The Scorch

Sweat trickled down the back of Sevrynne’s neck as she stood before Commander Yina in the UnderKnox. Even underground she felt like she was being cooked alive, though it was far more comfortable in the UnderKnox than above ground.

“Sevrynne. Report,” Commander Yina prompted with a dagger-sharp stare from beneath her broad-brimmed hat. Platform boots beneath her loose robes made her taller than everyone else in the conference dugout.

“My people have their orders, Commander. They are moving to their positions. As I should be,” Sevrynne answered. Her tone was neutral, but it took every ounce of self control to keep herself still under the commander’s gaze. Yina did not attain her position through a popularity contest but through sheer force of iron will. Not everyone was made to survive in the Outlands, fighting for survival in the Knox Wastes. Commander Yina took no prisoners and expected absolute obedience. So far, she had led her enclave of survivors and resistance fighters to something like prosperity–or at least as anyone got during the Scorch.

“And the preparations?” Commander Yina continued, unbothered by Sevrynne’s impatience.

“Completed and undisturbed, to my knowledge.”

“Good. You know how important this is. Go and be successful. Give the Emperor what he deserves.”

“That is my intention.” Sevrynne bowed and backed out of Commander Yina’s chamber–one of the ancient customs the commander insisted on from some bygone empire, back when the surface world was habitable.

Sevrynne hoped that Commander Yina’s leadership might help bring back such a world. The Emperor seemed to have no interest in even trying.

***~O~***

A blazing red-orange sun seared the burnt landscape of the Knox Wastes. A sleek cluster of tubular towers at the center of a ruined cityscape shone too brightly to look at. Around them sprawled acres of crumbling buildings–the decrepit remains of the society that brought about the Scorch. Parched remains of trees and sickly cacti protruded from the rubble. Trash blew about in the dusty streets, harried by a hot stale breeze. Shimmers of heat radiated from the ground. Amongst the buildings, a few people slunk in the shadows, completely covered by sun-bleached rags. Their movements were languid; the intense heat sapped everyone’s energy.

Beneath the bowing awning of what must have once been a bank, Anver took a long drink from his gleaming hydroflask. A passerby caught a glimpse of the Imperial sigil on the flask and glowered at him for a moment, then vanished into a tumbledown ruin before he could react.

“Filth,” he muttered, though he was jealous of the Outlanders in that moment. They, at least, had figured out a way to survive the intolerable heat of the Wastes. As one of the Emperor’s operatives, Anver had the privilege of living in the air-conditioned Imperial Compound, that shining cluster of towers at the center of the Knox Wastes. Inside it was blessedly habitable. The Wastes felt like something from Dante’s Inferno, even in the shade.

But no one refused an order from the Emperor, not if they wanted to remain one of the Chosen living in that man-made paradise. Anver had his orders, and they required him to be out in the Wastes, investigating rumors of some planned attack on the solar panels that fueled the Imperial Compound. And so he sweated and skulked through the ruined city, sticking to the shade as much as he could, in a mimicry of how the Outlanders moved. He squirmed uncomfortably under the shelter of a partially crumbled wall, hating how the rags of his disguise fit. The loose, rough fabric chafed where it rubbed against his skin.

“How does anyone live like this?” he complained under his breath, panting in the heat. It was the hottest weather he had ever experienced, perhaps the hottest day on record even since the Scorch began.

“An Imperial,” a woman’s voice, laced with disgust, remarked behind him. He turned to find someone about his height wearing a long kaftan and piles of lightweight scarves around her head, neck, and shoulders. A battered straw hat sat incongruously atop her headscarves.

“An Outlander,” he remarked in the same tone before stopping short as the scarf over her nose and mouth slipped down, allowing him to see more of her face, which looked surprisingly similar to his own. “Wait… Do I know you?”

“Doubt it,” she scoffed, adjusting her scarves, but her eyes scanned him with new interest. “Unless…”

“Sevrynne?” Anver asked, hope and doubt fighting for control of his voice.

“Anver?” Her voice broke.

The distance between them closed and they marveled at each other.

“I haven’t seen you since–”

“Before the Scorch began. I thought you died–”

“I thought you died! I was taken from University–”

“That’s why I couldn’t find you! My school was–”

“Destroyed in the riots, I know. I looked for you–”

“The janitors got us out. There were tunnels–”

“Tunnels.” Anver suddenly remembered why he was out in the oppressive heat to begin with. “Outlander shelters now, probably.”

Sevrynne’s expression turned guarded in an instant. “Perhaps. Or abandoned ruins, or attempted wells. I wouldn’t know.”

“Don’t act like you’re not one of them, sister.”

“Sister?” Sevrynne repeated, then barked a short, incredulous laugh. “I have no kinship with any Imperials. There must be some mistake, Anver.”

