Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  I squeeze his hand and gesture for him to lie back down. Then I shake my head, smile a little, and point at myself, trying to tell him he’s still in Mara. Still with me.

  “Talin,” I sign at myself. “Red.” I point at him. “Friend.”

  For an instant, I don’t think he understands me. But his eyes settle on my moving hands as I repeat the words. A flicker of recognition appears on his face at my name. Then he finally sees who I am. His muscles gradually loosen. The wild panic on his face fades into exhaustion, and he collapses back onto his cot.

  Perhaps he thought he’d somehow ended up back in his experimental chambers in the Federation. The way he reacted to the chains … maybe they kept him in shackles there.

  A moment later, his head turns back toward me. His eyes go to the scarlet stains on my coat.

  I give him a wry smile. “Not my blood,” I sign, not expecting him to know what I said. “I’m too good a Striker for that.” A part of me wants to go fetch Jeran and have him translate for us again, although Jeran must be in no mood for our company right now.

  A rush of warmth comes through the bond between me and Red. Somehow, I sense him understand my words. He opens his mouth and responds in Karenese—but at the same time, I hear his response in my mind, something I understand so deeply and instinctively that it feels like I’m reading my own thoughts.

  You look different, he’s saying. Without your Striker coat.

  I don’t know how it works.

  I can’t begin to describe why I understand him without comprehending Karenese.

  But through the new bond between us, I know what he’s saying to me, as if his mind had fused with my own. All I can do is stare back at him, unsure how to react, stunned into complete silence.

  “What did you do to me?” I finally manage to sign to him.

  He lifts a hand, chains clacking, and taps his temple with a finger. You don’t need to sign to me anymore, he says. Think your words. I can hear you in my mind.

  It is his voice, except his lips don’t move at all. Instead of hearing him out loud, his words echo inside my head, a trickle of his emotions accompanying it.

  I stare at him, disbelieving. Then I tentatively try to do the same thing.

  This is impossible, I think to him, my hands still moving unconsciously to sign the words.

  Nothing is impossible, he responds in my mind.

  Tears spring unbidden to my eyes.

  The last time I’d ever said anything to anyone, I was eight years old and my mother was beside my sickbed in Newage, where we’d been sent to after we fled into Mara. She was holding my hand as I croaked to her, blood running from my nose, lungs seizing with dry coughs, blisters searing the skin on my face and arms. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Those were my last spoken words to my mother. I can’t remember why I said it, what I’d been so sorry for. My eyes had darted wildly around, hoping to see my father walk through the door. He would have put a hand against my forehead and chuckled apologetically, say he hadn’t meant to lose us in the mass exodus out of Basea. That he’d been right behind us. But he never appeared. And the next morning, I’d woken up silent.

  I’ve gone so long without speech to communicate that I rarely think about it anymore. I spend my days in silence, signing to those who understand, steering clear of those who don’t.

  But here he is, Red, the Skyhunter, answering words that I merely think in my head, his voice so clear in my mind that it’s as if I’d thought them myself.

  And just like how he’s able to catch a glimpse of my thoughts and memories, I now see something of his—a boy in a chamber made entirely of glass and metal, fiddling desperately with shackles on his wrists, screaming and screaming and screaming.

  The image is there and gone in my head, so rapid that I wonder if I’d just imagined it.

  How…? I start to think, still unsure if my thought is being carried to him. But he seems to hear me as clearly as if I’d spoken or signed the word, because he nods and takes a deep breath.

  In order to control their human weapons of war, he explains, the Federation bonds with them through a mind link. It connects their mind to that of the Premier himself, who can control them.

  Again, I understand his words, even though I shouldn’t. Again, I can hear his voice—deep, gritty like the salt of the sea—in my mind, as clearly as my own thoughts.

  A bond with their Ghosts. A war experiment.

  Are you saying you’ve bonded with me? I think to him.

