Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  “Bow,” the Chief Architect says to the Ghosts. Her voice is not loud, but it carries clear and unmistakable across the room.

  In the cages, every Ghost seems to freeze. They bend, bowing to the audience seemingly against their will.

  The crowd gasps at the spectacle. Even I gape at the sight of these monsters on their knees, their heads lowered before this woman. They don’t look up once, don’t snarl, don’t gnash their teeth. They do exactly what they’re told.

  This is it, the Federation’s real power on full display: the ability to take a human being and twist body and mind into a monster—a creature capable of such severe hatred that it would then kill others just for the need of it—and the ability to then manipulate those monsters’ minds to do the Federation’s bidding.

  “That’s enough,” the Chief Architect says. This time, the Ghosts rise in unison out of their bows and go back to their crouches, their twisted, destroyed faces subdued, if unsettled. The audience gasps again in approval, then claps and whistles.

  They don’t think of the Ghosts as machines of death, mutated from humans like themselves. They think they’re fun. Entertainment.

  The Chief Architect watches the crowd without reacting, her expression as blank as a hollowed soul.

  “Do you ever feel power over Red like this?” Adena whispers beside me, her eyes riveted on the Chief Architect. “Or him over you?” Every fiber of her being seems fascinated by the control this woman has over her monsters.

  I shake my head.

  Adena chews her bottom lip as she thinks. I know she’s picturing the samples of blood that she’d experimented with, how Red is the key to severing this powerful bond. “Tonight,” she finally murmurs. “We’ll get into those labs. We’ll change all this.”

  Everything in me wants to bolt out of this crowd and aim for the woman standing before those cages. The one responsible for creating these monsters that have destroyed so many lives. I could kill her, even with only my knives. I could do it so quickly that no one would know until she lay dead at my feet.

  Of course, I don’t. Adena is right. We have come here for a plan bigger than that. So I take a deep breath instead and wait with the crowd, enduring their cheers.

  It’s only then that I pick out some of the downcast expressions and anguished eyes in the crowd. Here and there, I spot a man looking anxiously from one cage to the next in search of something, or a woman hugging a child to her with a pained expression. Near me stands a little girl leaning so far out to see the cages that she looks like she’ll fall any second. She continues to strain at the edge of the crowd until someone pulls her back.

  The families of those who had been mutilated into Ghosts. Those permanently separated from one another and then condemned to this half death. They’re here too, silent and helpless, looking on at all the people around them who don’t seem to care. Searching quietly for something familiar in the faces of these creatures. Trying to find the lost pieces of their families and terrified that they will get their wish. Those who have felt firsthand the true cruelty of the Federation, their tool for keeping their military mighty and their people under control.

  Red’s sister and father.

  As I think this, I feel a shock of pain come through our link. Perhaps he can sense that they’re on my mind. And suddenly my anger at this crowd dampens, replaced by true sorrow. How many of them applaud and cheer because they have no choice, because not doing so invites the risk that the Federation will come to their doors one night and rip their families apart? How many of them, then, have faked this glee so often that they now believe it?

  Even though I know he can’t hear my words from this distance, I send him my thoughts anyway.

  We’re not leaving this place without you, I tell him. And all of this—these sick games, this awful display, the torment of these souls—will come to an end. We will avenge your family, and mine. I promise.

  I don’t know how much of that promise Red can feel. But the thread of emotions between us turns dark, determined. My eyes lock on the Premier still standing casually up on the balconies, his cool eyes turned down at this hall. We may all die by the end of this mission, but so long as I’m alive, I’m going to bring this Federation down. I’ll tear down every brick of this place if I have to, until there is no breath left in my body.

  26

  All throughout the day, I feel Red’s pain shoot through me. It’s a knife in and out of my mind, coming and going, until finally it fades away with the sunset. I don’t know what is happening, but either they’ve stopped what they’re doing to him, or he’s collapsed into unconsciousness.

  His agony leaves a sheen of sweat over my brow as dusk falls and the fairgrounds begin to quiet. Fog settles into the corners of every street, haloing the city’s lights and blurring the crowds like a dream. We linger with the people, watching and waiting, until finally the guards unhook each of the Ghosts’ cages from their platforms in the glass exhibition hall and start to pull them out of the space. As they do, the remaining crowds jostle to watch the procession.

  We join them. Adena nods in the direction of where the hedges wrap around a gate, the same luxurious courtyard we’d seen earlier in the morning.

  “I think they’re going to parade them down the paths toward there,” she whispers.

  Jeran glances at me. “Red?” he asks.

  I nod, my eyes fixed on the hedges too. I jut my chin in its direction.

  “Do you know what he’s doing? Can you see anything?”

  “No,” I reply. “We’re too far away. I’ll try when we’re closer.”

  The crowd begins to disperse as the procession rumbles toward the complex gates. In the misty twilight, the Ghosts stir, gnashing their teeth, their eyes turned on the hedges with what I think is almost fear. Several of them, the ones still somewhat humanlike, avert their gazes altogether so that they don’t have to see. The lone human among them is curled into a tight ball on the floor of his cage, his shoulders shivering with sobs.

