Burn by Julianna Baggott Page A

and looks out one of the windows. “There’s another that went horribly wrong.”
    Worse than the boars that attack on command? What’s out there? No one has the guts to ask.
    El Capitan can see the boar’s wiry hairs, the blackened folds of its snout, the sharp curve of its tusks. He imagines the tip of a tusk piercing his rib cage, tearing up through his chest.
    Pressia says, with a hint of suspicion in her voice, “You could do this to a man, couldn’t you? Splice the genes between species. Why not humans?” She looks at Bartrand Kelly, narrows her eyes. “Did you give your research to Willux?”
    Special Forces. El Capitan imagines them as he first saw them, shifting through the trees—some had the muscularity of elk or deer and others seemed to hold the meaty bulk of bears. They lifted their faces to the wind, their nostrils tensing as they were alerted to different scents. Animallike. He thinks of his friend Hastings—is he actually a Beast, one genetically created under Willux’s orders with Kelly’s research?
    Kelly says, “You do what you have to do.”
    Bradwell’s wings arch and broaden. “Some people do what’s right.”
    “Research is research. How Willux chose to use it is his own sin. Not mine.”
    El Capitan recognizes the rationalization. He’s tried it out himself. Sin is sin—individual and collective. His life is full of it.
    Bradwell walks up to Kelly. “You knew how he’d use it.”
    Kelly raises his hand in the air and snaps his fingers. The boars tense. Their heads turn, heavy tusks and all, almost in perfect unison. “How about you take a few steps back?”
    Bradwell looks at the boars, their eyes all trained on Kelly’s hand. Bradwell walks toward the barn door, looking out at the sky.
    El Capitan steels himself. “Why don’t you just tell us what you want?”
    “I probably want what you want.”
    “What’s that?”
    “To be left alone.”
    “But Willux saved you,” Bradwell says, “and you’ve been playing nice with him.”
    “He’s dead,” Pressia says. “And Partridge is in charge now. Everything’s about to change.”
    “You have more faith in human nature than I do,” Kelly says.
    “Well, we don’t want to be left alone,” Bradwell says. “We want the truth to come out. We want justice.”
    Pressia shakes her head ever so slightly. It seems for a moment that’s the only contradicting she’ll do, but then it’s as if she can’t stop herself. She says, “No. We want the vial that belonged to my mother and the formula that we found. And we want to bring them back—to save lives.”
    Bradwell looks at Pressia. For a second, El Capitan thinks Bradwell’s going to break through all of the anger and resentment, walk over to her, and kiss her. But he says nothing. He has always simply wanted the truth to be known—to fulfill his parents’ mission. Willux arranged for the death of Bradwell’s parents before the Detonations and forced Arthur Walrond to end his own life—Walrond, a family friend who loved Bradwell. All three of them, gone. Pressia’s mother, dead.
    El Capitan says, “I wouldn’t mind a little old-fashioned revenge. I don’t think I’m alone.”
    This gets Kelly’s attention. “I gave Willux what he wanted, but I’ve been working on another agent as well, not unlike the thorned vines—a living but nearly undetectable bacterium that can eat the radiation-resistant material of the Dome.”
    “How does it work?” El Capitan asks.
    “It acts incredibly quickly.” He fits his hands in his pockets.
    “Are you saying that you have something that can bring down the Dome?” El Capitan says. His heart starts hammering in his chest.
    “Bring down the Dome?” Helmud repeats for clarity.
    “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Kelly says.
    “That’s not what we want at all,” Pressia says. “We need the Dome. If we get the vial back and the formula, we can get them to Partridge. He’ll find the right person on the inside