?”

“Yes.” He holds my chin in his hand. “Yes. Daydream all you like.”

Over us, the sky goes dark. At first I wonder how evening could have come so quickly, but then I realize it’s the clouds that have gotten dark, not the sky. Though they don’t make a sound, it’s as though they’re growling at us.

Basil notices it too. I hop down from the railing and we both stare up at this strange new sky.

G
ET YOUR FINGERS OFF MY WINDOWS, kid,” the professor says. Amy doesn’t even hear him. She’s too busy gaping at the flecks of white that are whirling around us.

“What is this?” she gasps.

“I think they’re ice shavings,” I say. “Lex, you told me about this happening when clouds release water and it freezes.”

He raises his head toward the windows as though he’ll be able to look. I immediately regret what I’ve said; it’s got to be killing him that he can’t see any of what’s happening.

“It shouldn’t hurt us,” he says. “Not unless it’s coming down fast.”

“They’re like lightbugs,” Amy says. “Daphne and I used to catch them in jars.”

“Where are you going?” Basil says when I let go of his hand.

“Pen has to see this,” I say.

“Take the lantern, then,” he says.

It’s hard to believe the rest of the bird is dark while this fantastic thing is happening in the Nucleus.

When I find Pen in Amy’s bunk room, she’s speaking to Thomas in a low voice. His eyes are open, but murky. “Don’t worry,” Pen tells him, raising her voice when she hears me approach. “You’re free of that crazy princess now. We’ll kill her later, no matter if Morgan thinks she can stop us.”

“I’m on your side, you know,” I say.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for not letting me punch her.”

Thomas draws a sharp breath and then hoarsely says, “Not a good idea.”

“See?” I say. “He agrees with me.”

“No he doesn’t,” Pen says. “He’s been speaking nonsense for the last several minutes.”

“I only told you I love you,” Thomas says.

“Shush. How did you end up in the hands of that lunatic princess anyway?”

Weakly, he raises his arm, reaches into his shirt pocket, and retrieves a scrap of lace. Pen looks at her dress and realizes it’s the piece that’s missing from her collar. “She told me that she had you prisoner,” he says. “She said she would kill you if I didn’t follow her.”

“We should just leave her somewhere to fend for herself when we land,” Pen says. “I hope the people on the ground are savages with an appetite for blondes.” She looks over her shoulder at me. “Did you want something?”

“Remember that frozen dust I told you about?” I say. “We’re flying in it.”

She turns her attention back to Thomas. Her fingers are trembling when she smoothes his blanket. Delirious though he may be, he notices and grabs her hand.

“Pen? Don’t you want to see it?” I say.

“No,” she says softly.

“But it’s unlike anything—”

She closes the door on me.

I know that it isn’t these icy white swirls that have Pen so scared. It’s the idea of leaving Internment and surviving it. It’s the idea that our god doesn’t care whether or not we return, and that the history book may be wrong.

Amy says the ice shavings are like lightbugs, but they remind me of the funerals I’ve attended. Of the dusted bodies released onto the wind. In the dusting process, all the bad of a person’s soul is burned away, so that only the goodness will carry on to the afterlife. It’s a cleansing.

“It’s like we’re flying through the tributary,” I say, leaning back against Basil’s chest.

“They’re flurries,” Lex says, annoyed. “Don’t turn something scientific into a cathartic experience.”

“Be nice,” Alice tells him.

I don’t offer a response. Lex is entitled to his bitterness for having to miss this sight. I wouldn’t know how anyone could describe it in a way he’d appreciate.

“I think I’ve found a landing spot,” the professor says. “Where’s Judas? Need him to help me with the wheels.” There are so many pieces to this bird, and they serve so many different purposes, that it makes my head spin. Once it’s on the ground in broad daylight, I want to inspect it. I hope they have image recorders on the ground so that I can take images.

“He’s watching the princess,” Amy says, adding a flourish to the word “princess.” “She can’t be left alone, apparently.”

“I’ll get him,” Basil says, before I can volunteer.

“I’ll go with you,” I say.

“Me too!” Amy chirps.

Judas is keeping the princess in one of the bunk rooms. We find him standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, as the princess re-braids her hair.

“We’re landing,” I tell Judas. “The professor needs you. Something about wheels?”

The princess stands, her face alight. “Landing?” she gasps. “As in, on the ground?”

“Watch her,” Judas says as he leaves the bunk room. “She’ll try to seduce you.”

“We’ll try to resist,” I say.

Princess Celeste wrings her hands. “So we’re near the ground, then?” she asks. She blinks several times when she notices Amy staring at her. “Hello,” she says. She cheerily shows a row of white teeth, and her eyes squint pleasantly when she smiles, the way she smiles in every image and at every ceremony her father hosts. She would have no way of knowing that this girl before her is the famous murdered girl’s sister. Maybe she doesn’t even know her father’s role in Daphne’s death.

“I heard you collect deer antlers,” Amy says.

“Not only the antlers,” Princess Celeste says. “The whole heads sometimes, if my father lets me. Most of the body gets sent to the food and bone factories, to make jewelry like the necklace you’re wearing there.”

Amy touches the bone-carved star hanging from her neck. I’ve never noticed it before.

“Living things make the greatest art,” the princess says.

“Dead things, you mean,” Amy says, hoisting the star up in her palm. “This is dead.”

“Once living, then,” the princess says.

From somewhere on the bird, Judas calls, “Brace yourselves!” And it’s not a moment too soon, because a jolt has us all going sideways. Basil grabs on to my waist, and I grab Amy, fearing she’ll go into another of her fits. The princess backs herself into a corner and presses her hands on either wall. I could swear she looks excited.

