by Marie Lu
Thomas approaches, then tips his hat at me. “Congratulations, June.” He smiles. “I think you really did it. What a run! Did you see the look on Day’s face?”
You just murdered someone. I can’t bring myself to look at Thomas. Can’t bring myself to ask him how he can bear to follow orders so blindly. My eyes wander to where the woman’s body lies on the pavement. Medics have already surrounded the three wounded soldiers, and I know they’ll be placed carefully in the medic truck and taken back to headquarters. But the woman’s body lies unattended and abandoned. A few heads peek out at us from the other houses along the street. Some of them see the body and quickly turn away, while others keep a timid gaze on Thomas and me. Some small part of me wants to smile at the sight, to feel the joy of avenging my brother’s death. I pause, but the feeling doesn’t come. My hands clench and unclench. The pool of blood underneath the woman is starting to make me feel sick.
Remember, I tell myself, Day killed Metias. Day killed Metias, Day killed Metias.
The words echo empty and uncertain in my mind.
“Yeah,” I say to Thomas. My voice sounds like a stranger’s. “I think I really did it.”
PART TWO
THE GIRL
WHO SHATTERS THE SHINING GLASS
THE WORLD’S A BLUR. I REMEMBER GUNS AND LOUD voices, and the splash of ice water over my head. Sometimes I recognize the sound of a key turning in a lock and the metallic smell of blood. Gas masks look down at me. Somebody won’t stop screaming. There’s a medic truck siren wailing all the time. I want to turn it off, and I keep trying to find its switch, but my arms feel weird. I can’t move them. A horrible pain in my left leg keeps my eyes and cheeks moist with tears. Maybe my entire leg’s wasted.
The moment the captain shot my mother plays over and over in my head, like a movie stuck on the same scene. I don’t understand why she doesn’t move out of the way. I yell at her to move, to duck, to do anything. But she just stays there until the bullet hits her and she crumples to the ground. Her face is pointed right at me—but it’s not my fault. It’s not.
The blurring comes into focus after an eternity. What’s it been, four or five days? A month, maybe? I have no idea. When I finally open my eyes, I see that I’m now in a small, windowless cell with four steel walls. Soldiers stand on either side of a small, vaultlike door. I grimace. My tongue is cracked and bone-dry. Tears have dried against my skin. Something that feels like metal cuffs binds my hands tightly to the back of a chair, and it takes me a second to realize that I’m sitting. My hair hangs over my face in stringy ribbons. Blood stains my vest. A sudden fear seizes me: my cap. I’m exposed.
Then I feel the pain in my left leg. It’s worse than anything I’ve ever experienced, worse even than the first time I got cut in that knee. I break out in a cold sweat and see stars flicker in the corners of my vision. At that moment, I would give anything for a painkiller, or ice to put out the fire in my injured thigh, or even another bullet to put me out of my misery. Tess, I need you. Where are you?
When I dare to look down at my leg, though, I see that it’s wrapped in a tight, blood-soaked bandage.
One of the soldiers notices me stirring. He presses his hand against his ear. “He’s awake, ma’am.”
Minutes later—maybe it’s hours—the metal door swings open and the commander who ordered my mother’s death strides in. She has her full uniform on, cloak and all, and her triple-arrow insignia shines silver under the fluorescent lights. Electricity. I’m in a government building. She says something to the soldiers on the other side of the door. Then it swings shut again, and she saunters over to me with a smile.
I’m not sure if the red haze clouding my vision is because of the pain from my leg or my rage at her presence.
The commander stops in front of my chair, then leans down close to my face. “My dear boy,” she says. I can hear the amusement in her voice. “I was so excited when they told me you were awake. I just had to come and see you myself. You should feel pretty lucky—the medics say you’re plague-free, even after spending time with that infected lot you call a family.”
I jerk back and spit at her. Even this movement is enough to make my leg tremble from white-hot pain.
“What a beautiful boy you are.” She gives me a smile laced with poison. “A pity you chose the life of a criminal. You could have become a celebrity in your own right, you know, with a face like that. Free plague vaccinations every year. Wouldn’t that have been nice?”
