Skylark Read Free

you.
    And lock them in with a pixie. My stomach roiled at the thought, a shudder of remembered terror running through me. I stared up at the hatch for a few long moments and then groaned, dropping back down to the floor, the hatch unlocked.
    My heart still pounding, I set off down the larger tunnel, avoiding the one where I’d gotten stuck. My nerves were jangling, and I had to try not to think of how close I’d come to being caught. The punishments for sneaking into the school were dire—minimum rations, isolation, even giving you a lower status apprenticeship when you were harvested and made an adult. Plus there was pride. In all these years, I’d never been caught. My thoughts were lost in imagining the punishments, fear mixed with relief still ruling my mind as I hurried home.
    I should have noticed something was wrong. Even though the cleaner chamber was receding further and further behind me, the sound of machinery remained. The humming grew louder as I walked, but I was so relieved at my escape that I didn’t give it a second’s thought.
    And so when I reached an intersection of the tunnels and rounded the corner to come face to face with a pixie, I could do nothing but stare stupidly.
    It had no eyes, no mouth, only a featureless, round head no bigger than my pinky fingernail. Delicate copper wings were a blur of motion as it hovered, its segmented body giving it an insectlike appearance. They were the smallest of the mechanimals invented in the extravagant decades before the wars, requiring so little of the Resource to run that they were the only ones the Institute still used. They were nothing more than curiosities then, but now they were the Institute’s eyes in the city, able to detect instantly any illegal use of the Resource. Children weren’t expected to report malfunctions and submit to Adjustment—children, after all, can’t be expected to act responsibly. They need to be watched.
    For a moment we were still, me staring at the pixie and it watching me sightlessly in return. The only sounds I could hear were the buzzing of its wings, the whirring of its gears, and the jarring, discordant twang of the Resource twisted to its mechanism.
    Then it gave a malevolent whine of triumph and launched itself toward my face, so fast I almost didn’t see it move. Without thinking, I threw up my hands, all of the panic, relief, despair, and fury of the past half hour exploding with no time to count to ten, no time to think of iron.
    The pixie was thrown against the far wall of the tunnel with such force that it shattered, fragments tinkling against the brick and splashing in the water.
    I staggered, lightheaded, a hazy mist descending over my eyes. A wave of dizziness nearly knocked me down, and I stumbled over toward where I’d seen the pixie strike. Dropping to my knees, I felt through the muck.
    There was nothing left but a few hollow shards of copper shell.
    Shaking, I forced myself to my feet again. The Resource. I’d used it. And not just a tiny spell to save my life in a tunnel somewhere. I’d damaged a pixie, a precious machine, the very eyes of the Institute. No, not just damaged. Obliterated.
    It shouldn’t have been possible. Even the strongest flow of Resource was barely enough to levitate a pencil without the help of machinery to amplify it. It was a power source—like the tightly wound spring in a watch—nothing more. The Institute had always taught us so. That the architects could be wrong was unthinkable.
    At least I’d found out I wasn’t a dud.
    But at what cost?
    •  •  •
    I longed to linger in the shower and let the water wash away the fear as well as the tunnel muck. I’d learned long ago to save my shower ration for the days I’d be going tunnel-hopping, but even so I had only a few minutes at most. It had taken me the better part of an hour to work my way back through the tunnels, and then find a circuitous route home that would avoid having anyone see me, wet and mucky