“They’ll be at it for a while,” Jeran whispers beside me. When I look at him, he makes a subtle gesture at the other soldiers. “Look at the backup they’re calling for.”
Sure enough, a trickle of guards is hurrying over to the artifact as it starts to roll off the train ramp again. Shouts of alarm come from the workers as they struggle with the chains thrown around the object, fighting to keep it from falling back to the ground.
I study the rest of the station. The number of guards left on patrol is sparse now as the rest have rushed to help with the loading effort. I glance at Jeran and nod.
As the remaining guards keep their attention on the scramble at the tracks, we make our way in the dark of night to the shadows of the train. There, we slip between two of the cars and wait in silence.
It’s not exactly a small object, but how in the world can something that size bethatheavy?
Finally, the weight shifts in their favor and the cylinder groans onto the train car. Workers scurry to secure it, throwing new chains over its top and bolting them securely against the car’s platform. It’s difficult to tell in the darkness, but the object seems to have a strange, faint glow about it.
The other voice in me shifts uncomfortably. Something about it reminds you of the first time you saw yourself in the mirror after your transformation. The way your new eyes seemed lit from within. Something that shouldn’t exist.
After the artifact seems securely fastened, the soldiers go back to their positions and the workers return to the train. Half a dozen of them stay on the same car as the artifact, settling beside the object in exhaustion.
We board one of the nearby train cars, flattening ourselves against its side as the wheels below us jerk once with a groan. A deafening blast comes from the train’s whistle. I brace myself against the car.
A minute later, the train finally begins to pull away from the station.
Before long, we are snaking through the nighttime countryside, leaving a trail of smoke and steam behind us. As the cars roll and clank, I peer out from the side to see nothing but blackness beyond us in all directions.
Behind me, Jeran shifts closer. He can’t see my hands in the night and the train is too loud for us to speak, so instead, I reach back and find his arm, then tug his wrist upward twice, hoping to signal to him that we should move to the roof. It’s impossible to stay down here without being thrown from side to side. If we grow too exhausted, we might fall off and be crushed when the train cars jolt against one another.
I lead Jeran to one of the ladders against the side of the car, then pull myself up step by step. Behind me, I listen for his boots on the ladder steps, but he moves so quietly that I can’t detect him at all. So I just look up and keep going.
Finally, we reach the top and are hit with a blast of wind. It’s cold up here, but at least it’s flat, and two metal railings running along either side of the car’s roof make it possible for us to grab on to something for balance.
I look behind me to see Jeran already crouched in a small, tight ball, his figure swaying gently with the car, his grip firm against the railing. His eyes glitter faintly in the night. It’s all I can really make out of him.
There’s still not much light to sign to each other, so instead we stay quiet and low, holding tight. The night drags on. I fight against the sleep calling to me. But the fatigue creeps into every corner of my mind, pulling me down. My chin dips as my eyes droop—I jerk awake repeatedly as the train jolts us. Then I fade again in a cycle.Hold tight, I scream at myself, making sure each time that my hand is still clamped against the railing.
The other voice in me chuckles. All these enhancements they gave you as a Skyhunter—and they didn’t bother to take away your need for sleep? What a waste.
Despite my best efforts, I eventually drift into a half sleep filled with hallucinations.
In most of my dreams, Talin’s pulse is the ever-present rhythm in the background, and I am so used to it I think of it as infrequently as my own heartbeat. But tonight, she feels near in a way that I only remember from the days when we used to walk side by side. I still, hoping to stay in this dream. Her figure starts to flicker like a shadow in the night, so subtle a movement that I cannot tell whether or not she is there.
Then I see a glimmer of her shoulder, the angle of her chin. The faint outline of a shirt with a wide, loose collar pulled back so that it exposes the skin of her upper back and lower neck. It is only a glimpse of her, but even this is enough to make me catch my breath, and in mydream, I tense, hating that my mind has conjured her in this imaginary state just to torment me. Everything in me wants to reach out and brush strands of hair from her neck, run my fingers along the line of her arm.
The scene sharpens further. Talin is sitting alone beside a window, weak light from streetlamps outside bathing her in silver, as she arches her neck high and closes her eyes. She is still wearing that loose-collared shirt, which pulls my gaze once more to the bit of exposed back and neck it reveals. My heart aches at the sight of her. Her steel wings are partially open, the bladed feathers draping down toward the floor in a graceful arch, and in the light, she looks like a creature from another world, all lines of beauty and death. Everything around her fades into blackness, so that she and the window and the moonlight seem to float in the middle of a dark world of nothing.
Suddenly, she straightens. Her face turns to one side, and then her voice comes through the link between us, like it used to, the sound echoing in the expanse of my dream.
Red?she says.Are you here?
I freeze. I am dreaming. This is not real. And yet, her voice comes through to me as clearly as beads on glass, as if she can see me too. As if she cancommunicatewith me.
Never have we spoken to each other in our dreams before.
Are you here?she asks again. This time, she turns around, and her eyes lock straight onto mine, as if I am standing in the room with her.
Yes, I answer, as if pushed on by some supernatural force.
I don’t expect her to hear me, much less answer—but the expression on her face is just as shocked as my own.
The tears that well in the corners of her eyes are ones of fear. As we stare at each other, her words come through our link.
Go away.
