by Marie Lu
Why do I even care? It shouldn’t hurt this much. Should it? Don’t I have more important stuff to worry about?
The Medic walks over to me. June squeezes my hand; I’m reluctant to let go. She is from a different world, but she gave it all up for me. Sometimes I take this for granted, and then I wonder how I have the nerve to doubt her, when she’s so willing to put herself in danger for my sake. She could easily leave me behind. But she doesn’t. I chose this, she’d told me.
“Thanks,” I say to her. It’s all I can manage.
June studies me, then gives me a light kiss on the lips. “It’ll all be over before you know it, and then you’ll be able to scale buildings and run walls as fast as you ever did.” She lingers for a moment, then stands up and nods to the Medic and Tess. Then she’s gone.
I close my eyes and take a shuddering breath as the Medic approaches. From this angle, I can’t see Tess at all. Well, whatever this’ll feel like, it can’t be as bad as getting shot in the leg. Right?
The Medic covers my mouth with a damp cloth. I drift away into a long, dark tunnel.
* * *
Sparks. Memories from some faraway place.
I’m sitting with John at our little living room table, both of us illuminated by the unsteady light of three candles. I’m nine. He’s fourteen. The table is as wobbly as it’s ever been—one of the legs is rotting away, and every other month or so, we try to extend its life by nailing more slabs of cardboard to it. John has a thick book open before him. His eyebrows are scrunched together in concentration. He reads another line, stumbles on two of the words, then patiently moves on to the next.
“You look really tired,” I say. “You should probably go to bed. Mom’s going to be mad if she sees you’re still up.”
“We’ll finish this page,” John murmurs, only half listening. “Unless you need to go to bed.”
That makes me sit up straighter. “I’m not tired,” I insist.
We both hunch over the pages again, and John reads the next line out loud. “‘In Denver,’” he says slowly, “‘after the . . . completion . . . of the northern Wall, the Elector Primo . . . officially . . . officially . . .’”
“‘Deemed,’” I say, helping him along.
“‘Deemed . . . it a crime . . .’” John pauses here for a few seconds, then shakes his head and sighs.
“‘Against,’” I say.
John frowns at the page. “Are you sure? Can’t be the right word. Okay then. ‘Against. Against the state to enter the . . .’” John stops, leans back in his chair, and rubs at his eyes. “You’re right, Danny,” he whispers. “Maybe I should go to bed.”
“What’s the matter?”
“The letters keep smearing on the page.” John sighs and taps a finger against the paper. “It’s making me dizzy.”
“Come on. We’ll stop after this line.” I point to the line where he had paused, then find the word that was giving him trouble. “‘Capital,’” I say. “‘A crime against the state to enter the capital without first obtaining official military clearance.’”
John smiles a little as I read the sentence to him without a hitch. “You’ll do just fine on your Trials,” he says when I finish. “You and Eden both. If I squeaked by, I know you’ll pass with flying colors. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, kid.”
I shrug off his praise. “I’m not that excited about high school.”
“You should be. At least you’ll get a chance to go. And if you do well enough, the Republic might even assign you to a college and put you in the military. That’s something to be excited about, right?”
Suddenly there’s pounding on our front door. I jump. John pushes me behind him. “Who is it?” he calls out. The knocking gets louder until I cover my ears to block out the noise. Mom comes out into the living room, holding a sleepy Eden in her arms, and asks us what’s going on. John takes a step forward as if to open the door—but before he can, the door swings open and a patrol of armed street police barge in. Standing in front is a girl with a long dark ponytail and a gold glint in her black eyes. Her name is June.
“You’re under arrest,” she says, “for the assassination of our glorious Elector.”
She lifts her gun and shoots John. Then she shoots Mom. I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, screaming so hard that my vocal cords snap. Everything goes black.
A jolt of pain runs through me. Now I’m ten. I’m back in the Los Angeles Central Hospital’s lab, locked away with who knows how many others, all strapped to separate gurneys, blinded by fluorescent lights. Doctors with face masks hover over me. I squint up at them. Why are they keeping me awake? The lights are so bright—I feel . . . slow, my mind dragging through a sea of haze.
