It means that Red, the Skyhunter, is the walking, living, breathing antidote for the Ghosts’ hunger for attacking us. His blood is the key to breaking the bond between the Federation and their monsters.
I’m in such disbelief over what I’ve seen that a part of me thinks this is when I’ll wake from this dream. My eyes dart from Adena to my mother and back again. “Why would the Federation create their Skyhunter to do this?” I ask.
Adena crosses her arms. “I don’t think they meant to,” she replies. “I think they made a mistake. Maybe it’s because they didn’t finish working on him before he escaped. Red doesn’t respond to the Federation’s beck and call. He doesn’t stay trapped under their commands like the Ghosts do. Whatever it is that the Federation put in their Ghosts’ blood, poisoning it, they failed to do with Red.” She leans closer to me, feverish with hope. “And when Red’s blood is mixed with a Ghost’s, that Ghost can do the same. That Ghost can stop responding to the Federation’s will. Somehow, it interferes with whatever bond that exists between their minds and the Federation.”
“So where does this all leave us?” I ask. “We take Red’s blood and figure out how it can inoculate the Maran population?”
Adena shakes her head. Her eyes are intense and serious now, and all signs of smiles have vanished from her face. “Red’s blood works best with Ghost blood, not our own. At any rate, Mara has too many people. Red can only afford to lose so much blood before it endangers his life.”
“What do you propose?”
She points at us. “We head into Federation territory. You, me, Jeran, and Red. We get into the heart of their capital, into Cardinia, where their lab is. We’ll snake our way into the heart of their darkness, where they create all their monstrosities.” She nods at me. “And we find a way to infect their Ghosts with Red’s blood. If the Ghosts are corrupted with what his blood contains, they’ll stop obeying the Federation. They’ll become useless. And we’ll break the most fearsome weapon they have.”
“What about new Ghosts they create? Surely they’ll just fix the problem.”
“Yes. But it will cost them time, money, and effort. Meanwhile, our soldiers can, for the first time, mount an offensive attack at the warfront into their territory. Push the Federation back. Give us time to find a way to make enough serum to protect us all against their Ghosts. All of this might just set them back enough that they’ll think Mara isn’t worth the trouble of invading.”
Now my heart has started to beat rapidly with the thought. Destroy the Federation’s monster machine. Destroy their Ghosts.
Impossible.
But then, I just witnessed the impossible right here in Adena’s shop.
This is a suicide mission in every way—maybe none of us will return from an expedition like this. Red, with his traumatic history and strange relationship with the Ghosts, might even refuse to be used inthis way. But maybe he’ll agree,maybeit could work, and we could all return having dealt the Federation a heavy blow.
My eyes return to the vials in Adena’s container. Then I stare at my mother. In her eyes, I see my father’s gentle face, the way his absence turned her hair white, the pain and suffering that has plagued us ever since we fled our homeland. I see everything that my patrol mates and I have lost, all the grief from Corian’s death. It’s hard to believe that it stems from something as small as this. A sample of blood.
If we can sever the Federation’s control from its war beasts, we’ll end all of that suffering. It is worth the sacrifice of a few lives.
My mother touches my hand. “You don’t have to do anything,” she signs to me. “You have no obligation to this world. But if you do, my heart will go with you.” There is an urgency in her watery expression now. She’s afraid, I realize, because she knows what this means for me.
Adena has the same expression mirrored in her eyes, the near inevitability of our deaths. No more summer days working in her shop here. No more afternoons arguing at my mother’s home in the Outer City, with the smell of hand-rolled noodles and soup wafting around us. But I see no signs of hesitation in Adena either. She knows, as well as I do, that we don’t have a choice.
“I didn’t want my brother to become a Striker,” Adena says quietly to me. She leans against the table, her eyes distant. “I woke up in a sweat one night and ran into his room, certain he was dead. He just laughed and hugged me. I asked him if he was willing to give anything in order to stop the Federation. He said he was. I asked him if he’d be willing to sacrifice me to achieve that. And he stopped to give me the strangest, most wounded look.” She shakes her head. “I’ll never forget that, as long as I live. Because to him, not being a Strikerwassacrificing me. He told me he couldn’t control the future, only what he could do to alter it. He knew that my future couldn’t exist unless there were those willing tofight to protect me. Now that he’s gone, I carry his promise.” She lifts her eyes to me. “If you go, I go. This is the future we can alter.”
My hand tightens against my mother’s. I’m silent for a breath. Then I let go, and my hands start to move.
“It has to be a fast mission,”I sign.“Get into the Federation’s capital. Get into their labs. Do what we need to do, get out.”My eyes narrow as anger surges through me.“And when we’ve accomplished it all, we destroy their labs. Burn them down.”
Adena nods grimly. In her eyes is the reflection of her brother. “We will leave them with what they leave behind for the rest of us. Nothing.”
19
No one believes us. I can hardly believe us myself.
So the next day, the Speaker calls the Senate to gather with us in the Grid, where they form a ring around the large, muddy square of land that we use to test our weapons. A patrol of Strikers stands evenly spaced out before them, masks up, gloved hands resting on the hilts of their weapons. I stand with Red, Jeran, and Adena. In the crowd, I pick out Jeran’s father and brother, the former’s face stony and expressionless, the latter’s looking almost bored. The Speaker himself looks disinterested in the whole experiment, as if expecting it to fail.
Guards bring out the Ghost from the prison, snarling and squinting under the sun after many months in darkness, its fury turning frantic as its ears pick up the shuffling and voices of so many humans nearby. It tries over and over again to lunge, but its handlers hold tight to the chains radiating from its neck.
Red cuts a small line in his arm and lets some of his blood drip into a large bowl of water in Adena’s hands. Then Jeran steps into the circle with the Ghost, and the guards let the Ghost free. It dashes for the Senators—who part for it like terrified fish—but Jeran slices wounds into its side, forcing it to focus its attention on him. They say Ghostsdon’t have much capacity for higher thought, but I think this one recognizes Jeran’s scent from our last visit to its cell. It narrows its eyes at him in a sense of familiarity, then snarls and crouches, clawing at the dirt. The Ghost tries to bite him again and again. Each time Jeran spins away, the Deathdancer in his flawless state, expertly guiding it around the ring so that it never attempts to attack the audience.
Then Adena darts forward and injects the Ghost with a serum she created using Red’s blood. The Ghost whirls, shrieking, and shakes its head, licking its lips as if tasting the poison.
At first, it continues to lunge for Jeran, now freshly enraged. Jeran dances away each time, his eyes narrowed in concentration. I lower my eyes, unable to bear the disappointment. Something must have gone wrong in our testing yesterday.
Adena is shaking her head beside me. “Maybe I diluted it too much,” she mutters to herself under her breath. “The serum worked yesterday.”
Then the Ghost shudders. It turns to Jeran with a bewildered snarl, sniffing at him, tilting its head this way and that. The Senate murmurs, shifting their feet.
