Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  My jaw clenches tight. I’m not here to save him, but to find a way to take down the Federation before the Federation can take Mara down. Still, the entire mission now suddenly takes on a personal tint. I couldn’t promise Red that we would help him escape back to Mara. I couldn’t promise that we would live through this. But now, as we make our way inland, I tell myself that promise. I’m going to get him out of here.

  And it’s only here, in the shadows of a strange land, that I realize I’m finally thinking of Red as my Shield.

  23

  I’m not sure what I expected the Federation to look like.

  The farther we travel away from Mara’s borders and into foreign territory, the warmer the climate gets. The next afternoon, as the chill of Mara’s winter winds fades away into lighter breezes and clearer skies, we stop shivering beside one another, and the landscape switches to rolling hills dotted with bushes and tiny towns. Here too are ruins from the Early Ones peeking out everywhere—rusted hulls of hulking structures and flying craft, some draped in greenery, others still standing stark against the sky. There are old, hollowed-out buildings of crumbling stone that have never been rebuilt. Small towns circle other ruins, stripping those structures down to their barest bones so they are nothing more than piles of rock in the center of a dozen buildings.

  Then, by late morning, we cross over a hilltop and find ourselves pausing at a station inside a small city.

  It’s only here that I realize something that turns my stomach. We’re traveling through Basea.

  I barely recognize it. The town where I’d grown up was a landscape of green, rows of plants lining the edges of neat grids of houses. But this place where we’ve stopped looks nothing like what I remember.

  The land around it has been stripped of the forests from my childhood. It now lies bare and yellow, and beyond it is a thick, half-built jumble of civilization—the wooden lattice of buildings under construction leaning against old steel bones of ancient cities, dirty roads churned into mud, logs sliding down their paths to the workers below, stacks of apartments leaning on either side of the rows. Beyond the unfinished borders of the city rise towers crowded one next to the other, their windows hung with lines of drying clothes. Lines of steel slice through the ground, along which run smaller trains filled with people. Signs written in Karenese hang over window fronts.

  Baseans bustle in the streets. They hunch their shoulders nervously as they pass Federation soldiers standing idly on the intersection corners. Maybe there’s some sort of curfew in place.

  A weight sinks in my stomach. It’s a childish fantasy, but somehow I’d always imagined a day when Basea would win back its independence and my mother and I would travel back to our old home, then see it still standing there the way it does in my memory. That, in my wildest dreams, we might even stumble across my father, as if he’d just gotten lost wandering through Basea and was waiting for us to return. Of course we couldn’t—I’d seen this land burn with my own eyes. But how could so much strangeness pop up here in the years since I’ve been gone? What would my mother think if she saw this?

  I’m glad she can’t. I’m almost even glad my father isn’t around to witness what has happened to his nation.

  This is a different land. This is Karensa.

  Adena’s hand on my arm makes me startle. I look up to see her face pointed grimly out at the scene. “Best we get back inside,” she signs at me. “I think they’re checking the carriages.”

  I rip my eyes away from the scene and scoot into the shadows with Adena as soldiers hurry by, carelessly glancing inside to make sure their cargo is there before patting the side of the train and moving on.

  A short time later, the train’s whistle cuts through the air and I feel the carriage lurch forward again. We leave Basea behind. Soon, we’re traveling through wide stretches of alternating farmland and wilderness. Jeran and Adena don’t speak at all. Our Striker training has embedded in us the need to stay quiet in hostile surroundings, so here we use the occasional sign, nothing more. I find myself oddly comforted by our shared silence. When my stomach squeezes in hunger, I take out hunks of cooked yam and flatbread from my canvas bag and share it with the others as they pass me cold strips of chicken.

  Through my link, I can tell that Red is still unconscious. They’ll probably keep him this way until we arrive at the capital, and I’m glad he doesn’t have to be awake for this journey, but I find myself missing his voice all the same.

  Rain slants down across our carriage’s opening for the second night. The next morning, right as the first rays of light peek out over the horizon, we finally feel the train slow around a bend. I stir out of an uneasy sleep, uncurl my body, and make my way over to the entrance. Jeran’s already there, crouched, his entire body tense. He nods out at the scene without looking my way.

  I glance out to see Cardinia, the capital of the Federation, sprawling before us.

  The smaller city we’d seen now seems like nothing more than a construction project next to this place. Bridges of black steel radiate from the city’s edges in regular intervals, arching over a deep trench of a river that acts as a protective moat. The buildings stretch into the sky with brutal elegance, eight or ten stories high, their sides draped with banners trimmed in scarlet. Their interiors are flooded with so much light that I wonder how they prevent their buildings from burning down. Other trains run in and out of the city via the bridges, huffing their steam behind them in long trails.

  I duck farther back into the carriage’s shadows as we now head along one of these bridges into the capital. My eyes tilt up at the structures towering over us. As we cross the river and enter the city, the roar of life fills my ears. There are people everywhere, spilling out from storefronts, packed into marketplaces, squeezed onto small trains that cut through the Karensan cities we’d passed before. They look like they come from every nation that the Federation has swallowed, although their clothing has changed to align with Karensan style—long, straight coats and trousers on the men, short coats on the women with loose pants that are so wide they look like dresses swaying with their steps.

