Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  She runs through it again. Again, it fails.

  What if Red remembered them incorrectly? He had sounded so hesitant. He must have gotten one of them wrong. I close my eyes, willing myself into calm, and think.

  Then, through the fog of my memories, I think of one incident with sudden clarity. The moment after the battle, when Red was feverish and near delirious on the floor of the makeshift infirmary. He had called out words from a Karenese story that his sister had once read to him.

  A hall with no end.

  A day to live.

  A millions ways to bridge the rift.

  According to my vision of that moment between Red and his sister, she had read the lines from right to left, the Karenese way, not left to right as Marans typically do. Maybe Red had told me the code in the same way, meant to be input right to left.

  I wave urgently at Adena. “Four. Nine,” I sign. “Six. Two. Five. Four.”

  Adena starts again right as a guard comes around the bend in our direction. She spots us. I see her hesitate, shocked, and then get into a fighting stance. She’s going to raise the alarm.

  But then a blur comes from the trees. Jeran. His knife sinks deep in her chest. She utters a gurgle, but I know the wet sound of her voice means her lung was punctured. She staggers against the wall, then slides down with a whimper.

  It’s a messier kill and none of us can go over there to hide the body. But there’s no time.

  Adena finishes putting in the new numbers and tries turning the lock again. This time it works. It spins in a full circle before sinking into the wall, and the gate clicks open.

  We dart inside.

  There’s little time to take in our surroundings. I turn my attention to the main building and then to the trees around it, hazy in the mist. At the same time, Adena pinches my arm, nodding quietly to the pair of guards at the far end of the courtyard. We make for the trees. As I reach them, I skip up the trunk to grab one of the branches that arches close to its roof.

  My mother had been the one to teach me how to move through the trees. As a child, I used to watch her from the ground in awe as she crept along the branch with both hands and feet, as silent and smooth as a leopard. Squirrels wouldn’t even know she was coming until she speared them from behind.

  I creep along the branches now, my boots firm against the bark. I gauge my distance from the main building and take a silent leap. My boots hit the roof with a muffled thud. I crumble and roll immediately, cushioning the rest of my landing.

  Down below, one of the guards glances idly up at the trees, as if unsure he’d heard the wind through the branches, then goes back to listening to his companion complain.

  I go to the edge of the roof and look over toward Adena. She’s ready and waiting. We exchange a brief nod.

  Then we jump down at the same time. Daggers flash in both of my hands.

  The guards don’t have time to look up. They don’t even have time to widen their eyes or utter a sound. My gloved hand clamps across one’s mouth. My dagger comes up to his throat. I press hard into his skin and cut.

  Gentle Talin, my father always said to me whenever I cried at the sight of my mother culling a chicken for our dinner. He’d chuckle in sympathy and hug me to him. I’m glad he never got to witness me doing my job.

  Adena doesn’t hesitate in her movements either. She chooses instead to stab the back of the other guard’s neck at the same time I make my move.

  Both soldiers collapse. We catch them before they can fall to the ground, then lower them carefully into the bush surrounding the complex.

  Then we hear it—the alarm going up outside. There’s a shout, followed by a second one. They’ve discovered the body we were forced to leave outside along the gates.

  We exchange a silent look of understanding. Adena pats the side of her belt, where she has the samples ready. There’s no smile between us—only the option to move forward. Through the darkness, I can feel Red’s pull beating strong in my mind. He can probably sense that we’re here too.

  They may try to take everything from you, my mother had said to me on our first night in Mara’s Outer City, huddled over a fire. Her eyes were locked on mine, sharp as flint. But you can take from them too.

  Then we face the main door of the building and smash the glass.

  This is enough to stir the hornet’s nest. Instantly, the courtyard and the gate come to life with guards. I see their shadows running along the top of the wall, then figures in the darkness of the courtyard, heading toward the shattered door.

  Adena and I both dart inside. I find myself staring at a hall that branches into darkness.

  The guards are on us, I tell Red.

