by Marie Lu
Finally I hear footsteps approaching. The door swings open to reveal a young man dressed in black, with dark hair that falls over his eyes. Silver epaulettes sit on each shoulder. The other soldiers click their heels together.
The man waves them off. Now I recognize him. This is the captain who shot my mother. June had mentioned him before. Thomas. Commander Jameson must’ve sent him.
“Mr. Wing,” he says. He approaches me and crosses his arms. “What a pleasure to formally meet you. I was beginning to worry that I’d never get the chance.”
I will myself to stay silent. He looks uncomfortable being in the same room as me, and his expression says that he really hates me.
“My commander wants me to ask you some standard procedural questions before your execution date. We’ll try to keep it cordial, although of course we started off on the wrong foot.”
I can’t help choking out a laugh. “Really? You think so?”
Thomas doesn’t reply, but I see him swallow hard in an effort not to react. He reaches into his cloak and pulls out a small gray remote. He points it at the room’s blank wall. A projection comes up. Some police report, with pictures of a person I don’t recognize.
“I’m going to show you a series of photos, Mr. Wing,” he says. “The people you’ll see are suspected of Patriot involvement.”
The Patriots had tried in vain to recruit me. Cryptic notes scrawled on alley walls above where I slept. An escort on a street corner who slipped me a note. A small parcel of money with a proposition. After ignoring their offers for a while, I stopped hearing from them. “I’ve never worked with the Patriots,” I snap. “If I ever kill, I’ll do it on my own terms.”
“You may claim no affiliation with them, but perhaps some have crossed your path. And perhaps you’d like to help us find them.”
“Oh, sure. You killed my mother. You can imagine I’m dying to help you out.”
Thomas manages to ignore me again. He glances at the first photo projected on the wall. “Know this person?”
I shake my head. “Never seen him before.”
Thomas clicks the remote. Another photo pops up. “How about this one?”
“Nope.”
Another photo. “How about this?”
“Nope.”
Yet another stranger pops up on the wall. “Seen this girl before?”
“Never seen her in my life.”
More unfamiliar faces. Thomas goes through them without blinking an eye or questioning my responses. What a stupid puppet of the state. I watch him as we continue, wishing I weren’t chained so I could beat this man to the ground.
More photos. More strange faces. Thomas doesn’t question a single one of my terse responses. In fact, it seems like he can’t wait to get out of this room and far away from me.
Then a photo pops up of someone I do recognize. The blurry image shows a girl with long hair—longer than the bobbed cut I remember. No vine tattoo yet. Apparently Kaede is a Patriot.
I don’t dare let the recognition show on my face. “Look,” I say. “If I knew any of these people, do you really think I’d tell you?”
Thomas is trying so hard to hold his composure. “That will be all, Mr. Wing.”
“Oh, come on, that’s not all. I can tell you’d give anything to take a swing at me. So do it. I dare you.”
His eyes have taken on a furious glow, but he still holds back. “My orders were to ask you a series of questions,” he says tightly. “That’s it. We’re done here.”
“Why? You afraid of me or something? Only brave enough to shoot people’s mothers?”
Thomas narrows his eyes, then shrugs. “She’s just one less slum con to deal with.”
I clench my fist and spit right in his face.
This seems to break his resolve. His left fist hits me hard across the jaw, and my head snaps to the side. Spots explode before my eyes.
“Think you’re a star, don’t you?” he says. “Just because you pulled some pranks and played charity worker to some street scum? Well, let me tell you a secret. I’m from a poor sector too. But I followed the rules. I worked my way up, I earned my country’s respect. The rest of you people just sit around and complain and blame the state for your bad luck. Bunch of dirty, lazy cons.” He punches me again. My head rocks back, and I taste blood in my mouth. My body trembles from the pain. He grabs my collar and pulls me close. My shackles clank. “Ms. Iparis told me about what you did to her on the streets. How dare you force yourself onto someone of her rank.”