The turbulence persists for another minute or so, and there’s an instant of reprieve before the floor shakes beneath us, like we’ve crashed into the ground and now we’re skidding.

“Pen!” I call. “Are you guys okay?”

“Lovely!”

This is it. The moment when we reach the ground, or die trying. My nerves are jumbled and I’m starting to feel nauseous. I’ve already endured more in one day than the whole of Internment’s population would deem possible. Generations of rebels have plotted for this. Several have died in failed attempts. It’s foolish of me to think that I’d be among the ones to finally achieve it.

But fantastic things are possible. I’ve learned that.

When the bird goes still at last, Amy stumbles into the hallway, drops to her knees, and gags like she’s going to be sick.

I kneel beside her.

“My body hates this endeavor,” she says, coughing.

“At least it wasn’t another fit,” I say. “You won’t miss any of the fun.”

She smiles wearily at me.

The bird hitches, and Amy claws at the floor and closes her eyes.

I think she’s whispering to the god in the sky.

P
EN AND THOMAS ARE THE ONLY ONES missing from the Nucleus.

We all stand at the windows, trying to reconcile what’s before us. A ground covered with white dust. White dust that falls from the clouds. Beyond that, more water than I’ve ever seen in one place. It’s nothing like our modest lakes. The waves are like roars. The water stretches on toward the sky, making a hazy, unreachable seam.

Basil stands behind me with an arm across my collarbone, as though to protect me from danger lurking in this gray-and-white place. Pen asked if they had color on the ground, and I assured her they did, but suddenly I’m not so sure. There’s no blue even in the sky.

I wonder if we’re dead. I feel as though we have been cast beyond the reaches of the living, and we’re to remain forever here, neither alive nor dead. For all the daydreaming I’ve done about the ground, I suddenly cannot imagine that life exists beyond my floating city.

The professor shuts the engine. The metal pops and groans.

The princess is the first to speak. “This is it?”

“Of course not,” Judas says. “We’re only facing the water, that’s all.”

“See you later, then,” she says, turning for the door. “You can all stand around gaping at this monstrosity of a lake if you’d like, but I’m on a mission.”

Her footsteps clomping down the metal platform stir us all into motion. Everyone follows her for the door, except the professor, who stays behind to be sure the engine cools properly. Not that I see what it would matter; I doubt this thing has the strength or the means to return us to the sky, and even if it does, we’re all fugitives. We aren’t returning.

We parade down the hallways and the spiral staircase, through the kitchen and down the ladder that will take us to the door. Judas shoulders his way to the front. “Sorry, Princess,” he says. “Usually I’d say ‘Ladies first,’ but this could be dangerous.”

The princess folds her arms. “So chivalrous.”

I’m worried about Pen, but I know that it will do no good to call for her. She can’t be rushed. All her life she has believed in our history books, and we’ve just fallen into a world where perhaps none of what we’ve been taught will matter.

I grab Basil’s hand and peer down the ladder as Judas undoes the series of locks.

“Wait,” I say. “What if the air is different? What if it’s diseased, or those ice flurries are dangerous?”

Judas smirks at me. Then, having undone the last lock, he pushes the door open.

The cold is immediate, assaulting my skin. My hair flies away from my face. We have chilly days on Internment this time of year, but they’re nothing at all like this. Cold like this could kill a person.

Over the sound of the wind, I hear the laugh on Basil’s breath. He squeezes his arm around my shoulders. “Would you look at that,” he says.

I stare at the white ground, accumulating more whiteness from the sky, until I see a strip of red fluttering about on a post. The only thing in sight. It must be some sort of flag.

Judas sets one foot outside the bird, preparing to climb his way down the side, and a voice calls out, “Halt!”

The voice is so loud that it echoes in all the metal walls.
The god of the sky,
I think, my heart on my tongue. He has followed us here. He’s come to decide our fates.

Judas is too stunned to step back into the bird or to go forward.

There’s a mechanical quality to the word. Not a god. A machine that’s being shouted into. And the word is heavily affected. No one on Interment speaks quite that way.

Amy grabs Judas by the collar and tugs, which brings him to his senses, and he climbs back inside.

Vehicles appear on the horizon, smaller and more colorful versions of Internment’s emergency vehicles. A peculiar mist trails behind them. Their lights are like pairs of eyes, and the flurries glimmer in their rays.

None of us move. Uncertain.

I like to think we’re brave.

Lex starts to say something, but Alice holds his arm and tells him to be quiet. “Where’s Morgan?” he says. I find his hand, and he squeezes hard. Whatever’s to happen to us, we’ll be together. I want him to know that, but I can’t speak. How can I? What words would be enough for this?

There are more vehicles than I can count, surrounding us on all sides. And then in that affected way, a voice says, “We won’t hurt you. Exit slowly. When you get to the ground, put your hands up where we can see them.”

When we get to the ground.

A hand touches my back, and when I turn around, I see Pen and Thomas behind me, clinging to each other. I don’t know how long they’ve been here. For her, I muster the words, “It’ll be all right.”

She doesn’t seem convinced.

Judas climbs the ladder on the outside of the bird first, Amy behind him, then Alice so that she can help Lex.

The princess is left to stand in the doorway, shivering. She looks at me, and a wicked grin begins to form. “Don’t look so glum,” she says. “This is going to be an adventure.”

Her hair is full of icy wind and daylight. She is every princess, every queen, in the history book. In this instant, I don’t see a bratty princess, but rather I see greatness in her.

She doesn’t bother with the ladder. She turns to face the strange world beyond the door, and she jumps.