  His voice comes back instantly. Head down the hall, he tells us. Stop two doors from the end and make a left. It’s a more private corridor that will take you deeper into the building.

  Outside, Jeran sends his call again. He’ll be waiting for us to emerge again … if we come out at all.

  I’ve never set foot inside a laboratory at the heart of the Federation. I wouldn’t know what kind of architecture they have. But I have been inside the Early Ones’ ruins, seen the way they structure their strange metal walls and their machines.

  This place looks like it could have been taken straight from one of those ruins. The walls are smooth and high, formed from metal, and within the grooves in the floor comes a faint glow of light behind glass, the same flameless filaments we’d seen on display in the city.

  Soldiers come behind us. Adena and I dash to the end of the hall until we’re two doors away, then follow Red’s directions and swerve left. The halls echo with the shouts of soldiers as their boots land on the floor.

  How far in? I ask Red.

  You’ll know when you’ve reached the main room, he tells me.

  We break into a sprint. Shadows pass us by. Then the narrow corridor ends, and I halt in my steps. Before me yawns a room larger than any I’ve ever seen in my life.

  At first glance, I think the room is full of mirrors, their edges catching the strange, sterile light shining from the ceilings. Then I realize that I’m staring at glass walls, dozens of them, each partitioning the vast space into separate rooms and chambers.

  I think of the way that Red had stared at the windowpane in our shared apartment, his eyes distant with an ancient wound. I remember the vision I’d seen flash between us, of him lifting his fist and pounding it repeatedly against a glass wall. He had meant this place.

  And now, as I keep looking, I realize that within each glass room is a figure hunched under the light, their limbs and silhouettes almost—but not quite—human. Ghosts.

  I watch in horror. Beside me, Adena sucks in her breath. This place is exactly what we thought it was. The birthplace of the Federation’s experiments.

  Inside each glass room is either a Ghost or one in the process of changing. Some, I can tell, have just been transformed days ago. They look like people—a few still have deep bite marks on their arms or legs, where they’d been attacked by another Ghost. Many of them stay shivering uncontrollably in the corners of their spaces, agitated and scratching at their skin, which has already started to split. Still others are already long-lost, hulking figures of ashen, cracked flesh and bleeding jaws with sharp, overgrown teeth, swaying in uneasy pain as they wait for the Federation to use them for another battle. From here, I can see another section of the complex that leads outside, where there are more glass chambers. They’re bigger. Those must hold Ghosts that are older, ones who have grown into beasts.

  Sure enough, embedded in each Ghost’s arm is a syringe connected to a thin tube. Currently, nothing seems to be flowing through it.

  The control center, I say to Red through our link. Where do we go?

  Head to the back of the room, he replies. His voice is even clearer now, his pull strong as we enter the space where he must be kept. Now, instead of speaking the directions to me, he sends the mental image. I see before me the entire space, only through Red’s eye
s, with the same knowledge and familiarity of its layout that he has.

  Guards are beginning to run down the aisles of this space. Some of them hold lanterns, their light flickering through the darkness, and as they go, light floods first one section of the chamber, then another, and so on down the line. It’s the same flameless light, and soon we’ll be bathed in it.

  Adena and I dash to the back of the chamber, then head against the wall to another corridor that leads to a hall of doors. We run right into a pair of soldiers. Their mouths open in surprise and they grab for us—but I disarm one of his gun and then seize his blade with the other. I use the weapon to slice him hard across the face. He collapses. Adena twists out of the grasp of the second guard and hits him so viciously in the jaw that it knocks him unconscious.

  We go on grimly.

  Then I pull to a halt before a final door. Through our link, Red tells us to open it. I do, and we find ourselves standing in a room full of machines and cylinders.

  Adena seems to know immediately that we’re in the right place. She grins, but doesn’t waste another second. She crouches down beside one of the cylinders and inspects the machine.

  “I’ll handle this,” she signs to me. “Go! Hurry!”

