Sparks Rise by Alexandra Bracken
My head jerks up. I scan the room for the other Reds and see them reaching into the pouches on their belts—earplugs. Dammit. I was right. I release my grip on Sam long enough to pull mine out, jam them into my ears as far as they can go, and brace myself for impact.
A hit of Calm Control is like taking an icy cold bath where the water’s been spiked with razors. The Trainers used it on us in the beginning, on and off and on and off for hours, but stopped a year in, when they realized daily use was making too many kids crack. And, let me tell you, you can reset broken bones and stitch up too-deep cuts, but you can’t piece a mind back together after it shatters into a thousand, flaming, furious pieces.
I remember those first days though. They’d keep the floodlights in our white cells on all day and all night, watch for the moments it seemed like you were about to finally pass out and sleep and then...the explosion of blinding hurt. No matter how deep I was in my own head, I could hear it muffled, the way I do now—growling static broken up by piercing screams that knock the breath out of you.
I hurt all over, a dull ache that turns into a chill rippling up and down my spine, but Sam—she’s convulsing. Her breath rips in and out of her in sobs. It’s the same for the other girls. The Factory fills with these horrible, breathy moans of pain; some of them sound like they’re being eaten alive by it.
Olsen nods at me, signaling that I need to get up and move. I can’t. For a second, it feels like my knees and feet have been cemented to the ground; it feels like if I don’t keep a hold on Sam’s wrists, her fingers, she’s going to blow apart.
Get up, I command myself. Don’t look at her. They would know—that I wasn’t in their grip, that there was something between me and this girl. I keep my eyes focused on the PSF as I return to my full, stiff-backed height. For a moment, she studies the letter and numbers stitched over my uniform’s pocket: M27.
“Situation under control.” Olsen speaks into her comm unit; I can hear it in the one in my ear with a half-second delay. “Disable Calm Control.”
Don’t look at her. It is almost impossible. Panic sends my pulse through the roof. The PSFs swarm where Sam is on the ground, locking her inside a ring of black. I yank out my earplugs as the kids around me start to stir.
“You know what’s supposed to happen, goddammit!” Tildon is shouting. “She assaulted me! It’s my job—”
Olsen’s gaze is so cold, it freezes the words in his throat. She knows, I think. She saw what happened, and for the first time I wonder if all of this has happened before, if the resignation in her eyes means she knows it’ll happen again. And again. And again. But what can she do? There are tiers of punishments in this place—the Trainers made us memorize them. Additional work, missed meals, exposure, isolation, corporal punishment. They could pick and choose from the list, combine them, if that’s what gets them off. What Sam has done is so far beyond being forced to skip dinner, I’m actually terrified I did the wrong thing in saving her.
Four minutes pass. No one moves. I breathe in. I breathe out. I try to dispel the heat trapped inside of my head. I’m afraid if I take a single step, I’m going to borrow the heat from the electricity powering the lights and send showers of sparks down over everyone’s heads. Control. Nothing. Numb. Control. Nothing. Numb. I can’t get a grip on my heart. It just wants to gallop. I have to slip inside my head, just to get away from this moment. But even my brain doesn’t cut me any slack—the first memory that stirs up, meeting me, is Sammy, age eight, informing me she doesn’t want to be a princess of Greenwood, she wants to be a knight, thank you very much. I laughed. She cracked a wooden sword against my head.
My fingers relax, as do the muscles in my shoulder and arm. Sam always quiets me; she finds me and leads me out of these dark places. The tic is still there, but less noticeable if I slide my hand into the pocket of my uniform trousers. The Trainers would have told the PSFs and camp controllers the tic—that involuntary spasm of muscle and joints—is a Red’s calling card, and when it comes around, it means we’re heating up. We’re thinking, dreaming, tasting fire. Fine if it comes hand in hand with an order to attack, not so fine if it appears out of the blue. Mine has always been less pronounced than some of the others’. Disappears completely as long as I’m mostly calm. Thank God. I’d seen too many other kids get “treated” by a month’s worth of daily, repeated ice-water submersions if they so much as flinched at the wrong moment.
