by Everly Frost
Pip ran to me and gawked up at the mechanical creature. “It’s a construction mech! I’ve seen pictures in the files. The Starsgardians used them to build the original towers.”
“You’re right,” Rift said, wobbling up to examine the huge creature. The mech towered over him, more than ten feet tall. “But I thought they were all destroyed. That’s what the file said.”
“Not this one.” I grinned. “How do they work?”
“Two ways,” Pip answered. “It can work on its own without a human operator if it’s programmed to do a task. Or a person can work inside it, telling it what to do. It detects your joints first—like your knees and elbows, your neck. There are particular parts of your body that it recognizes—anchor points—and then it fills in the gaps.”
A head-shaped body part nodded in my direction as the mech lumbered past me and the gaping boys. It stomped back to the marsh pond and lowered itself into it, scattering once more. Then it was nothing more than a seething mass again.
My thoughts whirled even more violently than before. “That’s how he did it.”
“Who did what?”
“Michael’s father.” I met Snowboy’s curious gaze over Pip’s head. “That’s how he escaped from Starsgard. He used the mech. It would have carried him down to the bottom and then, once he was out of it, the mech would have returned back here like it just did.”
Rift looked from me to Snowboy. “What are you two talking about?” He spun on Snowboy. “You have some explaining to do, brother.”
Snowboy’s teeth had stopped chattering and he told Rift and the others about Michael’s dad. They were quiet when he finished.
Quake broke the silence. “It’s strange. I remember him, I know it happened, but it’s like a dream now.”
“He would have used the mech to transport you up the cliff,” I said. “That’s how he got himself, and all of you, back into Starsgard. But there’s one more thing we need to talk about.”
I caught Rift’s gaze. “Please tell me about your sister.”
A look of pain shot across his face. “She was younger than me. She used to sing. A woman would visit us sometimes to hear my sister’s beautiful songs. My mother told me the woman was very important, and I was proud to be my sister’s brother. I was sure they’d killed her, but if everything you said is true … Do you really believe she’s alive?”
“They wouldn’t kill her. Michael’s dad tried for years to make a weapon from my brother, but only female DNA works. This afternoon, we saw Councilor Ruth say that Seversand had succeeded in making a weapon too. It has to be from your sister.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Well … How many other girls lived there with you in the cavern?”
“None.”
“Then it’s her. The timing fits.” But as happy as I was to tell Rift this, another part of me was awash with turmoil.
If there was another girl, then the threat of a mortality war was real. If Seversand already had a mortality weapon…
But Seversand hadn’t attacked. It could have, but something was holding them back.
The sun had set by the time we made it back to the tower. The sculpture glowed in the new moonlight, a strangely twisted sphere, and I realized what it reminded me of: the moon, luminescent against the dark sky.
Rift caught my arm, stopping me beside the magnolia tree, its blossoms closed in the dark. A smile broke across his face. “Thank you for coming for us today … Stargirl.”
I smiled at my new family—my brothers—and let the wild moonlight into my heart.
Chapter Fifteen
AFTER THAT, I learned everything I could from my brothers. My vow to see Michael again drove me to study as much as I could about my abilities and my surroundings. I wasn’t sure how I could find a way back to him, but I couldn’t make a start until I knew more about myself, even if that required more patience than I’d ever endured before.
As the summer turned cooler, Pip taught me how to listen to the sounds around me, Blaze taught me how to burn safely, and Rift taught me how to control the shadows—both the ones I created and the ones I couldn’t see. Quake taught me how to not break things—unless I wanted to—and Snowboy taught me both speed and endurance.
It was endurance that I needed the most. Endurance of mind and heart, to believe that I would see Michael again—or find a way to bring him to me. When my brothers decided it was time to teach me how to fight, I threw all my energy into it, beating back my impatience with my fists.
First, Blaze and Quake, who had been taught the Seversandian warrior’s code at a young age, taught me to control my breathing. I’d thought I would be good at that, having practiced so long at dancing, but their version of breathing was a deep calm, a strength in peace that could fuel the quickest of actions. I practiced the simple movements of breath and action beneath the magnolia tree’s branches with the scorpions watching on. Rift joined me there, adding his own version of what he’d learned of Seversandian hand-to-hand combat, all of which I absorbed like I was porous earth soaking in rain.
The surveillance room was a constant thought at the back of my mind. It would be so easy to spend my days in there, watching Michael go about his life, but that would get me no closer to him. Even so, sometimes I lingered outside the door on my trips to get nectar. Each time I drew on all my willpower and turned away from it, but the more I tried to control my thoughts during the day, the worse my dreams became.
At night, I relived the moment over and over when he wept over my dead body. I heard his voice again and again. Please don’t be dead. Please wake up. Each time I did wake up—to an empty room. He wasn’t there to see that I was alive.
One night, after I went to sleep, the dream was sharper than normal. Michael was trying to lift me up, begging me to be alive. His arms and his voice were so insistent, so strong, that I sensed myself lift and move. He took me into his arms, carrying me away from my death bed. His tears splashed my face as he walked us out into the clear air surrounded by sunlight—
“Ava!”