I could tear the skin off her face right now if I weren’t tied up. “Where are my brothers?” My voice comes out as a hoarse croak. “What have you done with Eden?”
The commander just smiles again and snaps her fingers at the soldiers behind her. “Believe me when I say I would love to stay and chat with you, but I have a training session to lead. There’s also a person much more eager to see you than I am. I’ll let her take it from here.” The commander exits without another word.
Then I see someone else—someone smaller, with a more delicate frame—enter the cell with the swoosh of a black cape. It takes me a minute to recognize her. No more torn trousers or muddy boots; no dirt on her face. The Girl is clean and polished, her dark hair pulled back into a high, glossy ponytail. She wears a fancy uniform: gold epaulettes shine from the top of her cloaked military robe, white ropes loop around her shoulders, and a double-arrow insignia is printed on both sleeves. Her cape hangs all the way to her feet, swathing her in gold-trimmed black. An elaborate Canto knot holds the top of her robe firmly in place. I’m surprised at how young she looks, even younger than when I first met her. Surely the Republic wouldn’t give a girl my age such a high rank. I look at her mouth—the same lips I kissed are now coated in a light sheen of gloss. A cracked thought hits me and I want to laugh. If she had not led to the death of my mother and my capture, if I did not wish she were dead, I would find her absolutely breathtaking.
She must’ve seen the recognition on my face. “You must be as thrilled as I am to meet again. Call it an act of extreme kindness that I requested your leg be bandaged up,” she snaps. “I want to see you stand for your execution, and I won’t have you dying from infection before I’m through with you.”
“Thanks. You’re very kind.”
She ignores my sarcasm. “So. You’re Day, then.”
I stay silent.
The Girl crosses her arms and regards me with a penetrating glare. “I suppose I should call you Daniel, though. Daniel Altan Wing. I managed to get that much out of your brother John.”
At the mention of John’s name, I lean forward and instantly regret it as my leg explodes in pain. “Tell me where my brothers are.”
Her expression doesn’t change. She doesn’t even blink. “They are no longer your concern.” She takes several steps forward. Here she has a precise, deliberate step, unmistakably that of the Republic’s elite. She disguised it surprisingly well on the streets. It only makes me angrier.
“Here’s how it works, Mr. Wing. I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to give me an answer. Let’s start with an easy one. How old are you?”
I meet her gaze. “I should’ve never saved you from that Skiz fight. I should’ve left you to die.”
The Girl looks down, then takes a gun from her belt and strikes me hard across the face. For a second I can see only blinding white light—the taste of blood fills my mouth. I hear something click, then feel cold metal against my temple. “Wrong answer. Let me be clear. You give me another wrong answer, and I’ll make sure you can hear your brother John’s screams all the way from here. You give me a third wrong answer, and your little brother, Eden, can share the same fate.”
John and Eden. At least they’re both still alive. Then I realize from the hollow sound of her gun’s click that her gun isn’t loaded. Apparently she just wants to slap me around with it.
The Girl doesn’t move her gun away. “How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“That’s better.�
� The Girl lowers her gun a little. “Time for a few confessions. Were you responsible for the break-in at the Arcadia bank?”
The ten-second place. “Yes.”
“Then you must be responsible for stealing sixteen thousand five hundred Notes from there as well.”
“You got that right.”
“Were you responsible for vandalizing the Department of Intra-Defense two years ago, and destroying the engines of two warfront airships?”
“Yes.”
“Did you set fire to a series of ten F-472 fighter jets parked at the Burbank air force base right before they were to head out to the warfront?”
“I’m kinda proud of that one.”
“Did you assault a cadet standing guard at the edge of the Alta sector’s quarantine zone?”
“I tied him up and delivered food to some quarantined families. Bite me.”
The Girl rattles off a few more past offenses, some of which I can barely remember. Then she names one more crime, my latest.
“Were you responsible for the death of a city patrol captain during a raid on the Los Angeles Central Hospital? Did you steal medical supplies and break into floor three?”
