by K A Riley
“I’ve got to lead. It’s what leaders do.” He sniffs and drags his jacket sleeve across his sweaty forehead before swinging around to face Matholook. “You were supposed to be a prisoner of war.”
I start to object, but Angel Fire clamps one hand on my wrist and his other hand on Matholook’s. His grip is as vice-like as his staring eyes.
“You’ve proven yourselves. You earned your appeal. The Unsettled…we believe in second chances.”
Matholook mouths a feeble, “Thanks,” but Angel Fire shakes off any hint of gratitude. “It’s not out of the goodness of our hearts. It’s out of our hopefulness for humanity.” He drops my wrist and instead locks his hands onto Matholook’s shoulders and leans in with a crinkle-nosed stare. “We believe in second chances. Not third chances. If you betray us…or them,” Angel Fire adds, pointing at me and my Asylum gathered at the base of the ladder, “I’ll make sure you wind up getting shat out by six different vultures.”
Another explosion from less than a hundred yards away punctuates his threat, and a roiling cloud of foul-smelling smoke bursts from under the hood of a metallic-green pickup truck we can see and smell from here. The flames climb high and then collapse in a mushroom-cloud vortex with a burst of heat I can feel from here.
“Go!” Angel Fire shouts, rattling the steel ladder with his hand.
“No way,” Arlo objects. “We’re going to fight with you.”
“Then you’ll also die with us.” He shakes his head and drags a sleeve across his red, worried eyes. “You’ll have plenty of fights of your own. But this isn’t one of them.”
We all start to object, but he cuts us of, his watery eyes now on the sky before coming back down to lock onto me. “Haida has told you where you need to be, hasn’t she?”
I open and close my mouth.
How does he know?
“She didn’t drop the fire,” he reminds me. “She’s revealed something to you, some truth. And you need to trust her.”
He rattles the ladder again and shouts “Go!” a second time, and this time, no one hesitates.
One by one and right on each other’s heels, we start to scamper up the hot, thirty-foot steel ladder riveted to the side of the crane. It rattles hard as the pulse of another explosion vibrates the air around us, and I think for a second that we all might plummet down on top of each other and die in a heap at Angel Fire’s feet.
Arlo is in the lead. I glance up in time to see his foot slip on the melted, patchy rubber grip-pad on one of the ladder’s rungs, and it looks like my premonition might come true.
In a flash, he reaches up and clamps his fingers to the ledge leading into the cab. Hauling himself the rest of the way up, he opens the cab door and climbs in, offering a helping hand to each of us as we also reach the top of the ladder.
As the last one in, I look down to see Angel Fire below, his hand shielding his eyes as he looks up at us and waves. I wave back and call down, “Thank you!” but he’s already turned and started sprinting toward the middle of the worst of the fighting, shouting out orders to his scattered troops along the way.
Explosive, concussive waves ripple through the air around him, and the fleets of trucks and vans to either side burst into splinters of lightning-blue flame. He covers his face with one arm and scoops up a little girl in the other. I think it’s the blond messenger girl—one of the two Heralds—with the French braid from before, only her braid, along with half of her face, has been melted to a blistering, resinous mess.
A tall boy, his arm wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, races over to help, and he and Angel Fire—holding the limp and unconscious girl between them—race on and disappear into a cloud of dark smoke.
Part of me wants to bolt back down and follow them. Even without weapons, my Asylum and I are no slouches in a scrape. We’ve been training all year in unarmed combat, and we’ve even had our chances to use our skills out here in the real world. But those were minor skirmishes. One-on-ones. Or us against a few others. Emergent or not, if we leave the cab of this towering crane, we’d get killed before our boots hit the ground.
Besides, Angel Fire was right: This isn’t our war. I don’t even know what side we’d be fighting on. The Unsettled have proven to be a good lot. They’re fierce, rowdy, and unpredictable. They’re also fun-loving, knowledgeable, and honorable. But Matholook isn’t an Unsettled. He’s a Devoted. He’s with us, and I want to be with him. The Devoted raised him. Kress and the Emergents Academy took him in. And the Unsettled forgave him. If it comes down to it, I don’t even know which of the three sides he’d fight on.
