The Burn

  Chapter Six

  I was trained to use a submarine since I could walk, and it’s second nature to release the robotic arm, turn on the engines, slip from the dock into the black water, turn on the navigation system, and direct the sub toward the Trench.

  The hard part will be finding Gaea’s home. I have only been down the Trench a handful of times on class field trips or when Dad wanted me to come with him on official business. I’m not too familiar with the geography of things down there. I can get to the research station no problem, but as far as lips of rock that might hold houses, I have no idea what to look for.

  The Trench looms ahead of me, and I slow down. With the sub’s lights, I can see about twenty feet in front of me and the rest of it is pitch black. I could use the navigation system that shows where the sub is on a topographical map of the area. I glance at it once or twice, but I prefer to use what my eyes can see. I don’t want to miss the edge of the Trench that will guide me down to the research station.

  I float along slowly for a few moments, and then the bottom of the ocean, grayish in the lights from my sub, disappear and there is nothing but water. I descend down into the Trench.

  I know it doesn’t bother the researchers that come down here every day and often spend a week or two at a time in the research station. But every time I go down the Trench and watch the numbers on the gauge slowly drop to depths that would crush me if there was the tiniest flaw in my sub, I’m unnerved. I grip the controls tighter, and my knuckles whiten. I breathe deeply. This is all just part of it—part of leaving. It’s not going to be easy. That’s one thing Dad always told me—and I actually agree with him—“Anything worth having is never easy.” The first time he told me this, I thought it was all just part of his political garbage, but he’s right. He’s right more than I give him credit for.

  The depth gauge reads 34,224 feet. The deepest part of the Trench is still another 2,000 feet down, but I’m almost to the research station. There shouldn’t be anyone here tonight—they should all have left this afternoon (or not even gone in at all) to be ready for the dance.

  The station is dark. Just a few pricks of light shine through the darkness—the dock illuminators. The station is eerie in the darkness. Usually you can see the researchers through the well-lit windows, bustling about with their experiments. But the station is just an empty shell tonight.

  Beyond the station, the lights of my sub catch the first waver of the warm water and smoke that fill this part of the Trench. The black smokers are thick here—hydrothermal vents that spew out sea water that seeps down into the earth and chars itself on the molten core. The minerals that escape back into the ocean with the hot water form layer upon layer into huge chimneys. The water down here can get up to 500 degrees. That’s one of the reasons the station is down here: to study the vents and the organisms that can live in these conditions.

  There is a forest of the black smokers south of the station, some of them forty feet tall. Surely this is where Gaea’s home is hidden. Somewhere along the east wall where the lip of rock, the smokers, the darkness, and the murky water will hide it unless you know it’s there.

  I start just south of the station and study the wall as high as the highest smoker here, down to where my lights no longer illuminate the wall. The wall of the Trench is irregular, but smooth, like the way a ribbon ripples in the air but is still satiny. The lights from the sub bounce off these ripples and make shadows. I think the first three shadows I see are the lip of rock Gaea’s home hides behind, until I look closer and realize my mistake. It will take me hours to find her home like this. It has to be different. None of these ripples can hide an entrance that a sub could squeeze through.

  I change the angle of the sub. Instead of facing the wall straight on, I am now at a 45 degree angle, facing southeast. I start combing the wall again.

  There, just up ahead. There is a mouth of shadow that gapes open. I turn the sub full-face on it, and the darkness shifts to look like any of the other shadows threading its way up toward the abyssal plain. This has to be it.

  I squint at the shadow mouth through the light. It’s hard to differentiate what is rock and what is mere darkness. I inch forward and see the slightest variance between the shadows—one looks more ghostly, less substantial than the other. I follow the ghost.

  The tunnel leads behind the lip of rock and then turns sharply to the left and up a steep climb. I follow it for five hundred feet before the tunnel in front of me disappears and the lights of the sub hit rock. This rock is more jagged. Even the slight ocean currents haven’t made their way into this long tunnel to wear at the rock. This is closer to what it might have been when it was made.

  But where now? The topographical map says there is nowhere else to go. I lean forward to peer up through the glass. I smile. There is a sub dock right above me.

