Last Star Burning

by Caitlin Sangster

  “. . . our only hope. They’d kill her before we got close.” It’s Dr. Yang, sounding depressed.

  “Don’t you think that is a bit extreme, He-ping?” General Root growls. “Invasion? Are there no other choices?”

  “We might have had success another way, if we could all come to an accord. . . .”

  Howl’s voice surprises me. “We had a deal, Dr. Yang.”

  “You knew what was going to happen if everything didn’t fall into place.” Dr. Yang sounds amused, despite the heavy words issuing from his lips. “Are you volunteering now, Howl? After all these years?”

  There’s a substantial pause before Howl answers. A whisper. “No.”

  “You know it’s going to come down to one of you in the end.”

  Even quieter. I almost don’t catch it. “Yes.”

  “That being said,” another voice chimes in, “if we aren’t prepared to force our resources here, we have to go back to the source. Why can’t we get to Gui-hua?”

  My mother? Waking her up now wouldn’t help much, would it?

  Dr. Yang answers, “There’s no telling if she would help us, even if we did get to her before the First Circle did. Like I said, the Mantis stockpiles—”

  Howl cuts in again, “You know what would happen with Menghu in the City. Whatever their orders, the whole thing would turn into a bloodbath. The people you are trying to save, all the Thirds—”

  General Root’s voice booms out over his, “This isn’t about saving anyone; it’s about survival. It’s between us and them. It always has been.”

  My jaw clenches, anger bitter on my tongue. Is that the real stance, what lies underneath all the feel-good, new life, equality business? Anything to get Mantis, all of it, not willing to share a single pill.

  And how can Howl just sit back and let him talk like that? His family and friends are all still in the City. Isn’t that why all these people left? Because Firsts decide who is going to live and how? Is Dr. Yang going back on a bargain not to invade? After all the help Howl has given them?

  A woman’s voice pipes up, muffled by the whispers of conversation spidering out from the General’s ultimatum. “We could be ready to move out within a week.”

  “General Root,” Dr. Yang interjects, “I don’t want any lives to be lost unnecessarily. The reports of SS experimentation and new types of chemical weapons coming our way are frightening. We do need to move quickly in order to secure enough Mantis to support the Mountain, but if I can have authorization to use Jiang Sev . . .”

  Use me? Everything goes cold, my breath frozen inside my chest, Helix’s warning cutting across my brain.

  “Sev?” I jump at the man’s voice at my back, managing to school my face into a smile before I turn around.

  “Raj. Howl asked me to meet him. . . .”

  Raj jerks me away from the door. “I’m sure he did. Howl doesn’t like following rules.”

  I pull against him, straining back toward the meeting, but he’s too strong for me. “Please, Raj, I need to talk to Howl.”

  “No.” He stops at the top of the stairs leading to the Core, the height almost dizzying through the glass. Poking at the telescreen, he whispers, “Jiang Sev,” and my schedule pops up under his hand. “You’ll find out along with everyone else. I’m calling your captain now. . . .”

  “No. I’ll go. I’m going.” I take the stairs at a swift jog, putting as much distance between me and Raj as quickly as possible, worried Raj would send the message, that I might bump into Helix on his way up.

  When my lungs start to complain, I slow to a walk, my mind bending around the conversation I so desperately wanted to hear the end of. Dr. Yang wants to use me? What could one infected Fourth do to tip the balance between City and Mountain?

  And invasion? General Hong would be first on the list to die, Tai-ge right after him. What could be so terrible that trying to break down the City walls sounds like the best defense? How many Menghu would have to die? Running my fingers along the wall, I walk without seeing, trying to piece things together.

  “Sev!” The voice only pushes through my thoughts when the owner grabs my shoulders. Kasim’s grin is a little too close to my face. “I was supposed to report five minutes ago and you aren’t even dressed.”

  “Dressed?” I look around at the unfamiliar hallway. Hand-painted numbers hang from the ceiling, the walls made up of tiny broken tiles arranged into a mosaic of animals in a forest. A lizard sits next to me on the wall, tongue lashing out to catch my hand. The movement startles me, just as impossible and frightening as the Red in the forest speaking to me from the dead, or the glass bottles singing my name back in the Chairman’s basement.

