Rain slants down across our carriage’s opening for the second night. The next morning, right as the first rays of light peek out over the horizon, we finally feel the train slow around a bend. I stir out of an uneasy sleep, uncurl my body, and make my way over to the entrance. Jeran’s already there, crouched, his entire body tense. He nods out at the scene without looking my way.
I glance out to see Cardinia, the capital of the Federation, sprawling before us.
The smaller city we’d seen now seems like nothing more than a construction project next to this place. Bridges of black steel radiate from the city’s edges in regular intervals, arching over a deep trench of a river that acts as a protective moat. The buildings stretch into the sky with brutal elegance, eight or ten stories high, their sides draped with banners trimmed in scarlet. Their interiors are flooded with so muchlight that I wonder how they prevent their buildings from burning down. Other trains run in and out of the city via the bridges, huffing their steam behind them in long trails.
I duck farther back into the carriage’s shadows as we now head along one of these bridges into the capital. My eyes tilt up at the structures towering over us. As we cross the river and enter the city, the roar of life fills my ears. There are people everywhere, spilling out from storefronts, packed into marketplaces, squeezed onto small trains that cut through the Karensan cities we’d passed before. They look like they come from every nation that the Federation has swallowed, although their clothing has changed to align with Karensan style—long, straight coats and trousers on the men, short coats on the women with loose pants that are so wide they look like dresses swaying with their steps.
Horses pull wagons through the crowded streets. The roads are paved with the same smooth black rock we have in our streets, a creation from the Early Ones. There are sights of beauty—enormous fountains surrounding elaborately carved statues, wide expanses of lush gardens, long roads lined with shops selling every variety of goods.
I focus on these shops the most. Fish, meat, and vegetables. Shoes. Soaps. A store with cans and jars piled high, selling preserved foods. Then there are stores displaying yards of fabric of all kinds, from silks to cottons and wools, as well as ammunition and weapons, knives and blades and guns, cakes and breads, cigars, hats, and medicines. The sheer variety makes my head spin. Along the banks of two rivers cutting through the city are dozens of factories, each seemingly powered by the churning of enormous water wheels. We have a few factories in Newage, right outside the Grid, all of them dedicated to creating uniforms and weapons for our soldiers, but here they seem to make everything. I see every manner of goods leaving their doors in carts.
I always knew, as did everyone, that the Federation was moreadvanced than Mara, that they had managed to learn a great deal more from the Early Ones than we did and put those inventions to use. They have always worshipped everything the Early Ones created, certain that they are the chosen ones to carry on that legacy. But seeing it all here with my own eyes leaves me feeling overwhelmed. How can we hope to defeat a nation this much more developed? What are we going to do?
Everything feels run with overwhelming efficiency—and yet, I can’t help but feel that things are off, that there’s an underlying tension beneath this bustle of economy and productivity. A moment later, I realize that tension comes from the imposing number of soldiers in the city, armed with guns at every corner, watching every interaction around them. And not just soldiers… ordinary citizens watch one another too, their eyes darting from one person to the next, as if no one can be trusted.
Adena points at the people. “Will we draw attention here if we stay dressed like Baseans?” she signs. She gestures down at the clothing that my mother and neighbors gave us, our high boots and linen shirts.
“We’ll attract more if we dress as anyone else,” Jeran signs back. “See how often the soldiers are stopping people on the streets?”
Right as he says it, we see a pair of guards gesture at a girl who looks lost at an intersection. She obeys, and when she does, one of them holds her hand out. The girl gives her a paper. The guard looks at the girl again, then nods and points down the street as if to show her the way.
“Basea has been conquered long enough that the soldiers shouldn’t be surprised to see some of us in the crowds,” I sign. “Jeran can translate. If anyone stops us, we’ll say we’re in the city to shop for supplies and ask for the nearest clothing store.”
As the train pulls to a stop, we slide out immediately and duck down underneath the train before the guards start coming around to unload their supplies. At first I wonder if the soldiers will do a close inspectionof each carriage, but then we notice their boots hurrying past us all in one general direction. Somewhere farther up the train is a commotion.
My link shudders, and then a steady trickle of emotions—bewilderment, anger, a dull pain—pour into me from Red. Through it, I glimpse flashes of what he must be seeing. The dark interior of a carriage now flooded with light. A dozen hands reaching for him. He’s awake. I know immediately then that the commotion must be for him.
Are you here? Are you safe?Red’s voice echoes in my mind a moment later, and I close my eyes, overwhelmed with relief at the sound.
Yes, I tell him.Where are you? What are they doing to you?
There’s a pause before he answers with an image. And there, I see as if through his eyes a steel-bar cage yawning before me. His vision is shaky as soldiers shove him inside. Red tries to stand, but something they’ve given him has weakened his muscles, and he struggles to stay on his hands and knees. The bars close behind him, and then he’s locked inside, chains shackling his body tight to the cage so that he can’t veer in one direction or the other. All around him, soldiers shout in Karenese, and through Red, I can understand them.
“Back away, back away!” one yells, waving at the others with both arms. “He’s not completely drugged.”
“Straight there?” another asks.
A third nods. “Orders direct from the Premier. Don’t keep the Architect waiting.”
The mention of him sends a jolt through me. Of course, word of Red’s capture had been sent ahead of the train, and Constantine himself would be impatiently expecting the return of his prized possession. But their mention of an Architect brings me up short. We know so little of how the Federation’s experiments work. All I’m sure of is that this must mean they are going to take Red to their lab complex. Anticipation courses through me at the same time I feel a stab of fear.
What if we can’t get Red out in time?
We’re right behind you, I tell him.I promise.
He doesn’t respond, but I do feel a flicker of hope come through our link from him. Then they’re taking him away, and the images vanish from my head as Red’s concentration switches to something else.
It doesn’t take long for the soldiers to follow in his wake. The ones remaining settle into the task of unloading items from the train, starting from the very back. As they work, we find a moment to slip out from the tracks, and in the clouds of steam, we vanish into the city.
It’s too easy to get lost in this overwhelming place, this maze of streets and alleys and plazas, of towering buildings lined with severe columns and harsh lines. Here too are what look like ruins—except they don’t resemble the Early Ones’ ruins that we have in Mara. Curves of steel that might have once been the side of a ship, an exquisitely carved wall that must have held up a beautiful building, uniform steel structures that look like rib bones, stretch up to the sky in dizzying patterns. Unlike in Mara, though, these ruins do not look like they originally belonged here. They’re not embedded in the ground as if they’ve been there for a thousand years. They look freshly planted here, then fenced off and marked with labels.
Jeran stops to read one of the descriptions. Then he clears his throat, careful not to use sign language here in public, lest he give away our Striker status. “Wall of the National Courthouse,” he translates in a low voice. “Larc.”
And then I realize that these are not ruins from the Early Ones at all—but pieces of destroyed buildings and structures taken from the nations that the Federation has conquered, then brought back here to display as trophies.
I take a step back from this open-air museum of graves, suddenly queasy. Soldiers stroll past us with leisurely expressions, as if they’re notconcerned at all about the war happening at their far border. They’re the faces of those who know that the war is all but won for them. Who are ready to march through Mara’s steel walls and plunder it, bring our ruins back to this capital and put them on display for their enjoyment.
The night when their soldiers had raided my home in Basea now comes flooding back to me. I no longer feel like I’m walking down a manicured path in the Federation’s capital. I see Basea around me, falling. Screams filling the air. My mother, seizing my hand and telling me to run. My father, already disappeared, whose memory I still cannot recall from that night.
