Free Steel Lily ARC by Megan Curd Page B

weren’t supposed to be there. What was left of her chignon was smashed to the right side of her head. She looked like she’d been put through the ringer.
    Jaxon took off in a long stride toward a massive skyline in the distance. It was gold and black in the sunlight, its rays bouncing off the hundreds, if not thousands, of windowed skyscrapers and plunging other areas into deep darkness.
    I quickened my pace to stay close to Jaxon. When he saw Alice and I had caught up, he began what was undoubtedly a practiced script. “Welcome to Dome Seven. Don’t ask what the numbers mean, because I don’t know and don’t care. My name is, as we’ve been over multiple times, Jaxon Pierce. You can call me Jax. I’m the resident alchemist in the dome. There are —”
    “What’s an alchemist?” I interjected.
    He smiled at me and glanced at a tree as we walked toward the gleaming city, as though he thought someone might be sitting in a branch, watching us. His eyes darkened for a moment, and then he continued on as though I’d never spoken a word.
    “There are twenty-six residents at Chromelius Academy, all here for their unique talents and abilities. Atticus Riggs protects our kind. He finds us in the other domes and brings us back here. He gives us chance to be ourselves.”
    “Are you his delivery boy, then?” Alice asked with a sour look on her face.
    Jaxon looked at her coolly. “I’m nobody’s delivery boy, Miss Dobson. Riggs said Avery was hesitant to trust him and needed persuasion. I was the persuasion.”
    “You decided to persuade her by sticking the entire Polatzi on us?” Alice said, now incredulous. She seemed to grow taller in her irritation. Right now she looked like she might take a bite out of Jaxon.
    He smiled, but I could tell Alice put him on edge. “ I didn’t do anything, Miss Dobson,” he said defensively as he stepped away from her. “Riggs can be quite persuasive when he wants something. He told me there would be an, ah, altercation, and for me to watch for two lovely girls to be pushed from their hidey-hole like rats chased by terriers. And just as Riggs said, there you were, running wildly in the streets. No one told me the Polatzi would be involved, that there’d be so many, or that they would be as stupid as they are. One would think the governor’s special forces would possess some sort of mental fortitude. I might send him a letter pointing this out.”
    “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to get a letter from the gentleman who sprung two of his people out from under him.”
    Jaxon nodded thoughtfully, then smiled. “I’ll make sure to let him down easy. I’ll put some cologne on it. Seems to make my words sound better to the ladies.”
    I remained silent. To be honest, Jaxon intrigued me. I would never admit it to Alice, who already made it clear she found his company as enjoyable as a hugging a leper. Personally, I found him to be an enigma — a puzzle to be pieced together. An intricate puzzle that probably was missing a few pieces, but I was still curious.
    “By the way,” he added as he strode on through the wild grass, his palms down against the tips of it, “an alchemist works to transmute common metals into gold or silver. Amongst other things.”
    “And why would we want to do that?” asked Alice, undeterred by the boredom in Jaxon’s voice. “Iron and steel are what we need. Steam powers everything.”
    Jaxon winked at me before he turned in a circle, arms extended in a simple yet grand gesture. “Ah, but how do you think this place runs? How it looks as nice as it does? Gold and silver are still the currency of the modern world, and we have it here at Dome Seven.”

CHAPTER
    EIGHT
    Alice and I followed Jaxon in silence after his introduction to the dome. The onslaught of new sights, sounds, and smells was overwhelming.
    We were out of Dome Four. I was away from having to donate steam. I was free.
    I laughed at the impossibility of it all.
    The skyline grew in