I lift my chin. “The captain named Metias.”
She gives me a cold look. “That’s right. My brother.”
So. This is why she hunted me down. I take a deep breath. “Your brother. I didn’t kill him—I couldn’t have. Unlike you trigger-happy trots, I don’t kill people.”
The Girl doesn’t reply. We stare at each other for a moment. I feel a weird tinge of sympathy and quickly push it away. I can’t feel sorry for a Republic agent.
She motions to one of the soldiers standing by the door. “The prisoner in 6822. Cut off his fingers.”
I lunge forward, but my cuffs and the chair stop me. My leg explodes with pain. I’m not used to someone having this much power over me. “Yes, I was responsible for breaking in!” I shout. “But I’m serious when I tell you that I didn’t kill him. I admit I hurt him—yes—I had to escape, and he tried to stop me. But there’s no way my knife throw could’ve caused anything more than a wounded shoulder. Please—I’ll answer your questions. I’ve given you answers to everything so far.”
The Girl looks at me again. “Nothing more than a wounded shoulder? Maybe you should’ve double-checked.” There’s a deep fury in her eyes, something that takes me aback. I try to remember the night I faced Metias—the moment when he had his gun pointed at me and I had my knife pointed at him. I’d thrown it at him . . . it had hit his shoulder. I’m sure of it.
Am I?
After a moment, she tells the soldier to hold off. “According to the Republic’s databases,” she goes on, “Daniel Altan Wing died five years ago from smallpox, in one of our labor camps.”
I snort at that. Labor camps. Yeah, right, and the Elector is fairly elected every term, too. This girl either actually believes all that made-up crap or she’s taunting me. An old memory struggles to resurface—a needle injected into one of my eyes, a cold metal gurney and an overhead light—but it vanishes as soon as it comes.
“Daniel is dead,” I reply. “I left him behind a long time ago.”
“That was when you began your little crime spree on the streets, I guess. Five years. Seems like you grew used to getting away with things. Started letting your guard down, didn’t you? Did you ever work for anybody? Did anybody ever work for you? Were you ever affiliated with the Patriots?”
I shake my head. A terrifying question emerges in my mind, a question I’m too afraid to bring up. What has she done with Tess?
“No. They’ve tried recruiting me before, but I prefer to work alone.”
“How did you escape the labor camps? How did you end up terrorizing Los Angeles when you should’ve been working for the Republic?”
So this is what the Republic thinks of children who fail the Trial. “What does it matter? I’m here now.”
This time I strike some sort of nerve with the Girl. She kicks my chair back until it can go no further, then slams my head against the wall. Stars burst across my vision. “I’ll tell you why it matters,” she hisses. “It matters because if you hadn’t escaped, my brother would be alive right now. And I want to make sure no other filthy street con assigned to the labor camps escapes the system—so that this scenario won’t play out ever again.”
I laugh in her face. The pain in my leg only fuels my anger. “Oh, is that all you’re worried about? A bunch of renegade Trial takers who managed to escape their deaths? Those ten-year-olds are a dangerous bunch, yeah? I’m telling you that you got your facts wrong. I didn’t kill your brother. But you killed my mother. You might as well have held the gun to her head!”
The Girl’s face hardens—but behind that I can see something waver, if only for a moment, and she looks like the girl I’d met on the streets. She leans over me, so close that her lips touch my ear and I can feel her breath against my skin. A shiver runs down my spine. She lowers her voice to a whisper that only I can hear. “I’m sorry about your mother. My commander had promised me she wouldn’t hurt any civilians, and she went back on her word. I . . .” Her voice quivers. She actually sounds a little apologetic, like that will help. “I wish I could have stopped Thomas. You and I are enemies, make no mistake about that . . . but I did not wish for such a thing to happen.” Then she straightens and begins to turn away. “That’ll do for now.”
“Wait.” With great effort, I swallow my temper and clear my throat. The question I’d been afraid to think about escapes before I can stop it. “Is she alive? What’d you do with her?”
