steel gates seem to be holding, but I can feel the heat of the flames even from the ground, and the soldiers on the walls are running frantically, shielding their faces from the inferno as they attempt to put it out.
We run into Adena in our rush down toward the gates. Her eyes are wild, her face smeared with oil and grease, and when she sees us, she wipes a hand across her face.
“I don’t know what they’re using to hit us,” she says breathlessly, “but the fuel igniting the walls is burning hotter than any flame I’ve ever known. It’s strong enough that I can see some signs of it melting the steel along the ruined area of the outer wall. You see that?” She points to where some of the steel has started to warp. “It’s a reaction I haven’t seen.”
That makes me blink. The walls were built by the Early Ones, their steel near impenetrable. “What?” I sign. “That steel has resisted every kind of attack.”
“I know. And yet, here we are. Have you seen their Ghosts at the wall?” The fear in her eyes seems to hollow her from the inside out. “They’re enormous. The size of beasts. I’ve never seen so many.”
I think of the Premier and the two he had brought with him during the siege weeks ago. Then I picture my mother out there in the panicking crowds, trying to escape the Federation soldiers by hiding in her home. Or maybe she’s not hiding at all. She might be helping others escape, trying to gather them into areas of the shanties where the Federation’s soldiers aren’t looking.
“I have to get out there,” I sign grimly to Adena.
“You won’t be able to do it before we all head out together,” Adena replies. “The Firstblade’s going to send us out through the gate tunnels, and then they’re going to collapse them the instant we get out.”
That means there’s no retreating for us tonight. Once the Strikers head out to fight, we’re not coming back.
“And the citizens?” I ask.
“They’re fleeing through the tunnels in the back of the city,” Adena says as we stop at the inner gates, where other Strikers have spaced themselves out into a long line of orderly rows. “We’re going to try to hold the Federation off as long as possible while the citizens escape.”
There are hundreds of thousands of people in the Outer City with nowhere to go, no tunnels to use to get to the forests safely, no walls to hold back the enemy that will soon be on them. And they will be left to fend for themselves.
I draw my blades. As I do, another flame streaks through the sky. It’s so bright that I pause to stare at it. This one soars high—high enough to clear the walls. A deep dread lodges in my throat.
And right as I think it, the streak lands in a cluster of metalwork stalls along the edge of the Inner City, behind the protection of the double walls. Everything explodes in a shower of light. We’re all thrown to our knees by the impact.
High in the sky, through the smoke, I see the first silhouette of a winged creature.
The fear burning in my chest turns into terror. Red? But it isn’t him. It’s someone else, clad head to toe in black armor, his face shielded behind a mask, steel wings expanded to their full size.
It’s a Skyhunter. Then, flying behind him, another.
The memory of others in Cardinia’s lab complex with wings grafted to their backs overwhelms me now in a sickening wave. The Federation has been busy creating more like Red—but unlike him, these are fully under the Federation’s control. Red’s feverish words to me in the infirmary, right after the warfront invasion, come flooding back.
I tremble at the sight of them and remember the carnage Red had left on the battlefield in just a few minutes. How many of them are there?
The ground beneath us rumbles. I feel a shock jolt through my link with Red. Suddenly, the images in his head—murky and undefined until now—turn sharper for an instant, and I see him break out of his cell amid a scene of fleeing guards, then walk to the center of the prison’s cylindrical pit. He looks up. His eyes are glowing, and I can no longer see his pupils. His lips curl. I can sense his rage welling up and spilling over, forcing him into blinding fury. His steel wings unfurl