Free Burn by Julianna Baggott Page B

Is there blood on that fingerprint now?”
    There’s another brief burst of static and his father’s voice is gone.
    It’s silent. He stares across the map with its blue lights. His breath feels high and tight in his throat. He flips over his hands and looks at his fingertips—the tiny intricate swirls that are his and his alone. His father knew that if Partridge was listening to this recording then he probably killed his father.
    Lyda whispers, “He knew you’d do it.”
    “Don’t,” Partridge says.
    “He’s still in power.” Her voice is cold, or maybe fearful.
    He lifts his head and turns to look at her. “No,” Partridge says. “I killed him.”
    Lyda’s face looks pale and stiff. “He’s still…” She pulls her hands up to her throat, tightening her fists. He stands up and she backs away. “It’s changed you, Partridge. Part of your father knew you’d do it, knew you were capable of killing him, and it’s changed you deep down.” She backs against a wall, the photographs rattling.
    “What else could I do? Let him kill me?”
    “No,” she says, shaking her head angrily. “It’s just…”
    “Just what?” He remembers the feeling he had just after he’d done it. His hands went numb. He couldn’t feel his legs. He couldn’t think. His heart was pounding, though, like it was the only thing left. And he feels that now because Lyda’s never been afraid of him like this, and he can read it on her face so clearly. “Lyda,” he whispers.
    “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s another secret. We grew up with all of these secrets and lies. How can we keep living this life, Partridge? I don’t know if I can…” She takes a deep breath, quickly touching her stomach. The baby. The future.
    “Without you, I’ll be alone in this,” he says. “Don’t turn your back on me.”
    “I’m not.” She glances around as if adding, I have nowhere else to go . But then she reaches into her coat pocket. “We’re not completely alone.” She pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. He walks to her and she hands it to him. “They’re here—the sleeper cells: Cygnus, the swan.”
    It’s an origami swan. “They made contact with you?”
    “Read it.”
    Partridge unfolds a wing and reads Glassings needs your help. Save him. “Who gave this to you?”
    “The tech who came to fix the orb.”
    “Save Glassings from what? Where the hell is he?” he says.
    “This is all I’ve got.” She sighs and then rubs her eyes. “Are you going to open the drawer?”
    “What?”
    “I think you should do it.”
    “I watched my father all my life, you know—how people looked at him and how he was spoken to. I didn’t mean to, but I took it all in, and I think, on some level, I must have thought my father’s life would one day be mine. I mean, he was my father.” He stops abruptly. He draws in a sharp breath. He’s worried that he’s going to cry. “It’s not just that I killed him, Lyda. It’s not just that I’m a murderer.” He rubs his thumb against his fingertips, thinking of his father talking about blood on his fingerprint. “It’s that I’m afraid I’ll become him.”
    “Open the drawer,” Lyda says.
    Partridge isn’t going to argue with her—not now. He puts a finger on the blue lit square on the top desk drawer. It glides open, revealing a stack of folders.
    He picks up the top folder and drops it on the desk. Just like his father said, its label reads ENEMIES . He opens it up. It’s filled with people’s pictures, each with a page of data—suspicious activity, family, friends, affiliations.
    Partridge flips through the stack, and Lyda walks over, close enough to see the faces. He stops when he comes to Bradwell. Lyda gasps, and he knows it’s because she recognizes the background too—the woods where his mother and brother were killed. The picture is of Bradwell shouting, the cords of his neck taut; he’s caught mid-action, and Partridge realizes that this picture was taken