Finally, he gives me a small nod.I know you resent saving my brother.
You know he is a monster.
At that, something strange and different ripples through our link. Pity, maybe, or regret. I can’t tell.
Caitoman is only what our father made him, Constantine replies.
He doesn’t say more about it. Instead, he straightens and walks aheadof me to join his brother’s side, listening patiently as his brother leans over to tell him something.
I watch the brothers go, not knowing how to feel. Then I realize that I don’t care. I don’t care what happened in Constantine’s past, or why Caitoman is the way he is. I don’t care to know why they have chosen to destroy everything in their paths. No matter what it is, it cannot change what they’ve done to me. To Red. To my friends. To my mother.
My mother. My mother. My fear for her life clouds every corner of my mind. So I let myself feel angry instead, allowing the emotion of fury to build in my chest until it overtakes my fear, until rage is the only thing Constantine could possibly feel from me. I hope the anger emanating from me haunts him. Let him wake at night, sweating, from his dark dreams.
Let him feel fear too.
9
RED
I head into the forests and land as soonas I can, trying to keep a distance away from our makeshift Striker campsite. No need to lead General Caitoman straight to us. There, I crouch in a high, dark nook of a tree and wait.
I don’t know what for. We’ve lost already.
The accusing voice, the other me talking to myself, fills my head like a maelstrom.
You’re back to running, it hisses. Always running. And for a while, you don’t know where to go. You were supposed to have destroyed the new train tracks they are building into Newage. The prisoners they were supposed to be transporting would instead be freed, ready to join us in our growing fight.
Instead, the others have died or vanished or been captured.
You’d left them there to fend for themselves. Had anyone else escaped? Would they head back to the campsite, or is it too dangerous? Would you even be able to return to the remaining stragglers like this, alone, a useless former Skyhunter with a broken wing that they’d somehow thought would give them a fighting chance? What will they thinkif they see you coming back empty-handed? Would you just be leading the enemy right to them?
And Talin.
I shut my eyes in an attempt to keep the image of her out—the new metal of her wings, the black armor that encases her, the hollow tragedy in her eyes. I try to kill the other voice. I had faced her and she had faced me. She’d looked straight at me, recognized me, knew what she was being forced to do, and told me to run.
Her body has been transformed, ripped apart and put together in the way that mine is. The difference is that I’d escaped, while she remains trapped.
The Premier of the Federation has her at his beck and call and I can’t free her. I couldn’t take her with me. My teeth clench until I think I might break my jaw. My fists tighten until the edges of my nails slice through the skin of my palms.
You couldn’t help her.
I stay frozen where I am, the shame in my heart pulling me in every direction, the voice repeating over and over in my mind. It always sounds the loudest when I’m alone, trapped and helpless, as if I’m back in that glass cage. Meeting Talin had quieted it for a time. Losing her has brought it back in force.
Then I shake my head. The voice’s advice changes.
No use dwelling on your failings now. Soldiers will still be on your trail. They saw the path you took in the sky to escape. They will be out, searching. You can’t afford to sit here, waiting for your mind to fall apart.
Talin took a risk, warning you to escape while you could. You don’t know the depth to which Constantine can control her, but she clearly still has a mind of her own. It means there’s still time.
You can still find a way to get her out. You have to.
The rest of the day gradually passes. I shift locations hour by hour, careful to stay on the move. My body aches. Sunset slides into evening and then into dawn. When I fall into an unsettled half sleep, I imagine I’m a boy soldier again, curled next to other guards and shivering on my shift. I dream someone is shaking me awake, Danna shouting that I’m late for my rotation. His voice turns into the Chief Architect’s, telling me to get up, it’s time for the next phase of my Skyhunter transformation. I bolt awake again and again, trembling.
Then, as the first weak rays of morning sift through the forest’s canopy, I see a lone figure picking its way silently through the carpet of dotted light.
At first I think it’s a Karensan scout. My muscles tense as I prepare to kill the intruder before they can find me.
Only when the figure passes under an illuminated patch of forest floor and I catch the glint of red in his hair do I recognize Jeran.
