I am not a general or a tactician, but her reasoning is clear. I am the little lightning girl—living electricity, a lightning bolt in human form. People know my name, my face, and my abilities. I am valuable, I am powerful, and Maven will do anything to stop me from striking back. How my brother can protect me from the twisted new king, even though he is like me, even though he’s the fastest thing I’ve ever seen, I do not know. But I must believe, even if it seems a miracle. After all, I have seen so many impossible things. Another escape will be the least of them.
The click and slide of gun barrels echo down the train as the Guard makes ready. Kilorn shifts to stand over me, swaying slightly, his grip tight on the rifle slung across his chest. He glances down, his expression soft. He tries to smirk, to make me laugh, but his bright green eyes are grave and afraid.
In contrast, Cal sits quietly, almost peaceful. Though he has the most to fear—chained, surrounded by enemies, hunted by his own brother—he looks serene. I’m not surprised. He’s a soldier born and bred. War is something he understands, and we are certainly at war now.
“I hope you don’t plan to fight,” he says, speaking for the first time in many long minutes. His eyes are on me, but his words bite at Farley. “I hope you plan to run.”
“Save your breath, Silver.” She squares her shoulders. “I know what we have to do.”
I can’t stop the words from bursting out. “So does he.” The glare she turns on me burns, but I’ve dealt with worse. I don’t even flinch. “Cal knows how they fight, he knows what they’ll do to stop us. Use him.”
How does it feel to be used? He spit those words at me in the prison beneath the Bowl of Bones and it made me want to die. Now it barely stings.
She doesn’t say anything, and that is enough for Cal.
“They’ll have Snapdragons,” he says grimly.
Kilorn laughs aloud. “Flowers?”
“Airjets,” Cal says, his eyes sparking with distaste. “Orange wings, silver bodies, single pilot, easy to maneuver, perfect for an urban assault. They carry four missiles each. Times one squadron, that’s forty-eight missiles you’re going to have to outrun, plus light ammunition. Can you handle that?”
He’s met only with silence. No, we can’t.
“And the Dragons are the least of our worries. They’ll just circle, defend a perimeter, keep us in place until ground troops arrive.”
He lowers his eyes, thinking quickly. He’s wondering what he would do, if he were on the other side of this. If he were king instead of Maven. “They’ll surround us and present terms. Mare and I for your escape.”
Another sacrifice. Slowly, I suck in a breath. This morning, yesterday, before all this madness, I would have been glad to give myself over to save just Kilorn and my brother. But now . . . now I know I am special. Now I have others to protect. Now I cannot be lost.
“We can’t agree to that,” I say. A bitter truth. Kilorn’s gaze weighs heavy, but I don’t look up. I can’t stomach his judgment.
Cal is not so harsh. He nods, agreeing with me. “The king doesn’t expect us to give in,” he replies. “The jets will bring the ruins down on us, and the rest will mop up the survivors. It will be little more than a massacre.”
Farley is a creature of pride, even now when she’s terribly cornered. “What do you suggest?” she asks, bending over him. Her words drip disdain. “Total surrender?”
Something like disgust crosses Cal’s face. “Maven will still kill you. In a cell or on the battlefield, he won’t let any of us live.”
“Then better we die fighting.” Kilorn’s voice sounds stronger than it should, but there’s a tremble in his fingers. He looks like the rest of the rebels, willing to do anything for the cause, but my friend is still afraid. Still a boy, no more than eighteen, with too much to live for, and too little reason to die.
Cal scoffs at Kilorn’s forced but brazen declaration, yet he doesn’t say anything else. He knows a more graphic description of our impending death won’t help anyone.
Farley doesn’t share his sentiment and waves a hand, dismissing both of them outright. Behind me, my brother mirrors her determination.
They know something we don’t, something they won’t say yet. Maven has taught us all the price of trust misplaced.
“We are not the ones who die today,” is all she says, before marching toward the front of the train. Her boots sound like hammer falls on the metal flooring, each one smacking of stubborn resolve.
I sense the train slow before I feel it. The electricity wanes, weakening, as we glide into the underground station. What we might find in the skies above, white fog or orange-winged airjets, I do not know. The others don’t seem to mind, exiting the Undertrain with great purpose. In their silence, the armed and masked Guard looks like true soldiers, but I know better. They’re no match for what is coming.
