How strange that, not long ago, I’d been facing him in the training arena, staring at him in shock as the Firstblade named him my Shield. I’d hated his every step then, loathed being tethered to him. Had been terrified of what he could do. And now here I am, entirely capable of betraying him and leaving him behind, and I cannot imagine doing it.
I find myself tapping a fist against my chest in return.I’m not going to leave you behind, I tell him quietly.
Red looks away from me and down toward the train station. There’s something in the link that tells me he doesn’t quite believe me, but he nods anyway without responding. Then he turns away from us, and we watch as he walks into the woods in the direction of the tents until he’s lost among the trees.
I straighten and force my eyes away. Time to get into position. My boots find their footing against the edges of broken bark on trees, and in a few seconds, I’m crouched among the gnarled branches that almost overlook the campsite. Adena has disappeared into the brush, while Jeran perches on light feet in a tree opposite me. There, we wait.
From here I can make out laughter echoing from below. There must be a dozen soldiers down there, all sharing a bite of lunch as they clap one another on their backs and stamp their feet in an attempt to warmup cold toes. One of them points and laughs at a mate struggling to load a heavy crate onto the train at the station. The fury rises in me from somewhere deep. Karensan soldiers, able to laugh even after all they’ve done. What had they been doing before this? Were they torturing hostages? Killing Strikers at the warfront?
Then I remember Red’s story of how he’d been punished by the Federation for failing to shoot me during the Basea invasion. I think of how his family had been separated and then individually destroyed, how he was made to participate in it. And I wonder how many of these soldiers have been trained into their cruelty, whether or not they’re like Red, out here laughing around a fire at the warfront because if they don’t, their families will be torn apart.
Crack.
All of us freeze at the sound. Down below, Red had purposely stepped on a twig and made the sound. It echoes from where he’s hiding, crouched in the ferns.
The noise around the campfire pauses. There’s silence, followed by murmurs. Then I see a scarlet uniform making its way down the path through the trees. One of his friends calls out at him, looking exasperated, but the first soldier waves him off and keeps walking in the direction of Red’s hiding place.
In the trees, I rise into my fighter’s stance.
Red shifts just enough to catch his attention. The soldier freezes at the sight of him, then jumps back instinctively with a shout. Immediately, the others at the campsite hop to their feet. The first soldier pulls out a gun and points it at Red. With his other hand, he frantically waves the others over.
Red avoids looking in our direction, but I can hear his thoughts.There’s some confusion among them, he tells me as he glares at the first soldier. The troops are wary around him. Like we’d been when we firstsaw him in the arena, they can tell that he’s built strongly, like a horse, muscled in the chest and arms, lean in his torso, as if he’d trained as someone who can fight. But he doesn’t look like a Maran, and his silence unnerves them. I look on as they mill about before forcing him to get to his feet by waving their guns at him.
Then a call goes up among them, echoing from one soldier to the next, each repeating the same word as the next.
It’s the Skyhunter, Red translates for me in his mind.They know who I am now.
They must have been briefed on how Red looks on the chance that they stumbled across him in the wilds. I wonder if they’ll relay word of this back to the capital immediately.
Below us, Red turns around and feigns an escape. If I didn’t know our plan, I would have believed him. Maybe it’s not all false, either—the fear in his eyes is tense and sharp, the same that I’d seen on him during the siege at our compound. He starts retreating down the path that leads back into the forest, away from the soldiers—but his movements are purposely slow, a pretense that he’s been injured or weakened by exhaustion.
They fire something at him. In an instant, Red collapses.
My every instinct screams at me to leap from the tree and attack the soldiers. I’m a better fighter than any of them, even with their more advanced guns and weapons, and if I take them by surprise, I could kill every single one before they could figure out where I’d come from.
It takes all my strength to hold myself back—to recall that Red reminded me that the Federation has no intention of killing him when they’ve invested so much in him, that they would bring him back to their lab complex and continue their work on him.
Through our link, I feel his consciousness shudder, his heart slow, and his body suddenly cool. He tries to reach out to me through ourbond, and I grasp for him, but he’s gone before I can, and on the path below us, I see him go limp against the forest floor, surrounded by soldiers.
I watch in silence, trembling from the act of keeping myself still and hidden, as the soldiers approach to capture him. Underneath the steel mesh of their nets, Red looks surprisingly vulnerable, not a war machine but a human caught in their trap.
The soldiers exchange rapid words before one of them goes running back to the train station. Two of the remaining clap each other on their backs with a laugh, while several others point at one another, arguing. They look shocked, shaken, and even elated by their find. Their movements remind me of when prizes are won during Midwinter celebrations back in Mara, and I wonder if maybe there was a bounty put on Red, some reward for the capture of him alive. Perhaps these soldiers are arguing about how to split it, or imagining what they’ll do next with it. It must have been a significant prize. Each new thing they do sets my teeth on edge.
Only one of them looks up at the trees in our general direction. I still myself into invisibility, barely daring to blink. Several branches away, Jeran slowly inches farther into his hiding place so that even I can’t tell he’s there. The soldier frowns thoughtfully to herself, but she doesn’t seem like she wants to interrupt the others. And who would? They act like they just won the jackpot of their lives. Why question how it happened?
I hold my breath as her eyes wander from one tree to the next. But we’ve given her nothing to see except shadows and bark.
Finally, one of the others shoves her arm slightly and gestures toward the train station. More soldiers are coming now, bringing with them some kind of sled to pull Red back with them. They struggle to get his dead weight onto the sled, and then they’re dragging him away towardthe train. The woman who had been searching the trees goes with them, whatever concern she might have had disappearing as she keeps pace with the others. Their excited shouts fade into the distance as they go.
I don’t move a muscle until they’re well out of earshot. Then I shift forward in the branch and survey our surroundings one more time. The other campsites are farther away, and there are no signs of Ghosts nearby. It seems like Red’s capture has gotten everyone at the station worked up, with soldiers swarming back and forth to the train as Red is loaded into one of the metal carriages.
Still, I wait a few more minutes before I finally drop to the ground, making no sound more than a soft hush against the dirt.
Jeran’s already down, his figure barely perceptible among the ferns. I don’t even notice him until I see his hands moving in the darkness. “For a second, I didn’t think they’d take him back,” he signs as he brushes leaves from his shoulders. Behind him, Adena emerges from the shadows without a sound.
“They would have,” Adena answers, her fingers moving rapidly. “I’ve seen them carefully load up Ghost corpses to take back with them. No Karensan patrol would be instructed to leave behind something that can be studied.”
Something that can be studied. I think of the vision of the glass chamber I’d seen in Red’s thoughts. When they get him back to the lab complex, the first thing they’ll want to do is find a way to establish the link between him and the Federation. Make sure he obeys the right people and never tries to escape again.
