Firespark by Julie Bertagna Page A

stuck
.
    But what about all your plans? Mara steps closer, is careful not to touch
.
    Fox shrugs. Since I crashed the system the rooks have put security blocks everywhere. Haven’t found a way around them yet. Can’t start anything until I do
.
    You’re the best Noosrunner in New Mungo, Mara reminds him. You can outwit the rooks. You’ll find a way
.
    He just looks at her
.
    I should have stayed with you, she thinks
.
    She is about to tell him about the fox fire in the sky, to let him know that she still feels close to him in her world, but his face freezes. He looks over his shoulder, frowning
.
    What
?
    It’s just
—
    What
?
    Sirens. I hear sirens
.
    It’s in his world, Mara realizes; the ether around them is abuzz and a-crackle but calm. No sign of cyberdogs or hazard spiders anywhere near the bridge
.
    Sea police, Mara warns him. Put out all light and fire. They come in fleets with the ships to guard them from the people in the boat camp. Sometimes they raid the netherworld. That’s how they got Gorbals. Be careful
.
    I need to go
.
    One last glance and he’s gone. And she’s alone again on the Bridge to Nowhere
.
    She waits awhile, stomach churning with fear. When he doesn’t return, she retracks back through the Weave, desolate, as suddenly she knows that it’s always going to be like
this. Every time they part, they’ll never know if the other will stay safe until they next meet on the bridge
.
    Each moment together is a gift from time. Just staying alive and meeting here is all they can hope to do
.

PINBALL AND ICE-SOUP SEA

    The wind has grown bitter. It’s been gnawing at her face while she’s been cyberwizzing, ripping tears from her eyes; a wind full of star crusts and the memory of ice.
    Mara hugs herself, chilled to the bone in flimsy New World clothes that are not designed for a world so harsh. Maybe all that’s left of the Arctic ice is in the wind, just as all she has left of Fox is in the ether.
    But she’s wrong about the ice. At first she thinks the change in the ocean is just a trail of fox fire, or the glint of starlight on the waves. It’s only when a terrible groan echoes across the waves that she sees a sinister thickening of the ocean and the hulking phantoms that loom out of the dark.
    There is an instant of hope when she thinks the white phantoms might be the other ships that escaped the city with theirs.
    â€œWhat is it?” Ruby shoves past to see.
    Mara runs toward the control cabin. This time she’ll be ready. There will be no more accidents, no more deaths.
    â€œRowan, there’s something—a city, I don’t know what.” She’s so panicked she can hardly speak.
    A sharp scent cuts through the salty air. Rowan’s eyes are fixed on the white fleet.
    â€œIcebergs,” he says.
    They seem to float between sea and sky; strange wrecked castles of an icy realm.
    Their collapsed towers, spires, and arches are an uncanny echo of the drowned city’s ruined cathedral and the university tower. The death moan as a whole iceberg topples into the sea is heart-stopping. An end-of-the-world sound. The salty ocean digests the ancient ice with a dyspeptic fizzle and gulp.
    There’s no turning back. The boreal wind wraps around the ship and hurls them onward into the Far North.
    â€œWasn’t this in your book either?” says Ruby, sarcasm icing every word.
    It was, but Mara had been sure the rising ocean meant that all the Arctic ice had melted—though she remembers the island fishermen would often return from long trips with tales of an iceberg blitz. Small enough to look like the crests of waves from a distance, each iceberg, they said, was big enough below the surface to sink a fishing boat. Mara remembers her mother calling her out of bed one night,
Quick, come quick and see
, when an iceberg passed the island, luminous under the stars. A spectral, unearthly thing, Mara thought a