This place looks like it could have been taken straight from one of those ruins. The walls are smooth and high, formed from metal, and within the grooves in the floor comes a faint glow of light behind glass, the same flameless filaments we’d seen on display in the city.
Soldiers come behind us. Adena and I dash to the end of the hall until we’re two doors away, then follow Red’s directions and swerve left. The halls echo with the shouts of soldiers as their boots land on the floor.
How far in?I ask Red.
You’ll know when you’ve reached the main room, he tells me.
We break into a sprint. Shadows pass us by. Then the narrow corridor ends, and I halt in my steps. Before me yawns a room larger than any I’ve ever seen in my life.
At first glance, I think the room is full of mirrors, their edges catching the strange, sterile light shining from the ceilings. Then I realize that I’m staring at glass walls, dozens of them, each partitioning the vast space into separate rooms and chambers.
I think of the way that Red had stared at the windowpane in our shared apartment, his eyes distant with an ancient wound. I remember the vision I’d seen flash between us, of him lifting his fist and pounding it repeatedly against a glass wall. He had meant this place.
And now, as I keep looking, I realize that within each glass room is a figure hunched under the light, their limbs and silhouettes almost—but not quite—human. Ghosts.
I watch in horror. Beside me, Adena sucks in her breath. This place is exactly what we thought it was. The birthplace of the Federation’s experiments.
Inside each glass room is either a Ghost or one in the process of changing. Some, I can tell, have just been transformed days ago. They look like people—a few still have deep bite marks on their arms or legs, where they’d been attacked by another Ghost. Many of them stay shivering uncontrollably in the corners of their spaces, agitated and scratching at their skin, which has already started to split. Still others are already long-lost, hulking figures of ashen, cracked flesh and bleeding jaws with sharp, overgrown teeth, swaying in uneasy pain as they wait for the Federation to use them for another battle. From here, I can see another section of the complex that leads outside, where there are more glass chambers. They’re bigger. Those must hold Ghosts that are older, ones who have grown into beasts.
Sure enough, embedded in each Ghost’s arm is a syringe connected to a thin tube. Currently, nothing seems to be flowing through it.
The control center, I say to Red through our link.Where do we go?
Head to the back of the room, he replies. His voice is even clearer now, his pull strong as we enter the space where he must be kept. Now, instead of speaking the directions to me, he sends the mental image. I see before me the entire space, only through Red’s eyes, with the same knowledge and familiarity of its layout that he has.
Guards are beginning to run down the aisles of this space. Some of them hold lanterns, their light flickering through the darkness, and as they go, light floods first one section of the chamber, then another, and so on down the line. It’s the same flameless light, and soon we’ll be bathed in it.
Adena and I dash to the back of the chamber, then head against the wall to another corridor that leads to a hall of doors. We run right intoa pair of soldiers. Their mouths open in surprise and they grab for us—but I disarm one of his gun and then seize his blade with the other. I use the weapon to slice him hard across the face. He collapses. Adena twists out of the grasp of the second guard and hits him so viciously in the jaw that it knocks him unconscious.
We go on grimly.
Then I pull to a halt before a final door. Through our link, Red tells us to open it. I do, and we find ourselves standing in a room full of machines and cylinders.
Adena seems to know immediately that we’re in the right place. She grins, but doesn’t waste another second. She crouches down beside one of the cylinders and inspects the machine.
“I’ll handle this,” she signs to me. “Go! Hurry!”
I don’t bother asking her if she’ll be all right on her own here. Without a second’s hesitation, we exchange a quick fist against our chests before I run to find Red. The strange lighting of this place casts long shadows of Ghost silhouettes against the floor. The creatures stir restlessly, snarling and gnashing their teeth as soldiers dash past their displays, knowing that something has gone wrong.
I crawl to hide as best I can behind one of the glass panels. My mind shifts instinctively in Red’s direction, from where his steady pulse is now beating through our bond. How had he survived life here for so many years? Had he spent all his time growing up among these tortured, gnarled beasts?
I sense a change in Red’s pulse. It quickens, followed by a surge of warmth, some sense of fear and delirium. It’s the only thing that brings a determined smile to the edges of my lips. He’s close. If Adena does what we came here to do, then soon these Ghosts will be breaking out of their confines in a rage.
I wait until there’s a clearing, and then dart to hide behind anotherglass room. I can feel myself edging close to Red now. I turn to look down the aisle of glass chambers—until my gaze rests on the creature inside the room I’m crouching behind.
Inside is a Ghost. No, it’s a silhouette I recognize all too well. A human, crouched, half transformed, with blood trickling down his arms and legs as they hyperextend into the elongated limbs of Ghosts. But it is his eyes that catch me off guard.
They are a bright, searing blue, surrounded by cracked, bleeding skin.
Corian. It’s Corian. It must be him.
Everything in me freezes. Corian’s body, lying in the middle of the forest after I’d been forced to end his life. He’s here—the Federation took him and brought him back to their labs. I stare in horror at his face peering back at me, those blue eyes now bloodshot and twitching with pain and anger.
I had not just failed Corian on the battlefield. I’d failed him in the final vow of a Striker to his Shield—to make sure that he dies a clean death, that he doesn’t end up in the hands of the Federation, doomed to be twisted into a creature that is no longer human. To become a war beast of the Federation itself. And suddenly I’m there in the forest again, standing over my Shield’s fallen body, his blood dripping from my blade. I’m kneeling in the dirt beside him and sobbing in silence, willing him back.
Corian is here. It has to be him.
But no! I’d carried him back to the defense compound myself. I’d seen his body laid to rest during his funeral, had been one of those to light him with fire.