Someone was shaking me. I opened my eyes, confused to find myself not in my bed, but standing in a hallway with Snowboy in front of me. He was trying to get my attention. Behind him, the surveillance room door came into focus.
“Ava, what are you doing here?”
I rubbed my eyes, trying to orientate myself. “I don’t know. I was dreaming…” I choked back a sob as the echo of Michael’s distraught voice haunted me.
Snow’s expression softened. “I think you were sleepwalking. Are you okay?”
I pressed my hand to my heart. There was a sharp pain in my chest that wouldn’t stop. “I don’t know. I can hear Michael.”
His voice echoed around me, so loud and clear that I placed my hands over my ears to block it out. Snowboy’s touch was gentle as he pried my hands away from my face.
“You aren’t imagining it.” He nudged the surveillance door open with his foot and I found all of my brothers except Pip watching the screens.
The images beyond them splashed across my vision like another dream. Michael and the other Protectors sat at one end of a table and all seven Councilors sat at the other.
Beside me, Snowboy said, “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. But if you’re ready, there’s a lot going on that you need to know about.”
I was ready.
I was way past ready.
Moving into the room felt like floating. Michael was on the side of the table facing the camera, so I could see his whole face. Before I could stop myself, I walked right up to the giant screen and placed my hand next to him. My brothers parted to let me through, none of them saying a word.
On the screen, Michael was speaking to the Council members. All seven of them were listening as he spoke. Ruth and Naomi leaned forward and the other Councilors nodded, their expressions grave.
“Olander’s troops continue to gather on the southwest border,” Michael said. “Until now, they’
ve been relatively quiet, other than increasing in numbers, but this week they started cutting down trees in the violet zone.”
I frowned, wondering what the violet zone was until I remembered the forest around the Starsgardian border that was lit with violet light as a warning to travelers to stay away.
“We don’t have any solid intel yet about why they’re clearing land. Whether it’s to allow troops through—or something else.”
“It’s the something else that worries us.” Ruth glanced at the other Councilors with a questioning look as though seeking permission. When they nodded back, she said, “We’ve received word that Olander may be developing an organic drone.”
“What?” It was Ricardo who spoke. He and Michael exchanged alarmed looks as the other Protectors all started talking at once.
Ruth silenced them with her upheld hand. “We know how dangerous that would be. Our EMP won’t stop an organic drone. But there’s something more worrying. Michael, can you please shed any light on how many mortality weapons were made while Ava was in captivity?”
Michael swallowed. “While Ava and I…” He stilled and I wondered if he was remembering the time in the Terminal, the time we’d both worked hard to forget.
He cleared his throat. “I remember my godfather, Cheyne, saying that they’d made something like twenty guns and my dad said that was too slow, that they had to work faster. I don’t know how many they made after that, but he was very clear that they could only make a certain number without more of Ava’s blood. The one thing I know for sure is that their supply will run out eventually.”
“An organic drone armed with mortality bullets would be devastating,” Ruth said. “Assuming the moss couldn’t catch it, a drone like that would get through all our current defenses. We could detect it using the air print, but not stop it. The one hope is that Olander’s supply of mortality bullets is restricted to the number they made while they had Ava.”
“He won’t waste the bullets.” Michael’s shoulders were visibly tense. “He won’t make a mindless attack. He’ll target…”
He stopped speaking and the Protectors were suddenly all staring at the Councilors.
“He’ll target all of you.” Michael planted his hands on the table. “You need to stay out of sight until we find out whether the threat is real, whether an organic drone exists.”
“We won’t hide,” Naomi said, speaking for the first time, her dark eyes flashing with resolve. “Our people need to see that we aren’t afraid.”
Michael looked like he was about to protest, but he swallowed the words. There was never any arguing with Naomi. When she rose to her feet, the other Councilors stood with her, and Ruth said, “Thank you, Michael and Ricardo. We’re relying on you to find out the truth.”
I sank away from the screen as the room cleared, willing Michael to look up—to look at me—even if he couldn’t see me. His head stayed down, deep in thought as he left the room and suddenly the surveillance room was dimmer around me.
“Could it be true?” I asked my brothers. “About an organic drone?”
They were thoughtful and Snowboy said, “From what you’ve told us about Evereach, they wouldn’t know how to produce that kind of technology. Unless Michael’s dad took something back with him that allowed them to.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “He took the bug that he implanted in Michael—and he changed its functions. He could have taken other technology too—and made more weapons.”
Rift’s eyes burned almost as brightly as Blaze’s. “We should increase our surveillance. It sounds like Evereach will concentrate its attack in the south, but we need to be prepared for anything. It’s time to teach Ava how to run in the mountains.” He smiled as he spoke and my heart leaped at the thought of going beyond the forest around the tower.
After that, each of the boys took turns accompanying me on my first surveillance runs, teaching me what to look for—the kinds of disturbances in the earth that would point to human intervention. Soon, they were satisfied that I could carry them out on my own and I reveled in the independence it gave me.
