Shatter the Suns

by Caitlin Sangster

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  Pulling me down to kneel next to him in the snow, Howl points toward the aisle of tents. “Because the place he sleeps is outside the fence. It’s supposed to keep him safer, I guess. Hard to kill someone in their sleep if you can’t find the right bed.” Howl looks out over the aisle between tents, pointing toward the largest one in the cluster near the flagpole. “He has a guard posted on his official tent where most of his things are, but when he’s actually planning to be there, they aren’t lounging around the back door. Look.”

  The entrance Howl is pointing to is manned by a single Red, who shuffles her feet every few minutes, then looks down to pick at a spot on her sleeve.

  “You know where to look in there?” Tai-ge asks.

  “I think so. If he hasn’t moved it.” Howl stands, walking out into the brightly lit circle at the center of the tents where the flag waves above us. He walks straight across, head held high, only looking back once to make sure we’re following.

  When we slip around the back side of the Chairman’s tent, Howl stops us. “There’s one outside, and one just inside. Can you help me?” He waits for Tai-ge’s answering nod.

  “And you?” Howl looks at me. When I don’t answer, he pulls his mask down around his throat, pulling the tinny rasp of the filters away from his voice. “You always did pretty well when we were running around Outside before. I didn’t bring any grenades this time around, though. Or a tree branch.”

  “You don’t have any guns up your sleeve this time?” I ask, my voice burning.

  “A sleeve wouldn’t be a very good place to hide a gun.” He pulls at the cuff of his sleeve, fingering the material. “How would you get it out?”

  “It’s a figure of speech.” When the gun came out back in the forest, it had been a surprise. One that he’d put into my hand, saying he couldn’t shoot it.

  “Right. One that doesn’t apply to guns.” Howl loops the mask back over his nose and mouth. “You going to help or not?”

  • • •

  When I stumble toward the Chairman’s tent, the woman standing guard pulls out her gun sleek and slow, the nose following my every move. I can almost feel its attention burning holes through my jacket, straight through to my skin, nothing but metal and a little black hole that mean my death. The Red squares her shoulders, all boredom evaporated into the night sky. “Back away, Comrade.”

  “I need to speak to the Chairman.” The title sucks the last of the air out of me, and I fall to my knees, tearing the mask from my face. “Please. When the scouts came back, they—”

  Tai-ge flies into the guard from around the tent’s corner, catching her in the side as she swings the gun around to point at him. She’s falling before I can even register the wrench cracking into her head, leaving the woman still in the snow. There’s a spot of blood on her temple, the wound looking black and sickly against her skin. Drips of red trail along behind her as Tai-ge drags her into the mouth of the tent. I dust the snow from my knees, feeling the bite of wet and ice through my canvas pants as I follow. Howl stands just inside, another still form at his feet. He and Tai-ge pull the masks off the two immobilized guards, and I come in with the inhibitor spray, pressing the trigger until it’s gone to ensure they won’t wake up. Not for a while, anyway.

  I try not to notice how frail they look, lying on the ground, their images sticking with me even after Howl and Tai-ge drag them into one of the tent’s rooms out of sight.

  Once the guards are hidden and tied up, Howl leads us down the tent’s length, long and thin like a hallway. Rooms open up on both sides, partitioned off with lengths of canvas. A space with what looks like a bathtub, one with a cot and a pile of books, one with a chest of drawers and a dressing table. Howl stops short of where the tent opens into a main area, with seats and a large table, taking us into a small side room with a desk instead.

  Tai-ge goes to a bookshelf up against the far wall, paned glass doors over the front. “What does the key look like?” He squints through the bubbled glass. “What I wouldn’t do for a quicklight right now.”

  “It’s a metal disc. With a ridge around the outside.” Howl yanks at one of the locked drawers until wood begins to creak.

  I pick through the items on the desk, accidentally sending a glass paperweight rolling and knocking over the Chairman’s seal, his name and title stained red with ink.

  “There’s something that might be . . .” Tai-ge points beyond the glass. He touches the door, trying to fit his fingers between the wooden trim and the frame. “Anyone good at breaking glass quietly?”