“Prepare yourself.” Cal’s voice hisses in my ear, making me shiver. It reminds me of days long past, of dancing in moonlight. “Remember how strong you are.”
Kilorn shoulders his way to my side, separating us before I can tell Cal my strength and my ability are all I’m sure of now. The electricity in my veins might be the only thing I trust in this world.
I want to believe in the Scarlet Guard, and certainly in Shade and Kilorn, but I won’t let myself, not after the mess my trust, my blindness toward Maven got us into. And Cal is out of the question altogether. He is a prisoner, a Silver, the enemy who would betray us if he could—if he had anywhere else to run.
But still, somehow, I feel a pull to him. I remember the burdened boy who gave me a silver coin when I was nothing. With that one gesture he changed my future, and destroyed his own.
And we share an alliance—an uneasy one forged in blood and betrayal. We are connected, we are united—against Maven, against all who deceived us, against the world about to tear itself apart.
Silence waits for us. Gray, damp mist hangs over the ruins of Naercey, bringing the sky down so close I might touch it. It’s cold, with the chill of autumn, the season of change and death. Nothing haunts the sky yet, no jets to rain destruction down upon an already destroyed city. Farley sets a brisk pace, leading up from the tracks to the wide, abandoned avenue. The wreckage yawns like a canyon, more gray and broken than I remember.
We march east down the street, toward the shrouded waterfront. The high, half-collapsed structures lean over us, their windows like eyes watching us pass. Silvers could be waiting in the broken hollows and shadowed arches, ready to kill the Scarlet Guard. Maven could make me watch as he struck rebels down one by one. He would not give me the luxury of a clean, quick death. Or worse, I think. He would not let me die at all.
The thought chills my blood like a Silver shiver’s touch. As much as Maven lied to me, I still know a small piece of his heart. I remember him grabbing me through the bars of a cell, holding on with shaking fingers. And I remember the name he carries, the name that reminds me a heart still beats inside him. His name was Thomas and I watched him die. He could not save that boy. But he can save me, in his own twisted way.
No. I will never give him the satisfaction of such a thing. I would rather die.
But try as I might, I can’t forget the shadow I thought him to be, the lost and forgotten prince. I wish that person were real. I wish he existed somewhere other than my memories.
The Naercey ruins echo strangely, more quiet than they should be. With a start, I realize why. The refugees are gone. The woman sweeping mountains of ash, the children hiding in drains, the shadows of my Red brothers and sisters—they have all fled. There’s no one left but us.
“Think what you want of Farley, but know she isn’t stupid,” Shade says, answering my question before I get a chance to ask. “She gave the order to evacuate last night, after she escaped Archeon. She thought you or Maven would talk under torture.”
She was wrong. There was no need to torture Maven. He gave his information and his mind freely. He opened his head to his mother, letting her paw through everything she saw there. The Undertrain, the secret city, the list. It is all hers now, just like he always was.
The line of Scarlet Guard soldiers stretches out behind us, a disorganized rabble of armed men and women. Kilorn marches directly behind me, his eyes darting, while Farley leads. Two burly soldiers keep Cal on her heels, gripping his arms tensely. With their red scarves, they look like the stuff of nightmares. But there are so few of us now, maybe thirty, all walking wounded. So few survived.
“There’s not enough of us to keep this rebellion going, even if we escape again,” I whisper to my brother. The low-hanging mist muffles my voice, but he still hears me.
The corner of his mouth twitches, wanting to smile. “That’s not your concern.”
Before I can press him, the soldier in front of us halts. He is not the only one. At the head of the line, Farley holds up a fist, glaring at the slate-gray sky. The rest mirror her, searching for what we cannot see. Only Cal keeps his eyes on the ground. He already knows what our doom looks like.
A distant, inhuman scream reaches down through the mist. This sound is mechanical and constant, circling overhead. And it is not alone. Twelve arrow-shaped shadows race through the sky, their orange wings cutting in and out of the clouds. I’ve never seen an airjet properly, not so close or without the cover of night, so I can’t stop my jaw from dropping when they come into view. Farley barks orders at the Guard, but I don’t hear her. I’m too busy staring at the sky, watching winged death arc overhead. Like Cal’s cycle, the flying machines are beautiful, impossibly curved steel and glass. I suppose a magnetron had something to do with their construction—how else can metal fly? Blue-tinged engines spark beneath their wings, the telltale sign of electricity. I can barely feel the twinge of them, like a breath against skin, but they’re too far away for me to affect. I can only watch—in horror.