Ah. Here is what’s really bothering him—I guess he found out about the kiss. I can’t help grinning, even though my face screams in pain. “Awww. Is that what’s got you down? I’ve seen the way you look at her. You want her bad, yeah? Is that something you’re also trying to earn your way up to, trot? Hate to burst your bubble, but I didn’t force her into anything.”
A deep scarlet rage flashes across his face. “She’s looking forward to your execution, Mr. Wing. I can guarantee you that.”
I laugh. “Sore loser, huh? Here, I’ll make you feel better. I’ll tell you all about what it was like. Hearing about it is the next best thing, isn’t it?”
Thomas grabs my neck. His hands are shaking. “I’d be careful if I were you, boy,” he spits. “Maybe you’ve forgotten that you still have two brothers. Both at the mercy of the Republic. Watch your tongue, unless you want to see their bodies lined up next to your mother’s.”
He hits me again, then one of his knees slams into my stomach. I gasp for air. I picture Eden and John and force myself to calm down, force away the pain. Stay strong. Don’t let him get to you.
He hits me two more times. He’s breathing hard now. With a great effort, he lowers his arms and exhales. “That will be all, Mr. Wing,” he says in a low voice. “I’ll see you on your execution day.”
I can’t speak through the pain, so I just try to keep my eyes focused on him. He has a strange expression, as if he’s angry or disappointed that I’ve forced him from his orderly state.
He turns and leaves the room without a word.
THAT NIGHT, THOMAS SPENDS HALF AN HOUR STANDING outside my door, trying out a dozen different kinds of apologies. He is really sorry. He didn’t want me to get hurt. He didn’t want me to resist Commander Jameson’s orders. He didn’t want me to get in trouble. He was trying to protect me.
I sit on my couch with Ollie, staring off into space. I can’t get the sound of those machine guns out of my head. Thomas has always been disciplined.
Today was not different. He didn’t hesitate—not for a second—to obey our commander. He’d carried out the extermination as if he were preparing for a routine plague sweep or for a night guarding an airfield. Is it worse that he followed the orders so faithfully or that he doesn’t even know that this is what I want him to apologize for?
“June, are you listening to me?”
I concentrate on scratching Ollie behind his ears. Metias’s old journals are still strewn on the coffee table, along with our parents’ photo albums. “You’re wasting your time,” I call back to him.
“Please. Just let me in. I want to see you.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I won’t be long, I promise. I’m really sorry.”
“Thomas, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“June—”
I raise my voice. “I said I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Silence.
I wait another minute, trying to distract myself by petting Ollie. After a while I get up and look through the peephole. The hallway’s empty.
When I’m finally convinced he’s gone, I lie awake on the couch for another hour. My mind races from the events in the square, to Day’s appearance on the rooftop, to Day’s outrageous claims about the plague and the Trial, and then back to Thomas. The Thomas that follows Commander Jameson’s orders without question is a different Thomas from the one who worried about my safety in the Lake sector. Growing up, Thomas was awkward but always polite, espe
cially to me. Or maybe it’s me who’s changed. When I tracked Day’s family down and watched Thomas shoot his mother, when I looked on today as the crowd in the square was gunned down . . . I stood by both times and did nothing. Does that make me the same as Thomas? Are we doing the right thing by following our orders? Surely the Republic knows best?
And as for what Day told me . . . my temper rises at the thought of it. My father had worked behind those double doors—Metias had mentored under Chian in overseeing the Trials. Why would we poison and kill our own people?
I sigh, sit up, and grab one of Metias’s journals off the coffee table.
This one is about an exhausting week of cleanup duty after Hurricane Elijah tore through Los Angeles. Another spells out his first week in Commander Jameson’s patrol. A third one is short, only a paragraph long, and complains about working two night shifts in a row. This makes me smile. I can still remember his words. “I can barely stay awake,” Metias had told me after his first night shift. “Does she honestly think we can guard anything after pulling an all-nighter? I was so out of it today that the Colonies’ Chancellor himself could’ve walked into Batalla Hall and I wouldn’t have known it.”
