Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  A loud knock made me jump. My mother clamped a hand over my mouth and forced us to crouch lower into the hole, but through the slit in the floor, I could see my father move to stand calmly in front of the door. Earlier in the afternoon, he had rushed in with family heirlooms in his arms—a copper ring, a set of bracelets from my grandmother, a series of rare coins from my grandparents’ time—and flushed them all down the toilet. The Federation wants things, he’d said to us, his voice dark with fear. Things, and people.

  People. I’d heard this about the Federation, the way they fixated on the most efficient uses for their people—as soldiers, as weapons, as experiments, as labor—as well as the rewards lavished if you did well and the punishments given if you failed.

  Maybe we could just do well for them, and they would let us keep on living.

  The soldiers shouted something I couldn’t understand. My father cast one glance in our direction before they burst inside, guns already drawn. One of them asked my father questions in harsh words, but my father just shook his head calmly. He lifted a hand and touched his fingers to his lips. Instantly I knew it was a gesture meant for us.

  “Silence, my little love,” my mother whispered to me in the darkness. My heart hammered so loudly against my ribs that I thought they’d hear us for sure. But what about my father? I kept thinking. How would he save himself?

  Then one of the soldiers pointed a gun directly at his face.

  I was eight years old, and I couldn’t stop the squeal of terror that burst from my lips. “Pa!” I squeaked, before my mother clamped a hand over my mouth.

  Oh no—what have I done? The thought flashed through me at the same time as my shout.

  At first I hoped the soldiers couldn’t hear it over the chaos—but they all turned simultaneously in our direction. My father’s face turned sickly white in an instant. The soldiers headed toward us and threw the carpet aside. The trapdoor flung open over our heads. Light flooded down over us.

  My father moved so quickly. He lunged forward, tackling the closest soldier to him and knocking the gun from his hands. Shouts went up. There was a scramble. It couldn’t have lasted longer than a minute, but to me it felt like hours and hours. I saw a second soldier lift his gun to my father’s face. This time there was a blast of sound, a burst of sparks.

  My father fell and didn’t get up again.

  I screamed and screamed as hands hauled my mother and me out from our hiding place and dragged us toward the front of the house. As I went, I caught a glimpse of my fallen father’s ruined face. Then we were out in the night, and I was thrown to my knees. My mother struggled against her captor—she managed to escape him. And I knelt, sobbing, before a twelve-year-old Red, helpless as he stood over me and weighed the risk of punishing himself and his entire family against murdering the little girl in front of him.

  My lost voice. My hazy recollections of my father. My inability to remember his face.

  The Federation’s poisonous gas permanently scarred my throat, yes. But that was never the true reason why I stopped speaking after that night. If I hadn’t called out for my father, they likely would have offered him and my mother the chance to join the Federation’s ranks, keeping me as insurance that they would stay loyal to their new nation. We would have lived.

  But instead I had raised my voice. And my voice had killed my father.

  Oh, Talin, Talin, my mother had said to me. Sometimes, it’s better to forget.

  That’s what I’d done. I’d buried that memory along with my voice.

  Until the Premier’s words echoed my mother’s from that night, against a backdrop of similar carnage.

  I feel myself slip away. The world around me fades to nothing but the face of the approaching Premier. Then he fades away too, until all I know is the ground cold beneath me, my mother’s words echoing into the darkness.

  Better to forget.

  35

  In my dream, I run after my father. All around us tower columns of fire, and behind that, the burning silhouette of a fallen Mara. I’m trying to call out to him, and in my dream, I have a voice, the voice of a child right before it is stolen from her.

  Maybe everything that had happened was one long nightmare. Maybe Mara still stands, with her flags flying blue and free over the ramparts.

  There’s a familiar voice that calls to me in the dream, and it does not belong to Red. It sounds like the most beautiful and horrible voice in the world, at once soothing and dark, the sound of bells in a temple of death. I find myself turning toward it, curious to hear it again at the same time I push away from it, repelled.