They screech and twist around the island of Naercey, never breaking their circle. I can almost pretend they’re harmless, nothing but curious birds come to see the obliterated remnants of a rebellion. Then a dart of gray metal sails overhead, trailing smoke, moving almost too fast to see. It collides with a building down the avenue, disappearing through a broken window. A bloom of red-orange explodes a split second later, destroying the entire floor of an already crumbling building. It shatters in on itself, collapsing onto thousand-year-old supports that snap like toothpicks. The entire structure tips, falling so slowly the sight can’t be real. When it hits the street, blockading the way ahead of us, I feel the rumble deep in my chest. A cloud of smoke and dust hits us head-on, but I don’t cower. It takes more than that to scare me now.
Through the gray-and-brown haze, Cal stands with me, even while his captors crouch. Our eyes meet for a moment, and his shoulders droop. It’s the only sign of defeat he’ll let me see.
Farley grabs the nearest Guardsman, hoisting her to her feet. “Scatter!” she shouts, gesturing to the alleys on either side of us. “To the north side, to the tunnels!” She points to her lieutenants as she speaks, telling them where to go. “Shade, to the park side!” My brother nods, knowing what she means. Another missile careens into a nearby building, drowning her out. But it’s easy to tell what she’s shouting.
Run.
Part of me wants to hold my ground, to stand, to fight. My purple-and-white lightning will certainly make me a target and draw the jets away from the fleeing Guard. I might even take a plane or two with me. But that cannot be. I’m worth more than the rest, more than red masks and bandages. Shade and I must survive—if not for the cause, then for the others. For the list of hundreds like us—hybrids, anomalies, freaks, Red-and-Silver impossibilities—who will surely die if we fail.
Shade knows this as well as I do. He loops his arm into mine, his grip so tight as to be bruising. It’s almost too easy to run in step with him, to let him guide me off the wide avenue and into a gray-green tangle of overgrown trees spilling into the street. The deeper we go, the thicker they become, gnarled together like deformed fingers. A thousand years of neglect turned this little plot into a dead jungle. It shelters us from the sky, until we can only hear the jets circling closer and closer. Kilorn is never far behind. For a moment, I can pretend we’re back at home, wandering the Stilts, looking for fun and trouble.
Trouble is all we seem to find.
When Shade finally skids to a stop, his heels scarring the dirt beneath us, I chance a glance around. Kilorn halts next to us, his rifle aimed uselessly skyward, but no one else follows. I can’t even see the street anymore, or the red rags fleeing into the ruins.
My brother glares up through the boughs of the trees, watching and waiting for the jets to fly out of range.
“Where are we going?” I ask him, breathless.
Kilorn answers instead. “The river,” he says. “And then the ocean. Can you take us?” He glances at Shade’s hands, as if he could see his ability plain in his flesh. But Shade’s strength is buried like mine, invisible until he chooses to reveal it.
My brother shakes his head. “Not in one jump, it’s too far. And I’d rather run, save my strength.” His eyes darken. “Until we really need it.”
I nod, agreeing. I know firsthand what it is to be ability-worn, tired in your bones, barely able to move, let alone fight.
“Where are they taking Cal?”
My question makes Kilorn wince.
“Hell if I care.”
“You should,” I fire back, even as my voice shakes with hesitation. No, he shouldn’t. Neither should you. If the prince is gone, you must let him go. “He can help us get out of this. He can fight with us.”
“He’ll escape or kill us the second we give him the chance,” he snaps, tearing away his scarf to show the angry scowl beneath.
In my head, I see Cal’s fire. It burns everything in its path, from metal to flesh. “He could’ve killed you already,” I say. It’s not an exaggeration, and Kilorn knows it.
“Somehow I thought you two would outgrow your bickering,” Shade says, stepping between us. “How silly of me.”
Kilorn forces out an apology through gritted teeth, but I do no such thing. My focus is on the jets, letting their electric hearts beat against mine. They weaken with each second, getting farther and farther away. “They’re flying away from us. If we’re going to go, we need to do it now.”
Both my brother and Kilorn look at me strangely, but neither argue. “This way,” Shade says, pointing through the trees. A small, almost invisible path winds through them, where the dirt has been swept away to reveal stone and asphalt beneath. Again, Shade links his arm through mine, and Kilorn charges ahead, setting a swift pace for us to follow.