But he isn’t. Instead, I travel alone across the bridge until I reach a land of gray, and there, the pulse of Red’s heart wraps around me, pulling me to him. Everything in me lifts in hope at the feeling. He’s here, all around me. I’m standing inside his consciousness. And slowly, the world he sees in that moment comes to me, as surely as if I’m beside him.
And then I am Red, seeing from his point of view, standing at the edge of the foothills ringing behind Newage. He’s staring without a word at the smoke still billowing from the city. Beside him are glimpses of a few other Strikers—maybe a dozen of them, their uniforms dirty and charred—settling in the darkness without fires to keep them warm or heat their food. They gnaw instead on handfuls of roots from the forest and what little provisions some of them had managed to take from the city.
Are these the only soldiers that escaped?
Beside Red comes a familiar voice. My heart surges as Red turns to look at Adena beside him, who nods down at the ramparts of Newage’s steel walls. She’s hunched over a Karensan gun, taking it apart bit by bit.
Even the sight of Adena’s slouched figure sitting on the ground makes my throat constrict. Tears well behind my closed eyes. I’ve thought about her so often since my captivity, had ached for her quick smile and her homemade remedies and thoughtful inventions. I miss her even more than I thought I did.
“—not nearly enough of us to mount even the semblance of a rebellion,” Adena says. “But we have to free those prisoners. We need more than just this small crew.”
“How much time can they really buy for us against the Federation?” Tomm says.
Tomm had hated us not long ago, back when the Maran warfront still held. Now here he is, sitting side by side with Adena. All I can feel is gratitude at the sight of his blue coat. I suppose desperate circumstances can unite anyone.
“A month? That’d give us enough to think of a way to push back, maybe even force them out of Newage,” Adena argues. “We can’t defeat the entire Federation. We only want them to think Mara isn’t worth the trouble.”
“You don’t understand,” Red responds. “What we saw at the train yard changes things. None of us knew that the Premier would be on that train tomorrow. That means he will be out at the yard in the morning, when we are supposed to make our move, and Talin will be the one protecting him. She is a true Skyhunter, Adena, one loyal to the Premier.” His voice quiets. “I am no match for her. None of us are.”
She straightens and shakes her head at him. “Waiting isn’t a luxury we can afford. You said that yourself.”
If they had been near the train yards, then they are definitely close. No wonder I felt Red’s pull today. And he had seen me there. He knows what I’ve become.
Then I notice Red is wearing my armguard from the last battle we’d fought and lost. Except this is impossible, because I’d never taken them off. I blink and look at Adena, whose hair also seems too long given the time that has passed.
This is, after all, still a dream. I don’t even know how much of what I’m seeing is real and how much is just a fantasy. Maybe only fragments are real. Maybe I can’t tell what is and isn’t. There were times, back during my transformation, when the agony of steel instruments working against my back and on my limbs and in my eyes had sent me into shock, had filled my head with hallucinations. Maybe I am still confused.
Maybe they’re not alive at all. Maybe this is my imagination.
Red sits back, frustrated, but unwilling to argue Adena’s point. At his silence, one of other figures sitting nearby stirs, and Red turns to look at him. I suck in my breath. Aramin.
“You’re both right,” the Firstblade says, his eyes reflecting the night. When he speaks, everyone else hushes. “Talin as a Skyhunter isn’t something we bargained for. We can’t fight against her. But if we’re lucky, we won’t have to. If everything goes as we plan, we can destroy the tracks and escape with those prisoners before she can hunt us all down.”
“It isn’t worth it,” Red snaps. “A ruined train track and a few prisoners, for your lives?”
At that, the figure beside Aramin speaks up. It’s Jeran. He looks like he has a fresh wound on his face, a scar running along his cheek that changes his beauty. His uniform is worn, fraying at the elbows, but he still looks so much like himself that I can hardly bear seeing him.
“I think there’s another reason why you’re holding back, Red,” Jeran says in his soft voice. “I know what Talin means to you.”
“Talin is not a human anymore,” Red replies. His words are stated in a cold, vicious way that I recognize. It’s his defense against the grief that might otherwise overwhelm him, the same habit he had when I first met him and he seemed ready to give up his life. “She is a war machine. She is designed to do one thing—carry out Constantine’s orders, whether they are to protect him or kill everyone in sight. She will do as he asks without hesitation. Why do you not understand this?”
His words pierce me as painfully as a blade. My own grief wells up in me now, surging through my chest and up my throat until I can feel the pressure of a cry wanting to burst from me. Red, I try reaching through our link again, but he doesn’t react at all.
“We understand just fine,” Aramin says, his voice just as cutting.
“For what? A brief delay of the Federation’s plans?”
“Do you really think we will stay here, camped safely, for another month?” Aramin narrows his eyes. “Two months? Three? How long? Meanwhile, they hunt for us in the hills. Do we let them capture us like frightened children? Or do we do something?”
“Something would have to shift the odds in our favor,” Red mutters. He looks down at his feet, and now I can feel the fear flowing through him. With a start, I realize it’s directed at me.
Not because he’s afraid to go against me in battle. He’s afraid to come face-to-face with what I really am. To be unable to help me.
“You are our odds,” Adena tells him. “You are a Skyhunter too.” She shrugs, her gaze going momentarily toward Newage in the distance. “We have to believe in something.”
Red’s silent. A wave of his emotions roils over me, and I gasp, drowning for a moment in his grief. He’s thinking of the last time we saw each other, and the flash of that memory appears sharp in my own mind.
“We are going to do this,” Aramin says in the pause that follows. “And we are going to do it quickly. In and out. Let’s keep this efficient.”
Red doesn’t answer at first. Then, finally, he nods, his jaw tight.
“And then what?” Adena asks quietly.
“Step by step,” Jeran says.
Before them, the first rays of dawn scatter purple and orange streaks behind the fallen city of Newage, and overhead, the stars are beginning to fade away. They’re still so bright through Red’s enhanced vision that I think their light must be heightened by the fog of my dream.
Be real, I wish. And then I think, Don’t be real. If this is just a dream, then Red isn’t really sitting at a campsite with the Strikers. If this is real, then he believes I’m now a monster. Real, not real. Either way, I lose.
Then I see Red turn to his side. His profile is framed in the shadows, but in that darkness, I make out the expression on his face. He’s looking over his shoulder, his eyes lost in thought, his body blurred in mist. As if he heard a whisper from some faraway place. From me.