Finally, the doors to the Factory are dragged open, and a dripping, dark figure jogs inside. He brings the frigid air in with him, cooling my temper, freezing me at my core. He’s in what almost looks like civilian clothes—a black poncho, black slacks, boots. Under the heavy, rain-slick fabric, I see the lumps and bumps of a utility belt with a holstered gun. The man wipes the rain off his face as he pushes his hood back. The dark, graying stubble on his face gives it shadows that aren’t really there. He strides toward us, every movement strong, brisk, efficient. He isn’t military, but like the Trainers, he probably used to be.
I remember him. This is O’Ryan. He’s the one that gave us our “orientation” the night before, when we were brought in. He assessed us as we passed by, the way my mom used to examine the cuts of meat in the grocery store, then waved us on to collect our uniforms and our red vests.
camp controller. Shit. The camp controller. Something sticks inside my throat, sealing it off from the air I need to think.
Tildon shoots to his side, his face covered in grime and blood. Next to O’Ryan, who is as steady and silent as a mountain, he looks like an idiot as he flails and moves into the next phase of his tantrum. O’Ryan crosses his arms over his chest, listening but not listening, his eyes glancing between Sam and the PSF. Olsen speaks up toward the end, explaining how I was the one to finally restrain her, that I acted quickly and behaved exactly as I should have.
O’Ryan’s pleased expression turns my stomach. I hide my clenched fist behind me and give him a salute when he says, “Well done, M27.” And every second his eyes are on me, I have to wrestle with the anger all over again. I have to think of Mia’s face when my fingers rub against each other, ready to snap a flame into the air. Hurting him helps no one. It wouldn’t get me closer to finding my sister, it wouldn’t do a single thing to help Sam—but I have a feeling it would be pretty gratifying to set the asshole on fire. I want so badly for all of them to experience the kind of hurt they’ve inflicted on us.
But more than that, I want to cover Sam. I want to cover her so none of these people can see her like this, too weak to even lift her head. The other kids are only just coming out of their daze, waking back up to this nightmare. They stay in the positions they’ve been taught to assume, though—face down on the floor, hands on the back of their heads. Drip, drip, drip goes the rain through the holes in the roof, splattering over them, into their plastic bins. The room smells like damp animal and urine and cigarette smoke. The lights flicker as the wind picks up.
“Fine, then put her in isolation. Two weeks,” O’Ryan finally interrupts.
“Isolation,” Tildon sneers. “She attacked me! The little bitch deserves at least twenty-five strikes! And I want her in the cages, not the Infirmary.”
It’s the first time Sam shows any reaction since the Calm Control. Her hands claw at the ground at that word cages. Where the hell is that? The blood is draining out of my head. They said they sometimes tie them to the fences outside of the Garden, but isolation is the upper level of the Infirmary. Little padded, lightless cells. The kids there are broken, or need to be broken. Every hair on my body seems to prick and stand at attention.
“Fine. A night in the cages and ten strikes.” I don’t know if he saw Tildon’s face light up, but O’Ryan quickly adds, “Delivered by Olsen.”
Her posture relaxes as she swings around, away from Tildon’s sputtering.
One last look from O’Ryan silences him for good. “Go clean yourself up,” he says quietly, lay
He let a kid get the best of him—there’ll be some kind of disciplinary action, at least. He deserves to be smeared against the ground like the shit stain he is. It won’t be enough to balance out what he did to Sam, but it’ll be something.
Olsen flicks her hand toward Sam, staring at me. These PSFs are all the same, aren’t they? They resent the fact they brought us in to fill in the gaps in their security, but they love the power they wield in outranking us. We aren’t human to them, even now that we’re supposedly on the same side. We don’t get eye contact or words. It makes me feel like a damn dog, staring at a master shouting a command in a language I don’t understand.