  Howl looks up, hand slipping into his pants pocket. It takes a second to register that the thing he pulls out is a knife until he flicks the blade free from its leather sheath.

  “Tai-ge . . . !” I jump up as Howl steps toward Tai-ge’s exposed back.

  But Howl’s holding the knife out handle-first.

  “Try breaking the lock.” Howl says, waiting until Tai-ge takes the knife before looking back at me, a challenge in his eyes.

  Tai-ge wiggles the knife between the frame and the trim around the glass, using it as a lever to bend the locking mechanism. Wood splinters, the door groaning as he puts his weight on it until finally a chunk of wood flies out from under the knife. The door swings open.

  Knife still in hand, Tai-ge pulls something from inside, the darkness of the tent making it difficult to see what the object is. Howl takes it from Tai-ge, running his hand across the top.

  “Well? Is that what we’re looking for?” Tai-ge asks. “Because if it isn’t, then we need to . . .” He trails off, looking down at the knife as he rubs his thumb across the handgrip.

  Howl pockets the disc. “I think it’s the beginning of a lucky evening.” He holds out his hand for the knife, but Tai-ge—staring down at it as if it’s begun to glow—doesn’t move to give it to him.

  “Where did you get this knife?” Tai-ge asks.

  “Magic.” Howl steps closer as if he means to take it back whether or not Tai-ge’s willing, and suddenly the air turns sharp. “Same way I undid the tape and got out of the storage closet.”

  I step up, whisking the knife from Tai-ge’s hands. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I hold my hand out for the weapon’s leather sheath, and Howl reluctantly hands it over. The notched blade catches on the leather covering as I slip it on, but the lightning-strike quality to the air seems to dissipate once the weapon is properly sheathed and in my pocket. Howl watches me put it away but doesn’t say anything before heading out of the room.

  “Did you see . . . ? On the handle, Sev,” Tai-ge whispers.

  “It doesn’t matter how he got his hands on a knife right now.” Taking hold of Tai-ge’s arm, I pull him into the hallway after Howl. “We have to get to the edge of camp before June starts—”

  Something harsh and metallic echoes over the camp. Howl skids to a stop in front of me, and I narrowly miss barreling straight into him. We’re are too close, my shoulder against Howl’s side and Tai-ge’s ribs squished against mine as we all listen hard.

  Gunfire.

  CHAPTER 20

  “THAT CAN’T BE BECAUSE OF June, can it?” Tai-ge whispers. “I didn’t hear an explosion.”

  “Unless someone saw the guard we left in the trough . . .” I try to push past Howl, attempting to calm my rising panic.

  “Or maybe it isn’t June. Running out there without thinking isn’t going to do anything but send bullets toward your head.” Howl seems to unfold in front of me, filling the little hallway to block the door. “With Menghu and Reds together in the camp, I don’t think it would take much for guns to come out. Stay close to me.” He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the door. The darkness seems to thicken around him as I try to pull my arm free, worming a hand into my pocket for the inhibitor spray, only to remember it’s empty.

  “Let go!” My whisper is sharp enough to cut.

  Tai-ge’s arm snakes between me and Howl, but before he can do whatever it i
s he has planned, I kick Howl in the side of the knee. Howl lets go of me with a curse and limps back a step, his hands up. “Sorry. You can’t just run out there. The guard around the other side of the tent—”

  Voices filter back from the front of the tent, the three of us turning to see light blossoming in the tent’s receiving room.

  “Hide!” Howl hisses, ducking into the side room immediately next to us, the one with the tub. He beckons to me, but I skip away, slipping back into the room with the desk, only one sheet of canvas away from the receiving room. Tai-ge slides in next to me, still bristling at Howl taking charge.

  Shadows dance across the canvas wall between us and the receiving room, quicklights burning yellow across the canvas, the thin fabric billowing back and forth as the tent’s main doors open and shut, letting in a gust of wind.

  Panic fizzes across my skin as three more shots ring out over the camp. It makes it difficult to even want to listen to the voices rising in the receiving room.