I see the scalpels in their hands. A mess of mumbled words passes between them. Then I feel something cold and metallic against my knee, and the next thing I know, I arch my back and try to shriek. No sound comes out. I want to tell them to stop cutting my knee, but then something pierces the back of my head and pain explodes my thoughts away. My vision tunnels into blinding white.
Then I’m opening my eyes and I’m lying in a dim basement that feels uncomfortably warm. I’m alive by some crazy accident. The pain in my knee makes me want to cry, but I know I have to stay silent. I can see dark shapes around me, most of them laid out on the ground and unmoving, while adults in lab coats walk around, inspecting the bundles on the floor. I wait quietly, lying there with my eyes closed into tiny slits, until those walking leave the chamber. Then I push myself up onto my feet and tear off a pant leg to tie around my bleeding knee. I stumble through the darkness and feel along the walls until I find a door that leads outside, then drag myself into a back alley. I walk out into the light, and this time June is there, composed and unafraid, holding her cool hand out to help me.
“Come on,” she whispers, putting her arm around my waist. I hold her close. “We’re in this together, right? You and me?” We walk to the road and leave the hospital lab behind.
But the people on the street all have Eden’s white-blond curls, each with a scarlet streak of blood cutting through the strands. Every door we pass has a large, spray-painted red X with a line drawn through its center. That means everybody here has the plague. A mutant plague. We wander down the streets for what seems like days, through air thick as molasses. I’m searching for my mother’s house. Far in the distance, I can see the glistening cities of the Colonies beckoning to me, the promise of a better world and a better life. I’m going to take John and Mom and Eden there, and we’ll be free from the clutches of the Republic at last.
Finally, we reach my mother’s door, but when I push it open, the living room is empty. My mother isn’t there. John is gone. The soldiers shot him, I remember abruptly. I glance to my side, but June has vanished, and I’m alone in the doorway. Only Eden’s left . . . he’s lying in bed. When I get close enough for him to hear me coming, he opens his eyes and holds his hands out to me.
But his eyes aren’t blue. They’re black, because his irises are bleeding.
* * *
I come to slowly, very slowly, out of the darkness. The base of my neck pulses the way it does when I’m recovering from one of my headaches. I know I’ve been dreaming, but all I remember is a lingering feeling of dread, of something horrible lurking right behind a locked door. A pillow is wedged under my head. A tube pokes out of my arm and runs along the floor. Everything’s out of focus. I struggle to sharpen my vision, but all I can see is the edge of a bed and a carpet on the floor and a girl sitting there with her head resting on the bed. At least, I think it’s a girl. For an instant I think it might be Eden, that somehow the Patriots rescued him and brought him here.
The figure stirs. Now I see that it’s Tess.
“Hey,” I murmur. The word slurs out of my mouth. “What’s up? Where’s June?”
Tess grabs my hand and stands up, stumbling over her reply in her rush. “You’re awake,” she says. “You’re—how are you feeling?”
“Slow.” I try to touch her face. I’m still not entirely convinced that she’s real.
Tess checks behind her at the bedroom door to make sure no one else is there. She holds up a finger to her lips. “Don’t worry,” she says quietly. “You won’t feel slow for long. The Medic seemed pretty happy. Soon you’ll be better than new and we can head for the warfront to kill the Elector.”
It’s jarring to hear the word kill come so smoothly out of Tess’s mouth. Then, an instant later, I realize that my leg doesn’t hurt—not even the smallest bit. I try to prop myself up to see, and Tess pushes the pillows up behind my back so I can sit. I glance down at my leg, almost afraid to look.
Tess sits beside me and unwraps the white bandages that cover the area where the wound was. Under the gauze are smooth plates of steel, a mechanical knee where my bad one used to be, and metal sheets that cover half my upper thigh. I gape at it. The parts where metal meets flesh on my thigh and calf feel molded tightly together, but only small bits of redness and swelling line the edges. My vision swims.