  I close my eyes for a beat, concentrating. Red’s pulse feels shallow, a nervous and flittering rhythm. Gradually, as we edge closer to the far side of the government halls, our link begins to take a more distinct shape. I sense more of the pattern of his emotions, followed by the faint haze of thoughts, so vague that they feel like dreams forgotten by the first light of dawn, hovering just out of my mind’s reach. Then, as we pass another bridge toward the hedged gate and the crowds turn sparser again, Red’s mind sharpens—I’m finally able to focus on some blurry memory.

  I see glass walls and the glint of light against them. Somewhere nearby, whimpers echo.

  We’re close enough to the complex now that the gate emerges from behind tendrils of fog. The procession continues on, and as it goes, several of the guards at the gate move to open them. As I look on, one of them heads to what looks like a rectangular lock on the side of the entrance. He turns dials on the lock that I can’t see from here, and then twists the entire lock in a full circle until it completely inserts into the wall. The gate groans open.

  Adena watches all of this from the corner of her eye. “It’s a code they’re using,” she murmurs as we continue to walk, “although we’re not anywhere near enough to see it.”

  The first of the Ghost cages reaches the opened gate. More guards come around the perimeter to look on as the cage is ushered inside. They keep guns out and drawn, visible for the spectators to see, so that the remaining crowd gathers in an arc around the outside of the gate while each of the cages heads in. We stop here too, clustering with the others as each cage rumbles by.

  The open gate is so close. Inside, I glimpse only a few trees and the wide expanse of a grassy courtyard leading up to a series of windowless buildings.

  There’s a sudden commotion on the other side of the gate. One of the people in the crowd has broken free from the others with an anguished cry. He steps forward as the cage holding the untransformed young man rolls in, and for a few seconds, his foot crosses the
threshold inside the gate.

  Then the soldiers are on him. He disappears in a scuffle of uniforms, still struggling wildly.

  “Bena! Bena!” he’s shouting, but then his voice cuts off abruptly. When the soldiers step back, I see the man lying unconscious on the ground, a thin trickle of blood leaking from the back of his head. Two guards pull him up and drag him unceremoniously across the dirt path to deposit him on the other side of the bridge.

  I swallow hard and try not to fixate too much on the stricken face of the young man as his cage wheels into the complex’s inner courtyard. He uncurled himself from his fetal position at the sound of the other man’s voice. His face already looks unnaturally pale, and sweat glistens on his body. I know this phase well, have seen it on many Strikers who had to be killed. By midnight, he’ll be well on his way into his Ghost transformation.

  Adena forces herself to stay focused on the lock. “If I knew the code, I could figure out how to input it,” she whispers. “Are we close enough to Red yet?”

  I clench my teeth and look away from the procession to concentrate instead on Red.

  His mind has sharpened in mine again, so that now I can feel the details of his emotions—a prickle of curiosity at the fact that I’m nearby, then the stir of his heart as it beats more rapidly. Then, his voice.

  You’re outside the gates, he says in my mind.

  The gate has a code, I tell him. Do you know it?

  No, he tells me. They’ve changed the rotation of their guards. There have been more of them here ever since my return. Do not come back at midnight.

  When, then?

  Come at the hour before dawn, and use the entrance meant for servants, on the side facing away from the main path. There is a different code there, but the same lock mechanism. It’s where they took me inside yesterday.

  Do you know the number?

  I can feel his mind at work as he recalls the numbers he’d seen the day before. The last of the procession enters the gate, and the guards begin to pull it closed again. A part of me longs to bolt inside the courtyard before they can seal the complex off from the rest of the world. But I stay where I am, until the gate locks again with a clang, and the guards shout at the remaining crowd to disperse. People begin to wander off, some elated by what they’ve seen, a few children dashing about with excited chatter.

  Then Red’s voice comes back to me again. Four, five, he says. Two, six. Nine, four.

  He says the numbers slowly, as if struggling to remember them from when he’d been returned to the complex, and I can tell that he’s hesitant about them. Once you’re in, he finishes, I’ll guide you.

  We’ll see you then, I tell him anyway. I know he can sense my uncertainty, but he doesn’t respond to it.

  Then it’s all over, and we go with the last of the crowd so we aren’t the final few standing in front of the gates. I look behind me to see two women and a little girl lingering at the gate, as if hoping it will open for them. Maybe they had been the ones in the audience who recognized a loved one in the face of one of the Ghosts. What they hope to find now by staying here, I don’t know, but I doubt it will bring them any peace.

  I force myself to turn to Jeran instead. He doesn’t look at me as we cross the bridge. “Will Red be able to get us in tonight?” he whispers.

  I nod once. So it’s finally time for us to execute the mission we’d come all this way for.

  Jeran nods back, but he doesn’t smile. Neither does Adena. We stay mute the whole way back through the main plaza until our expressions are hidden by the night’s shadows.

  Because we all know getting in is not the hard part. Getting out will be.

  * * *

  We wait through the night until dawn is approaching.

  The air has a bite of cold at this hour, and I shiver in the thickening fog as we perch in the trees lining the banks of the river. I miss the heavy coziness of my Striker coat. The fog will help conceal us, but the thin shirts we left Mara in don’t do well on a cool night like this, and I find myself thinking up new curses in my mind as a way to distract myself.