  That is, until I recognize them.

  “We did not discuss bringing Outsiders into this camp, Dr. Yang.” It’s Chairman Sun. “The invasion was price enough. It was part of our agreement to ensure the safety of—”

  “It was also part of our agreement that you wouldn’t send Reds poking around into Menghu-controlled ground.”

  Silence. Another shot blasts the night air, shattering the strain on the other side of the wall into something that sounds like a scuffle.

  “Whatever is happening out there, you can’t just send me to a bunker. We have to stop it.”

  “I will stop it. The Menghu will stop it. They’re much better disciplined than anything turned out of your City.”

  “Just leave us alone! I did what you asked to facilitate the invasion. You have all the equipment you need now. We bombed all the places you told us to. Got rid of all the Mountain leaders who were sitting between you and . . . whatever your end goal is here.” The Chairman’s voice is soft. “You’ve chased us away from the City, away from any chance of fleeing contagion. You’ve taken our factories, our farms. You got want you wanted, now leave us be.”

  The Chairman bombed the places Dr. Yang wanted? Got rid of Mountain leaders? He facilitated the invasion of the City? I cover my mouth, trying to dampen the sound of my breaths, Tai-ge alert beside me.

  “Nothing belongs to you anymore, Chairman,” Dr. Yang says. “Who will follow you once they know you provided targets for the invasion in order to ease this transition for you? Your order to purge General Hong leaders won’t go over well with Reds.”

  I glance at Tai-ge, his jaw set in stone. His father had been called a First in all but markings. The Aihu Bridge bomb—the one that sent me scurrying out of the City in Howl’s shadow for fear of repercussions against me—may well have been targeting Tai-ge as warning to the General to take a step back.

  But even if the Chairman felt as if he didn’t have enough control over the City, why let the Menghu in? What could the Chairman have possibly wanted so much that he traded his home and everyone who lived there for a rust-and-tentpole empire filled to the brim with people who can’t close their eyes for fear of what sort of Sleep will find them? Getting rid of General Hong or any other leaders encroaching on the Chairman’s power couldn’t possibly have been worth giving away . . . everything.

  “We both know the political reshuffling was your idea. You can’t pin that on me.” The Chairman’s voice is dismissive.

  “I can do whatever I want.” The smile in Dr. Yang’s voice is bloody. “You knew that the moment you saw the photograph.”

  The photograph? I lean toward the wall, as if I can somehow hear what the two men are thinking if I listen hard enough.

  “You are incapable of leading. All the Firsts are.” The doctor’s voice rattles through his mask. “And I’m not the only one who sees it now.”

  “You are a First, Dr. Yang.”

  “I’m everything Firsts were supposed to be. Open to new ideas, to genius and learning instead of preserving what is already comfortable. You had the whole City at your disposal, but you were too stupid to know what to do with it. The City died because it couldn’t listen to those of us who were smart enough to see that we wouldn’t last hidden away up there. People are dying every day because of you, and I’m going to stop it.”

  I bite my lip. Dr. Yang murdered six people just to keep the cure away from Firsts back when my mother rediscovered it. He was willing to let her rot away, frozen alive in her glass coffin. Willing to allow hate-filled Menghu to run unchecked through City streets, their guns drawn, just so he could gain control.

  Forgive me if I’m not quite convinced he cares about people dying.

  “I found the cure you kept back from the suffering people in your city. Infecting them on purpose so you could let your Firsts play around with their bones and organs. And still you pretend you are somehow better than I am.” Dr. Yang’s voice is heated. “Get him underground.”

  My skin goes cold, the scuffling noises we heard when they first started talking finally making sense. I know who Dr. Yang would have in his entourage, who could be so close without making their presences known. Menghu.