  Horses pull wagons through the crowded streets. The roads are paved with the same smooth black rock we have in our streets, a creation from the Early Ones. There are sights of beauty—enormous fountains surrounding elaborately carved statues, wide expanses of lush gardens, long roads lined with shops selling every variety of goods.

  I focus on these shops the most. Fish, meat, and vegetables. Shoes. Soaps. A store with cans and jars piled high, selling preserved foods. Then there are stores displaying yards of fabric of all kinds, from silks to cottons and wools, as well as ammunition and weapons, knives and blades and guns, cakes and breads, cigars, hats, and medicines. The sheer variety makes my head spin. Along the banks of two rivers cutting through the city are dozens of factories, each seemingly powered by the churning of enormous water wheels. We have a few factories in Newage, right outside the Grid, all of them dedicated to creating uniforms and weapons for our soldiers, but here they seem to make everything. I see every manner of goods leaving their doors in carts.

  I always knew, as did everyone, that the Federation was more advanced than Mara, that they had managed to learn a great deal more from the Early Ones than we did and put those inventions to use. They have always worshipped everything the Early Ones created, certain that they are the chosen ones to carry on that legacy. But seeing it all here with my own eyes leaves me feeling overwhelmed. How can we hope to defeat a nation this much more developed? What are we going to do?

  Everything feels run with overwhelming efficiency—and yet, I can’t help but feel that things are off, that there’s an underlying tension beneath this bustle of economy and productivity. A moment later, I realize that tension comes from the imposing number of soldiers in the city, armed with guns at every corner, watching every interaction around them. And not just soldiers … ordinary citizens watch one another too, their eyes darting from one person to the next, as
if no one can be trusted.

  Adena points at the people. “Will we draw attention here if we stay dressed like Baseans?” she signs. She gestures down at the clothing that my mother and neighbors gave us, our high boots and linen shirts.

  “We’ll attract more if we dress as anyone else,” Jeran signs back. “See how often the soldiers are stopping people on the streets?”

  Right as he says it, we see a pair of guards gesture at a girl who looks lost at an intersection. She obeys, and when she does, one of them holds her hand out. The girl gives her a paper. The guard looks at the girl again, then nods and points down the street as if to show her the way.

  “Basea has been conquered long enough that the soldiers shouldn’t be surprised to see some of us in the crowds,” I sign. “Jeran can translate. If anyone stops us, we’ll say we’re in the city to shop for supplies and ask for the nearest clothing store.”

  As the train pulls to a stop, we slide out immediately and duck down underneath the train before the guards start coming around to unload their supplies. At first I wonder if the soldiers will do a close inspection of each carriage, but then we notice their boots hurrying past us all in one general direction. Somewhere farther up the train is a commotion.

  My link shudders, and then a steady trickle of emotions—bewilderment, anger, a dull pain—pour into me from Red. Through it, I glimpse flashes of what he must be seeing. The dark interior of a carriage now flooded with light. A dozen hands reaching for him. He’s awake. I know immediately then that the commotion must be for him.

  Are you here? Are you safe? Red’s voice echoes in my mind a moment later, and I close my eyes, overwhelmed with relief at the sound.

  Yes, I tell him. Where are you? What are they doing to you?

  There’s a pause before he answers with an image. And there, I see as if through his eyes a steel-bar cage yawning before me. His vision is shaky as soldiers shove him inside. Red tries to stand, but something they’ve given him has weakened his muscles, and he struggles to stay on his hands and knees. The bars close behind him, and then he’s locked inside, chains shackling his body tight to the cage so that he can’t veer in one direction or the other. All around him, soldiers shout in Karenese, and through Red, I can understand them.

  “Back away, back away!” one yells, waving at the others with both arms. “He’s not completely drugged.”

  “Straight there?” another asks.

  A third nods. “Orders direct from the Premier. Don’t keep the Architect waiting.”

  The mention of him sends a jolt through me. Of course, word of Red’s capture had been sent ahead of the train, and Constantine himself would be impatiently expecting the return of his prized possession. But their mention of an Architect brings me up short. We know so little of how the Federation’s experiments work. All I’m sure of is that this must mean they are going to take Red to their lab complex. Anticipation courses through me at the same time I feel a stab of fear.

  What if we can’t get Red out in time?

  We’re right behind you, I tell him. I promise.

  He doesn’t respond, but I do feel a flicker of hope come through our link from him. Then they’re taking him away, and the images vanish from my head as Red’s concentration switches to something else.

  It doesn’t take long for the soldiers to follow in his wake. The ones remaining settle into the task of unloading items from the train, starting from the very back. As they work, we find a moment to slip out from the tracks, and in the clouds of steam, we vanish into the city.

  It’s too easy to get lost in this overwhelming place, this maze of streets and alleys and plazas, of towering buildings lined with severe columns and harsh lines. Here too are what look like ruins—except they don’t resemble the Early Ones’ ruins that we have in Mara. Curves of steel that might have once been the side of a ship, an exquisitely carved wall that must have held up a beautiful building, uniform steel structures that look like rib bones, stretch up to the sky in dizzying patterns. Unlike in Mara, though, these ruins do not look like they originally belonged here. They’re not embedded in the ground as if they’ve been there for a thousand years. They look freshly planted here, then fenced off and marked with labels.