  The comprehension on his face reminds me so painfully of the way I felt when Corian had first signed to me outside the arena that I have to suck in my breath to calm myself. Red’s expression changes to match my sudden wave of grief. He stares at me, and in a flash, I know that he has somehow managed to see the memory that I just conjured in my head, has managed to feel my rush of pain.

  Your Shield? he asks.

  I tighten my jaw, unwilling to discuss Corian with him. Why does the Federation create this bond with their Ghosts? I think instead.

  To make their Ghosts obey, Red answers. Attacking anyone from the Federation would feel like attacking themselves. Even if the Premier dies, the power of his mind stays, lingering in the Ghost as if the Premier’s thoughts are its own.

  For decades, Mara has tried to explain how the Federation manages to keep their Ghosts from attacking their own troops. We have tortured captured Ghosts, cutting them open in an attempt to understand. Dozens of shops in the Grid are dedicated to trying to unlock this secret, whether by testing Ghost blood against that of humans or mixing the two in an attempt to find an antidote. And here, right in front of me, is the answer.

  The Federation’s Premier quite literally invades their minds.

  But you’re not a Ghost, I tell him.

  I’m something worse. A new war experiment.

  The thought sends such a shudder through me as I shrink away from Red. And do you control me now? I ask him, suddenly suspicious. Did you link me to your Premier?

  He’s not my Premier, he answers sharply, his eyes flashing. Then he softens and adds, I’m his war machine. Others cannot obey me. I was supposed to obey the Premier. He looks away from me. Except they didn’t finish working on me before I escaped. My link was only created, not bonded. Then I touched you on the battlefield …

  His voice trails off in my mind. He doesn’t say it, but I understand. He’s bonded with me.

  Why me? I ask.

  He hesitates for a long moment. I don’t know how it happened, he says slowly, but I think my mind needed to connect with someone who would be willing to understand. Someone willing to understand him. He was crying out for help, I realize, and in his need, he reached out to me.

  Engineered to obey the Federation through a bond. The Ghosts shackled during the battle until they were ready to be unleashed, the chains hanging from their necks—none of it was necessary. Ghosts are designed to not attack their masters.

  Is Red the same? He was supposed to be bound with the same link. Except it hadn’t worked.

  The thought plays again in my mind, lighting sparks in the darkness. I hurriedly wipe the tears from my eyes and stare at Red. He fled before they could properly bind him to the Federation. And he has given to me the bond that he should have had with the Premier.

  I picture Red racing through the Federation’s capital, hiding in their alleys and then in their woods, surviving on his own as soldiers and Ghosts alike are sent to hunt him down. No—I correct myself—not Ghosts.

  What if the Premier had recaptured Red? He would have taken Red back, and Red would have been his to command. But they hadn’t linked. Red has bound himself to me instead, and now I have a direct bridge into the mind of a Federation creation who, for the first time I know of, doesn’t obey.

  If he can avoid being attacked by Ghosts, and if the Federation is capable of failing to bind Red to them, then it means their method for controlling their Ghosts isn’t foolproof. It means that, somehow, ther
e’s a way to sever whatever bond they have with their creations. There’s a way to stop them, and Red might be the key.

  And now the Federation knows that Red has fallen into their enemy’s hands. It’s no wonder that the Premier himself came to hunt him down. They’re afraid they’ve just handed their greatest weakness to us.

  Did we win tonight? Red asks, his voice echoing in my mind and cutting through my whirlwind of thoughts.

  I nod. How much of what I’m thinking can he sense? How much does he know? We didn’t lose, I reply. But our defense compound is severely damaged.

  He’s quiet. There’s another question hovering in his eyes, but he doesn’t want to say it. I observe him, guessing at what it must be.

  What did I do? he finally asks.

  I think about not telling him. He’s still recovering, after all. But when he gives me a meaningful stare, I find myself taking a seat on the floor beside his cot.

  Do you remember anything about the battle? I ask him.

  No.

  The only reason we won was because of you.

