The Fire Sermon by Francesca Haig Page A

he left, they crowded me for hours with their closed eyes and open mouths. They were all Omegas, all suspended in the timelessness of those glass vats. As the months passed, even as Zach’s visits grew rarer, my awareness of the tank room became near-constant. Far from being abstract, it felt not only real but also close. It became so pressing a physical presence that I felt as if I could navigate by it: the sure pull of that room, perhaps only hundreds of feet away, had become my compass point. Just as the river had once been the basis of my mental map of the valley where I grew up, now my imagination’s map of the fort was oriented by two locations: the cell, and the tank room. Beneath it all, the river was still there. I could sense it running deep underfoot, its ceaseless movement taunting me with my own stagnation.

    One day the Confessor unlocked the door but didn’t step inside the cell.
    “Get up,” she said, holding the door open.
    I hadn’t been out of the cell for more than a year. I wondered if she was taunting me. In the last few months, I’d sometimes begun to fear I was going mad. Looking through the open door, I distrusted even the strip of corridor I could make out. To my space-starved eyes, the concrete passageway seemed as far-fetched as a mountain vista under sunlight.
    “Hurry up. I’m going to show you something. We don’t have long.”
    Even with three armed soldiers standing by, and the Confessor watching me impatiently, I couldn’t hide my excitement as we stepped through the door.
    She refused to tell me where she was taking me, or to respond at all to any of my questions. She walked briskly, a few steps ahead of me, the guards following closely behind. As it turned out, it wasn’t far: just to the end of the corridor, through another locked door, then down a flight of stairs to another row of doors.
    “We’re not going outside?” I asked, facing the row of cell doors that mimicked my own: the gray steel; the narrow slot for meal trays near the base; the observation hatch at eye level, which could be opened only from the corridor, not within.
    “This isn’t a picnic excursion,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”
    She walked to the third door and slid open the hatch. Like the one in my cell, it clearly hadn’t been opened often—it slid awkwardly, shrieking with rust.
    The Confessor stepped back. “Go on,” she said, gesturing at the hatch.
    I stepped toward the door, leaned closer to the opening. It was darker inside the cell, the single electric light no match for the rows of them in the corridor. But even as my eyes were adjusting, I could see that the cell was just like mine. The same narrow bed, the same gray walls.
    “Look closer,” said the Confessor, her breath warm on the back of my ear.
    That’s when I saw the man. He was standing against the wall, in the darkest corner of the cell, watching the door warily.
    “Who are you?” he said, stepping forward, eyes narrowing to see me more clearly. His voice was as rusty as the observation hatch, grating with disuse.
    “Don’t talk to him,” said the Confessor. “Just watch.”
    “Who are you?” he said, louder this time. He was perhaps ten years older than me. I hadn’t seen him before, on any of those early visits to the ramparts, but his long beard and his pale skin showed that he wasn’t new to the Keeping Rooms.
    “I’m Cass,” I said.
    “There’s no point talking to him,” said the Confessor. She sounded almost bored. “Just watch. It’ll happen soon. I’ve been feeling it coming for days.”
    The man stepped forward again, only feet from the door now, so close that I could have reached out to him through the small opening. He was missing one hand, and his brand was visible through his matted hair.
    “Is there someone else there with you?” he said. “I haven’t seen anyone for months. Not since they brought me here.” He stepped closer, his hand raised.
    Then he buckled. It