  No. Not again.

  “Aren’t you coming out on patrol with me tonight?”

  I pull my hand away from the wall, brushing my sweaty palm against my pants. It’s just a picture. It can’t move. This hallway must be Jiaoyang. Where all the little kids go to school.

  “I thought you were kidding,” I reply, still trying to rub the twinges of hallucination away. “How did you find me?”

  “Telescreen. Tracks your ID card.”

  I pull the card from my pocket. I don’t remember bringing it with me. “It tracks me wherever I go? Why?”

  Kasim shrugs. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Howl made sure I didn’t get a permanent ID chip. Talked his way around all of the blood tests and whatever else Dr. Yang is asking for. And somehow seems to know a whole lot more about what is going on than he did last night. Helix’s words repeat over and over in my head, spinning until I feel dizzy.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE NIGHT REACHES OUT TO me like an old friend, an unwelcome one that buzzes for attention at the back of my brain. But the fear that has me wondering if images around me are real or just inside my head dims behind the conversation I overheard upstairs. Kasim’s solid presence at my side should be reassuring, but when he reaches out to touch my arm, I jump.

  “Outside at last, right? You ready for this?” he asks with a grin.

  Kasim moves out ahead of me, letting me catch up to him under a tree with icicles hanging from its branches in long gnarled spikes. “This is a routine patrol. Checking for Reds, but none of them ever come this close,” he explains, pressing something hard and metal into my hand. A gun. A quicklight comes next. “Nothing fancy. Just don’t get lost.”

  He fades into the night ahead of me, and following is impossible. I jog a few steps into the trees before stopping to see if I can hear him. But then something tugs at my hair, and I look back to find Kasim undoing my braid.

  He guffaws when I grab my hair away from him and reaches out to swat a moth away from my face. “You move too fast. Too loud.” Hand still clenched around the moth, he tears one of its wings off, dropping it to the forest floor.

  The casual nonchalance in his face as he crushes the remainder of the moth between his fingers leaves the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

  Suddenly, he goes still, jovial smile turning a little as he cocks an ear to listen. “That’s odd. We’re so close to the Mountain. . . .” He glances back at me and then up into the trees. “Why don’t you play lookout. High enough no one’s going to find you easy.” His smile goes back to relaxed and teasing. “Shoot any Reds that come through, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I watch him disappear into the undergrowth before finding a tree, clinging to the trunk to keep myself from kicking my dangling feet. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. He doesn’t come back.

  When the darkness around me begins to swirl, I decide it’s time to move. I don’t want to fall out of the tree trying to run away from cloud monsters or evil tree demons that only I can see.

  It’s unnaturally quiet down on the forest floor. But then I hear something. A whisper. Wind blows up from behind me, carrying the sound away with it. There are scuff marks against a tree and in the dirt a few feet ahead. When I get to them, I notice a few wet spots on the ground. Blood?


  There’s a line scratched into the dirt and leaves. A drag mark. The trough in the ground trails away through the trees, and I follow with my nose practically in the dirt.

  I come upon them so quickly, I almost fall over to keep from walking straight into the campsite. Four Reds, sitting around the smoldering ashes of a fire. Kasim is on the ground.

  Dead.

  CHAPTER 29

  “SHOULD WE JUST KILL HIM and get it over with?” A girl, her head covered by a hood. “There are probably a bunch of them out here. The night patrols are out.”

  I breathe out. Not dead.

  “Nah.” The speaker’s voice is low and grumbles like a thunderstorm. “Hong wants them brought back. We’ll have to drag him to base camp.”

