Shatter the Suns

by Caitlin Sangster

  “Then we’ll storm over the top of the camp in the heli. Or paint our faces with mud and wriggle through like snakes. We’ll pretend to be Thirds and pour wine down scouts’ throats until they ride us in on their shoulders.”

  “You’ve got a bottle of wine stashed somewhere?”

  I roll my eyes. “Things are so messy right now, what are the odds that they check under everyone’s masks and count the marks? The risk of contagion is too high. Howl is a bigger risk than wearing gloves to hide my brand and hoping for the best.”

  Tai-ge sighs. “So do we try for the ones locked in with the Chairman’s things or do we break into the new General’s tent?”

  I don’t miss the way his voice wavers over the mention of a new General. “How are you holding up, Tai-ge?”

  He shakes his head, leaning over the bowl of soup and breathing in deep before looking out past the broken buildings into the trees beyond—and freezes. “Someone’s watching us out there.”

  “There’s . . . ?” My heart pauses, and I stare at the shadowed tree trunks, twilight purpling the air around us. I pull myself into a crouch, setting my bowl down. “Let’s get inside, get your masks.”

  “Only one person.” June looks up from dishing up another portion of soup. “Someone like me.”

  Like June? A Wood Rat? June stands and goes to the ladder, precariously balancing the bowl as she climbs up. She looks back when I stand to follow her. “No. Stay. If they’d wanted to, they would have come at us a long time ago.”

  “Are you going to eat inside?” Tai-ge calls after her.

  June shakes her head without looking back and pulls herself through the hatch. The bowl must be for Howl. Tai-ge doesn’t seem concerned about whoever it is out there watching us, so I let myself slide back to the ground.

  I put a hand on Tai-ge’s arm. “It’s got to be difficult, listening to Howl talk about the camps. After your dad . . .”

  “We can’t waste time getting upset about anything right now, Sevvy.” Tai-ge inches closer, and I’m glad for the extra warmth when his side brushes up against mine. “Your mother died too.”

  “She might as well have been dead for years. It was just a chance to say good-bye for me.” I try not to think of the blood, of how frail she felt. “Or it was a release, anyway. For both of us. I don’t know how you feel, but I have lost . . . so much. I even lost you, my best friend, for a while. All of us here have lost somebody to bullets. June’s dad was shot right in front of her only a few months ago.”

  “We’re all alone now,” Tai-ge whispers, as if June’s father being dead is no more or less than he expected. “Even if my father had survived, he’d probably be lost along with everyone else who was trapped inside the City. I’d probably be there too.” He looks down. “I can’t think about it now. When this is over, we can . . .” Tai-ge licks his lips, staring hard at his hands, still and useless in his lap. “We’ll be able to feel again.”

  I pinch my lips together, the sharp prick of tears needling my eyes. “I used to feel that way. I still catch myself pushing it all aside. You have to sometimes.” It’s dangerous to let yourself be flooded by your anger, sorrow, hatred, or worst of all, uselessness. They wash away anything that’s left inside you that can act. But pretending it isn’t there, that you’re fine, isn’t healthy either. How many years did I spend imagining Mother was a doll, dressed up and posed inside her glass cage in the City Center, as though she had nothing to do with me? How long did it take before I could let myself think of Aya, my own sister, as anything other than an empty space in my heart?

  It was Aya—missing Aya, and wishing I somehow could have saved her—that made me want to help June when we first met her.

  “If you don’t let yourself feel any of it, then it weighs you down, Tai-ge.” I allowed my family to be a weight on my shoulders instead of a memory of where I came from. It’s not as if everything’s fine now that I’m staring those memories in the face, trying to make sense of them, to let some of them go. But it’s a little better. “Pushing it back makes it so you can’t feel anything at all, good or bad.”

  Tai-ge looks at me, an almost-smile on his face. “You wouldn’t even talk about your family back in the City. Not your sister, your father, your mother.”