  “Do not touch me.” The Chairman’s voice rises as they move into the hall, elbows brushing into the canvas, almost hitting me. I pull away from the wall, curling up beside the desk, trying to make myself as small as possible, Tai-ge pressed in next to me. “You grew up with food on your table.” The Chairman hardly deigns to raise his voice. “With anything you could ever want. You chose your studies, your friends, your research without ever having to worry about whether rain would make your bed wet. Why do any of this? I gave you—”

  “You and the other Circle members passed over me and my work, my warnings about the Mountain becoming more stable, about the farms becoming more autonomous.” The doctor’s voice grows sharper, almost wounded, as if he can’t believe the Chairman doesn’t understand. “You didn’t listen when I said work on the cure had stopped. You could have told me we already had a cure. You could have been honest and said you thought I was less. You thought you could treat me like one of them because my parents worked Outside for so long.”

  Another volley of shots shatter the night air. Dr. Yang pauses for a moment. “They’re coming closer. We’ll go to the helis, then.”

  “Please let me find out what is going on so we can—”

  “As far as you are concerned, nothing is going on. Helix, would you . . . ?”

  My blood freezes in my veins. Not just any Menghu. Helix. Here. Only a few feet away from me. It seems as if he’s never been far, his face most often the one that reappears in dreams where everyone I love dies, his eye the one behind the gun site.

  I press my hands to my forehead, this new take on the Chairman and the Reds leaving holes in my brain. Dr. Yang set contagious SS loose on the Mountain and the City, planning to use the cure to bring the poor afflicted people begging for alms at his feet. He has Menghu support. He has some sort of hold over the Chairman, who is forcing the Reds to kowtow. And now he’s pointed all of them toward Kamar—Port North, if I’m not mistaken—like an arrow, with Dr. Yang bending the bow.

  “Just think,” Dr. Yang continues, “if you had a single compassionate cell inside you, you’d care how many lives you are saving by standing next to me. The dead rotting in the forest, the bombs, the walls . . . all of that will be over.” His voice grows louder, and I clamp my hands down over my own wrists, as if it will somehow keep him from finding us in here. “Continue saying the things I’ve told you to say,” he instructs. “Maybe something inside you will change. Maybe you’ll learn to see people out there, not census records, factory rosters, and rifle counts, all of it weighing against whether the sun was hot enough on the south farms to make a decent grape for your wine.”

  They move farther down the hall, past where Howl must be. I hold my breath, my eyes clenched shut. Will they notice the guards are gone, Howl hovering over their inert bodies? The docto
r’s voice a harsh rasp. “Even if it doesn’t, I won’t let another generation break because your thumb is pressing down on them.”

  Who is it Dr. Yang thinks he’s saved so far? By my count, contagious SS has done more to destroy lives than the City could have even dreamed.

  The tent flap opens and I hold myself still as death. I must imagine the flash of tiger-head insignia snarling at me from the unmarked collars, the Chairman a lone spot of black and red in the midst of muddy brown. And then they’re all gone.

  Before the flap over my door even has time to settle, Howl gusts through, pulling both of us to our feet. We stop just inside the door the Chairman and Dr. Yang just exited.

  “What do we do? Follow them out?”

  “They’re going to lock this part of the camp down.” Howl growls. “There’s still gunfire. If we want to get out of here alive, we’ll have to move fast.”

  Tai-ge and I look at each other, and I can hardly feel myself breathe, as if my lungs have given out. But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that Howl doesn’t want to die.

  The gunfire is coming faster now, peppering the air with frantic bursts. Howl doesn’t look back to see if we obey as he picks his way over the downed guards and peeks out the back of the tent. Wherever the shots are coming from now, it’s not from where June was waiting. Not unless she’s running straight down the middle of the camp.

  Adjusting his mask, Howl points outside, his whisper rough. “You see weapons on fallen soldiers as we go, take them. Check for extra ammunition if we have time.”

  Cold washes over me at his flat tone. As if finding dead men and women isn’t something to think too hard about. Tai-ge stands so close behind me I can feel his recycled breath blowing at the hairs on the back of my neck. Howl pushes the tent flap aside and slinks through, boots silent outside.

  “You still want to get away from him?” Tai-ge asks.

  I nod, even as I take a step forward, “How, though? We can’t get past the fence without his stars. And he has the encryption key.”