Sleep. Sleep is what betrayed me.
In my dreams, I have less control. I can sense it when I wake, fighting to open my eyes and build my walls up once more. My broken heart must leak through the stone of my restraint when I’m unconscious. Does my link to Red strengthen in response during those hours, connecting me to him against my will?
Is that what had happened?
Constantine had forced everything out of me once he was aware of the extent of our linking, on pain of my mother’s life.
It’d gotten my friends captured. It’d almost gotten Red.
Even though I can sense the low pulse of Red’s heartbeat, everything in me trembles as if I had ended his life. I could have, in that moment. If Constantine had ordered me to ignore Caitoman and kill Red, I would’ve had no choice but to do it.
What if he had sensed the fraction of a second I’d given Red to escape?
The thought leaves me weak with fear. Nevertheless, I force myself to clench my fists instead, opening and closing them in my steady exercise.
My mother, I think, reminding myself. My mother. My mother.
So when Constantine calls me back to his side, I force myself to go to him. I force myself to bow my head in obedience when he praises me for what I’ve done. I force myself to watch as Constantine turns his attention to the captured Strikers. My friends.
He doesn’t order their deaths. I don’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified by that. They’re instead bound with rope and chain, added to the prisoners that will head to Cardinia. I search each of their faces. Tomm and Pira. Adena. Aramin.
Jeran. I don’t see him here, but I don’t dare utter a sound about it. Still, my eyes scan the prisoners and the grounds before I come to the realization that Jeran isn’t among them. He’d been here during the attack—I’d seen him in the fray.
At first, I worry that maybe one of the soldiers had killed him. But he’s far too talented a Striker for that. Had he escaped in the chaos? My heart hammers against my ribs, and I hope that Constantine associates it only with the fact that I’m seeing my companions chained before me.
Jeran and Red have escaped. I let myself hang on to this threadbare hope as I meet the gazes of the others.
What Constantine will do with them once they arrive in Cardinia, I already know. The Chief Architect will see them, just as she saw me. She’ll take them to the National Laboratory and have them tested to see if they can withstand the Skyhunter transformation. Or, if they don’t pass that exam, they may be transformed into Ghosts.
Or worse, he might hand them over to his brother. I tremble at the thought of what General Caitoman might do to them.
“Firstblade,” he says when he sees Aramin. I expect Constantine togloat, but instead he just shakes his head. “You should have surrendered at the warfront. So many of your talented soldiers could have found new purpose within the Federation.”
Aramin doesn’t respond to that, but he does keep his eyes fixed steadily on the Premier, a silent challenge.
The guard standing beside Aramin hits him so hard that he crumples to his knees, then shoves him face-first into the ground. I push down the pain of this sight, biting the inside of my lip until I taste the metallic tang of blood. Constantine watches coolly, unfazed.
My eyes go to Adena. She looks hollowed out, a shadow of who she’d been in Red’s vision only the night before. She searches my gaze and finds what she’s looking for in there—the truth. She knows I’m the reason why they were ambushed. Why their plan today didn’t work. She knows that, somehow, I discovered what they were doing and I passed the knowledge on to the Premier.
The grief I see in her now reminds me of when her brother had first died.
Adena had gotten heavily drunk that night. She threw up everything in her and fell right outside of our mess hall. Jeran carried her half-conscious form back to the apartments, where Corian made her guzzle water before I helped her change and get into bed. As she went down, she turned to me, eyes glazed with despair.
How did you do it, Talin?she whispered to me.Make it day after day, after Basea?
I gave her a sad smile.Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t remember many of the days after my mother and I settled in the Outer City. They blended together.I shrugged, hesitating.And then, one day, you realize years have passed and you’re still here.
She smiled back, her bravado surging forward for a second, and then started to cry. Her hands came up, trembling, to hide her face.I wasstaring right at him, Talin, she sobbed.He was running right at me, and I didn’t even think to run forward to get him. He watched me do nothing to save him. I feel like I killed him.
I put a hand on her shoulder and waited for her. Finally, when she fell silent and started to wipe her tears away, I leaned forward against her bed and met her stare.You didn’t do this, I signed to her firmly.They did. Listen to me, Adena. You’re still here. You made it. And as long as you’re alive, you carry on your brother’s legacy. As long as we’re still alive, we can keep pushing back.
The memory fades, and I find myself staring back into the face of the same girl. But her grief is not what it once was. She doesn’t see me as the Striker who fought alongside her or who held her as she cried. She looks at me like I’m the one on the other side of the warfront, shooting her brother in the back as he runs.
And she’s right. Because what else am I?
Constantine glances at Caitoman and gives him a curt nod. Caitoman snaps his fingers at his troops, that malicious smile back on his face, and the Strikers are jerked away by their ropes. I tear my eyes away from their bound figures, my heart pounding at the thought of what he might do to them.
When I look back at Constantine, he’s regarding me with a curious expression. “Thank you for saving my brother’s life,” he says to me. But I can feel him studying me, wondering if I did anything in that moment to defy him.
