Arclight. Josin L McQuein

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СКАЧАТЬ wind beyond the Arc.

      The closer he comes to the boundary, the more frequent his glances to the side, toward the fire. There’s no way he can get to the breach point unnoticed. And there’s no explanation for being caught at the Arc, other than a desire to cross it. No one’s going to admit to that—not even Tobin. Not even for his father.

      He starts pacing, venting his frustration through his feet.

      Maybe, like me, he wants to watch the world change hands, and see the sun set, if only to prove life doesn’t end at moonrise. More likely, he’s hoping for a glimpse of something familiar. A figure in the distance, headed home. Walking, staggering, or carried by others, it won’t matter, so long as it’s recognizable as James Lutrell. If I knew what my parents looked like, I’d be searching, too.

      Tobin’s hands run up his arms and through his hair. He bends to inspect a large rock wedged between two lamps at the divide between Light and Grey. It looks the same on both sides, which seems strange to me. What good is a barrier if nothing changes once you cross it?

      He kicks at the rock until he works it loose, then picks it up, testing its heft in his hand. I hold my breath as he draws back for a throw, but he loses his nerve. It isn’t wise to disturb the silence beyond. This rule he’s not willing to break.

      The rock drops with a heavy thud.

      A sudden chill curls around the lamps, drawing fog into the perimeter. Tobin waves the misty trails away, frantically; I try blowing on them, hoping my breath will scatter them back to nothing.

      The shadows shift again, stretching out, and when they reach their farthest point and join the Dark at the horizon, the Arc’s lamps come on in succession, early enough to change the bulbs or do repairs if one stops working. The lamps below our feet send columns of light into the sky, threading their beams into the horizontal lines cast by lamps on the poles. The ones atop our buildings create a canopy to cover the rest. Together they create a perfect weave, tight enough to beat back even the smallest creatures that might try to drag the Dark across our boundary on their feet and fur.

      Anne-Marie says once a raccoon had the misfortune of crossing the Arc as it ignited. There was only a singe line left, and the scent of burnt hair. It’s absurd, but she swears her brother told the story when she was little.

      Everything snaps back into view: grass and trees and animals like owls and Anne-Marie’s raccoon who’ve forgotten what it’s like to be nocturnal. A soft white glow bounces back from the building’s walls to match the polished shine of poured walkways set with crushed glass and reflective minerals. Somewhere, the night is black, but not here. Bugs from both sides hit the bulbs and incinerate, sparking and popping as they fall.

      This is the time the world is divided, with no Grey in between. This is when it’s dangerous. The lines no longer blur and everything I lost is still out there, almost in sight, but beyond my reach. I rest my hand against the smooth metal of the nearest pole as Tobin leans his head against another. Power hums beneath my fingers and feet. The invisible wall between us falls away, and Tobin finally acknowledges that he’s not alone. His eyes, when they meet mine, have that distant look again, as though they’re not focused on the here or now. They grow stormy, then he turns toward the main building without a word.

      A persistent plea of “Go” rattles around my brain, but there’s no answer when I ask it where I’m supposed to go to. Nothing lives beyond the Arc but death. There’s no way back to wherever I came from.

      “I thought we had a deal.”

      I cringe, knowing exactly who that voice belongs to. I’m an idiot. I’m not the one Tobin ran from.

      Mr. Pace stands behind me, arms crossed. Trailing him, Honoria approaches with half of her patrolmen from the fire, ready pick up the slack of our weakened perimeter. They’re going back to their assigned places for the night, still wearing the exhaustion that comes from working through the day.

      “You were supposed to stay in your room until first meal,” Mr. Pace says. “Not wander out to the boundary and set off the proximity alarms.”

      I’m going to kill Tobin for picking up that stone; he must have tripped a sensor.

      “I promised I’d stay out of sight, not in my room,” I say weakly.

      “What’s she doing out here?” Honoria asks, ignoring me, as though I can’t answer for myself.

      Hateful and hard, she snaps her fingers toward Mr. Pace and draws him away, pointing to me and then to the switchbox I’d used to hide from Tobin.

      She thinks I was going to run; I can see it in her face.

      She’ll turn me out to die in the Dark, or lock me up so the others can forget I ever disturbed their routine. If she’s decided that those lost to the Fade really did die in vain because of me. . . .

      I bob from one foot to the other, giving the Arc a long glance and struggling not to give in to the voice telling me to leave and never look back. If I run, no one would follow.

      No! Such thoughts are madness. Whatever Honoria decides, it’s not worth venturing into certain death to escape.

      Finally, it ends. She jabs the air with an insistent finger, sending Mr. Pace back toward me.

      “Sorry,” I whisper to my teacher. “I wasn’t running. I don’t hear voices like the people before.”

      Honoria hasn’t taken her eyes off me, so I shift my attention to my feet.

      “Is she going to make me leave?”

      Mr. Pace steps sideways, turning his body into a blockade. “Marina, even if you did hear voices, that wouldn’t happen. Those who left in the first days weren’t tossed aside; the people here tried to keep them. Why were you at the switchbox?”

      “I wanted to see what was burning, but then the sun started to go down and . . . I got scared, so I hid.” It sounds better than the truth.

      “The fire’s nothing to worry about,” he says, and tries to smile.

      “People only say that when they mean the opposite.”

      “Not me.”

      “It’s where they broke through, isn’t it?”

      Mr. Pace hesitates, checking over his shoulder to see what Honoria’s doing. Once he’s sure she’s occupied with inspecting the switchbox, he answers.

      “Yes.”

      “How’d they get so close?” If Tobin and I were enough to trigger a sensor, they should have, too.

      “Most people think of the Arclight and Dark as rings, with the Grey between them.” He drops to the ground and draws three concentric circles in the dirt. “But there are places where the Dark comes so close that the Grey’s almost gone.”

      He nods in the direction my little bird disappeared and wipes the drawing away to make another. A tiny circle in the center, with an amorphous blob surrounding it. The band that separates the two grows wide on one side, and nonexistent on the other.

      “Our territory is shrinking, while the Dark is always growing wider, consuming the terrain around it. Another decade, СКАЧАТЬ