Tess’s fingers drum expectantly against my blankets, and she bites her round upper lip. “Well? How does it feel?”
“It feels like . . . nothing. It’s not painful at all.” I run a tentative finger over the cool metal, trying to get used to the foreign parts embedded in my leg. “She did all this? When can I walk again? Has it really healed this quickly?”
Tess puffs up a little with pride. “I helped the Medic. You’re not supposed to move around much over the next twelve hours. To let the healing salves settle and do their work.” Tess grins and the smile crinkles up her eyes in a familiar way. “It’s a standard operation for injured warfront soldiers. Pretty awesome, yeah? You should be able to use it like a regular leg after that, maybe even better. The doctor I helped is really famous from the warfront hospitals, but she also does black-market work on the side, which is lucky. While she was here, she showed me how to reset Kaede’s broken arm too, so it’d heal faster.”
I wonder how much the Patriots spent on this surgery. I’d seen soldiers with metal parts before, from as little as a steel square on their upper arms to as much as an entire leg replaced with metal. It can’t be a cheap operation, and from the appearance of my leg, the doctor used military-grade healing salves. I can already tell how much power my leg will have when I recover—and how much more quickly I’ll be able to get around. How much sooner I can find Eden.
“Yeah,” I say to Tess. “It’s amazing.” I crane my neck a little so I can focus on the bedroom door, but this makes me dizzy. My head is pounding up a storm now, and I can hear low voices coming from farther down the hall. “What’s everyone doing?”
Tess glances over her shoulder again and then back to me. “They’re talking about the first phase of the plan. I’m not in it, so I’m sitting out.” She helps me lie back down. Then an awkward pause follows. I still can’t get used to how different Tess seems. Tess notices me admiring her, hesitates, and smiles awkwardly.
“When all this is finished,” I begin, “I want you to come with me to the Colonies, okay?” Tess breaks into a smile, then smoothes my blankets nervously with one hand as I go on. “If everything goes according to the Patriots’ plans, and the Republic really does fall, I don’t want us to be caught in the chaos. Eden, June, you, and me. Got it, cousin?”
Tess’s burst of enthusiasm wanes. She hesitates. “I don’t know, Day,” she says, glancing over toward the door again.
“Why? You afraid of the Patriots or something?”
“No . . . they’ve been good to me so far.”
“Then why don’t you want to come?” I ask her quietly. I’m starting to feel weak again, and it’s hard to keep things from getting foggy. “Back in Lake, we always said that we’d escape to the Colonies together if we got the chance. My father told me that the Colonies must be a place full of—”
“Freedom and opportunities. I know.” Tess shakes her head. “It’s just that . . .”
“That what?”
One of Tess’s hands slides over to tuck inside my own. I picture her as a kid again, back when I first found her rummaging through that garbage bin in Nima sector. Is this really the same girl? Her hands aren’t as small as they used to be, although they still fit neatly into mine. She looks up at me. “Day . . . I’m worried about you.”
I blink. “What do you mean? The surgery?”
Tess gives me an impatient shake of her head. “No. I’m worried about you because of June.”
I breathe deeply, waiting for her to continue, afraid of what she’ll say.
Tess’s voice changes into something strange, something I don’t recognize. “Well . . . if June travels with us . . . I mean, I know how attached you are to her, but just a few weeks ago she was a Republic soldier. Don’t you see that expression she gets now and then? Like she misses the Republic, or wants to go back or something? What if she tries to sabotage our plan, or turns on you while we’re trying to get to the Colonies? The Patriots are already taking precautions—”
“Stop.” I’m a little surprised by how loud and irritated I sound. I’ve never raised my voice to Tess before, and I regret it instantly. I can hear Tess’s jealousy in every word she says, the way she spits June’s name out like she can’t wait to get it over with. “I understand that it’s only been a few weeks since everything’s happened. Of course she’s going to have moments of uncertainty. Right? Still, she’s not loyal to the Republic anymore, and we’re in a dangerous place even if we don’t travel with her. Besides, June has skills that none of us have. She broke me out of Batalla Hall, for crying out loud. She can keep us safe.”