  “Wake up, Talin,” he says in Basean, and the sound of my native tongue stirs me out of the blur of my dream.

  The towering flames fade into gray, and the image of my father before me turns to mist. My heart lodges in my throat. I reach out for him, desperate for him to stay. But of course he can’t hear me. His figure turns lighter and lighter until it disappears altogether, replaced by this voice that keeps calling for me from another world.

  “Talin, it’s time to wake up.”

  Pain starts to lance down my arms and legs. There’s such a sharp agony in my side that I can’t take a full breath. I think I’m standing, but I can’t possibly have enough strength to be holding myself up alone. The pain turns acute and real now. Tingles run through my limbs as I try in vain to move. Something is securing my arms tightly behind my back, and the way my weight seems to hang tells me that I must be chained upright. There is no gag on my mouth, but with the way my hands are bound, I’m as good as silenced.

  Slowly, I open my eyes.

  The Premier of the Karensa Federation is standing before me, resplendent in a brilliant yellow coat. The kind of outfit a king would wear to his coronation. When he sees me awake, his lips curve up.

  “There she is,” he says encouragingly to me, again in Basean. Hearing the language on the lips of the man responsible for tearing my life apart … I want to reach out and rip the words out of his mouth.

  I see that we’re in the banquet room of Mara’s National Hall, the same chamber where Red and I had once stood before the Senate and demonstrated to the Speaker what we could do.

  The Premier ignores the anger on my face, nods behind him, and lets me see everyone else in the room. A ring of his personal guards circles the space around us, their hands resting on the guns at their belts, their scarlet uniforms emblazoned with the Federation’s double crescents. My gaze stutters to a halt on the Speaker of Mara, who now stands in a corner with guards on either side of him, his hands behind his back. He clears his throat at me, but something in my stare must unnerve him, because he quickly averts his eyes.

  Then I see her.

  Chained and kneeling, with two guards on either side of her … is my mother. Bloodied, but alive.

  I come fully awake now, and every muscle in my body screams in pain. A cold sweat breaks out all over my body—I struggle to catch my breath as the wound in my side and my leg flare to life. My eyes stay fixed on my mother, who stares back at me in anguished silence.

  One of the soldiers steps forward, the ornate trim of his sleeves distinguishing him from the others. His gloved hands go to the sword at his belt.

  The Premier just holds a hand up and shakes his head. He takes a few steps away from me and folds his arms across his chest. “Have you trained as a Striker all your life?” he asks me, this time in Maran.

  I only nod at him.

  “So, starting when you were twelve.”

  Another nod.

  “They say you can’t speak,” he muses out loud, “but I can arrange for my Chief Architect to fix that.”

  My eyes narrow at his words. He doesn’t understand that scars can be invisible, that his soldiers—that he—was the one who’d broken my voice. His words are so dismissive, so confident in his assessment and control over my own body that I resolve, in this instant, that I’d rather die than give him the power to force me to speak.

  Beside him, on
e of his soldiers steps forward and bows his head. General Caitoman, the Premier’s brother who I’d first seen in Cardinia. He says something in Karenese, and the Premier considers me as the man talks. When he finishes, he nods at me. “I’m told you’re one of the best in Mara’s forces,” he says. “Your Firstblade tended to put you on the warfront, and I can see why.”

  Aramin. Did he survive the massacre? What about Jeran, and Adena?

  What about Red?

  The Premier strides in a slow circle around me as I continue to tremble from my pain. “I heard you took down more of my Ghosts on your own than anyone else out there on the field. Your Firstblade must have seen a great deal of potential in you.”

  I hate that, in spite of everything, my heart jumps at his words. A great deal of potential. Not because Corian had taken pity on me, had spoken for me. Is it a cruel irony that the respect I’ve ached for comes from my worst enemy?

  He stops before me again, the rings on his hand clinking as he holds his hand out. “Given your resemblance,” he says, “I’m assuming the woman chained behind me is your mother. Yes?”