  His lips tighten, and he seems to sink back into himself, as if it were his way of retreating from a situation he doesn’t want to be in. Why?

  I try to recount what I’d seen. His wings. The light that consumed his eyes. The way he’d cut down the enemies around him like they were paper dolls. And then … how he couldn’t stop, even when our soldiers surrounded him in the end.

  You didn’t attack our soldiers, I add. You may not remember what you did, but you seemed able to understand which side of the battle you were on. I don’t know if this is entirely true. Before he sank into my arms, his furious eyes and bared teeth had been directed at our men surrounding him. If I hadn’t approached him, would he have cut them down too? Would Jeran and Adena and the rest of my patrol be lying dead in the grass right now, their bodies drenched in blood?

  Finally, I tell him about the way he’d put his hands on either side of my face, how we’d touched foreheads and felt the burst of this bond between us.

  His brows furrow, his eyes lost in thought. Does he remember any of it, the moment when he finally came out of his trance? Does he remember me walking toward him with my hands outstretched, the way he’d collapsed against me?

  They are making others like me, he suddenly says. Tears glint in his eyes with a feverish light. I watch him take breath after shallow breath. In their labs.

  Others. There are others in the Federation like him, who can rain down death such that the world has never seen. The fear of it claws deep into the folds of my stomach, sending a ripple of nausea through me.

  Red had said that they never finished experimenting on him before he escaped. What will happen when the other Skyhunters are finished and fully equipped, their bonds to the Federation tight and uncompromising? How will any of us stand a chance?

  The link between us pulses again, and suddenly I glimpse a few faces. An older man with deep-set eyes and a worried slant to his lips. A young girl, running through the grass. And Red, staring at a faint reflection against a glass wall. Some of the same images I’d seen flashing through my mind when he’d first touched my face, except now I understand what they are.

  His father. His sister. I know this without hesitation through our link, as if the memory were my own.

  What happened to them? I ask, dreading the answer.

  Red doesn’t reply this time, but the pain that comes through our bond now claws at my heart, ripping it open, filling it with the weight of grief and shame and failure. He won’t say what happened to them. All I know is that this is the reason he didn’t want to live, why he had despaired so much that he was willing to be executed in the Striker arena. This is the source of the haunting look in his eyes, the anguish burning deep in him.

  I stare down at this weapon we have been handed, this young man who in many ways is still a boy. And in that moment, I know I must do everything in my power to protect him.

  Red has started to shiver again. Even the little he’s told me seems to have taken everything out of him, and already he seems to be sinking back into an uneasy sleep.

  If the others come to check on him and notice him awake, they’re going to want to interrogate him. More than that. He will be brought before the Firstblade, the Senate, and the Speaker. They may run tests on him. I can already hear the Speaker’s command to send Red out immediately to fight at the warfront. Will they have the patience to understand this bond we have? Or will they consider him too great a threat to use? Will they want him dead?

  Maybe there’s a way we can help each other, I tell him. But first, rest. We can talk more in a few hours.

  I pull my coat back over his body, and then start to get up.

  His hand shoots up without warning and grabs my wrist. His skin is still feverishly hot. When I glance at his face, that undercurrent of panic has reappeared in his eyes.

  Stay, he whispers in my mind, his voice hoarse with a sudden terror that I can’t explain. Please. Just for a while.

  I may not have known him for long—I’m not even sure if I like him—but I recognize everything about the fear now roiling in him. It’s the way I’d felt in the months and years after my mother and I fled into Mara, the way I’d bolt awake in the middle of the night at the slightest sound, certain that the Federation’s soldiers were breaking down our door. It’s the way I’d stumble out of our shack to retch into the grass whenever I smelled smoke from the stove, because I thought it was the Federation lighting houses on fire, setting dead and living bodies alike aflame. It’s the way I’d cling to my mother, crying, until she finally rocked me to sleep.

  His fear is the same as mine, and it never really goes away.