  He reaches out to brush a strand of hair away from my face just as I pull away to brush it aside myself. “I couldn’t. Mourning traitors? It probably would have gotten me a nice bed in the Hole.” I bite my lip, thinking of Howl and how he did exactly what I’m trying to do for Tai-ge now. He opened the door. Let all the things burning up my insides explode out, or they would have turned me to cinders eventually. It wasn’t saying things out loud that helped so much as knowing he was listening, knowing he was there. On my side. “I guess if you don’t want to talk, that’s okay. I just want you to know that I’m here and I care about you. If you want to talk, I’ll listen. If you want to sit, I’ll sit by you. Anything you need.”

  Tai-ge’s so still for a second. But then he leans over an inch, shoulder heavy against mine. We watch the fire’s embers crack and spit until the hatch hisses open and something thuds to the ground, heavy enough to be a broken body. I’m halfway to my feet, panic roaring in my ears, when June’s boots appear at the top of the ladder, unharmed. She climbs down one-handed, her face now covered by a gas mask, two more empty bowls clutched against her.

  “Do you think Howl can eat without help?” Tai-ge asks tiredly as June drops a second mask in his lap. He fingers the plastic curls, then fits it over his nose and mouth, turning his attention back toward the black of the forest. “His hands are tied.”

  June nods in response, ladling stew into a bowl, then setting it carefully just beyond the fire circle. She goes back to the ladder, heaving the thing she threw to the ground up against her hip. The other wintermelon. She waddles by, scoops up the bowl of soup, then walks out of the circle of our firelight, disappearing into the darkness.

  She comes back empty-handed.

  I stare into the darkness as if I’ll see the bowl of soup where June left it, tracing silver curls of heat up into the frozen night.

  How do June and Tai-ge know there’s only one person out there, eyes catching the light of our fire? Hungry. Cold. Watching, waiting. Hoping we’ll leave something, or planning to take it. How many left in the City, SS burning inside them? My days as a Seph were broken up by green pills in a little cup. An assurance I’d keep walking in a straight line, even as the hallucinations pulling at my brain tried to convince me otherwise. The people we left in the City don’t even have that. Compartmentalizing their days and nights between moments of sick and moments of well, no one even trying to divide the one from the other.

  SS doesn’t turn you into something too far gone to save. Lihua isn’t a monster any more than I ever was. That’s why we’re going to Port North. It’s time for SS to stop twisting us to its will. And for the people with Mantis to stop twisting us along with it.

  A bird calls out over the darkness, a hollow sort of hu, huuuuu. Bumps prickle across my arms. Thirds used to whisper old legends over their evening meals when electricity was being rationed. They’d say that if an owl lights in the tree outside your house, someone inside will die. Every sound that comes from its beak, the long hu, huuuu a command to start digging. Of course, we don’t bury our dead anymore. And owls can’t change the sound they make to tell people to start a bonfire, so maybe the bad luck doesn’t apply.

  I shrug off the long, lonely sound. Across the fire, June pulls her mask away from her face just enough to admit a quick sip of soup, the steam wafting in pearly trails around her face.

  A smile finds its way to my mouth, a warm feeling in my chest as I think of that bowl of soup waiting out in the dark. After everything, I’m glad to see something being given rather than taken.

  CHAPTER 14

  GET UP HIGH. RUNNING IN will just mean both of our heads on the Chairman’s desk. I can’t shoot someone, not even Reds who would happily tear me apart. I wo
n’t. I’m better than that, better than my mother. I just have to scare them off. I can do this. This is Kasim’s life.

  But then I see it below me. A single black eye winking up at me, the only point of light in the giant, muddled shadow lurking beneath my tree. Everything inside me screams for the Reds to run, to get away before the gore comes for them, but my voice is melted glass, ablaze in my throat. I watch, every move painfully slow and inevitable as the creature charges, jagged teeth finding flesh and bone. Screams. Kasim with a blood-smeared arc carved into his chest. Cale, her gun pointed at me.

  It’s a dream. I know it’s a dream. But no matter how I twist and turn, the gun doesn’t move, the gore doesn’t sleep. I’m trapped in the tar of my own memories until I can force myself to wake. Nightmares don’t retract their claws no matter how much you struggle, bringing you to the very edge before letting you fall. Cale’s finger squeezes her trigger, and the sound fills my whole world.