  A surge of strength jolts through me, and I lunge at him before I can stop myself. The chains holding me back pull taut, sending fresh pain lancing through my arms. Around the chamber, all the soldiers immediately lift their guns at me in a unity of clicks.

  The Premier doesn’t flinch at my movement at all, nor does he smile. “It’s up to you,” he continues, “whether or not your mother lives.”

  I don’t know if he can see the hatred burning in my gaze. My hands are trembling so hard behind my back that my chains rattle.

  He looks grave now. “I know how hard everything must be for you,” he says. “How difficult it must always have been. You never had a chance to know your homeland of Basea, and when you and your mother fled into the borders of Mara, you ended up in a country that both sheltered you and insulted you.”

  The manipulation in this man’s words. How would you know? I want to say to him, the thought barbed with rage. How could you begin to care about the pain that you have inflicted on this world?

  Constantine smiles grimly at me, as if he can guess what’s going through my mind. “I know you see me as the source of your pain, that I take from you and your people without mercy. But the truth is that I am here to build a better country for Mara. Do you know, Talin, what ended the Early Ones’ civilization?”

  In spite of myself, I lean forward, suddenly curious to hear his answer. No one knows, I thought. It’s the mystery of their disappearance that’s always added a near-spiritual element to their ruins.

  “I know. We found evidence of it in the ruins in our territory. They had built such a powerful society, had been poised to leave this world and travel to the stars. But they were careless too, in the way they lived and created. And when a weapon they built escaped from their control, they paid the price with their lives.”

  I listen, my heart in my throat.

  “This weapon caused a sickness. They tried to stop it, built massive walls around their cities to contain it.” His eyes stay unwaveringly on me as he speaks. “Their best and brightest scientists raced to find a cure. It didn’t matter. Nature has a way of moving faster than any of us. By the end, the few survivors fought one another in bloody wars for the scraps of what remained. They turned on one another and tore one another apart. You would be surprised at how quickly a society can fall and forget itself, how they can regress from a period of enlightenment into one of darkness. Thousands of years of progress lost, after they made a simple mistake: They couldn’t control what they had built. That was their fatal flaw, Talin, and one I don’t intend to make.”

  The Premier then pointed out beyond the chamber and in the direction of our prison.

  “Before Karensa, wars erupted frequently between every country on this land. Everyone knows this. It’s the way of our kind, war. But I believe in rebuilding a unified, advanced society. We can rise to the former glory of our ancestors by bringing all of our fractured nations under a single rule. And a single rule—absolute control—brings peace. Each of us can contribute something greater to a whole.” He leans forward. “You see, Mara is rumored to hold the ruins of an ancient technology mightier than anything we’ve ever discovered. It is a weapon buried in the ground, deep in their old silos. It is the power, they say, contained inside the hearts of stars and the cells of man, a source of incredible energy that can carry us all into the next millennium. Now, finally, we are all under the same rule. With the new peace that brings us, and with Mara’s help, we can advance together. Stretch our ambitions further than the Early Ones ever did.” His smile now is cold, searing. “After all, there are other lands to conquer across the seas.”

  So this was the reason behind the Premier’s determination to conquer Mara. To end war, in his twisted way. Then to claim this myth of an energy source in Mara. I think of the displays of ruins I’d seen in Cardinia, taken from fallen nations. And then, suddenly, I remember the prison under the National Hall. The cylindrical pit winding down into the darkness, originally dug by the Early Ones. How Adena had always complained of the chemical smell down there. A weapon buried deep in the ground.

  Horror rises low and nauseating in my chest. My hands clench and unclench against my bonds. I watch the Premier from behind a veil of hate and fear. Was there more to that ruin than we ever knew in Mara? What terrible power buried under Mara’s surface has drawn the Federation here?

  The Premier’s eyes dart to my shaking chains, then back to me. “Did you see Mara as a country that loved you?” he asks. “When you first entered, you were grateful for her embrace of you and your mother—but did this nation give you back everything you gave her? You were willing to lay down your life out there on the battlefield.” He leans closer. “And yet, Mara wouldn’t even let your talented, educated mother live within the walls of Newage.”