When Glacier’s kittens were born, the snow leopards started inhabiting the grounds around the tower and the kittens trailed after me as I went about my morning chores and tried to keep up with me when I ran surveillance in the afternoon.
At the end of each day, I would sit hidden in a tree at the edge of the forest, breathing in the snow around me, drinking in the distant mountains—the snow belt—and plotting pathways through it. Pathways back to Michael.
Many times, I wondered what would happen if he simply walked out of the snow one day, if somehow he found out I was alive and came for me. But the only creatures that crept down from the mountains were bears.
Large paw prints often marred the earth in the far forest floor as the beasts ventured closer than they ever had before—but never closer than the middle of the forest. More than once, a bear rolled to the edge of the nearest slope, pondering the trees and inhaling the air, seeking the scent it now took for a predator: me.
I attempted to see the world from the bears’ point of view. According to the files, the Starsgardians had bred thirty bears, designing them to attack anything that passed through the snow belt to protect Starsgard’s northern border.
Their killing method was a gruesome combination of subduing their victim with a toxin hidden in their claws—injected in the same way a snake injects venom—followed by a lethal dismembering, the kind that couldn’t be achieved by anything else. It was violent and savage in the worst possible way. I never wanted to see it happen, let alone to one of my brothers.
Every time the bears rolled to the base of the slope, rising up on their hind legs, each time they moved closer, pushing the boundary of the threat I created, I was reminded that without me, the bears would attack my brothers.
It was that realization that crushed me more than any other.
No matter how many times I imagined a path through the mountains and back to Michael, no matter how fast I could run or how many of Starsgard’s defenses I could defeat, no matter how many times I invented a way to reach him without being detected, it was the bears that stopped me dead in my thoughts.
No matter what was happening in the south or how much I wanted to see Michael again, I couldn’t leave the northern tower vulnerable.
To do that would condemn my brothers to death.
The knowledge of this choice and responsibility destroyed my hope like nothing else. My dreams of Michael walking out of the mountains to find me were only dreams. Dreams that I tried to cast into the back of my mind, but they burst back with dizzying possibility every time I saw Michael on the screens in the surveillance room.
My brothers and I took turns keeping track of what was happening in the south and reporting back at dinner time about the meetings between Councilors, news of Evereach, the threat of an organic drone, and the mortality weapons Olander might use to threaten Starsgard.
Two weeks after the first mention of the drone, I was out in the forest when Snowboy burst through the trees to find me. I was keeping an eye on a bear at the base of the slope opposite me, a bold one that didn’t retreat even when I moved to the trees at the edge of the forest.
As soon as Snowboy appeared, I jumped from the low-hanging branch and landed lightly in the snow. He looked as worried as the day the bears attacked. He glanced at the animal across the way, but by the dismissive way he looked at it, I knew the reason for his pounding heart was not the bear.
“Come quickly, Ava. It’s started.”
I threw one last glare at the pacing animal, jumping forward and roaring at it. “Go away!”
With a defeated growl, it finally rolled away up the slope and disappeared into the snow.
Snowboy grasped my hand and his own was clammy. My body turned colder than the ice around me as I waited for him to speak.
“It’s war,” he said, fear burning at the back of his eyes. “The mortality war has begun.”
; Threat
Chapter Sixteen
ALL I COULD do was watch.
The surveillance screen showed dozens of flying creatures speeding over the edge of the cliff next to Tower Twenty—a western border tower. The moss shot out into vines and lashed at them, but the drones flew far enough from the edge, taking a large curve around the lip of the cliff, to avoid the biological weapon. Unhindered, they sped across the open train line and toward the entrance to the tower.
These drones weren’t the wasps I knew. They had slick, black bodies and shiny needles at the end of each of their six, dangling legs. They looked for all the world like beetles.
I’d expected to see Starsgardian civilians running in all directions, but the train station was deserted. Beyond it, in front of the tower, multiple rows of people came into view. All of them were dressed in gray, the color of the Protectors, and they wore masks over their faces, the same as the mask and goggles that I wore on my surveillance trips through the snow.
The beetles sped toward the waiting people, ripping through the branches of a majestic beech tree on their way, scattering orange leaves into the air.
One of the Protectors—a female—touched her ear, never taking her eyes off the approaching drones. I remembered the tiny leaf-shaped object I’d used when I was dancing—it was like an earbud through which I heard music. The Starsgardians must all have the same earpiece and it appeared that they were waiting for orders.
Sitting at the console in front of me, Blaze tapped the command and the screen on our right flickered on to reveal a control center contained in the top level of Tower Twenty. The southwestern region was Ruth’s domain, so I wasn’t surprised to see her sitting in front of her own screen using a communicator to call the shots. She wasn’t alone—Arachne sat at the console beside her and other people were positioned at consoles all around the room.
“Hold steady. Brace for the EMP.” Ruth spoke into the communicator and I sensed the impatience of the gray-clad Starsgardians in front of the tower.