I feel a tear on my cheek and quickly wipe it away. Ollie whines next to me. I reach out and let my hand sink into the thick white fur around his neck, and he drops his head into my lap with a sigh.
Metias had fretted over such small things.
My eyes grow heavy as I continue to read. The words start to blur together on the page, until I can’t quite understand what each entry means anymore. Finally I put the journal aside and drift off into sleep.
Day appears in my dreams. He holds my hands in his own, and my heart pounds at the touch. His hair falls around his shoulders like a silk drape, one streak of it scarlet with blood, and his eyes look pained. “I didn’t kill your brother.” He pulls me close. “I promise you, I couldn’t have.”
When I wake up, I lie still for a while and let Day’s words run through my head. My eyes wander over to the computer desk. How had that fateful night played out? If Day hit Metias’s shoulder, then how did the knife end up in my brother’s chest? This brief thought makes my heart ache. I look at Ollie.
“Who would want to hurt Metias?” I ask him. Ollie looks back at me with mournful eyes. “And why?”
I push myself off the couch several minutes later, then wander over to my desk and turn on my computer.
I go back to the crime report from the Central Hospital. Four pages of text, one page of photos. It’s the photos that I decide to take a closer look at. After all, Commander Jameson had given me only a few minutes to analyze Metias’s body, and I’d used the time poorly—but how could I have concentrated? I’d never doubted that the murderer was anyone but Day. I hadn’t studied the photos as closely as I should have.
Now I double-click on the first photos and enlarge them to full screen. The sight makes me light-headed. Metias’s cold, lifeless face tilts up to the sky, and his hair fans out in a small circle under his head. Blood stains his shirt. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and tell myself to concentrate this time. I’d always managed to get through reading the text of the report, but I could never bring myself to study the photos. Now I have to. I open my eyes and focus back on my brother’s body. I wish I’d studied the wounds more closely in person when I had the chance.
First I make sure the knife in the photo is indeed buried in his chest. Bits of blood stain the hilt. I can’t see any of the blade. Then I look at Metias’s shoulder.
Although it’s covered up by his sleeve, I can see that a sizable circle of blood stains the cloth there. It couldn’t all be spillover from the chest—there must be another wound. I enlarge the photo again. Nope, too blurry. Even if there is a knifelike slice in the sleeve over his shoulder, I can’t see it at this angle.
I close the photo and click on another one.
That’s when I realize something. All the photos on this page are taken at an angle. I can barely make out the details on his shoulder and even on the knife. I frown. Poor crime scene photography. Why weren’t there close-up photos of the actual wounds? I scroll through the report again, searching for pages I might have missed. But that was it. I go back to the same page, then try to make sense of it.
Maybe the other photos are classified. What if Commander Jameson took them out to spare me the pain? I shake my head. No, that’s stupid. Then she wouldn’t have sent any photos with this report at all. I stare at the screen, then dare to imagine the alternative.
What if Commander Jameson took them out to hide something from me?
No, no. I sit back and stare at the first photo again. Why would Commander Jameson want to hide the details of my brother’s murder from me? She loves her soldiers. She was outraged by Metias’s death—she even arranged for his funeral. She wanted him on her patrol. She was the one who made him captain.
But I doubt the crime scene photographer was so rushed that he would take such a bad set of photos.
I think about it from several angles, but keep coming to the same conclusion. This report is incomplete. I run a hand through my hair in frustration. I don’t understand it.
Suddenly I look closer at the knife in the photo. It’s grainy, and details are almost impossible to make out, but something triggers an old memory that makes my stomach churn. The blood on the knife’s hilt is dark, but there’s another mark there too, something darker than the blood. At first I think it’s a part of the faint pattern on the knife, but these marks are on top of the blood. They look black, thick and textured. I try to remember what the knife looked like on the night it happened, when I had a chance to look at it myself.
