I glanced at Ezra and found him watching me. He gave me a minute wink, and I looked away, shaking my head—but happy. Strangely, improbably happy. We were going to do something. Now. Together.
Julian took a seat on a stool at her worktable, looking exhausted. “You’d have presented electricity on your own if we hadn’t arrived in time?”
Nikola poured him a cup of water from the pitcher on the table. “Sterling City wasn’t going to postpone the biggest event of the year to wait on my accomplices.”
“I hate the circumstances of our arrival, but I’m glad we’re here to help,” Julian admitted, holding the cup without drinking.
“I am as well. You’d have murdered me yourself if I’d gotten all the glory,” she said with a grin, nudging him until he seemed to notice the water and finished it all at once.
I knew that she was joking. That was the beauty of what they were doing. “You’re not seeking glory at all,” I said, wondrous. “You want your electricity to belong to everyone.”
“Exactly,” Nikola said. “The House controls too much. Together, the Elders own more land than any other private entity. They run the supply lines and manage the labor. The economies of entire regions are dependent on radiance and the work it takes to construct Missions. The Elders serve in the government and ensure that regulations favor them. It’s corruption. And it has to be stopped before they become even more powerful.”
At the House of Industry, we’d been told from the moment we could listen that we were better than everyone else. Blessed by a birthright. The Elders of the House lived in opulence from the dues paid to every Mission for providing radiance.
I felt sick for never questioning their obscene wealth.
But now I could help stop it. If cities and towns and villages produced this new electricity, they wouldn’t need the radiance that had spread across the land like an invasive weed. The people could reconfigure conduction lines, continue innovating, and in turn cut off the flood of money into the House.
A heavy reminder settled in the pit of my stomach.
“The Elders know exactly what they’re doing.” It was a soft, hurt exhale. I’d known this. But saying it aloud, truly accepting it … this was something new. It made my legs feel tired and weak. “And they don’t care.”
“Oh, they care,” Nikola said with a snort. “They care deeply about getting rich and staying rich.”
Not only did they know that they were destroying lives and the countryside, but it was likely they also knew why our parents had died. Surely there were ways of determining if infants were Children of Industry. All those deaths had been preventable, but they’d chosen instead to allow us to become orphaned, to become isolated, to become perfect tools.
Anger took root in me like nothing I’d felt before. Unlike the rage that made it so easy to lash out with radiance, this anger was calm. Theradiance in me hummed, content to lie in wait. Ready to be released at the right time.
“Are your people killing Children of Industry?” Ezra’s abrupt question hung in the air like the silence after a crack of lightning. I’d never thought to ask—or even wonder. Nikola hadn’t spoken of violence. But that didn’t mean her version of resistance was limited to demonstrations.
“Ezra,” Julian chastised, earning only a dark look from him.
“It’s fine. He’s not out of line to ask.” Nikola crossed the room to a shelf full of books and oddities and loose papers. She reached for a stack of thin pamphlets and held one up.
Industry Is Killing Us,the cover read in big, angry letters. Below it, a woodblock illustration depicted a child standing before two gravestones. I recognized the style from the poster back in Cascade.
“I might not agree with everything done in the name of resistance, but wecanagree on using truth as a weapon. I help create and distribute materials that erode trust in the House of Industry. I do not condone murdering children who have been manipulated, and the sooner the House falls, the sooner that will stop happening. Once we have a path forward, our path, I believe those who call themselves resistors will align behind a common goal.”
“You don’t condone murdering children. But what about murdering people who actually deserve it?” I asked without intending to speak the words aloud. Ezra frowned, but I looked away from him. Now that I’d said it, I might as well explain myself. “The Elders of the House. It’s not like we can have them arrested or even investigated. Not when they’re embedded in the justice system itself.”
I thought of Marshall gleefully anticipating my death. I yearned to destroy the Elders for what they’d done. Was I any different?
“We’re not here to murder anyone,” Julian warned. I turned from him, hating the way he looked as if he didn’t know me at all. I knew I’d see the same expression on Ezra’s face. “That isn’t the plan. The plan is to convince others to stand up against the House. Not to wage war.”
Nikola handed me one of the pamphlets. She was ignoring both boys. “I don’t have an answer for you, Josephine. All I can tell you is that I’m debuting electricity at the Continental Exposition. I’m empowering others to fight the House of Industry on their own terms.”
Pushing down my thoughts of violent revenge, I considered another way to punish the Elders: turning their followers against them. “The other Children of Industry deserve to know all this,” I said, gesturing with the pamphlet. “Even the Transistors. Even—especially—the Generators. There’s no way they know anything that’s happening outside.”
Outside of where they were held captive, I finally understood. Prisoners. Enslaved in the name of Progress.
“Then tell them,” Nikola said. It wasn’t a dismissal. She was serious. “Who better to voice the truth than someone who has only just seen it?”
“At the exposition?” I asked, recalling a conversation that felt like it had happened a century ago. Grace had been so disappointed to miss the event. But the rest of the students at the House, and the local Conductors and Transistors—they’d be there. They’d be listening right alongside the rest of Sterling City. For the first time, the magnitude of what we were doing struck me.
Once again, I felt like I wasn’t enough. How could my voice possibly carry?
“The Continental Exposition is a moment in time,” Nikola said. “It’s the starting line, not the end of the race. And you won’t be doing anything alone.”