  When I open the top hatch, light streams into my eyes. Not strong light, just enough to illuminate everything around me. I’m in a small room filled with shelves of supplies—tins and pouches of food, first-aid supplies, folded clothes in neat stacks, shoes, tools, and other random odds and ends. An air filter chugs in one corner, its intake tubes reaching up and burrowing through the rock ceiling. There must be some kind of natural air pocket up there.

  There is a door up ahead, the heavy kind that is on one of the larger subs. It’s mounted to the rock wall. Light streams through the chinks between rock and door. Not the wild lights of the dance, or the pallid, white lights all around the colony, but warm yellowish lights that almost feel like sunshine if they had just been warmer. I hear voices on the other side—a jumble of voices that changes every few seconds. Men, women, children all talking over each other in muted tones. Who is on the other side of that door?

  I creep forward, ignoring the scritch-scratch my shoes make on the rock. Gaea might be expecting me, but I still don’t know what to expect from her, and I don’t want her surprising me.

  Before I heft the door open, I want a clue of what I’m up against. I look around the door and see a gap between it and the rock just wide enough for me to peek through. I lean my cheek against the damp rock and peer through.

  My eyes adjust for a second. The lights are brilliant and warm. I blink. The wall to the left of the door is completely devoted to a bank of probably thirty different monitors, all showing different images. That is where the voices come from. The people on those monitors talk to each other or to no one in particular. All the images are from the same angle—just barely off from directly overhead. Some of the monitors show image after image changing in rapid succession, and others stay focused for minutes at a time. Sitting on a simple metal folding chair in front of the monitors is a woman with black hair streaked with gray that reaches out in wild waves all the way down her back. She hunches over to see some of the lower monitors, so from where I am, she looks like an indistinct lump. Then she turns to the door and stares hard at it with sharp, green eyes. I jump back.

  “Don’t just stand there staring. Come in.”

  I heave the door open. It scrapes along a groove worn into the rock from the door being pulled open and closed time and time again.

  Gaea stands when I come in, and the indistinct shape falls from her to reveal a tall, slender woman. She wears a long colorful skirt, scuffed boots, and a loose shirt with long sleeves. A head band keeps her unruly hair from her face and makes the hair around the crown of her head look like a black and gray halo. Huge earrings in the shape of elephants weigh down her earlobes. She has smooth, copper skin with furrowed wrinkles at her eyes and around her mouth. She smiles at me, and the smile is a dare to go through with what I have been contemplating for I don’t know how long.

  “So, Terra.”

  Gaea gestures to a chair in a corner of the room. I’ve never seen a chair like it before. It’s woven out of some kind of wood. I run my fingers over it.

  “Wicker.” Gaea has a mocking smirk on her mouth. “Used to be a popular kind of furniture on the Burn.” r />
  It creaks at me as I sit down. I rub my palms on the arm rests.

  “How did you get it?” I ask, the question I have for just about everything I see around me.

  “I brought it here,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. She goes over to the other corner of the room. There’s a bed there—a mattress shoved into a recess of rock—and a dresser. A photo stands on one end of the dresser, but she turns it over before I can see it and tucks it under her pillow. Then she grabs a whistling tea pot off a burner.

  “Coffee?”

  “Real coffee, the kind with caffeine?” Has Mr. Klein been here to have real coffee?

  Gaea takes two mugs from a drawer and pours a packet of dark crystals into each one. “The only kind of coffee. That garbage in the colony shouldn’t be called coffee. Rint loves this. He requests it every time he comes to see me.”

  I have the feeling she is the kind of person I shouldn’t ask too many questions of, but I can’t help myself.

  “Does he come here a lot?”

  She hands me a cup and sits down on the folding chair. I’m about to take a sip when she stops me.

  “Careful, you’ll burn your tongue clean off.” An odd glint comes into her eyes, but she tempers it and looks back at me with a shrug. “No temperature regulators.”

  I watch as she blows into her cup. “And yes, Rint comes when he can. Though his visits have been fewer lately. He and I were anticipating you.”

  “What do you mean?” Her presence is…I can’t find a word for it. Almost ominous, like a bad omen. Of course that stuff is all bogus Burn superstition, but I feel like it applies perfectly to her.

  I blow on my coffee, watching the small ripples float across the surface and then hit the edge of the cup. I take a sip and make a face. It is strong and bitter. I’ve never had coffee—even in thcolony—and I wonder what all the fuss is about. Gaea laughs, a short rasping sound in her throat.