  Jeran stops to read one of the descriptions. Then he clears his throat, careful not to use sign language here in public, lest he give away our Striker status. “Wall of the National Courthouse,” he translates in a low voice. “Larc.”

  And then I realize that these are not ruins from the Early Ones at all—but pieces of destroyed buildings and structures taken from the nations that the Federation has conquered, then brought back here to display as trophies.

  I take a step back from this open-air museum of graves, suddenly queasy. Soldiers stroll past us with leisurely expressions, as if they’re not concerned at all about the war happening at their far border. They’re the faces of those who know that the war is all but won for them. Who are ready to march through Mara’s steel walls and plunder it, bring our ruins back to this capital and put them on display for their enjoyment.

  The night when their soldiers had raided my home in Basea now comes flooding back to me. I no longer feel like I’m walking down a manicured path in the Federation’s capital. I see Basea around me, falling. Screams filling the air. My mother, seizing my hand and telling me to run. My father, already disappeared, whose memory I still cannot recall from that night.

  What former Basean landmarks will I find displayed here? What will they take from the ashes of Mara, once they invade and burn us to the ground?

  “Look,” Adena whispers as we make our way down another street.

  Her voice cuts through my rising tide of thoughts, and I gratefully turn in her direction, eager for the distraction. My eyes settle on what’s caught her attention. In sconces on either side of each building’s entrance are torchlike objects. But when I look closer, I see that they’re not flames. At least, not candles or torches in any form that I recognize. The golden glow from them are contained inside small glass bulbs.

  “I don’t understand. How do they light?” Adena murmurs in fascination, reaching a hand tentatively out to touch the surface of one glass bulb. She jerks her hand away, as if it burns the same way a flame does, but then goes back to touch it again, tapping delicately against the glass, her eyes wide.

  “Doesn’t it burn?” I ask her, standing closer so that others near us don’t see me signing.

  She shakes her head. “It’s hot, but bearable. Not like a flame.” She squints at the fixture, and I can tell she wants to take the whole thing off the wall and bring it back to Mara to study.

  I touch the glass too. The light inside the bulb is so steady and warm, like a frozen flame. I frown, tapping the glass the same way Adena had done.

  In Mara, we’d learned from the Early Ones how to make guns and buildings out of their leftover steel, fortified our estates with their otherworldly metals and stone. But what kind of technology is this? Fire that doesn’t burn, light that gives off heat but no flame.

  In the back of my mind, Red’s presence tugs at me. I look away from the strange invention and out into the street in the direction he must be.

  Jeran watches me. “It’s him?” he murmurs.

  I nod, listening for a moment. Red is too far away for words to pass between us now, but I can feel his unmistakable presence as well as a trickle of images he sees. Rows of trees, lined too neatly on either side of him. A circle of buildings, all draped in tall banners. Curious crowds gathered around his cage. And a festivity of some kind, a fair being set up, all colorful tents and grass sectioned off with rope.

  “Something is happening in the city,” I tell the others. “A sort of celebration.”

  I turn and lead us down a narrow road that opens onto the lawn of a large circular building in the center of a square. Now we start to see banners hanging from the metal poles around the city.

  “Midwinter, maybe?” Adena murmurs.

  “It’s possible
,” Jeran replies, “although my language classes taught me that the Karensans don’t celebrate Midwinter. Perhaps a difference in decorations?”

  “Less white, more desserts?” Adena suggests at the sight of carts lining the streets, selling food on sticks.

  As we walk around the circular building, still following Red’s pull on my mind, we reach an area where we get a better vantage point of this part of the city. A wide river slices through the roads, and over it curve steel bridges. Beyond it is a section of the city that appears less crowded, with none of the towering apartment buildings that we had just passed. Instead, there are tall hedges and shorter buildings arranged in neat courtyards that span at least a dozen blocks in each direction.

  And then I see the array of colorful tents rising beyond the hedges in a wide, open plaza.

  I nod and point toward it.

  “Let’s go join the fun,” Adena says.

  I step forward and am about to head down the terrace when a voice makes me freeze in my tracks. It’s cool and steady, one full of authority borne from a lifetime of power. It’s the same voice I’d heard on the night the Federation pushed past Mara’s warfront, when I’d witnessed Red’s terrible strength.

  I whirl around and come face-to-face with the Premier of the Federation.

  24

  Gone are the harsh lines of his ornate battle uniform. Today, he’s dressed in a simple but luxurious robe of flint gray. His face is as sickly and gaunt as I remember but washed clean of the black paint, the dark circles under his eyes like bruises against his white skin. Under his faded brows, though, his eyes gleam like the edge of a blade. He smells of rose water and soap, and I realize that the circular building we’re beside is a bathhouse, where he must have just come from. All I can think is that he’s far too young to be ruling this regime in his father’s stead. Far too imperial for his delicate body. Far too ill for his age.