  I don’t bother asking her if she’ll be all right on her own here. Without a second’s hesitation, we exchange a quick fist against our chests before I run to find Red. The strange lighting of this place casts long shadows of Ghost silhouettes against the floor. The creatures stir restlessly, snarling and gnashing their teeth as soldiers dash past their displays, knowing that something has gone wrong.

  I crawl to hide as best I can behind one of the glass panels. My mind shifts instinctively in Red’s direction, from where his steady pulse is now beating through our bond. How had he survived life here for so many years? Had he spent all his time growing up among these tortured, gnarled beasts?

  I sense a change in Red’s pulse. It quickens, followed by a surge of warmth, some sense of fear and delirium. It’s the only thing that brings a determined smile to the edges of my lips. He’s close. If Adena does what we came here to do, then soon these Ghosts will be breaking out of their confines in a rage.

  I wait until there’s a clearing, and then dart to hide behind another glass room. I can feel myself edging close to Red now. I turn to look down the aisle of glass chambers—until my gaze rests on the creature inside the room I’m crouching behind.

  Inside is a Ghost. No, it’s a silhouette I recognize all too well. A human, crouched, half transformed, with blood trickling down his arms and legs as they hyperextend into the elongated limbs of Ghosts. But it is his eyes that catch me off guard.

  They are a bright, searing blue, surrounded by cracked, bleeding skin.

  Corian. It’s Corian. It must be him.

  Everything in me freezes. Corian’s body, lying in the middle of the forest after I’d been forced to end his life. He’s here—the Federation took him and brought him back to their labs. I stare in horror at his face peering back at me, those blue eyes now bloodshot and twitching with pain and anger.

  I had not just failed Corian on the battlefield. I’d failed him in the final vow of a Striker to his Shield—to make sure that he dies a clean death, that he doesn’t end up in the hands of the Federation, doomed to be twisted into a creature that is no longer human. To become a war beast of the Federation itself. And suddenly I’m there in the forest again, standing over my Shield’s fallen body, his blood dripping from my blade. I’m kneeling in the dirt beside him and sobbing in silence, willing him back.

  Corian is here. It has to be him.

  But no! I’d carried him back to the defense compound myself. I’d seen his body laid to rest during his funeral, had been one of those to light him with fire.

  I close my eyes, willing my heart to calm.

  When I open my eyes again, I realize that the Ghost inside the chamber isn’t Corian. His eyes are different, the tormented features of his face are slightly longer, his cheeks deeper set than my former Shield’s. Through his nearly unrecognizable frame, I now can see that this Ghost was once someone else.

  Not Corian.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Everything here feels wrong. Through my link with Red, I can sense a rivulet of what I think is terror. I realize that his heartbeat through the link isn’t rapid because he’s anxious about our presence here.

  He’s trying to warn us.

  Red, I call to him. Red, what’s happening?

  His answer slices through my mind. Get out.

  Then the space where I’m crouching suddenly floods with brightness. I’m momentarily blinded by an intense, white light.

  Through our link, Red’s warning heightens into horror.

  “Well. You’re here now.”

  A familiar voice over me makes me look up. Through my watering eyes, I see the silhouette of a gaunt young man.

  It’s the Premier. The silver thread of his collar shines in the light, and his eyes are narrowed at me in curiosity. A faint smile plays on his lips.

  “You’re the one I saw at the bathhouse,” he says in that rasping voice. He speaks to me in Maran this time, which is how I know he’s figured out who we are. “And you’re the one bonded to my Skyhunter.”

  27

  Red senses the instant I’m captured. It’s a merging of his fear and mine.

  I wince at the sudden brightness. All around me, the Ghosts stir out of their uneasy sleep. Snarls and the gnashing of teeth surround me.

  Red, I try to call through our link. But it’s no use. All I feel through our bond now is extreme terror and despair. Somewhere else in the space, I hear the sound of blades scraping hard enough to cut lines into glass walls. He’s not far now. I can feel his rapid pulse increasing.