These black marks look like rifle grease. Almost like the streak of grease that was on Thomas’s forehead when I first saw him that night.
WHEN JUNE VISITS ME AGAIN THE NEXT MORNING, even she looks shocked—if just for a second—at my figure, slumped against one wall of my cell. I tilt my head in her direction. She hesitates at the sight of me but quickly regains her composure.
“I assume you made someone angry,” she says, then snaps her fingers at the soldiers. “Everyone out. I want a private word with the prisoner.” She nods up at the security cameras positioned in each corner. “And cut those too.”
The soldier in charge salutes. “Yes, ma’am.” As several of them hurry to click off the cameras, I see her take out two knives sheathed at her belt. Somehow I must’ve made her angry too. A laugh bubbles out of my throat and turns into a coughing fit. Well, I guess we should just get it all out of the way.
When the soldiers leave and the door slams shut behind June, she walks over and crouches beside me. I brace myself for the feeling of a blade against my skin.
“Day.”
She hasn’t moved. Instead, she puts her knives back by her belt and pulls out a canteen of water. Just a display for the soldiers, I guess. She splashes some of the cool liquid on my face. I flinch, but then I open my mouth to catch some of it. Water never tasted so good.
June squirts some water directly into my mouth, then puts the canteen away. “Your face looks awful.” There’s concern—and something else—in her expression. “Who did this to you?”
“Nice of you to ask.” I’m amazed she even cares. “You can thank your captain friend for this.”
“Thomas?”
“That’s the guy. I don’t think he’s very happy that I got a kiss from you and he hasn’t. So he interrogated me about the Patriots. Apparently Kaede’s a Patriot. Small world, huh?”
Anger flashes across June’s face. “He never mentioned this to me. Last night he—well, I’ll take it up with Commander Jameson.”
“Thanks.” I blink water out of my eyes. “I was wondering when you’d come.” I hesitate for a second. “Do you know anything about Tess yet? If she’s alive?”
June looks down. “Sorry,” she replies. “I have no way of knowing where she is. She should be safe, as long as she stays low. I haven’t mentioned
her to anyone. She hasn’t appeared in any of the recent arrests . . . or deaths.”
I’m frustrated by the lack of news, but relieved at the same time. “How are my brothers?”
June tightens her lips. “I have no access to Eden, although I’m sure he’s still alive. John is doing as well as can be expected.” When she looks up again, I see confusion and sadness in her eyes. “I’m sorry you had to deal with Thomas yesterday.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I whisper. “Is there any particular reason why you’re nicer than usual today?”
I don’t expect June to take this question seriously, but she does. She stares at me, and then seats herself in front of me with her legs folded underneath her. She seems different today. Subdued, maybe, even sad. Uncertain. An expression I’ve never seen before, even when I first met her on the streets. “Something bothering you?”
June stays silent for a long while, with her eyes cast down. Finally, she looks at me. She’s searching for something, I realize. Is she trying to find a way to trust me? “I studied my brother’s crime scene report again last night.” Her voice trickles to a whisper so that I have to lean forward to hear her.
“And?” I say.
June’s eyes search mine. She hesitates again. “Day, can you say, honestly and truly . . . that you didn’t kill Metias?”
She must have found something. She wants a confession. The night at the hospital flashes through my thoughts—my disguise, Metias watching me as I entered the hospital, the young doctor I’d held hostage, the bullets bouncing off the refrigerators. My long fall to the ground. Then the face-off with Metias, the way I’d thrown my knife at him. I’d seen it hit his shoulder, so far from his chest that it couldn’t possibly have killed him. I hold June’s gaze with my own.
“I did not kill your brother.” I reach out to touch her hand and wince at the pain that shoots up my arm. “I don’t know who did. I’m sorry for injuring him at all—but I had to save my own life. I wish I’d had more time to think it through.”
