Then the soldiers are on him. He disappears in a scuffle of uniforms, still struggling wildly.
“Bena! Bena!” he’s shouting, but then his voice cuts off abruptly. When the soldiers step back, I see the man lying unconscious on the ground, a thin trickle of blood leaking from the back of his head. Two guards pull him up and drag him unceremoniously across the dirt path to deposit him on the other side of the bridge.
I swallow hard and try not to fixate too much on the stricken face of the young man as his cage wheels into the complex’s inner courtyard. He uncurled himself from his fetal position at the sound of the other man’s voice. His face already looks unnaturally pale, and sweat glistens on his body. I know this phase well, have seen it on many Strikers who had to be killed. By midnight, he’ll be well on his way into his Ghost transformation.
Adena forces herself to stay focused on the lock. “If I knew the code, I could figure out how to input it,” she whispers. “Are we close enough to Red yet?”
I clench my teeth and look away from the procession to concentrate instead on Red.
His mind has sharpened in mine again, so that now I can feel the details of his emotions—a prickle of curiosity at the fact that I’m nearby, then the stir of his heart as it beats more rapidly. Then, his voice.
You’re outside the gates, he says in my mind.
The gate has a code, I tell him.Do you know it?
No, he tells me.They’ve changed the rotation of their guards. There have been more of them here ever since my return. Do not come back at midnight.
When, then?
Come at the hour before dawn, and use the entrance meant for servants, on the side facing away from the main path. There is a different code there, but the same lock mechanism. It’s where they took me inside yesterday.
Do you know the number?
I can feel his mind at work as he recalls the numbers he’d seen the day before. The last of the procession enters the gate, and the guards begin to pull it closed again. A part of me longs to bolt inside the courtyard before they can seal the complex off from the rest of the world. But I stay where I am, until the gate locks again with a clang, and the guards shout at the remaining crowd to disperse. People begin to wander off, some elated by what they’ve seen, a few children dashing about with excited chatter.
Then Red’s voice comes back to me again.Four, five, he says.Two, six. Nine, four.
He says the numbers slowly, as if struggling to remember them from when he’d been returned to the complex, and I can tell that he’s hesitant about them.Once you’re in, he finishes,I’ll guide you.
We’ll see you then, I tell him anyway. I know he can sense my uncertainty, but he doesn’t respond to it.
Then it’s all over, and we go with the last of the crowd so we aren’t the final few standing in front of the gates. I look behind me to see two women and a little girl lingering at the gate, as if hoping it will open forthem. Maybe they had been the ones in the audience who recognized a loved one in the face of one of the Ghosts. What they hope to find now by staying here, I don’t know, but I doubt it will bring them any peace.
I force myself to turn to Jeran instead. He doesn’t look at me as we cross the bridge. “Will Red be able to get us in tonight?” he whispers.
I nod once. So it’s finally time for us to execute the mission we’d come all this way for.
Jeran nods back, but he doesn’t smile. Neither does Adena. We stay mute the whole way back through the main plaza until our expressions are hidden by the night’s shadows.
Because we all know getting in is not the hard part. Getting out will be.
We wait through the night until dawn is approaching.
The air has a bite of cold at this hour, and I shiver in the thickening fog as we perch in the trees lining the banks of the river. I miss the heavy coziness of my Striker coat. The fog will help conceal us, but the thin shirts we left Mara in don’t do well on a cool night like this, and I find myself thinking up new curses in my mind as a way to distract myself.
The guards should change soon.Red’s voice comes to me again, echoing in the quiet of my thoughts.
We’re waiting at the side entrance, I tell him. My eyes dart from one guard on patrol to the next.They don’t appear to be in any hurry to change.
Adena glances at the side of the wall. We’re still two buildings away from the entrance where we’d seen the procession of caged Ghosts enter. She absently touches the pouch tucked securely at her waist, where she keeps the vials of Red’s blood that she’s going to add into the complex’s water system.
They used to stagger it differently, Red answers.Then I escaped during one of their windows. They changed the hour to just before dawn because of it.
Why?
Because it’s when both night and morning rotations of soldiers are in the streets, and the capital is under the heaviest guard. We’ll have the smallest chance of escaping out of the city.
From here, I can see a hint of guards standing near the side entrance. A series of shrubs obscures our line of sight, though. I glance at Adena, then look up at the buildings’ roofs.