It takes me a moment to translate what she wants, and, just as quickly, the horror slams right back into me. They’re going to do it right here—they’re going to hit her right here, and they want me to hold her up while they do it.
Fuck.
Them.
Olsen stares at me expectantly. The moment crashes down around me, and I feel something inside of me strain to its ultimate limit. I want to cry—I want to sob like a baby, Don’t make me do this, not to her, not to Sammy. Why did I have to volunteer for this place? Why did I have to come here and find her? I wanted Thurmond because that’s where they were supposed to take Mia. All I want is to find her. Mom and Dad are gone now. I’m all Mia has left. I’m her only chance to get out. I can’t blow this and show them I’m not what I’m supposed to be. But I can’t do this to Sammy. I would rather cut out my own heart.
My left arm twitches so hard, it’s actually painful. I grab Sam under the armpits like she’s one of Mia’s dolls and try to prop her onto her feet, turning her around to face me when Olsen gives a little twirl of a finger. Her knees won’t lock, and with her hands tied behind her, I can’t hold her up as gently as I would have liked. I can’t turn my back on the black uniforms and shield her from this, take the hits meant for her. There’s a voice at the back of my head telling me to take her and run, to set the building on fire and just go, but I can’t—I can’t—my need to live, to find Mia, is a rope around my neck. I’m hanging us both with it.
Her lashes flutter and I know she’s coming back to herself, which makes it that much more horrifying. She’s going to think I want this. She’s going to hate me. The thoughts are there, even as the more rational part of me thinks, She doesn’t even recognize you. I feel sick enough supporting her full weight, watching her head loll to the side. I don’t know how it’s possible to feel worse when Olsen shakes her head and motions for me to clear the bins and lay her over her work table.
The girl with dark curling hair is openly crying beside my right foot. She gets a kick from one of the PSFs, who, apparently, is offended by the small whimpering sounds. I give up Sam’s soft weight to the table, arranging her carefully so the hard wood supports her chest. I’ve barely stepped back when Olsen pushes forward, her baton in the air. In the space of one heartbeat to the next, she’s already hit Sam twice, once across her shoulder blades, the other across her bottom, she alternates with each strike, and I know they’re getting harder because Sam starts grunting at the impact of each one. Her eyes are open, devoid of light. I think she’s looking at my empty, shaking hand, but then I realize she’s not looking at anything at all. The pain and anger and hatred play out over her features, and I think, She’s got a fire in her, I think, I can’t let it go out, I think, Please, God, please make this stop, I’ll do anything—
And then it does. Olsen is finished and looks back at Tildon, who is faintly smiling as he tries to smear the rest of the blood off his chin with the back of his hand. “The cages,” he reminds her.
I don’t know what they are, or where they are, but when Olsen says, “Follow me and bring her,” I know that I’ll at least be able to follow her into their hell. There’s that, at least.
There’s that.
I have to carry her over my shoulder, pinning her legs against me with one arm. Several times, I completely lose track of Olsen as she stomps through the rain and mud, arms swinging under her poncho. There’s no way to shield us from the downpour, and I remind myself that I am supposed to be an unfeeling drone. I can’t be cold or furious or even snap back at the PSF when she turns back to shout over the wind, “Keep up!”
Instead, I focus on Sammy’s breathing. Feeling it go in and out in its light, but steady rhythm, calms the pounding pain in my head and the dizzying wave of nausea. I try to think of us in our tree fort, using slingshots and pebbles to defend our turf from those jackasses down the street, the Strider boys, but I send the memory sailing back to the farthest corner of my mind. Those thoughts are like grains of sugar in the salt of my life, and I don’t want any part of them to be polluted by this moment.
I can’t even give myself the pleasure of what I’d like to do to Tildon—I’d give my anger away in a heartbeat. So I focus on Sam’s soft weight the whole walk over to a small wooden shack attached to the back of the Mess. It wasn’t included in our debriefing. When they walked us through the camp this morning, I’d assumed it was storage for the Mess’s kitchen.
