At another tent, a man lifts an enormous metal plate imprinted with what looks like thousands of letters against steel, then presses it down against a sheet of paper to produce a large print of the embedded words. He then steps away as the machine works on its own, printing multiplecopies of the same print over and over. Over the noise of applause, he hands out some of the printed pages to young children in the crowd.
Each tent exhibits some unusual invention, each more impressive than the last. Along the walkways, street stalls are already set up at regular intervals, selling fried meats and sweet snacks, fresh fruits and paper bags filled with candied nuts. Other stalls sell fruit too rotten to eat and bread too moldy to keep, little sharpened sticks and pebbles with sharp edges to them. These confuse me for a while before I realize they might be things meant not to be eaten or used, but to be thrown.
Finally, we enter the main plaza where the largest tents loom. Here we come to a stuttering halt. Towering several stories in the air is a massive structure built almost entirely of steel and glass, with a grand curving roof letting in the light. One look tells me immediately that this was built on top of a ruin. The Early Ones’ influence is everywhere—symbols carved into the stone floor look reminiscent of those on the structures in Mara, and the tall pillars of black steel that circle the edges of the plaza are jagged on top, as if once part of something bigger. But the glass itself reminds me of Larc, one of the nations that the Federation had conquered long ago. They must have swallowed their artisans and engineers as much as they’d swallowed the land.
Beyond this impressive building, near the end of where these government halls line the city, I see a courtyard surrounded by hedges and walled by a long gate, around which dozens of guards now stand. Red’s presence pulses in my mind. He’s somewhere in that direction, my instincts tell me. Perhaps that is the Federation’s lab complex.
Now I walk underneath the giant glass entrance with Adena and Jeran, trying hard not to let my temper get the best of me. Hundreds of guards are inside this building, pushing crowds back and forcing clear pathways between exhibitions. There are displays of enormousmachines, some with wings, humming with wheels running as if they might take off into the sky. I think instantly of some of the ruins I’d seen before in Mara, the Early Ones’ winged machines, and realize with a lurch that maybe the Federation has begun to figure out some of those ancient inventions and have remade them. Other displays are of new guns that advertise to be faster, more accurate, and more devastating than ever before. There are huge cannons, as well as parts of ships and new styles of experimental armor modeled by soldiers. Children squeal in delight as one of these soldiers pretends to lunge at them, his movements shockingly fast behind plated metal that must be light as air.
Suddenly, Jeran touches my arm. I look in the direction he’s focused on.
And there we see the cages that are currently drawing the biggest crowds—along with the creatures contained inside them.
The first cage holds a Ghost as I know them. It’s lying against the cold, metal floor of its cage, its body cut with lines of shadows. If it stretches out, its hands and feet touch the opposite ends of the space. The cage’s bars are painted gold, and as it stirs, it squints under the sunlight beaming down through the glass atrium. It turns its milky eyes feverishly at the crowds surrounding it, gnashing its teeth, but unlike the Ghosts I know, it doesn’t lurch at the audience. Instead, it’s subdued. I think of what Red had told me about the Federation’s link with its Ghosts, how it can command them into rage or calm, and realize that it’s not attacking anyone in this crowd because it has been told not to.
Children mew in fright and clutch their parents’ hands. Older boys and girls laugh and point in delight, some of them tossing the rotten fruit I’d seen being sold at stands into the cage. Adults give it looks of awe and fear. I can see their expressions change as its cage rolls by, the way they nod knowingly to one another as if they’re studying a specimen in a zoo.
Standing on either side of its cage are pairs of guards, hands on their guns as they watch both the creature and the crowd.
The next cage features a Ghost too, but something about it also seems different from those I’ve fought on the warfront. Its features are less twisted, its limbs less stretched and cracked. Its eyes even seem less milky, and it turns its head from side to side as if it can see us more clearly, stopping to focus on each of us. It still gnashes its teeth against its bloody mouth, but the teeth are shorter too. Even its voice, still gritty and raw, sounds less like a Ghost’s and more like a human’s.
In horror, I look at the next cage. This Ghost looks even less like a monster, with limbs only stretched a bit long and its stance like one that is used to walking on two legs. It has hair on its head, white strands clinging together in greasy clumps, and its eyes look more bewildered than enraged, with a spark of something left in them.