Tess purses her lips. “Well, how do you feel about what the Patriots are planning for her? What about her relationship with the Elector?”
“What relationship?” I hold up my hands weakly, trying to pretend that it doesn’t matter. “It’s all part of the game. She doesn’t even know him.”
Tess shrugs. “She will soon,” she whispers. “When she has to get close enough to manipulate him.” Her eyes lower again. “I’ll go with you, Day. I’d go anywhere with you. But I just wanted to remind you about . . . her. Just in case you hadn’t thought of things that way.”
“Everything will be okay,” I manage to say. “Just trust me.”
The tension finally passes. Tess’s face softens into its familiar sweetness, and my irritation slips away as quickly as it had come. “You’ve always watched out for me,” I say with a smile. “Thanks, cousin.”
Tess grins. “Someone has to, yeah?” She gestures at my rolled-up sleeves. “I’m glad the uniform fits you, by the way. It seemed too big when it was folded, but I guess it turned out all right.” Without warning, she leans over and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. She jumps away almost instantly. Her face is bright pink. Tess has kissed me on the cheek before, when she was younger, but this is the first time I’ve felt something more in her gesture. I try to figure out how, in less than a month, Tess left her childhood behind and became an adult. I cough uncomfortably. It’s an odd new relationship.
Then she stands up and pulls her hand away. She looks toward the door instead of at me. “Sorry, you should be resting. I’ll check on you later. Try to go back to sleep.”
That’s when I realize that Tess must’ve been the one to drop off our uniforms in the bathroom. She might’ve seen me kissing June. I try to think through the fog in my mind, to say something to her before she leaves, but she’s already walked out the door and disappeared down the hall.
0545 HOURS.
VENEZIA.
DAY ONE AS AN OFFICIAL MEMBER OF THE PATRIOTS.
I CHOSE NOT TO BE IN THE ROOM DURING THE SURGERY; Tess, of course, stayed to assist the Medic. The image of Day lying unconscious on the table, face pale and blank, head turned ninety degrees to the ceiling, would remind me a little too much of the night I’d hunched over Metias’s dead body in the hospital alley. I prefer not to let the Patriots see my weaknesses. So
I stay away, sitting alone on one of the couches in the main room.
I also keep my distance in order to really think about Razor’s plan for me:
I’m going to be arrested by Republic soldiers.
I’m going to find a way to get a private audience with the Elector, and then I’m going to gain his trust.
I’m going to tell him about a bogus assassination plot that will lead to a full pardon of all my crimes against the Republic.
Then I’m going to lure him to his actual assassination.
That’s my role. Thinking about it is one thing; pulling it off is another. I study my hands and wonder whether I’m ready to have blood on them, whether I’m ready to kill someone. What was it Metias had always told me? “Few people ever kill for the right reasons, June.” But then I remember what Day said in the bathroom. “Getting rid of the person in charge seems like a small price to pay for starting a revolution. Don’t you think so?”
The Republic took Metias away from me. I think of the Trials, the lies about my parents’ deaths. The engineered plagues. From this luxury high-rise I can see Vegas’s Trial stadium behind the skyscrapers, gleaming, off in the distance. Few people kill for the right reasons, but if any reason is the right one, it must be this. Isn’t it?
My hands are trembling slightly. I steady them.
It’s quiet in this apartment now. Razor has left again (he stepped out at 0332 in full uniform), and Kaede is dozing on the far end of my couch. If I were to drop a pin on the marble floor in here, the sound would probably hurt my ears. After a while, I turn my attention to the small screen on the wall. It’s muted, but I still watch the familiar cycle of news play. Flood warnings, storm warnings. Airship arrival and departure times. Victories against the Colonies along the warfront. Sometimes I wonder whether the Republic makes up those victories too, and whether we’re actually winning or losing the war. The headlines roll on. There’s even a public announcement warning that any civilian caught with a red streak in his or her hair will be arrested on sight.