Olsen stops outside of the metal door and taps her ID card against it, shielding the black pad from the rain. Sam is silent, but her teeth chatter as she shivers. My grip on her tightens as the door swings open, and I realize the shaking might be a mixture of terror and cold.
The room is small, the walls lined with stacked individual metal crates. The air in here is damp and frigid. There’s a dark, wet crack in the ceiling. The moisture collected there is dripping down, catching the rust coating the cages’ thin bars and falling to the ground like drops of blood. I know they must have kept dogs here at one point; the smell doesn’t reach my nose so much as assault it. There are still sacks of unused dog food stacked beside the door. Collars and leashes hang useless and forgotten on hooks.
There are windows lining the top of the back wall, but only a faint gray-blue light manages to escape in. Olsen fusses with the light switch. Almost as if they’d been watching the struggle from the monitors in the Control Tower, a voice filters through our comm units: “All units—we’ve lost the primary generator, back up is at 50 percent. Visuals are down. Return all Psi to their cabins and engage the locks manually. Status update in five.”
“Shit,” I hear her grumble, swiping at her face in irritation. “Falling apart—”
Falling apart is one way to describe what’s happening to this place. Falling to fucking shambles is probably more accurate. The last inspection deemed it unlivable, which also feels like a massive understatement. “You will participate in the relocation of the Psi at Thurmond to nearby rehabilitation facilities,” the Trainers had told us on the flight over. “You will assist them in monitoring the Psi as the Psi Special Forces officers and camp controllers make the arrangements, remove the materials held there, and dissemble the structures.”
When I first got here, I panicked at how little time there was to find Mia and get her out, but the swift guilt that came with the thought of having to leave the others boiled the contents of my stomach. But, now that I’m here, I am so damn elated that these kids are getting out, no matter the circumstances. Nowhere in the world is worse than this camp. No place as damp, cold, and filthy. I think the sun has forgotten this place exists.
“Put her down,” Olsen says sharply. I can’t drop her, but I can’t set her down with the care I want to. Sam slumps forward on her hands and knees at the center of the old kennel. Olsen cuts the restraints on her wrist. I’m actually stupid enough to think, This could be worse.
“You know where to go.” It takes a second to realize that she’s talking to Sammy, not me. She tries to get up onto her feet, but pitches forward, off-balance. My body instinctively moves toward her. Olsen holds out an arm, blocking me—she watches, her face void of anything resembling emotion as Sam
She hesitates a moment, then pulls the door open.
She crawls inside.
I am in shock.
I am...
Fire is calling my name. It is whispering words of encouragement, sweet things. It wants out, for me to fan the heat until it’s a vortex that can’t and won’t be stopped. Olsen’s back is to me, and there’s no power feeding the camera in the upper corner of the room. It becomes an option, a real one, to turn her, this place, to ash. I think I can overpower even the storm outside.
“You deserve this for provoking him. He—” Olsen catches herself before another word can slip out. She hooks a padlock through the crate’s door. Sam inches back, along the metal interior. The crate is just big enough for her to sit up with her back hunched over her knees. It’s as far as she can get from this woman, her dirty lies and accusations. “Don’t come into the Factory with your face clean. I will find you a larger uniform. Don’t look at him, don’t act like you want it. He will leave you alone if you stop tempting him.”
This has happened before. Maybe not to Sam—maybe to a different girl. Many different girls? I’m surprised I’m not glowing in the dark. The pain in my head, in my chest, makes me sway.
“He likes your hair, I think,” Olsen says, almost more to herself than to Sam. “That’s easy enough to take care of.”
Sam doesn’t look up. Just nods. What choice does she have? This is a place that turns beautiful things into shadows. They’ll cut off her hair and the traces of sunshine in it. They’ll rough her up, make her harder, uglier, skinnier, instead of solving the real problem.