  The Premier watches me closely. It’s as if he were searching for evidence on my face that I can sense Red through a bond, and when I meet his eyes, he gives me a smile.

  I grab for a dagger—but my fingers barely brush the blade’s hilt before someone hits me hard in the neck, and a searing pain shoots through my limbs. Then guards are on me, pushing me hard to the ground. The Premier’s security is even tighter than I thought. I grit my teeth and twist in their grasp. All of my instincts are firing now. I feel like I’m no longer fighting against humans, but a pack of Ghosts in the forest. I whirl hard enough so that one guard loses his grip on my arm, then stab at him with my dagger. He lets out a choked shriek and falls.

  The Ghosts around us stir into a frenzy at the scent of blood in the air.

  But there are far too many soldiers here. I’m brought down hard to the ground again. My cheek strikes cold marble, and the force knocks me unconscious.

  * * *

  I don’t know how long I’m out. Seconds? Long enough that when I open my eyes again, my cheek is throbbing and their guards are dragging me across the floor. Ahead of me walks the Premier, his black boots clicking against the ground and his coat streaming behind him. Beside him is the woman with the white coat I’d seen from Red’s memories. The Chief Architect.

  I struggle, but my coordination is slightly off after my bout of unconsciousness.

  Talin.

  Red comes through our link, his voice clear as a dove’s call. I hang on to his thought. Talin. Now that I hear him speak again in my mind, I can tell that he’s struggling to send his words to me, as if my name is all he can manage. And then, abruptly, we stop in front of a giant glass wall.

  I’ve never seen an enclosed room like this. It’s a structure of glass so thick that I couldn’t hope to shatter the walls. Inside, the space is bare except for a series of chains hooked to the floor and ceiling. And there, in the center of it, crouches a figure I’ve come to recognize anywhere, his wings unfurled so that they stretch the full length of the room.

  Red.

  In the darkness beyond him are similar rooms to his, and when I look inside them, I see the shapes of two others. Strapped to flat tables. Chained to the floor.
Wings of deadly steel grafted onto their backs. My breath leaves me.

  They are already making more Skyhunters.

  The soldiers drag Adena forward from the darkness too, stopping in front of the glass wall. She struggles between two soldiers before one of them hits her hard between her shoulders. She lets out a pained gasp and slumps slightly. Everything in me wants to protect her, but I see the guns in the soldiers’ hands and force myself to stop. They might shoot her dead. Had she managed to inject the serum into the control room’s containers? What if they’d caught her before she could?

  The Premier casts her a dismissive look. Beside him, the Chief Architect has her hands folded behind her back and head turned down, as if none of this feels out of the ordinary.

  I sway on my feet. My cheek throbs from where I’d hit the floor. We’ve missed our rendezvous time with Jeran, I think, trying to concentrate on how many minutes must have passed. He’ll know that something has gone wrong, that our mission has been compromised.

  The Chief Architect says something to Red, and Red glares back at her with rage that simmers hot through our link.

  “No answer?” the Premier speaks, the Maran language as eerily smooth on his tongue as Basean had been. He looks at me, then nods at the guards.

  I’m shoved forward hard enough that I stumble. I barely manage to catch myself. Red stares at me. I know he can tell that my balance is off, because a fresh current of worry ripples through our bond. Then the guards force me to my knees, and my hair flops over my eyes, obscuring my view. Splatters of blood dot my shirt.

  Behind the glass wall, Red utters a long, low snarl. It’s the sound he makes before his mind goes blank, before he transforms.

  The Chief Architect notices his reaction and says something to the Premier. He, in turn, smiles at me. “Ah,” he tells me. “He’s afraid for you. You’re communicating right now.”

  They know. My eyes go back to the woman, whose gaze darts nervously away.

  “Perhaps we should test your link,” he says, then turns to the woman and speaks Karenese. Beside him, one of the soldiers draws a dagger in anticipation.