  “We wondered when you would finally want to escape badly enough. So we limited our contact with each other. We didn’t want anyone getting suspicious and stopping you.”

  “Um, that was good of you.” I shift my weight uncomfortably. How many other people noticed I was itching to leave?

  Gaea leans forward and puts a cold hand on my arm.

  “Don’t worry, all three of us have done our jobs well. I don’t believe anyone knows you’re here.” She smiles, her pink lips parting over white teeth.

  “But they’ll know I’m gone soon.”

  “Of course,” Gaea says, straightening up and the smile ebbing. “And they’ll be searching the territory once they see you’re no longer in the colony, and that will make getting to the Burn very difficult.”

  She sets down her mug and turns to the monitors. She pulls a computer keyboard off one of them and sets it on her lap. She clacks a few keys and the images on the screens begin to change.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “The United States somewhere, I guess.” I watch the monitors and try to see some pattern to the images there. Gaea looks at one and shakes her head, types a few words and the image changes. She does this over and over.

  “Not what it’s now called, of course. But New America may be a wise choice, given the current global climate.”

  “The current climate?”

  She smiles that unnerving, smirking smile. “Not weather, of course. Politically. New America is the most stable nation at the moment. Though that’s nothing to brag about, given the way they’re enforcing the stability. Their citizens are required to live in designated cities. Anyone found outside is incarcerated in a labor camp. So many other nations broke out into civil war after the Event and war with each other as well. I suppose the relative peace in New America is admirable, but I wouldn’t ask its citizens about it. You’d think something like this would have brought everyone together, but sadly it didn’t. Too much finger pointing, too much ‘I told you so’.”

  “How long have you been down here?”

  Gaea’s eyes flash to mine, something suddenly shrouding the bitterness that sits so openly there. She looks back to the monitors.

  “A good while.”

  There’s something she doesn’t want to tell me. She turns her back, physically blocking any more questions. The images on the monitors slow as she seems to be happy with what she’s seeing.

  “Where do these pictures come from?” I ask, waving my hand at the monitors.

  “Satellite images. Quite a few countries put up satellites for several years before the Event. And you thought the colony was the only one capable of invading people’s privacy? Bah! The Burn isn’t the bliss you’ve conjured up in that head of yours, Terra. They used these satellites as a way to watch people, track movements, try to subdue terrorism and other dangerous activity. And now I’m using them to keep tabs on what goes on up there. I have twenty-eight monitors, but there’s probably two thousand or more satellites floating around in space. But these are the only monitors I could get.”

  “Mr. Klein?”

  Gaea is remiss to divulge all her secrets to me, but she answers. “Yes, when those wasteful self-righteous...never mind. When there’s extras, he tries to get them for me.”

  “No wonder he knows so much about the Burn.” I gaze at the images on the screens. Five of the screens focus on various angles of rocky beach with brown-green water pounding the shore. Skeletons of buildings huddle under the sky. It is raining at this place, and a gray mist settles over the rocks. I’ve been longing for the sun, but even this looks magical.

  “The Washington coast.” Gaea gestures at the monitors. “I was thinking perhaps Arizona, but someone soft from the colony wouldn’t last two days this time of year. Washington was one of the United States. Now there is only the federal government and all states have been dissolved, and they’re calling themselves New America. This may be a good place to start. Bigger coast cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco were heavily targeted by the bombs and obliterated, and I haven’t been able to see many survivors. But there seems to be more in this area. There will be shelter among the trees, and lots of wildlife.”

  I snap my head up. “Wildlife?”

  I hadn’t thought about the animals that may be out there. There will be animals that could kill me if they wanted to.

  The corner of Gaea’s mouth raises up. “Yes, wildlife, but what is that to a daughter of a man? Shouldn’t man subdue all the beasts? But not to worry. I’ll give you a few weapons. And if you’re smart, you’ll find a group of survivors quickly and figure out a way to make them trust you. It’s summer, so they should be out instead of hunkered down to outlast the winter.”

  My stomach clenches up. What am I getting myself into? But Gaea doesn’t give me much time for introspection. She pulls a map off of a shelf and spreads it out on the floor.