  I settle back down beside him, my hand still in his, and nod once without a word. The heat of his skin seeps into my palm. My eyes linger on his face, his dark, bloody lashes, the curve of his lips. The brows that stay knotted even in rest, never at peace. There is a beauty about him, in the same way that the Early Ones must have imagined their angels. I study him in wonder, my cheeks flushed. He mumbles as he drifts off. Whatever he’s saying, he doesn’t send it through our bond—but keeps repeating it as a mantra to himself until he slips gradually into sleep again. And I find myself thinking about whether ancient angels were actually real or not, and whether they were the reason the Early Ones vanished.

  11

  I stay beside him for some time after he falls back into a fitful asleep. Everything about him seems enhanced now through our link, as if I’m seeing him clearly for the first time. He moves restlessly, his fingers twitching, his eyes shifting beneath their lids in an endless dream. He murmurs a feverish string of Karenese words.

  “A hall with no end,” he whispers. The language still sounds foreign to my ears, but through our bond, I know what they mean. “A day to live. A million ways to bridge the rift.” He repeats this over and over again until it feels engraved into my memory.

  The bond between us pulses steadily as he rests. I don’t see his dreams, but I can feel the unease that seems to churn forever in him, the kind borne from a lifetime of fear. Now and then, a glimmer of his unconscious thoughts even seems to trickle through. I stare at him, trying to understand this new bond between us, until his eyes finally stop moving underneath their lids and he has fallen into a steady sleep.

  At last, I force myself to stand and leave his side, then step out of the building. Every part of my body aches from the fight. Our link fades slightly, settling into a steady presence at the back of my mind. I glance back at him one last time before I head out of the compound.

  With the dawn, the bite of winter eases slightly against my cheeks and lips. I turn my face up to the compound’s fire-scorched ramparts, where tiny figures sitting along its ledge are outlined against the sky. The others must have headed up there. It’s become a common ritual after each one of the Federation’s sieges.

  I sigh and run a hand through my hair, untangling strands knotted with dried blood, and head up
toward the ramparts. The farther I go from Red, the fainter our link pulses, until the glimmer of his thoughts is replaced with the beat of his heart and a small, subtle current of his emotions, flickering deep and troubled as he endures his nightmares.

  By the time I make my way up, the stars have winked out of existence. Jeran is already here, staring out at the dawning landscape with his arms around his knees, lost in thought. It seems like he’s alone, until I spot who I’m looking for: Adena’s tall figure perched some distance away on a stone ledge. She’s always somewhere nearby, quietly watching over her Shield.

  She glances up at me as I walk over to her. Now I notice that she’s running the side of one of her daggers against a honing stone until the blade looks fine enough to carve a roast.

  “It’s one of Jeran’s,” she tells me as I sit down beside her and nod at the weapon.

  I’d expected her to ask me about Red and what the hell happened during the battle. But even though I can see the question in her eyes, she doesn’t say it. Maybe she’s letting me mention it in my own time.

  I nod at her, wishing everyone in the world had her heart. “I saw Jeran at the entrance earlier,” I reply. “Saw him forced to cut someone down.”

  Adena pauses in her motions long enough to stare at the figure of her Shield in the distance. “You know Pietra, the Striker from one of the southern border patrols? Some idiot left a hunting snare intact near the edge of the compound, and poor Pietra stepped in it during the battle. Got stuck and bitten hard by a Ghost.” Adena looks away from me and back down at the dagger. “She escaped the snare and got back to the compound by some sheer miracle. But we all could see the Ghost’s bite on her. Her Shield had already been killed, so Jeran had to cut her throat.”

  So that was the Striker I’d seen begging for mercy.

  Down below the ramparts, I glimpse the Firstblade surveying the field. He turns his eyes up toward us for a moment, and his gaze catches at the sight of Jeran sitting on his own. I’m too far away to make out Aramin’s face, but he stays standing there for a long beat, watching his Striker, until he finally turns away and continues his work.