  My eyes tear open. Sweat streams down my temples, my sleeping bag wet under my cheek. I roll to my back and stare up into the dark, hands clasped over my mouth to quiet the sounds of my gasps.

  “Sev?” It’s a whisper from where Tai-ge is keeping watch over the cargo bay door, the only way into the heli when the hatch is locked. “What’s the matter?” the voice asks.

  I sit up, inching closer to where Tai-ge sits slumped against the doors, his breaths rasping long and slow out of that monster mask. He’s asleep. Not in a state to whisper anything.

  And then my eyes find Howl’s door next to Tai-ge’s still form. Open.

  Panic rushes over me in a swell, choking my lungs, and for a moment I can’t speak. How did Howl get the door open? Is Tai-ge really asleep? Or did Howl get to him somehow?

  Howl eases himself backward into the doorway, his hands extended into the room where they’re tethered to the shelves inside. He can’t get any farther, craning his neck over his shoulder to look at me.

  “I heard you wake up. Are you okay?” he asks, the whisper hoarse. Whispers are tricky, scrubbing the owner’s voice to a tattered remnant of the truth. “Dreams?”

  I lie down, not willing to go close enough to shut the door. Howl can’t get out. He can’t reach Tai-ge. If he wants to pull against the shelves all night and bruise his wrists, it’s not my problem.

  “Sometimes, if you’ve been through hard things . . .” He stops, the silence heavy with indecision. “When I was with the Menghu, it would happen to some of them. The worst moments assaulting you when your guard is down and you can’t make yourself forget.”

  I’m millimeters from saying something about Howl being the cause of my bad dreams, the catalyst that started the war in my head, but I shut my mouth instead. It’s not fair to say that leaving the City was the beginning of sleepless nights, of wishing I could forget everything that came before this moment. Dead men and guns have just come to replace the dreams I had before. Of Father burning, Aya falling in the street, blood spattering the concrete. Of Mother’s voice, crying, telling me she was sorry. Of darkness. Of Sleep.

  “I just . . . understand,” Howl whispers. “If you’re scared. If you don’t want to sit there alone, wondering if you’ll ever be able to sleep again.”

  I roll over, facing the blur of darkness in his direction. “You have bad dreams too?”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, but when he does, it’s so quiet I can hardly hear him. As if it’s a confession he’s not quite comfortable airing. “No.”

  I turn away. Swallow. Force my eyes to close. Even if I wish the dead would leave me alone, I’m glad I’m human enough to remember them.

  • • •

  Before light creeps in through the seams in the heli’s tarp over the cockpit window, a hand grabs my shoulder, jerking me out of my half sleep. I roll over to find a writhing mass of rubber tentacles and mesh filter in my face. Fear knifes through my heart, but before I can scream, the thing pulls the filters down, and my brain haltingly recognizes Tai-ge’s face underneath.

  “We need to get in the air if we want to make Dazhai before dawn.” He pulls the mask back over his nose and mouth. “Come help me pull back the tarp?”

  My breath shivers from my lungs in reluctant streams, but I nod and follow him out. Outside, the night sky is clouded over, blocking all but a few silvery wisps of moonlight. Tai-ge pulls open the first set of controls, then goes still, staring out into the trees. I follow his gaze, my heart racing when it lands on . . . something.

  It’s too dark to make out anything, but it’s more a feeling, like the scrape of a blade against my bare skin, the itch of knowing it’s about to stab you straight through. There’s something out there watching us. Both of us can feel it.

  “Get the back side, Sevvy.” Tai-ge hits the control to unlock the tarp from its anchoring points and runs to unlatch it from the cockpit’s great glass eye and front propellers. I run around the back of the heli, my hands fumbling to pull the plastic covering free from the belly of the cargo bay and the four propellers jutting out on either side of it. By the time the plastic is slowly feeding itself back into its housing, I’m already at the ladder, trying not to think of what will happen if it jams.

