Flashfall by Jenny Moyer

Author:Jenny Moyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

FIFTEEN

14.6 grams flash dust

THE STORM LASTS less than an hour. We leave Winn in the shelter and press closer to the curtain. I’ve given up hope, so I let my anger fuel me instead. I’m determined Graham won’t have died in vain. The shift in attitude affects my focus, and soon I’m picking up traces of flash dust like they’re calling my name.

I’m lead ore scout once more.

Gabe’s cirium hands strain the burnt sands faster and with more success than our thick gloves and sifters, but our pails slowly begin to fill. I lead us to a deposit and then we all drop down and mine the Congress’s precious element.

“How long have you known?” I ask Dram. I can still hardly believe it. I never dreamed our government was this depraved. Or this desperate.

He doesn’t answer right away, but taps his sifter into his pail. Finally, he meets my eyes, his own red-rimmed. I feel a punch of guilt. If possible, he loved Graham even more than I did. At least I still had Dad after Mom and Wes died. Dram has lost everyone close to him. Everyone but me.

“Graham told me,” he says. “When he gave me the flash wand. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“How is it even possible? They’re just human bodies.”

“They’re not just human bodies,” he counters. “Everything is altered by the flashfall—transformed by elements we still don’t understand—and then the curtain alters them again when…” He trails off, and I have a vivid memory of Graham spinning on one foot before the flashfall swallowed him beside our shelter.

“Think of how the curtain affects living things,” Gabe says. “It infuses everything with a bit of its substance. It doesn’t incinerate its own elements, so it’s left behind as flash dust.

“And in terms of it being ammunition?” He sifts the dust through his metal fingers. “We’re talking about traces of the flash curtain—unexpended energy.”

I still see Graham telling me my mother would be proud.

“Why don’t they just have machines do this?” I grumble, my hands burning as I sift the particles into my pail.

“Machines malfunction this close to the curtain,” Gabe answers.

“That’s not the only reason,” Reeves murmurs. “If we die out here, we’re more dust in someone’s pail.” He slips his hand beneath his headpiece to swipe the blood trickling from his nose. His skin gleams, pale as bone.

I share a glance with Dram. Something’s wrong with Reeves. He’s sick—sick in a way that none of the rest of us are, which tells me it’s something other than the cordon.

My stomach twists. I don’t want to put a name to it. Not yet.

“What do you think is the other reason?” I say instead.

“It’s a convenient way for the Congress to get rid of us.”

“But we supply them with cirium.”

“Which is probably why we’re still breathing.” He coughs, and I avert my eyes, half expecting him to vomit again. Dad’s voice in my head catalogs all his symptoms, so I tune it out and listen for the elements in the sand instead.

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