One after another, the cages display Ghosts less and less like Ghosts, until finally I see a cage containing a young man, his skin not ash white but warm with pinks and yellows. His arms already have deep, bleeding cracks in them, but they are the length of normal human arms, and his fingers look like my hands instead of clawed fingers that have been broken and regrown. His hair is long and unkempt, shaggy with sweat. He grips the bars of his cage and peers out with such a heartbreaking look of fear that I feel my heart swell in pain.
They are displaying the progression of a man into a Ghost. Even now, as I look on, I can see each of them transforming gradually, their bodies twisting painfully into what they will ultimately become.
My arms and legs tingle from the horror of the sight. I think of Corian, how he used to kneel beside the bodies of dying Ghosts and offer them a few final words.May you find rest.And now all I think of as I stare at this nightmare of an exhibit is the sound of those dying Ghosts, the piteous, humanlike cries begging for mercy.
Beside me, Adena’s eyes are hauntingly dark, and as unsympathetic as she is toward most things related to the Federation, she looks as sickened by this sight as I am.
Red’s foggy mind still lingers through our link. For a horrible moment, I wonder if they’re going to have him out on display too, their Skyhunter, to be observed like an animal in captivity. But I reach out tentatively through our link, asking him where he is, and when he doesn’t reply, I realize that Red is still too far away for me to hear his voice. He can’t be right here in the glass atrium.
Two people are standing in front of the row of caged Ghosts. One is a bearded man with a wicked smile so bright that it would seem he’s showing off a gold statue instead of experiments in cages. He now taps on the bars of the nearest cage, making the half-formed Ghost inside jump in startled anger.
“In the span of fifty years,” he says to the audience in a loud, clear voice, “we have used what you see here to conquer nearly every nation on our continent. By the end of this winter, we will finally overtake Mara. Then we will stretch from coast to coast, an unbroken land. This is only the beginning of our Infinite Destiny, as ordained by our ancestors.” He stretches his arms wide. “Here before you is a treasure trove of inventions, gifts given to us by the civilizations that came before us. Unlike them, though, we have improved on what they’ve created and learned from their mistakes, so that we will never fall into darkness and obscurity. This is our Premier’s promise to you. There will be no ruins of Karensa!”
It’s similar to the words I’d heard on the night they attacked our warfront. No ruins. Infinite Destiny. This man speaks it with such reverence that it almost sounds like fear. In the midst of the crowd’s riotous applause, he sweeps his hand up at the balconies overlooking the atrium,and there I see the young Premier standing with his guards, dressed now in a full scarlet outfit and coat, his bald head sporting a heavy band of gold. He waves at the crowd, a proper smile on his face, and the audience cheers him. He must have someone else address the people for him, because his own voice has the rasp of someone deeply ill. I instinctively shrink behind the silhouettes of taller people, hoping he doesn’t spot me in the crowd.
The second person standing beside the announcer, a long, lean woman with a slight hunch in her shoulders, looks more reserved. She wears a white coat, and her eyes are so deep set that the light beaming down on her swathes her gaze in shadow. Although she doesn’t speak, I sense the tension in her, the tightness of her posture and the stiffness of her muscles, frozen like a rabbit before its predator.
It’s the woman from Red’s nightmares.
“And now,” the man continues, offering a formal hand in the woman’s direction, “a demonstration of the Chief Architect’s abilities.”
She startles a bit at this sudden introduction. Then she steps forward, turns her back to the crowd, and faces the cages. As she does, the crowd instinctively shifts to murmurs, their faces intent on her.
“Bow,” the Chief Architect says to the Ghosts. Her voice is not loud, but it carries clear and unmistakable across the room.
In the cages, every Ghost seems to freeze. They bend, bowing to the audience seemingly against their will.
The crowd gasps at the spectacle. Even I gape at the sight of these monsters on their knees, their heads lowered before this woman. They don’t look up once, don’t snarl, don’t gnash their teeth. They do exactly what they’re told.
This is it, the Federation’s real power on full display: the ability to take a human being and twist body and mind into a monster—acreature capable of such severe hatred that it would then kill others just for the need of it—and the ability to then manipulate those monsters’ minds to do the Federation’s bidding.
“That’s enough,” the Chief Architect says. This time, the Ghosts rise in unison out of their bows and go back to their crouches, their twisted, destroyed faces subdued, if unsettled. The audience gasps again in approval, then claps and whistles.
They don’t think of the Ghosts as machines of death, mutated from humans like themselves. They think they’re fun. Entertainment.