  Just as Tai-ge comes running, a dark smudge detaches from the edge of the forest, skittering toward us as if the shadows themselves are reaching out to drag us into the gloom. Then another shape, and another. I push him onto the ladder, worming my way up next to him so we both squeeze into the cockpit at the same time. Tai-ge slams his hand across the control to lock the hatch and runs for the captain’s chair. I wait for the thunk that will mean the ladder has pulled all the way up, a shudder rippling through me when the mechanism whines instead.

  The propellers ignite, filling the air with a steely roar. Finally, the ladder mechanism gives one last protest, and the ladder clicks into place. Our craft shivers into the air with an extra swing as if it is shaking something off.

  I perch on the copilot’s chair next to Tai-ge, breathing long and slow, as if I can exhale the adrenaline buzzing through me. Was it the watcher from last night, with friends to help? Made bold by a bowl of soup and the promises of an owl’s call?

  Looking through the cockpit windows, I can’t see anything but the glare of the heli’s underlights against the ragged field below us. Whatever—whoever—was out there, it doesn’t matter. We’re in the air. We’re safe. But even though my view of the ground looks empty, it feels as if something is watching us.

  The feeling solidifies inside me, prickled and sharp. We can’t fail. The people in these mountains won’t survive much longer if something doesn’t change. None of us will. We have to find the cure. It won’t change the Wood Rats who live alone and prey on others because it’s all they know. But it will at least give more options to everyone else stuck out in the cold. I grit my teeth. We need a kiss to wake up the sleeping princess, one that isn’t doled out by someone based on what they can take from you. We’ll find a happy ending, because I won’t stop until we do.

  And that resolve, that feeling of control, banishes some of the fear boiling in my head. Fear that’s been there my whole life, laughing at me. But no more. I am not helpless. I’m not a victim. I won’t be.

  CHAPTER 15

  JUNE TAKES MY PLACE IN the chair by Tai-ge when she wakes up, letting me follow the growl of my stomach to our supplies. The storage closet door is still open as I walk by, Howl a shadowy smudge that takes up most of the floor inside. His arms are wrapped around his head, dead asleep as if our conversation last night never happened. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just another dream of the dark things inside me, wishing Howl would be the one to wake up because I did, that he’d care whether or not I could sleep.

  I push the door closed, full import of finding it propped open in the middle of the night shuddering through me. “June?” She swivels the chair in my direction, gas mask sucked tight over her nose and mouth like a gargantuan caterpillar. “Did you open Howl’s door last night?”

  She gives a
slow nod. “Stuffy in there.”

  I close my eyes for a second, not sure if I’m more glad Howl didn’t magically unlock it from the inside or upset that June would open it for him and give him one less obstacle to hurting us.

  Tai-ge fights with the controls, the mask cockeyed on his face as the heli wobbles from side to side. I grab a spear of dried meat and join them at the controls, nothing but darkness to tell me how high we are. Howl and Tai-ge plotted a course that would take us between a series of mountains, keeping the heli from being easily spotted. Everything that might alert Reds to our presence has been turned off, and I can see the strain of flying without the extra help from the heli’s instruments in Tai-ge’s shoulders.

  June leans in to stare at the controls, shifting her balance along with the heli to keep herself from falling every time we wobble to the side. She points toward a dark outline that suddenly looms up in front of us, then to the base of the one just beyond, and finally to the glint of river mirror-bright even under the clouds that have rolled in during the night. Tai-ge nods as if this is some kind of plan, June pointing out the landmarks he knew were coming but couldn’t find for himself. It seems to help, and when we finally set back down on the ground in one of the abrupt hills populating the mountain range’s feet, Tai-ge sags back against his chair, sweat streaming down his temples.

  “Let’s never do that again,” he says, voice exhausted as he pulls the gas mask over his head, rubbing at the spot where it dug into on his cheek. “June, if you hadn’t come with us, we’d be skewered on the branches of a tree somewhere like a downed kite after the sweeping festival.”

  June hops down from the chair without responding. She goes to the boxes of supplies to rummage until she comes up with some dried pear slices. Tai-ge slowly kicks his chair around to face me, his almost-smile making his dimples stand out in each cheek. “She really likes those,” he whispers, as if it’s a joke just between us.