  “This is Washington. You see the way the ocean cuts into the land here?”

  I nod.

  “You’ll follow that and then down here to what’s called the Puget Sound. You can land anywhere along here. I don’t know if I’d go for the city of Seattle right away. It’s a designated city for the citizens and you need to get a feel for the area and any hostilities.”

  “Hostilities? Is it still a war zone?” I am more nervous with every minute of this conversation.

  “Were you expecting all sunshine and daisies? I think you’ll find that most people will be hostile toward a stranger. And you are a stranger. We’ve been down here for a hundred years, and things will be very different for you up there. And there’s general anger and distrust of things that are unknown.”

  “Do they know about the colonies? Is that why?” I rock back on my heels and wrap my arms around my legs. Despite the warmth from the lights, I start to feel cold.

  Gaea’s eyes glimmer with shards of light. “Yes, they know. They realized what was going on just before the Event. I don’t blame them for being angry that all the best minds abandoned them—more or less left them with little hope of sorting
things out on their own. That was one of the things that escalated the conflict. Though you won’t find your father ever telling anyone that.”

  She spits the word father with such vehemence that I shudder. Once again her eyes cloud over. She continues as if nothing happened.

  “They hate us for it.”

  “Oh.” I want to escape the colony for a world where I may be eaten by an animal and everyone will most likely hate me. Gaea notices my sudden quiet and reaches out a long, slender hand on my own. Her skin is dark on my white. Just like Jessa’s skin. The sudden reminder of my sister brings tears.

  “It’s okay, I was just thinking about my sister. Can I ever come back?”

  “Out of the question. I’ll program your sub to return here after you land. It would be too dangerous for everyone down here for people up there to come. They’re too angry. Right now there isn’t a way for the people on the Burn to find us, but there will be some day and I think it’s best not to speed that up, but to let it happen by itself.”

  Why does she want to protect the colonies? Gaea stands up, brushing off her skirt. She motions me up. She turns on a burner like we use in chemistry and puts something metal on it.

  “Which reminds me. There’s one promise you have to make.”

  “Promise?” I remember what she said on the computer. Sacrifice.

  “You can never speak of the colonies to anyone up there. Ever.”

  “Where do I tell them I come from?”

  “You’ll have to make something up, something believable. But if you love your sister and want to protect her, you can’t ever speak of us. There hasn’t been enough time between the Event and the present. Emotions are still too raw. If they knew there was a colonist among them, knew that you could somehow take them here, things will be so much worse for you and for us. Do you understand?”

  Never speak of this life to anyone? Never even mention Jessa? Those are the memories I prize most—memories with her, doing nothing, talking, singing, laughing. The only fun I ever managed to have in the colony was with her. Because of her. And now that part of me will be buried forever.

  “Terra, do you understand?”

  Gaea has a look of knowing in her eyes, and my temper flares. How can she know what I feel?

  But I bring the anger to a simmer and I nod. I will bury the feelings for Jessa, the longing and sadness deep in a grave in my heart and leave those skeletons there for always.

  “Not a problem.”

  Then Gaea reaches over to a table by the monitors and faces me with a gleaming scalpel.

  “I don’t think you understand, Terra. You will be unable to speak of the colonies. Open your mouth.”

  My jaw clenches. I fall over myself and scrabble along the floor. Now I seriously doubt Gaea’s sanity and her ability to help me. My mouth runs dry as she stalks me with the scalpel held by white knuckles.

  “That’s the only way?” I choke out, never taking my eyes off the sharp blade.

  “I think your sister is the most precious thing to you. What would you do if you accidentally gave her away? If you were sleeping one night and spoke out in dreams of her at the bottom of the sea? If those sleeping by you heard such a thing? Would you risk Jessa that way?”

  I stop at the door. This is the sacrifice she wants me to make. She must have dreamed of it all along. This is the price I will pay to earn my way to the Burn and protect the colonies. To protect Jessa. To seal her away forever. My dad’s words come floating to me again. “Anything worth having is never easy.”

  I stand up, taking an hour-long minute to straighten my knees and shoulders and look Gaea in the face.

  “Fine.”

