PRESSIA
FRESH SMOKE
Pressia is leaning out of the airship. She’s going to lower Fignan to Hastings, who will then give him to Fandra. Then they’ll have to drag Hastings up into the airship. The wind whips Pressia’s hair into her mouth, across her cheeks, stinging her eyes. She holds Fignan tightly and leans deeper toward Hastings, trusting Bradwell’s grip on her waist, familiar and yet foreign. His wings are rustling, buffeted by the gusts.
“It’s okay,” Bradwell reassures her. “I’ve got you. I do.”
Fignan is blaring out the Crazy John-Johns theme park music so loud it’s already caused a few Dusts to start to retreat. But still, some Dusts are slamming at the foundation of the ruined roller coaster. Hastings has his arms held high, and Fandra crouches beside him, flinching each time the Dusts thump the base.
“Slower! Tell him to go slower!” Pressia yells into the wind at Bradwell. It feels good to scream at him after their argument and all the distance between them.
“He’s doing what he can!” Bradwell says at her back. She knows his face so well—the long scars, his eyebrows, his lashes—that she can imagine the face he’s making right now, grimacing to hold on to her, furrowing his brow with effort. She’s so close she can see the wrinkles on Hastings’ knuckles, the fine sand blowing against his cheek, the shine of the guns on his arms.
Suddenly the wind lifts the front end of the airship. It’s as if Hastings is falling beneath her. She wants to drop Fignan to Fandra, hoping she’ll catch him, but can’t risk it.
“We missed!” she yells.
The heavier drone means that El Capitan knows and is pulling up to circle around for another try. They were so close.
Bradwell pulls her back into the hull, and they sit breathing heavily.
“Maybe he can reapproach facing the wind,” Bradwell says without looking at her. “He almost had it.”
“We were really close,” Pressia says. And as she hears herself say these words to Bradwell, she wants to say them to him about them. They were so close. They were in love. Now this: the long silence, the tension, the disappointment. She wants back that tingle when he walked near her, not the thud of dread. Sitting this close to Bradwell should make her feel confident, happy, even as she’s about to lean out of the airship hundreds of feet off the ground.
“We’ll get it this time,” Bradwell says.
Pressia nods. But there’s no hope for the two of them, is there? She looks back toward the amusement park, the roller coaster like a giant sliced serpent, the gray horizon. This has been Fandra’s home, and Pressia is going to help her save it. Pressia misses her own home. As dirty and wrecked as it is, she’s almost back, which is a strange comfort.
The airship moves in, closing on Hastings’ outstretched hands.
Pressia faces the opening again and leans to Hastings, Bradwell’s strong hands on her hips. The airship lurches up briefly and then into almost a complete halt that allows Pressia to drop Fignan just a couple of inches into Hastings’ grip.
“He’s got it!” she yells.
Hastings turns quickly with the little black box playing its haunting melody and gives it to Fandra. He says something to Fandra, who looks up at Hastings through her wind-crazed hair, through the pelting sand and dust and ash. She smiles. And Hastings turns away and leaps at one of the airship’s legs. He balances there for a few moments, and then makes eye contact with Pressia, readying himself to swing up to her.
“When I count to three,” Bradwell says.
She nods.
Bradwell tightens his grip. “One, two, three!”
Hastings swings off the leg of the airship and clasps Pressia’s hand. She pulls with all her strength; Bradwell’s arms flex, pull her to his chest. The ground below is a blur. The wind fills her lungs, the airship noise roars in her ears—overwhelming. Hastings’ eyes are shot through with confident determination, and she feels the depth of her own strength as she and Bradwell pull Hastings toward the safety of the airship. Pressia is a link, saving Hastings from the sky and then the ground. Bradwell reels them all the way in, falling backward on his enormous wings, pulling Pressia with him.
Hastings tumbles in, his metal prosthetic rattling on the floor.
“Go, Cap! We’ve got him!” Bradwell yells. “Go!”
Hastings rights himself and moves quickly back to the open cabin door. He holds up his hand, and then he lets it fall. He sits on the floor of the airship and leans against the wall, propping his good leg.
Bradwell shuts the cabin door, locks it, and sits on the edge of his chair.
Pressia moves quickly to the porthole. The Dusts are lumbering away from Fignan’s music, lugging their heavy bodies back over the broken fence. She sees Fandra. They lock eyes. Pressia spreads her hand on the small circular pane of glass. Fandra nods and smiles. She mouths, “Thank you!” Pressia wants to stop time, wants to confide in Fandra, to tell her everything, but the airship speeds up, banks left.
El Capitan shouts, “Everybody okay?”
“Okay?” Helmud cries.
“We’re all good!” Bradwell says, relieved.
“So glad you made it,” Pressia says, turning to Hastings.
She sees some of Hastings’ prosthetic. Pressia specialized in making prosthetics while at OSR headquarters, and she can tell that the joints aren’t very flexible, but it’s sturdy workmanship. The lower leg is made of two bowed pieces of metal. She figures that they’d have a lot of parts to choose from in a fallen amusement park.
“I made it, yes,” Hastings says, still breathing hard. “But we’re not okay. We’re not all good.”
Bradwell leans forward. “Why are there more survivors at the amusement park now?”
“They had to leave the city,” Hastings says. “It was no longer safe.”
“It’s never been safe,” Pressia reminds him.
“It’s worse now. Attacks—new ones.”
“What kind of attacks?” Bradwell asks.
“Special Forces attacks, and not even really coded troops. The wretches say the Dome is sending out troops that are still just boys, just a little bulked up. The fusings with their weapons are still so raw the skin puckers around them.” Hastings swallows hard. “I’m worried about what’s going on in the Dome.”
“But Partridge is in charge now!” Pressia says. “Things are supposed to be better!”
“Partridge is in charge?” Hastings asks. “Is Willux…?”
“Dead,” Bradwell says. “I don’t like this. What kind of attacks are we talking about?”
“Bloody ones,” Hastings says. “The boy soldiers are killing those in the city—a blood bath—but the mothers have moved in and are picking them off. Bloodshed on all sides.”
Pressia feels sucker punched. Partridge, she thinks, how is this happening? “What else?” Pressia asks, sitting in her seat. “Tell us everything.”
“I only know what I’ve told you. I haven’t seen it myself.”
She doesn’t want to look at Bradwell. Will he blame Partridge?
Bradwell says, “We have the means to take down the Dome, Hastings.”
Hastings is lost. “How? It’s not possible.”
Bradwell explains the bacterium given to them by Bartrand Kelly. “It’s ours now.” The threat lingers in the air.
Pressia sits back and stares up at the curved ceiling. The engines are noise, and the airship bobbles and lifts.
She looks out the porthole again. They’re passing over the terrain quickly—rocks, rusted hulls of trucks, traces of roads, charred rubble. They soon come to Washington, DC, and glide over the fallen tower, the Capitol Building with its crumbled dome, and what was once the White House, reduced to hunks of mossy pale rocks—all that marble and limestone. And then a zebra bounds through tall grass that gives way to marshland and woodland. The airship rises over a hill.
Her heart starts beating more quickly. She takes a deep breath and blows it out. They’re getting close now, and what will she see? Bloodshed.
She closes her eyes. Maybe Hastings is wrong. Maybe this is a miscommunication. Not bloodshed. There’s been enough loss.
But then she hears Bradwell say, “Look at that.”
She doesn’t want to open her eyes, but she does. And there is the darkened horizon—blotted with the rise of fresh smoke. Their city is on fire.