What Constantine will do with them once they arrive in Cardinia, I already know. The Chief Architect will see them, just as she saw me. She’ll take them to the National Laboratory and have them tested to see if they can withstand the Skyhunter transformation. Or, if they don’t pass that exam, they may be transformed into Ghosts.
Or worse, he might hand them over to his brother. I tremble at the thought of what General Caitoman might do to them.
“Firstblade,” he says when he sees Aramin. I expect Constantine to gloat, but instead he just shakes his head. “You should have surrendered at the warfront. So many of your talented soldiers could have found new purpose within the Federation.”
Aramin doesn’t respond to that, but he does keep his eyes fixed steadily on the Premier, a silent challenge.
The guard standing beside Aramin hits him so hard that he crumples to his knees, then shoves him face-first into the ground. I push down the pain of this sight, biting the inside of my lip until I taste the metallic tang of blood. Constantine watches coolly, unfazed.
My eyes go to Adena. She looks hollowed out, a shadow of who she’d been in Red’s vision only the night before. She searches my gaze and finds what she’s looking for in there—the truth. She knows I’m the reason why they were ambushed. Why their plan today didn’t work. She knows that, somehow, I discovered what they were doing and I passed the knowledge on to the Premier.
The grief I see in her now reminds me of when her brother had first died.
Adena had gotten heavily drunk that night. She threw up everything in her and fell right outside of our mess hall. Jeran carried her half-conscious form back to the apartments, where Corian made her guzzle water before I helped her change and get into bed. As she went down, she turned to me, eyes glazed with despair.
How did you do it, Talin? she whispered to me. Make it day after day, after Basea?
I gave her a sad smile. Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t remember many of the days after my mother and I settled in the Outer City. They blended together. I shrugged, hesitating. And then, one day, you realize years have passed and you’re still here.
She smiled back, her bravado surging forward for a second, and then started to cry. Her hands came up, trembling, to hide her face. I was staring right at him, Talin, she sobbed. He was running right at me, and I didn’t even think to run forward to get him. He watched me do nothing to save him. I feel like I killed him.
I put a hand on her shoulder and waited for her. Finally, when she fell silent and started to wipe her tears away, I leaned forward against her bed and met her stare. You didn’t do this, I signed to her firmly. They did. Listen to me, Adena. You’re still here. You made it. And as long as you’re alive, you carry on your brother’s legacy. As long as we’re still alive, we can keep pushing back.
The memory fades, and I find myself staring back into the face of the same girl. But her grief is not what it once was. She doesn’t see me as the Striker who fought alongside her or who held her as she cried. She looks at me like I’m the one on the other side of the warfront, shooting her brother in the back as he runs.
And she’s right. Because what else am I?
Constantine glances at Caitoman and gives him a curt nod. Caitoman snaps his fingers at his troops, that malicious smile back on his face, and the Strikers are jerked away by their ropes. I tear my eyes away from their bound figures, my heart pounding at the thought of what he might do to them.
When I look back at Constantine, he’s regarding me with a curious expression. “Thank you for saving my brother’s life,” he says to me. But I can feel him studying me, wondering if I did anything in that moment to defy him.
Finally, he gives me a small nod. I know you resent saving my brother.
You know he is a monster.
At that, something strange and different ripples through our link. Pity, maybe, or regret. I can’t tell.
Caitoman is only what our father made him, Constantine replies.
He doesn’t say more about it. Instead, he straightens and walks ahead of me to join his brother’s side, listening patiently as his brother leans over to tell him something.
I watch the brothers go, not knowing how to feel. Then I realize that I don’t care. I don’t care what happened in Constantine’s past, or why Caitoman is the way he is. I don’t care to know why they have chosen to destroy everything in their paths. No matter what it is, it cannot change what they’ve done to me. To Red. To my friends. To my mother.
My mother. My mother. My fear for her life clouds every corner of my mind. So I let myself feel angry instead, allowing the emotion of fury to build in my chest until it overtakes my fear, until rage is the only thing Constantine could possibly feel from me. I hope the anger emanating from me haunts him. Let him wake at night, sweating, from his dark dreams.
Let him feel fear too.
9
RED
I head into the forests and land as soon as I can, trying to keep a distance away from our makeshift Striker campsite. No need to lead General Caitoman straight to us. There, I crouch in a high, dark nook of a tree and wait.
I don’t know what for. We’ve lost already.
The accusing voice, the other me talking to myself, fills my head like a maelstrom.
You’re back to running, it hisses. Always running. And for a while, you don’t know where to go. You were supposed to have destroyed the new train tracks they are building into Newage. The prisoners they were supposed to be transporting would instead be freed, ready to join us in our growing fight.
Instead, the others have died or vanished or been captured.
You’d left them there to fend for themselves. Had anyone else escaped? Would they head back to the campsite, or is it too dangerous? Would you even be able to return to the remaining stragglers like this, alone, a useless former Skyhunter with a broken wing that they’d somehow thought would give them a fighting chance? What will they think if they see you coming back empty-handed? Would you just be leading the enemy right to them?
And Talin.
I shut my eyes in an attempt to keep the image of her out—the new metal of her wings, the black armor that encases her, the hollow tragedy in her eyes. I try to kill the other voice. I had faced her and she had faced me. She’d looked straight at me, recognized me, knew what she was being forced to do, and told me to run.
Her body has been transformed, ripped apart and put together in the way that mine is. The difference is that I’d escaped, while she remains trapped.
The Premier of the Federation has her at his beck and call and I can’t free her. I couldn’t take her with me. My teeth clench until I think I might break my jaw. My fists tighten until the edges of my nails slice through the skin of my palms.
You couldn’t help her.
I stay frozen where I am, the shame in my heart pulling me in every direction, the voice repeating over and over in my mind. It always sounds the loudest when I’m alone, trapped and helpless, as if I’m back in that glass cage. Meeting Talin had quieted it for a time. Losing her has brought it back in force.
Then I shake my head. The voice’s advice changes.
No use dwelling on your failings now. Soldiers will still be on your trail. They saw the path you took in the sky to escape. They will be out, searching. You can’t afford to sit here, waiting for your mind to fall apart.