With no better options, I close the door.
Up high and enclosed in the glass-walled cab, we’re helpless, stranded, safe, and cornered at the same time. We’re warriors, high up and disconnected from the war.
37
Worse
In the crane, staring out through the scratched and smoky glass, Libra slips her arm into mine. “We should be down there, not up here.”
“This isn’t a classroom battle-sim,” Arlo says from the other side of the cab. “If we go down there, we’ll die.”
“We’re just as likely to die if we stay up here,” Ignacio mutters. “If the Devoted win, they’re not going to be shy about coming up here when they’re done down there.”
Leaning with her back to the glass, her arms folded across her chest, Sara looks inappropriately pleased. “We’ll be fine,” she assures us.
“And how on earth do you know that?” I snap.
She answers with a quiet smile. I step forward, fully ready to smack an answer out of her, but I’m stopped when a blast from below rocks the entire crane and sends us all sliding to one side where we smash against the glass. The crane goes into a teetering correction where it tilts the other way, and we go sliding across the floor and crash into the opposite window. Thankfully the glass is strong enough to withstand the impact. But the weight of Ignacio’s body slamming into my back knocks the wind out of me, and I wind up gasping for breath as the crane steadies itself and regains its proper vertical position.
Gathering our wits and patting ourselves down to check for bruises or broken bones, we wait for a second explosion—one that will destroy this crane and all of us along with it—but we’re lucky, and the majority of the fighting seems to have moved toward the interior of the fleet.
From thirty feet up and inside the glass-walled cab, we can witness nearly all of the war surging below.
The battle is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
The two armies—the Devoted and the Unsettled—melt together.
The patriotic colors of the Devoted in their dressy reds, whites, and blues mix in with the baggy earth-tones of the Unsettled.
It’s a dance, a choreographed ballet. Like the ones in London my parents went to see before the Atomic Wars.
“The Royal Opera House was the most beautiful place in the world,” they promised, reflecting back on their times of basking in culture. “The music. The dancing. Simply sublime.”
(During one of my many exploratory outings—always without my mum and dad’s knowledge or consent—I personally explored the ruins of the Royal Opera House. Covered head to toe in protective layers of my lead-lined haz-mat suit, I went out to see what all the fuss had been about. Like everything else in and around Covent Garden, the place was a ruined mess of steel and concrete, packed with dead rats and dying people puking up the linings of their internal organs as they suffered through the aftereffects of radiation poisoning and the unforgiving assault of the Cyst Plague.)
This dance happening down below, while we watch on like a bunch of little kids spying on the grownups at a cocktail party, is like the dances my parents described: an overwhelming sea of intertwined bodies and a symphony of rolling motion.
Only this sea of motion is bathed in blood.
Crimson spray mixes with war whoops, shouted directions from field generals, and the screams of the wounded and of the soon-to-be dead.
Fi
re belches up in thick bursts throughout the Army of the Unsettled. The victims of impact grenades, four jeeps and one of the smaller RVs hop into the air and land on their sides as the Unsettled drivers leap out and dash for cover. Not more than two hundred yards away, the steel arm of an excavator sweeps sideways, swatting at a small platoon of marching Devoted soldiers, who duck and unleash a flurry of gunfire at the young driver in the cab of the burning construction vehicle.
The rigid rows of the Unsettleds’ moving city are in disarray. What had been roads and laneways only minutes ago are already a jagged mess of confusion, with driverless dump trucks grinding to life, backing up on their own, and slamming into each other while the young soldiers of the Unsettled army try to keep their balance under an unending barrage of enemy gunfire.
“The Devoted have control of the fleet’s nav-system,” Matholook observes. “The Unsettled can’t move. And if they can’t move, they’re going to lose.”
It feels like we all might drown as the simple truth of that statement floods the cab.
