as if yearning toward my blood, wanting to mix its poisons with mine. Until they’re killed, Ghosts are designed to seek us out.”
I nod at Red’s vial. “What about his, then?” I ask.
Adena brightens. “Take a look at Red’s blood.”
This time, my mother puts a few drops of his blood on a clean glass tablet beside drops of the Ghost’s. The Ghost’s blood doesn’t react at all to Red’s blood. Neither does Red’s. It’s as if both were completely uninterested in each other, as still and unaffected as if two samples of human blood were side by side.
“I think,” Adena murmurs, “that the Federation wanted Red to be the more advanced iteration of their Ghosts. A far more intelligent war machine, a more unstoppable one. Ghosts aren’t designed to attack him, because they see him as one of their own.”
Adena then puts a sample of Red’s blood beside her own on a new tablet. No reaction either.
She smiles at my mother and me. “Now, for the best part. Are you ready?”
I nod faintly.
First, Adena mixes Red’s blood with the Ghost’s blood. Then she puts another sample of her own blood beside this mixed sample.
None of the blood samples move. The Ghost blood mixed with Red’s stays floating in its own circle. There is no eerie, hungry movement that the pure Ghost’s blood originally had.
I look quickly up at Adena, not trusting myself to understand what she’d just done. “Wait. Does this mean what I think it does?” I sign.
Adena’s smile is so large and so full of hope that I’m afraid to believe it. She nods. “Red’s blood causes the Ghost’s blood to stop reacting to ours, to stop hungering for ours.”
It means that Red, the Skyhunter, is the walking, living, breathing antidote for the Ghosts’ hunger for attacking us. His blood is the key to breaking the bond between the Federation and their monsters.
I’m in such disbelief over what I’ve seen that a part of me thinks this is when I’ll wake from this dream. My eyes dart from Adena to my mother and back again. “Why would the Federation create their Skyhunter to do this?” I ask.
Adena crosses her arms. “I don’t think they meant to,” she replies. “I think they made a mistake. Maybe it’s because they didn’t finish working on him before he escaped. Red doesn’t respond to the Federation’s beck and call. He doesn’t stay trapped under their commands like the Ghosts do. Whatever it is that the Federation put in their Ghosts’ blood, poisoning it, they failed to do with Red.” She leans closer to me, feverish with hope. “And when Red’s blood is mixed with a Ghost’s, that Ghost can do the same. That Ghost can stop responding to the Federation’s will. Somehow, it interferes with whatever bond that exists between their minds and the Federation.”
“So where does this all leave us?” I ask. “We take Red’s blood and figure out how it can inoculate the Maran population?”
Adena shakes her head. Her eyes are intense and serious now, and all signs of smiles have vanished from her face. “Red’s blood works best with Ghost blood, not our own. At any rate, Mara has too many people. Red can only afford to lose so much blood before it endangers his life.”
“What do you propose?”
She points at us. “We head into Federation territory. You, me, Jeran, and Red. We get into the heart of their capital, into Cardinia, where their lab is. We’ll snake our way into the heart of their darkness, where they create all their monstrosities.” She nods at me. “And we find a way to infect their Ghosts with Red’s blood. If the Ghosts are corrupted with what his blood contains, they’ll stop obeying the Federation. They’ll become useless. And we’ll break the most fearsome weapon they have.”
“What about new Ghosts they create? Surely they’ll just fix the problem.”
“Yes. But it will cost them time, money, and effort. Meanwhile, our soldiers can, for the first time, mount an offensive attack at the warfront into their territory. Push the Federation back. Give us time to find a way to make enough serum to protect us all against their Ghosts. All of this might just set them back enough that they’ll think Mara isn’t worth the trouble of invading.”
Now my heart has started to beat rapidly with the thought. Destroy the Federation’s monster machine. Destroy their Ghosts.
Impossible.
But then, I just witnessed the impossible right here in Adena’s shop.