“Don’t be like that. We finally found each other, after…how long has it been?”

“Many months. Perhaps years.”

“Right. Just because Fate took us to different places–”

“Fate. Right.” Sevrynne laughed again, a grating, bitter sound that made Anver’s skin crawl. “I don’t believe in Fate. The world didn’t have to be like this. And it doesn’t have to stay this way, if we’re willing to do something about it.”

“The Emperor and his Council are working to fight the Scorch–”

“Then they really ought to publicize that to the Outlanders. But those of us out here, fighting for survival and growing the food you eat in the Agri-Tents–we’re beneath their notice.”

Anver hardly recognized his younger sister as she spoke, each word a venomous cocktail of bitterness and hatred. There was a chance, perhaps more than a chance, that she was one of the people he was looking for, one of the Outlanders plotting terrorism against the Imperial Compound. But even so, she was his sister. Maybe there was a way they could both benefit from this encounter, he thought as he wiped sweat from his brow.

“Come with me, then,” Anver invited. “With a recommendation from me, you could join an Imperial Task Force.”

“You’re joking. This is a trap,” Sevrynne said, taking a step back. One of her hands dipped into a fold in her kaftan.

“I’m not. There’s air conditioning. Good food. Beds.” The offer had to be appealing to an Outlander, especially to Sevrynne, who had never been one for outdoorsy activities when they were growing up.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s very nice. But do you know the price of your luxuries?” She waved a hand at their surroundings. A stale gust of wind assaulted Anver’s head, feeling like it just came out of an oven and coming with a puff of dust. He coughed and reached for his hydroflask. Sevrynne knocked it out of his hand with a blow almost too fast to see. “Leave it. No point in being disguised as one of us with that thing.”

“But surely you have water?” He retrieved the hydroflask from the dry crumbled asphalt at his feet. “There’s no way you’re surviving without it.”

“We dig for it. Or pull it from the air with stolen technology, since the Emperor doesn’t see fit to give us legal access to such things. Or we drain liquid from cacti.”

“But there’s the river…”

“There was the river. It ran dry long ago. Let me show you.”

***~O~***

Sevrynne bounded away over the rubble of the Knox Waste, half expecting Anver not to follow her. She didn’t have time for this kind of delay if Commander Yina’s operation was to go to plan. She had to find a way to ditch him, and quickly. But the riverbed was on the way to her mission site. They just had to trudge through the sunbaked wreckage with very little shade to get there.

To her surprise, Anver followed her, even keeping pace, though he lacked her energy and grace as she picked through the wreckage. They passed husks of cars abandoned on strips of disintegrating, bleached asphalt that were once roads. A pile of garbage swarming with flies sat beside an ancient, immobile van and Sevrynne gave it a wide berth. Flies meant the stink hadn’t baked out of it yet; probably someone was living in the van, at least at night. Anver walked closer to it until he gagged and stumbled back.

“What is that?!” he demanded around hacking coughs.

“Better we don’t know. Just a little further. Keep up,” Sevrynne answered. She has no sympathy for her older brother now that he’s an Imperial.

“It’s too hot to walk this fast.”

“It’s too hot, period. And what is the Emperor doing about it?”

“He’s not a god, Sevrynne. He can’t turn down the sun.”

“But he has air conditioning and clean water and real food. While we don’t.” She crested a heap of rocks and trash that had long since been scorched into irrelevance by an unmerciful sun. “There.” She pointed at the dry, cracked earth of what was once a riverbed. Bits of metal and debris stuck up from the mud–things that were lost beneath the water many years ago. A couple of Outlanders with tattered umbrellas scrabbled in the earth with improvised tools.

While Anver gaped at them, Sevrynne darted away into the shell of an old convenience store. An entrance to the UnderKnox was hidden in what used to be a “beer cave” that had long since lost its refrigeration. Though still overwarm, the air underground was almost refreshing compared to the temperature on the surface. Sevrynne sprinted through narrow corridors, desperate to make it to her destination.

A few minutes later, she emerged from the UnderKnox in the remains of a riverside high-rise that had been converted to a solar farm. Huge cables ran from the farm towards the shining towers of the Imperial Compound. A couple other Outlanders were already there, tools at the ready.

“Took you long enough,” Raxtyn grumbled.

“Delayed by an Imperial,” she explained.

“Were you followed?”

“Don’t think so. And he can’t stop us, anyway.”

“Let’s do this, then,” Mirla said, and they got to work, pulling cables of their own out of the cracked porcelain tile in what might have once been a lavatory. The Emperor might own this solar farm, but today the Outlanders would take its power for themselves and give themselves the means to do more than just scrape by in the infernal heat of the Scorch.

If they succeeded, maybe their tomorrow would be cooler.