The Girl glances back at me. The expression on her face tells me she knows exactly who I’m talking about. Tess. Is she alive? I brace myself for the worst.
But instead the Girl just shakes her head. “I don’t know. I have no interest in her.” She nods at one of the soldiers. “Withhold water from him for the rest of the day and move him to a cell at the end of the hall. Maybe he’ll be less temperamental in the morning.” It’s weird to see the soldier salute someone so young.
She’s keeping Tess a secret, I realize. For my sake? For Tess’s sake?
Then the Girl’s gone, and I’m left alone in the cell with the soldiers. They haul me off the chair, across the floor, and out the door. My bad leg drags along the tiles. I can’t hold back the tears that spring to my eyes. The pain makes me light-headed, like I’m drowning in a bottomless lake. The soldiers are taking me down a wide hallway that seems to be a mile long. Troops are everywhere, along with doctors wearing goggles and white gloves. I must be in the medical ward. Probably because of my leg.
My head slumps forward. I can’t hold it up anymore. In my mind, I see the image of my mother’s face as she lies crumpled on the ground. I didn’t do it, I want to scream, but no sound comes out. The pain of my wounded leg reclaims me.
At least Tess is safe. I try to send a mental warning to her, to tell her to get out of California and run as far as she can.
That’s when, halfway down the hall, something catches my attention. A small red number—a zero—printed in the same style as the ones I’d seen underneath the porch of our house and under the banks of our sector’s lake. It’s here. I turn my head to get a better look as we pass the double doors it’s sprayed on. The doors have no windows, but a gas-masked figure clad in white enters and I get a brief glimpse inside. I don’t see much more than blurs as we walk by—but I do manage to catch one thing. Something in a bag on a gurney. A body. On the bag is a red X.
Then the doors slide shut again, and we continue on.
A series of images begin to run through my mind. The red numbers. The three-lined X mark on my family’s door. The medic trucks that took Eden away. Eden’s eyes—black and bleeding.
They want something from my little brother. Something to do with his illness. I picture the three-lined X again.
What if it was no accident that Eden got the plague? What if it’s no accident when anyone gets it?
; THAT EVENING, I FORCE MYSELF INTO A DRESS TO ATTEND an impromptu ball with Thomas on my arm. The gala is being held to celebrate the capture of a dangerous criminal, and to reward us all for bringing him to justice. Soldiers go out of their way to hold open doors for me when we arrive. Others throw me salutes. Clusters of chatting officials smile at me when I pass, and my name is scattered through almost every conversation I overhear. That’s the Iparis girl. . . . She looks awfully young. . . . Only fifteen years old, my friend. . . . The Elector himself is impressed. . . . Some words are more heavily laced with envy than others. Not as big a deal as you might think. . . . Truly it’s Commander Jameson that deserves the recognition. . . . Just a child . . .
No matter their tone, though, the topic is me.
I try to take pride in all this. I even tell Thomas, as we wander the lavish ballroom with its endless banquet tables and chandeliers, that arresting Day has filled the gaping hole Metias’s death left in my life. But even as I say it, I don’t believe it. Everything here feels wrong somehow, everything about this room—as if it’s all an illusion that will shatter if I reach out and touch it.
I feel wrong . . . like I did a terrible thing by betraying a boy who trusted me.
“I’m glad you’re relieved,” Thomas says. “At least Day’s good for something.” His hair is carefully combed back, and he looks taller than usual in a flawless, tasseled captain’s uniform. He touches my arm with one gloved hand. Before the murder of Day’s mother, I would’ve smiled at him. Now I feel a chill at his touch and pull away.
Day is good for forcing me into this dress, I want to say, but instead I just smooth down the already smooth fabric of my gown. Both Thomas and Commander Jameson had insisted I wear something nice. Neither would tell me why. Commander Jameson had simply waved a dismissive hand when I asked her. “For once, Iparis,” she’d said, “do what you’re told and don’t question it.” Then she added something about a surprise, the unexpected appearance of someone I care very much about.