Down below, the Devoted swarm through the Army of the Unsettled in unrelenting waves. To their credit, the Unsettled give almost as good as they get.
It’d probably even be beautiful. If it weren’t for all the death.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
Matholook asks me what’s wrong.
“This…this is what Haida saw.”
“What Haida saw…?” Arlo repeats.
“It’s what Angel Fire was talking about down there. Haida told me where we needed to be. She shared a vision with me. A premonition. All of us, trapped in glass, floating above a war. She called it, the end.’”
My friends stare at me, but I don’t have anything more to tell them.
In the space of my silence, Libra opens and closes her mouth before finally asking, “What else? What else did she see?”
I know what she’s asking. As a fellow Emergent, she doesn’t need to ask me how I’m able to read Haida’s warnings. And she doesn’t challenge the truth or validity of my statement.
But the part of the promotion she’s really asking about is too scary for me to answer out loud, so I clamp my teeth together and keep that final question to myself:
Could the “end” she was talking about be our death?
The Army of the Unsettled have always been known for being in constant motion.
But now, playing out for us on the fields of rocks and desert sand below, it’s the Cult of the Devoted who can’t be stopped.
Ignacio stalks from window to window inside the cab. He keeps firing sinister glances at Matholook each time he pivots and gets ready to resume his pacing.
“It’s your boyfriend’s fault,” he snaps at me.
“How the hell is any of that down there his fault?” I snap right back.
Boyfriend?
“Angel Fire was right. The Devoted don’t call themselves a cult for nothing. One of them is just as bad as all the rest.”
I’ve seen this before. When frustration, anger, and helplessness have nowhere else to go, they go to whichever target is closest. In this case, that means Matholook is the target in Ignacio’s sights.
“It wasn’t the Unsettled who killed Mattea,” Ignacio says, pointing out what we’ve all been suspecting since our encounter with the Outposters. “That girl was a Devoted, wasn’t she?”
Matholook shakes his head.
Ignacio responds by lunging forward, his fingers curled into a tight clench on the edges of Matholook’s jacket just below his neck. “Your people infiltrated the Unsettled, didn’t they?” His forearms come together as he presses Matholook to the glass with Matholook’s feet now nearly off the ground. “How else do you explain how this entire army could come to a sudden stop?” He lets go of Matholook’s jacket with one hand and snaps his fingers in his face. “Just like that.”
“Let him go!” I shout.
I clamp my hand on the crook of Ignacio’s arm, but he doesn’t budge.
“It’s what you do, isn’t it?” he sneers to Matholook. “You lie. You brainwash. You infiltrate.” His white-knuckled fists are now planted squarely under Matholook’s chin. “It’s what you’ve been trying to do with us all along, isn’t it?”
Matholook seems weirdly calm as he curls his own fingers around Ignacio’s wrists. He says, “I’m not the Devoted,” and, at the same time, twists Ignacio’s wrists, causing him to release his grip.
It’s the first display of physical strength I’ve seen from Matholook, and I’m stunned, proud, and terrified at the same time.
Where is this raw power coming from? Where has it been up until now? And do I have to worry about him using it against me someday?
Another blast from down below rocks the crane’s cab, shakes the windows, and, in the distance, sends a mushroom cloud of dust somersaulting high into the air.
“Stop it!” I shout, swinging myself all the way in between Ignacio and Matholook.
The two boys are staring daggers at each other over my head, and I’ve got one palm on each of their chests. I breathe a sigh of relief when I literally feel the tension drop a notch in each of them.
I’ve been in plenty of fights. But for about a dozen reasons I can think of off the top of my head, I don’t want to wind up in the middle of this one.
“I can’t take sitting around like this,” Sara complains.
“I’d hardly call this ‘sitting,’” Arlo says, making his way over to Ignacio’s side.
Another blast rips through the air, and we rush to the big side window. Our hands pressed to the pock-marked glass, we stare out in horror at the small group of the Devoted marching their way from the back ranks of their army toward the scrambling, screaming heart of the Army of the Unsettled.
