He shakes his head, eyes wide. I can see the brand peeking out from under his shirt, except this time it looks freshly done, the wound still bloody and swollen. It’s the same double-crescent insignia that had been on his uniform sleeve during the invasion.
“You’re in the Laboratory of Cardinia,” the woman tells him.Cardinia, I think, the name registering in my mind. The capital of the Federation. “Do you know why you were sent here?”
Now Red is trembling, his lanky twelve-year-old frame bent like a willow. I can tell he knows exactly what she’s talking about, but the woman tells him again anyway, as if she feels sorry for him. “Soldiers of the Federation are to, above all, obey the command of their Premier. You are very young, Redlen, but that’s never an excuse to fail at your duty in battle. I heard that you were shadowing your captain in Sur Kama. He gave you a direct order to shoot, and you refused. Your hesitation cost him his life.” She sighs, sounding sad, and looks down at the floor. Then she asks him a fateful question. “Did you understand that it was a direct order?”
Red hangs his head and nods quietly. “Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs.
“Of course you did, because you deliberately disobeyed.”
Red suddenly looks at her with an expression of desperate intensity. “I didn’t mean to. Can you please help me get an audience with General Caitoman again? I’m not ready to go. Is my sister all right? My father? I…”
The woman gives him such a look of pity, of deep understanding, that I immediately wonder who she had also lost before, and who she fears to lose.My little boy, she had said in the last vision I’d seen from Red.My husband.
“This is beyond my power,” she replies apologetically, as if she’d told this to dozens of others before. “Federation law dictates that soldiers in violation of their oath be branded with their failure and then permanently separated from their family. Your family will suffer similar consequences. You knew this when your disobedience lost the Federation a valuable soldier. Yes? The Federation tells you no lies and keeps every promise. Isn’t that right?”
Red doesn’t look like he wants to agree, but he does anyway, as if it might help. “Yes,” he repeats.
So this is what happens to soldiers in the Federation, why they stay loyal. Obey the Federation, and it will reward your entire family. Disobey, and not only are you branded and punished, but your family will suffer similar fates.
His sister. His father. I remember the small girl I’d seen in Red’s first memory, her look of fright.
“You have now forfeited your life into the hands of the Federation,” she continues, “and since you have proven to be unreliable in the field, you must serve your nation in another way. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Red says, even though he doesn’t look like he does.
“That is why you’re here, Redlen. Here, I’ve been tasked with putting you to use for the Federation.” Her eyes are weary and full of sorrow. “The Premier himself saw something very promising in you when he reviewed your training videos. Not every soldier in violation of their oath gets sent to me, you know.”
“And what will you do with me?”
“Have you heard of the Skyhunter Program?”
At that, Red’s eyes widen. He backs up to the edge of the glass, and the color drains from his face. He knows what it is; he must have heard about it before. But my heart is still in my throat as I witness this nightmare go on, feel the terror that surges through his chest.
“It is our most ambitious program yet. The Skyhunter will become our most fearsome weapon.” She bends down to look him firmly in the eye, and in that gaze, I see a silent apology for what she’s about to do to him. “You should be very proud of yourself. You will soar, Redlen. But in order to do that, you must first be broken.”
Then she steps aside. On the other side of the glass wall, I see a panel rise slowly to reveal a second glass room directly opposite Red’s. And asthe panel rises, it reveals a girl inside. Red’s sister. Her eyes stay trained on Red, wide-eyed with terror.
The nightmare shudders, then shatters, as if the entire vision around me were made of glass, and the shards exploded into fine dust. I jerk awake in my bed, breathing hard at what I’d just experienced. My eyes dart wildly around the bedroom, settling first on the moonlight spilling across the floor, and then the display of my weapons hanging against the wall. I’m drenched in sweat.
So that is how Ghosts are chosen. You, your family, your loved one makes a mistake that insults the Federation. And you are all sent away to their labs, to be broken and remade as monsters in the Federation’s image, ones unable to rebel against your leader.
And in Red’s case, his mistake had been to spare my life.
I’m shaken out of a restless sleep early the next morning by a fist rapping on our front door.
It’s Adena. Heavy bags hang under her eyes, as if she’d stayed up all night like I did, but a wide smile covers her face. Her hair sticks straight up, barely held back by the goggles pushed up on her head.
“Is Red awake?” she says in a breathless rush before peeking over my shoulder into the apartment. Then she blinks at me. “Hells, you look exhausted. Did you sleep at all?”
I shake my head, unwilling to explain Red’s memories. His nightmares kept me awake for most of the night, so that every time I closed my eyes, I saw the horrible images of him and his sister being held in opposite prisons, secured behind glass. Even now, I can feel the churn of it in my mind.
“I could ask the same of you,”I reply instead.“Anyway, Red’s still asleep.”
“Your mother’s in the Grid with me. I’ve been working with her on something.”
My mother? I come alert now.“What happened? What’s wrong?”
But one look at her tells me that nothing is wrong. Her eyes are so bright, so eager, that I know immediately she’s discovered something. It’s the same look she gets when she has designed something no one else has ever thought of, when she sees something that no one else can see.
