I close my eyes, willing my heart to calm.
When I open my eyes again, I realize that the Ghost inside the chamber isn’t Corian. His eyes are different, the tormented featuresof his face are slightly longer, his cheeks deeper set than my former Shield’s. Through his nearly unrecognizable frame, I now can see that this Ghost was once someone else.
Not Corian.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Everything here feels wrong. Through my link with Red, I can sense a rivulet of what I think is terror. I realize that his heartbeat through the link isn’t rapid because he’s anxious about our presence here.
He’s trying to warn us.
Red, I call to him.Red, what’s happening?
His answer slices through my mind.Get out.
Then the space where I’m crouching suddenly floods with brightness. I’m momentarily blinded by an intense, white light.
Through our link, Red’s warning heightens into horror.
“Well. You’re here now.”
A familiar voice over me makes me look up. Through my watering eyes, I see the silhouette of a gaunt young man.
It’s the Premier. The silver thread of his collar shines in the light, and his eyes are narrowed at me in curiosity. A faint smile plays on his lips.
“You’re the one I saw at the bathhouse,” he says in that rasping voice. He speaks to me in Maran this time, which is how I know he’s figured out who we are. “And you’re the one bonded to my Skyhunter.”
27
Red senses the instant I’m captured. It’s a merging of his fear and mine.
I wince at the sudden brightness. All around me, the Ghosts stir out of their uneasy sleep. Snarls and the gnashing of teeth surround me.
Red, I try to call through our link. But it’s no use. All I feel through our bond now is extreme terror and despair. Somewhere else in the space, I hear the sound of blades scraping hard enough to cut lines into glass walls. He’s not far now. I can feel his rapid pulse increasing.
The Premier watches me closely. It’s as if he were searching for evidence on my face that I can sense Red through a bond, and when I meet his eyes, he gives me a smile.
I grab for a dagger—but my fingers barely brush the blade’s hilt before someone hits me hard in the neck, and a searing pain shoots through my limbs. Then guards are on me, pushing me hard to the ground. The Premier’s security is even tighter than I thought. I grit my teeth and twist in their grasp. All of my instincts are firing now. I feel like I’m no longer fighting against humans, but a pack of Ghosts in the forest. I whirl hard enough so that one guard loses his grip on my arm, then stab at him with my dagger. He lets out a choked shriek and falls.
The Ghosts around us stir into a frenzy at the scent of blood in the air.
But there are far too many soldiers here. I’m brought down hard to the ground again. My cheek strikes cold marble, and the force knocks me unconscious.
I don’t know how long I’m out. Seconds? Long enough that when I open my eyes again, my cheek is throbbing and their guards are dragging me across the floor. Ahead of me walks the Premier, his black boots clicking against the ground and his coat streaming behind him. Beside him is the woman with the white coat I’d seen from Red’s memories. The Chief Architect.
I struggle, but my coordination is slightly off after my bout of unconsciousness.
Talin.
Red comes through our link, his voice clear as a dove’s call. I hang on to his thought.Talin.Now that I hear him speak again in my mind, I can tell that he’s struggling to send his words to me, as if my name is all he can manage. And then, abruptly, we stop in front of a giant glass wall.
I’ve never seen an enclosed room like this. It’s a structure of glass so thick that I couldn’t hope to shatter the walls. Inside, the space is bare except for a series of chains hooked to the floor and ceiling. And there, in the center of it, crouches a figure I’ve come to recognize anywhere, his wings unfurled so that they stretch the full length of the room.
Red.
In the darkness beyond him are similar rooms to his, and when I look inside them, I see the shapes of two others. Strapped to flat tables. Chained to the floor. Wings of deadly steel grafted onto their backs. My breath leaves me.
They are already making more Skyhunters.
The soldiers drag Adena forward from the darkness too, stopping in front of the glass wall. She struggles between two soldiers before one of them hits her hard between her shoulders. She lets out a pained gasp and slumps slightly. Everything in me wants to protect her, but I see the guns in the soldiers’ hands and force myself to stop. They might shoot her dead. Had she managed to inject the serum into the control room’s containers? What if they’d caught her before she could?
