“A little. It’s connected, right?”
“It’s likely more connected than you realize,” Julian said. “You’ve got an affinity for herbal healing and an intuition about the body. You should explore it further.”
A little pang of envy made itself known in my belly. Julian spoke as if he shared a language with Ezra. As if he had no trouble following the meandering path of Ezra’s thoughts.
Ezra let out a tired chuckle. “Yes, well, I haven’t had the benefit of instruction the way you both did.”
“We weren’t instructed,” Julian said. He’d paused, allowing us to catch up. Impatience tightened his jaw, but I understood. He wasn’t frustrated with me and Ezra, only at the necessity of our pace. “We were indoctrinated. We were made to be something, not given the opportunity to step into what we were meant to be. Everything meaningful I know I had to teach myself. I had to seek the information, the same as Josephine must, now that her eyes have been opened.”
“By all means,” Ezra said, brittle, as if Julian’s irritation had infected him, “direct me to where I can seek information about Animators. Find me documentation without bias. Show me thecontactsI can correspond with. I’d be happy to learn.”
“Ezra,” I said, not quite admonishing—but not hiding my surprise either. I’d only heard him speak with such venom once before, when Julian had chastised me at the Mission. I was still discovering the thorny parts of him.
“It’s fine.” Julian was looking at Ezra. “He’s right. We had guidance, whether the intention was good or not.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but Ezra brushed by him, bumping his shoulder and continuing down the weed-strewn path.
Julian’s gaze shifted to mine. An apology seemed to linger at his mouth, but he said nothing.
“Come on,” I said, my feet feeling heavy. My heart heavier. “Let’s go.”
We walked in silence for hours. The rhythm of my steps became meditative. As the shape of the shadows changed, I felt lighter in increments. There was space out here for my hurt. For Ezra’s and Julian’s. Space to let it be.
Out here with the sky turning scarlet and clouds rippling like smears of paint across forever, I felt terribly foolish to have ever believed radiance was my birthright. That spreading Progress across this beautiful world had been a noble cause.
Though I could not articulate it, I was starting to understand some of what Ezra meant when he said that his gift was like being called. For the first time in my life, I felt beckoning whispers along my skin and in my bones.
Out here, far from any machines, far from conduction lines and coils, my radiance responded to the moonlight and the starlight and the sun. It rippled in me, sustaining in a way that didn’t demand to be released or used. It didn’t require a mandate from the Elders. It simply was. I was.
I’d never felt so whole.
Did Julian feel it too?
I caught up to him on the path that had narrowed through a dense patch of flowering bushes. “What about the rest of us?” I asked.
“The rest of us?” he asked, sounding briefly dazed, as if his thoughts had also stretched wide in the silence and the steadiness of our travels.
“At the House. The students. The Generators. Even the professors. Some of them must be reasonable.” I thought of my classmates—my friends, they’d been my friends. Gertrude was my friend. She deserved to know the Elders were manipulating her. Were manipulating everyone.
“Yes, some are reasonable,” Julian agreed absently.
“We can’t let this happen to them, too.”
“Can’t let what happen? Being attacked by well-meaning but misguided resistors or having an internal crisis over the realization that radiance is profoundly toxic when misused?”
I punched Julian’s arm. “I’m being serious.”
“He’s also being serious,” Ezra said, an amused voice behind us.
“You want to debut your synthetic radiance at the Continental Exposition next year and change the course of Progress. But what about the other Children of Industry? Don’t they deserve a chance to stand beside you?”
“What are you proposing?” Julian reached to move a skinny branch out of the way for me, but it bent on its own before he could touch it. His shoulders stiffened as he continued. “Visit the House of Industry and tell everyone that overuse of radiance is destroying the world? And then see if they’d like to become resistors—the same people they associate with murdering their classmates?”
“Maybe we could,” I said stubbornly. “Maybe if they knew more about the wasting …”
“And what of the Elders? Will you destroy them if they refuse to acknowledge their crimes?”
It didn’t sound like a terrible idea to me.
But I had a feeling that thought was best kept to myself.