  “You don’t think carting two hundred pounds of Kamari soldier is going to slow us down, Kai? We’re supposed to set these things and run.” The girl nudges a large flat disk with her foot. Get up high. Running in will just mean both of our heads on the Chairman’s desk. The gun Kasim so casually handed to me weighs heavily at my side as I climb up a nearby tree. The metal feels uncomfortable against my skin as I steady it across my arm, setting my sights on the hooded girl. I rethink and switch to Kai, the one who seems to be in charge. I can’t shoot someone, not even Reds who would happily tear me apart. I won’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 something pulls my attention down, movement flickering at the edge of my sight. An eye blinks up at me from the base of the tree, a giant, muddled outline hidden in shadow. The thing yawns, shadowy hole of a mouth lined with yellowing ivory. Black eyes focus on the ring of Reds ahead of us.

  A gore.

  A fairy-tale monster, come alive. Even murky and indistinct beneath me, the nightmarish creature I had imagined after that first wakeful night Outside doesn’t do the real beast justice.

  I drown in indecision, choking back the warning that tries to pass my lips. If the gore charges them, in all likelihood, they’ll kill it. On the other hand, Kasim would be the first one to go if they don’t. Even if he woke up this very second, his hands are tied.

  Instant karma. For the moth.

  I shake the thought away. I move my gun down to shoot it myself, but before I can convince my finger to go anywhere near the trigger, a baying call from the forest echoes all around us, pulling the Reds’ guns out like a magnet. The four in the clearing jump to their feet. The gore under my branch hasn’t moved, ears flicking back and forth at the hunting call from out in the darkness. The girl has two guns out now, standing wide over Kasim.

  With their heads pointing toward the strange cry, none of them are ready when the gore under me charges. It zips through the trees, too fast for something its size, snapping toward Kai before he realizes the beast is there. A second gore charges in, hackles raised as it joins the first.

  I can’t wrench my eyes away from them. The gores are gruesomely beautiful, heavy hyena-like shoulders at least five feet off the ground, spiky manes trailing down their muscular necks to a pointy nose. Their faces are dark brown, eyes sunken in over a mouth lined with jagged teeth engineered for ripping and tearing. But when the first bite clenches down, I cover my face with one hand, tree bark pressing painfully into my cheek as Kai begins screaming, the trophy in a ghastly game of tug-of-war. The beasts crouch down on long muscled legs, roughly shaking their heads back and forth as they go to work on him, powerful shoulders out of proportion with their smaller hindquarters.

  The remaining Reds stand transfixed as the gores rip their leader to pieces. One jerks himself out of shock and shoots, bringing a gore around snarling, red blossoming on its spotted neck. The other gore latches on to Kai’s bloody leg and drags his body into the trees.

  The soldiers finally come together, firing point-blank into the injured gore charging them. Snapping its jaws down on a gunman’s shoulder, the gore ignores the bullets as they burn smoking trails through its fur, not forceful enough to penetrate its thick hide. Leaving the Red in a crumpled heap, the thing lunges hungrily toward Kasim. Its formidable jaws rip through the unconscious Menghu’s coat before one of the bullets finds its way past the tough hide, dark drops of blood matting the coarse hair at its hip. Keening squeals raise the hairs on my arms, the unearthly cries sending creatures all around us streaking away through the forest. The wounded monster darts out of the clearing, uneven gait spattering blood behind it in a slippery red trail.

  The Reds left standing don’t have time to lower their weapons before they fall, one after the other, in an ungraceful heap around Kasim. I didn’t even hear the gunshots.

  A Menghu coat steps in, gun out, switching aim between the fallen soldiers. Pulling the men off Kasim, she twitches his coat aside, eyeing the ragged tears in his chest. Another Menghu stalks out of the trees, and I catch sight of a wide mouth. It’s Cale listening to see if Kasim is breathing, Mei standing watch with her gun drawn.

  I yell out to them, half climbing and half falling as I come down from the tree, stumbling toward the pile of Reds around Kasim. The gashes in his chest aren’t deep, but blood is flowing. Cale’s gun follows me down the tree trunk.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asks. Casually. As though her finger isn’t one twitch away from blowing off my head.

  Mei pulls her hood back, looking around at all the dead Reds. She kicks the girl as she walks by, the soldier’s head jerking lifelessly against the ground. When she kneels by Kasim, her face is calm. “He’s alive, but not in good shape. They must have hit him pretty hard for him still to be unconscious. I think the cuts on his chest are superficial, but this”—she points to his leg, twisted underneath him—“is definitely broken. We need to get him out of here.”