Standing out among the rest of the Devoted, this group is led by an unmistakable warrior:
Bendegatefran.
Towering above the next tallest soldier, the giant swings that mammoth axe of his in slow, swooping arcs.
The blade end slices two of the Unsettled at a time, and the hammer end catches two more of the Unsettled on the way back.
Marching along in his wake, a second small group, only eight people in all, is made up of figures in dark hoods with their eyes burning orange from a piercing, electric glow we can see from here.
Unarmed, the figures nevertheless stalk in a confident march as the rest of the Devoted army parts for them.
Bendegatefran steps aside, and the eight hooded people with the orange eyes scatter in different directions.
Not running. Not fleeing or trying to outmaneuver or outflank the Unsettled.
No. These eight are on a mission of pure destruction. And they have the power to do it.
Peeling open their hooded cloaks, they reveal bodies clad in orange-trimmed black armor, layered with pockets, sheaths, and clips to hold multiple knives, grenades, and throwing weapons. They’re all teenagers, like us. Unlike us, they stare out from behind soulless, inhuman eyes.
Four of the hooded teens have military sniper rifles strapped to their backs. Two of them have simple bo-staffs. Two of them don’t look armed at all.
But as they separate in eight different directions, they whip their hands around, lashing out with wavy energy pulses, and something becomes crystal clear: they are weapons.
“Wait,” Libra says, rubbing dirt from the inside of the glass with the sleeve of her jacket. “Those aren’t Devoted.”
“Then who the hell are they?” Arlo asks.
Matholook says something too quiet for any of us to hear.
“What’d you say?” Ignacio snarls.
“They’re with Epic,” Matholook says, louder this time. “They’re what he’s been after all this time. They’re why he wanted Branwynne in the first place.”
“But who are they?” Libra demands, her hands on her hips, her voice simmering with impatience.
“They’re like you. Only…worse. They’re Hypnagogics.”
Ignacio rounds on Matho
look, grabbing a fistful of his shirt in one hand and pressing him to the window, harder this time. “And you knew about this?”
Matholook shakes his head. “It was just rumors.”
“Let him go,” I shout at Ignacio, but Ignacio doesn’t budge.
“Rumors?”
“Emergents, Hypnagogics…whatever you want to call them. It’s what Epic cares about. It’s all Epic cares about.”
“Let him go!” I shout again to Ignacio. This time, he glares at me over his shoulder, but I’m not about to let him hurt Matholook. Locking my hand onto Ignacio’s wrist, I give his arm a sharp turn, causing him to lose his grip on Matholook’s shirt. In a single, smooth motion, I sling Ignacio backward, sending his shoulders and head cracking against the glass on the far side of the cab.
“That’s not war!” Libra shouts. “The Devoted are murdering people down there!”
“They’re warriors,” Matholook responds with way too much calm. “Whether it meets your definition or not, this is war. They’re doing what they were trained to do.”
I can never tell if he’s sad or boastful when he says things like that.
Technically, following me to the Academy has made him a traitor to his own people, so maybe he doesn’t know, either.
Kress once told me, “There’s nothing worse than not knowing who you are.”
Standing here, not knowing if I might be in love with a boy who may or may not have had a hand in starting a war, I’m pretty sure I found something worse.
38
Witness
What happens next shocks us all to our bones.
The eight hooded boys and girls—all teenagers like us—wade into the fray. They’re different sizes, colors, and shapes, but they have plenty in common: Their sleek, armored black military gear. Their fearlessness. Their ferocity. Their deadly purpose. And those orange, burning eyes.
Forming a wide arc, they lead the Devoted army around and over the monstrous vehicles of the Unsettled. The matte-black armor of the eight teens appears to absorb the heat and the kinetic energy around them. The orange seams of their uniforms glow bright enough to make me squint, while Libra, standing next to me in rigid disbelief, gasps and clamps her hand over my forearm.