  The guards should change soon. Red’s voice comes to me again, echoing in the quiet of my thoughts.

  We’re waiting at the side entrance, I tell him. My eyes dart from one guard on patrol to the next. They don’t appear to be in any hurry to change.

  Adena glances at the side of the wall. We’re still two buildings away from the entrance where we’d seen the procession of caged Ghosts enter. She absently touches the pouch tucked securely at her waist, where she keeps the vials of Red’s blood that she’s going to add into the complex’s water system.

  They used to stagger it differently, Red answers. Then I escaped during one of their windows. They changed the hour to just before dawn because of it.

  Why?

  Because it’s when both night and morning rotations of soldiers are in the streets, and the capital is under the heaviest guard. We’ll have the smallest chance of escaping out of the city.

  From here, I can see a hint of guards standing near the side entrance. A series of shrubs obscures our line of sight, though. I glance at Adena, then look up at the buildings’ roofs.

  “I’m going to get some height,” I sign. “Better vantage point.”

  She nods silently back.

  In the night, my boots don’t make a sound. Every ounce of my Striker training comes forward now as I move like wind through the shadows. At the edge of the building, I get a foothold against the wall and reach up for the roof. My gloved hand closes around it.

  I grit my teeth and pull myself up into a crouch on the edge.

  There are guards patrolling up here too. I can see a couple making their rounds on the top of the gates that surround the complex. I wait quietly until they’ve turned their backs to me, and then melt into the night by blending into the branches of a tree that leans over the roof.

  From here, I get a better view of the main entrance. There are two additional guards we hadn’t seen, each posted at the far edges of the building.

  I tell Red this.

  Good, comes his answer. They keep watch when the rotation happens. It will be soon.

  And almost like clockwork after he tells me this, the other guards around the perimeter pause in their usual routes as another set of soldiers comes to replace them. There is some shuffling, and for a while, the place seems to crawl with their uniforms. But in this there is a slightest sense of chaos, exactly the window we need as the only soldiers with their minds entirely on their watch are the pair at the side entrance, doing temporary duty.

  Now is our only chance.

  I bite the inside of my cheek and glance toward the trees. No one else would be able to see where Jeran has hidden. But after a beat comes a low trill, followed by the sound of what seems like a clicking beetle. Only a few seconds later, I hear a faint rush through the air. Down below, one guard at the side gate suddenly touches a hand to his neck before his knees give way. He slides slowly to the ground. On the west side, the guard makes the same gesture, then hunches as if he’d sighed. His body crumples without a sound.

  As always, the Deathdancer never misses.

  For the briefest moment, a flash of doubt sparks through me. This is it—this is too easy, but it will become difficult very soon. We are going to fail in what we do, we will die for it, and the fear of that fills me with sudden hesitation.

  But then my training kicks back into gear, and my body acts before my mind can decide.

  I’m sprinting as the second guard hits the ground. We have to move fast now. They’ll know within minutes that something has happened. I dart to the edge of the building, take a silent leap, and land on the building next to the main one. In my mind rush the exercises I’d done through the rooftops of Mara’s Inner City—how Corian and I would race together, side by side, from the double gates to the National Hall without alerting any of the city’s soldiers. If we failed, we’d start over. It would go on for hours.

  Corian’s
laugh still echoes in my mind from whenever he had beaten me. If he were here with us now, no doubt he’d take down the guards before I could even make my way off the roof.

  Now I cushion each of my steps the same way I’d done during our training. Down below at the side gate, Adena materializes from the shadows of the trees to drag the guards’ bodies into the darkness. She moves quickly—one blink and they’re there, another and they’re gone. I stop in the trees right above the gate as Adena emerges to look at the lock. Another guard walks by on the complex’s gate. He glances in my direction, then looks right past me, and continues.

  I slide a knife out of my boot and give myself only a split second to aim. The knife flies down at the guard, burying deep in his throat.

  His eyes pop open as his hands fly to his neck. I’m already down from the tree before he can see me as anything more than a shadow in the night. My hand wraps around his mouth and I snap his neck hard. He goes limp in my arms as I lower him to the ground, collecting my knife and his weapons in one swift motion.

  Well, look at you, Corian would say to me with a smirk if he saw me now. So light on your feet.

  Adena pulls her face mask down as she studies the lock. There are a series of six tumblers against the rectangular grid, each with the numerals 0 through 9 on them. She turns each, realizes they don’t just move like a simple tumbler, and fiddles with the first one until she figures out that it requires a twist to the left and then a twist to the right. Her eyes dart occasionally to me as I sign the numbers to her as a reminder. Her fingers move quickly, feeling the weight and clicks of each tumbler.

  “What a design,” she whispers to herself.

  Four. Five. Two. Six. Nine. Four.

  Then Adena tries to turn the lock in the same circle as the guard had done.

  It doesn’t budge.

  Her eyes dart immediately to me. “Wrong numbers,” she tells me. Her eyes go frantically to the edge of the gate. The new guards will come around the bend soon.

  “Try again,” I tell her.