  I don’t know who he talked to or forced information out of, but he must have been paying close attention to me.

  “Tell me, Talin,” he says. “Is that the kind of country you want to defend? Was that worth your life?”

  Behind him, the soldiers force my mother onto her feet. She struggles up, wincing, and for the first time, I see the lashes along her legs, wounds bleeding on her arms. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly at me.

  “You loved Mara, clearly, as much as you loved your own,” the Premier says to me. “But do you see these soldiers behind me?” He motions to the others standing in the chamber. “They are all willing to lay down their lives for me without hesitation—because not only do they believe in defending the Federation, but because they appreciate how they are valued. Because I value them. If you fight for me, I can promise you that all your loyalty and love will be returned to you tenfold. I do not take my soldiers for granted. I can’t unite this world in peace without first waging war, and I can’t wage war without my army at my back. I make sure they have everything they need, that their families are provided for. In return, they are willing to lay down their lives for me. Do you see?”

  My eyes stay on my mother. They are going to kill her right before me—or worse, do what they did to Red’s family. I can feel the threat permeating the air, winding through the hollows of my bones.

  “I can give you anything and everything you’ve ever wanted. Your old home back? I can gift you ten thousand acres of land and a title in the heart of Basea. Wealth? The Federation overflows with gold—have as much wealth as you can stand.” He watches the way my shoulders tense. “Prestige? I can transform you into a greater fighter, a more formidable assassin, than you’ve ever been. Whatever you were capable of as a Striker for Mara, you can be a hundredfold under the Federation. I’ve seen you fight, watched you make your kills. I can tell you that no soldier I’ve ever worked with has ever started off with half your talent. Not even Redlen.”

  Red. His name on the Premier’s tongue sounds hostile and chilling. My gaze shifts from my mother to Constantine. There’s a
n intensity etched into his face now, as if he were truly seeing me for the first time, and the way it pulls me in is unnerving. I can sense the words he’s about to say next.

  “I’m offering you the chance to become a Skyhunter for the Karensa Federation,” the Premier says. “My personal Skyhunter, to shield and protect me at all times.”

  A Skyhunter. The most advanced warrior the world has ever known. The deadliest killing machine I’ve ever witnessed.

  A Skyhunter, bringer of death, servant to the Federation. Servant to the regime that stole our home. Servant to the Premier, at his every beck and call.

  What he’d intended Red to be.

  My limbs tremble harder now. This is not an offer. There is no choice in this.

  “It’s difficult for you to see the benefit of becoming a Skyhunter right now, when you’ve suffered such a loss as your country has,” he continues. “Someday, you’ll understand why an unbroken Karensa Federation, stretching sea to sea, is the greatest gift for all humanity. Why I will not make the same mistakes our ancestors did. But if not for the treasures I can offer you, perhaps you will do it for your mother’s sake, and for the sake of other Marans we now have captive.”

  He glances back to where the soldiers have forced my mother to her feet. “Your mother was in the thick of war,” he explains, “and showed a great deal of courage in the way she fought. I see where you inherited your skills. Unfortunately, this also makes your mother an enemy of the Federation, a soldier who took the lives of some of my men.” He nods at me. “By law, I must make her a prisoner of war, and she must stand for her crimes against Karensa. She will be executed for her actions. You know this, don’t you, Talin?”

  One of the guards holding my mother pulls out a dagger.

  They’re going to cut her throat here. Her blood is going to spill against the marble floor.

  Constantine nods at the soldiers standing beside me. “Let her loose,” he says. “It’s all right.”

  The chains over my head clack as they move to unlock me. I feel the weight of my shackles shift, then the slack of the chains as I’m released from them. Immediately, my legs buckle, but I manage somehow to fight for balance and stay standing, swaying in place, my shoulders hunched and my arms still secured behind my back.