Pure by Julianna Baggott Page B

she can’t breathe. Even though she doesn’t remember them in any whole way, she remembers the feel of being enveloped by her mother—the softness of her body, the silkiness of her hair, the sweetness of her scent, the warmth. When her father wrapped her in his coat, she felt cocooned.
    This is what she’s thinking about, her fingers quickly attaching wings to the skeletal frame of a butterfly, when there’s a knock at the door. The knock is sharp, the singular rap of a knuckle. There’s no engine noise of an OSR truck. Who can it be?
    Her grandfather is sleeping soundly, deep rattling snores. She gets up and tiptoes to her grandfather, which is hard to do in Dutch-invented clogs; did these Dutch never have a reason to tiptoe? She grabs his shoulder and shakes it. “Someone’s here,” she whispers.
    He startles awake just as another knock sounds out in the small room.
    “Into the cabinet,” he says. They’ve worked it that she hides there if someone comes to the door, and if he taps his cane—
shave and a haircut, two bits
—she should escape through the fake panel. Pressia assumes that the little rhythm has something to do with barbershops, which may be why her grandfather’s chosen it. That’s their sign.
    Pressia walks quickly to the cabinet and climbs in. She leaves the smallest crack in the door so she can see.
    Her grandfather hobbles to the door with his cane and peers through a small hole that he’s cut out of the wood. “Who is it?” he asks.
    There’s a voice on the other side, a woman’s voice. Pressia can’t make out what she’s saying, but it must appease her grandfather in some way. He opens the door, and the woman walks in quickly, breathlessly. He shuts the door behind her.
    Pressia sees the woman in small glimpses—the rust on the gears embedded in her cheek, a sheen of metal cast over one of her eyes. She’s thin and short with blunt shoulders. She’s holding a bloody rag to her elbow. “Death Spree!” she tells Pressia’s grandfather. “Unannounced! We just had one not but a month ago! I barely got away.”
    A Death Spree? It makes no sense. The OSR announces Death Sprees—they let the soldiers form tribes for twenty-four-hour periods so they can kill people, carry their bodies to a circle staked out in an enemy’s field, tallying the dead for points. Those with the most win. OSR sees it as a way of winnowing the weak from the general population. They announce Death Sprees about twice a year, but they’d just had one. It was the time Pressia’s grandfather chose to strip the cabinets and make the fake panel so his handiwork wouldn’t be heard over the stomping, hooting wildness. There have never been two Death Sprees so close together and never unannounced. She assumes the woman’s crazy or perhaps in shock.
    “You sure about a Death Spree?” Pressia’s grandfather says. “I haven’t heard any chants.”
    “How else did I get this wound? It was out past the Rubble Fields heading west, still going strong. I ran here instead of home.” The woman has come to be stitched up, but it’s been so long since her grandfather has done any stitching, he has to look for his kit, which sits at the end of the cabinet, and dust it off.
    The woman says, “By God, what a day. First all them whispers, now a Death Spree!” She sits down at the table and looks at Pressia’s creatures. She sees the picture and touches it lightly with one finger. Pressia wonders if she’ll ask about it. She wishes she’d thought to swipe it from the table before climbing into the cabinet. “You heard them new whispers. Didn’t you?”
    “Can’t say that I’ve been out today.” He sits down across from the woman and looks at the gaping flesh.
    “You didn’t hear?”
    Her grandfather shakes his head and starts swabbing his instruments with alcohol. The room fills with its antiseptic tang.
    “A Pure,” she says, lowering her voice. “A boy with no scars, no marks, no fusings. They say he was