brother. The low-hanging mist muffles
my voice, but he still hears me.
The corner of his mouth twitches, wanting to smile. “That’s not
your concern.”
Before I can press him, the soldier in front of us halts. He is not the
only one. At the head of the line, Farley holds up a fist, glaring at the
slate-gray sky. The rest mirror her, searching for what we cannot see.
Only Cal keeps his eyes on the ground. He already knows what our
doom looks like.
A distant, inhuman scream reaches down through the mist. This
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sound is mechanical and constant, circling overhead. And it is not
alone. Twelve arrow-shaped shadows race through the sky, their
orange wings cutting in and out of the clouds. I’ve never seen an airjet
properly, not so close or without the cover of night, so I can’t stop my
jaw from dropping when they come into view. Farley barks orders at
the Guard, but I don’t hear her. I’m too busy staring at the sky, watch-
ing winged death arc overhead. Like Cal’s cycle, the flying machines
are beautiful, impossibly curved steel and glass. I suppose a magnetron
had something to do with their construction—how else can metal fly?
Blue-tinged engines spark beneath their wings, the telltale sign of elec-
tricity. I can barely feel the twinge of them, like a breath against skin,
but they’re too far away for me to affect. I can only watch—in horror.
They screech and twist around the island of Naercey, never breaking
their circle. I can almost pretend they’re harmless, nothing but curious
birds come to see the obliterated remnants of a rebellion. Then a dart
of gray metal sails overhead, trailing smoke, moving almost too fast to
see. It collides with a building down the avenue, disappearing through
a broken window. A bloom of red-orange explodes a split second later,
destroying the entire floor of an already crumbling building. It shatters
in on itself, collapsing onto thousand-year-old supports that snap like
toothpicks. The entire structure tips, falling so slowly the sight can’t be
real. When it hits the street, blockading the way ahead of us, I feel the
rumble deep in my chest. A cloud of smoke and dust hits us head-on,
but I don’t cower. It takes more than that to scare me now.
Through the gray-and-brown haze, Cal stands with me, even while
his captors crouch. Our eyes meet for a moment, and his shoulders
droop. It’s the only sign of defeat he’ll let me see.
Farley grabs the nearest Guardsman, hoisting her to her feet. “Scat-
ter!” she shouts, gesturing to the alleys on either side of us. “To the
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north side, to the tunnels!” She points to her lieutenants as she speaks,
telling them where to go. “Shade, to the park side!” My brother nods,
knowing what she means. Another missile careens into a nearby build-
ing, drowning her out. But it’s easy to tell what she’s shouting.
Run.
Part of me wants to hold my ground, to stand, to fight. My purple-
and-white lightning will certainly make me a target and draw the jets
away from the fleeing Guard. I might even take a plane or two with
me. But that cannot be. I’m worth more than the rest, more than red
masks and bandages. Shade and I must survive—if not for the cause,
then for the others. For the list of hundreds like us—hybrids, anoma-
lies, freaks, Red-and-Silver impossibilities—who will surely die if we
fail.
Shade knows this as well as I do. He loops his arm into mine, his
grip so tight as to be bruising. It’s almost too easy to run in step with
him, to let him guide me off the wide avenue and into a gray-green
tangle of overgrown trees spilling into the street. The deeper we go,
the thicker they become, gnarled together like deformed fingers. A
thousand years of neglect turned this little plot into a dead jungle. It
shelters us from the sky, until we can only hear the jets circling closer
and closer. Kilorn is never far behind. For a moment, I can pretend
we’re back at home, wandering the Stilts, looking for fun and trouble.
Trouble is all we seem to find.
When Shade finally skids to a stop, his heels scarring the dirt
beneath us, I chance a glance around. Kilorn halts next to us, his rifle
aimed uselessly skyward, but no one else follows. I can’t even see the
street anymore, or the red rags fleeing into the ruins.
My brother glares up through the boughs of the trees, watching and
waiting for the jets to fly out of range.
1 0 v i c t o
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