  Gaea’s green eyes bore into mine, and they flash once as they look for any trace of—what? Regret? She will find that etched all over me. Or maybe deception. To know that I can keep everyone down here a secret. Or maybe certainty. To know that this is what I want. Whatever she finds on my face leaves her satisfied, and she motions for me to sit on the wicker chair again, next to the burner. The metal piece on it shimmers in the heat.

  “Now that’s settled,” she says, wrenching open the door to the supply room. She rustles for a few moments in there, and comes back with a syringe and a vial. She smiles condescendingly at me.

  “I’m not a complete witch, you know. I will give you a little anesthetic.” She stabs the needle into the vial and pulls back on the plunger. “Now open your mouth.”

  The moment of hesitation grips me before I can steel myself. I freeze to the chair, icy fear seizing my muscles into paralysis. Gaea clucks her tongue.

  “A tongue is a small price to pay for your dream, isn’t it?”

  My tongue is the only muscle I can move. “What will I do up there if I can’t talk to anyone?”

  Gaea rubs down the scalpel with a disinfecting wipe. She shrugs her shoulders. “My dear, you have a lovely face and a lovely figure. You have very expressive eyes. You’ll do just fine.”

  She tosses the wipe on the floor and steps closer to me with the scalpel in one hand and the syringe in the other. The burning in my stomach moves to my chest, and suddenly I can move my arms. But still they grip the arms of the chair. She binds me with her logic and my burning need to leave the colony.

  “Now open your mouth.”

  Slowly I unclench my jaw and open it just a fraction. Gaea chuckles.

  “That will never do. Do you want me to wrench it open for you?”

  I open the rest of the way, and Gaea pricks the needle into the top of my tongue at the back of my mouth. I wince at the sting. Then she pricks with the needle again and again around my tongue, numbing the whole area. By the time she’s done, I can’t feel anything. She puts the syringe on the dresser and pulls a white towel from a drawer and holds it under my mouth.

  “There will be quite a bit of blood, so keep your mouth open wide as you can. I’ll cauterize the wound as soon as I’m done.”

  Did she say cauterize?

  “Are you ready? Relax, dear, you won’t feel a thing.”

  Then she puts the scalpel in my mouth. The bitter, metallic taste of blood floods my mouth and I choke. She turns from me quickly, my tongue dangling from her right hand, and grabs the hot metal piece from the burner. I open my mouth wider—I don’t want that searing metal to touch anything more than my bloody stump. Gaea presses it in with a hiss, and a wisp of smoke curls from my mouth. I smell burning flesh and gag. Gaea pulls the metal out quickly, and I retch all over her floor. I look up, and tears glitter in her eyes.

  Why is she crying? She intimidated me so much, why the moment of vulnerability? She smears a tear away with the blood-stained towel and the moment disappears like shadows.

  “Now then, that should do it.” She hands me a pill. “An antibiotic. Mouth wounds do heal quickly, but we want to be safe, don’t we?” She turns and walks through the door.

  I roll my stub of a tongue around in my mouth. I can’t reach the roof of my mouth anymore, only the soft palate. The bitter blood taste washes away with the water I drink for the antibiotic.

  Gaea refuses to look at me as she grabs a backpack off a shelf and shoves supplies in it, rattling off names as she goes. I struggle to keep up with it all.

  “Sunscreen—be sure to put it on, especially with your skin tone. I see you’ve already had a bout of UV exposure, and it’s not any better up there. MREs—you eat these—blanket, first aid kit, flint and steel wool—for lighting fires—a knife,” she holds up a large, mean-looking knife, then sheathes it and puts it in the pack. “You’ll probably want to carry that on your belt. Let’s see here, what size?” Then she rifles through the stacks of clothes until she finds a few things that will fit me. She eyes my dress. “You’ll definitely want to put these on before you land.”

  She puts the pack into my trembling hands, and I follow her numbly back to the sub dock.

  “I think that should be all you need to start.” She bends, her skirt pooling around her feet in brilliant colors, and open
s the hatch.

  I’m halfway down the ladder when she speaks, a heaviness in her voice that almost forces me the rest of the way down the hatch.

  “You will never speak of us, Terra. But don’t forget us.”

  Her eyes fill with tears again, but not just of sadness. There’s also a triumph there. And suddenly those eyes look so familiar to me. But I must be going wonkers with all the pressure on me now. So I just nod and close the hatch behind me.