  “I’ve got some medic experience. . . .” I falter. Even at the orphanage, they would have sent Kasim to the hospital. Backing away from Cale, I jerk my attention from the gun still following my every move.

  Easing Kasim’s leg so that it is straight, I pull off my jacket to pad it. With Mei’s help, I splint the break with a straight branch from nearby. Not perfect, but it might get us back to the Mountain.

  “They were setting those.” I nod toward the two disks piled next to the bodies as I tie the splint. “I heard one of the Reds say they were supposed to leave them and run.”

  Mei rolls one up on its side, brows knitted together as she looks it over. “Too small to be mines. What do you think, Cale?”

  Cale’s gun is still on me, her eyes narrowed. The weapon tucked into my coat pinches at my side, my hands shaking a little as I try to concentrate on Kasim, not the thoughts that must be running through the Menghu’s head.

  She blinks. Finally lets the pistol fall. Dropping down by one of the Reds, Cale looks over at Mei. “You got one of them, Mei. I’m proud of you.” She stuffs something in her pocket, stepping on the dead girl’s hand as she stands back up.

  “Can you lift him?” Cale asks as she stoops behind Kasim, threading her arms under his wide shoulders to pick him up. “Or are you really as useless as I thought?”

  I kneel at his legs, balancing the splint on one shoulder and wrapping an arm around his other knee. He’s heavy. Too heavy. But I’m not going to admit that now. Mei grabs one of the disks and follows.

  As we walk by the Reds’ packs, Cale catches a toe on a loose strap and skips a step, landing on one of the disks still lying on the ground. The light in the center of the disk flashes red, white . . . and then my ears are inside out, boiling with noise, the bright white of an explosion all around me, tearing at my hair and clothes. A loud hissing fills my ears as I try to pick myself up from the ground. I break a quicklight, but the air is so clouded with dirt and gas it’s like being underwater, my eyes straining to identify dark shapes in the blur.

  When things start to clear, Cale lies crumpled on the ground at my feet, Kasim an inanimate heap next to her. Fragments of the disk lie smoldering all around them, burning holes in Cale’s coat
. As I take it all in, smoke blooms around her head, her tangled blond hair bursting into flame.

  I frantically roll her over in the dirt, batting at the fire’s crackled touch until it’s dead. Her eyes don’t open. Anxiously checking for a pulse, I take a few breaths to calm myself enough to be able to feel it.

  It’s there. Fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. Bending close to her upturned face, I feel faint brushes of air against my ear.

  Mei crashes down next to me, and I have to look twice to make sure I’m not giving in to a hallucination. Black plastic obstructs the bottom half of her face, curling up over her nose and into her mouth, clasping a mesh filter, making her look like a monster from the First library fairy stories. She rips through her bag and pulls out another one like it, shoving it up against my face and helping to untangle the rubber clasp. “Check Kasim!” Her breath rasps through the mask in a tinny hiss as she pulls Cale’s mask out. “Get his mask on if he’s breathing.”

  Kasim’s eyes are open when I get to him, but he bats my hands away when I start looking for the mask. I have to turn both of the Reds over before I find his bag. When I hand him the mask, he just looks at it. Taking it back, I try to fit it over his mouth, but he jerks away, landing an open-handed slap across the back of my head.

  Mei tries to pull him up into a sitting position, but he fights her, too. She lets him slump back to the ground, and pulls me in close. “We have to move. I don’t know who else is out here . . . or what. We’ve made so much noise. . . .”

  She picks up fragments of the disk and shoves them into her pack, far enough from Kasim that he can’t reach her. “I’ll stay with him while you go for help,” she says. “Can you get Cale back?”

  The filter on Cale’s mask is painted with sharp teeth, a grotesque imitation of the monsters that just ran away into the forest. Pushing back a shudder, I boost her up, sliding her over my shoulders. The bone bracelet she’s always wearing flops off onto the ground, so I pick it up and tuck it into one of my pockets.