way—maybe none of us will return from an expedition like this. Red, with his traumatic history and strange relationship with the Ghosts, might even refuse to be used in this way. But maybe he’ll agree, maybe it could work, and we could all return having dealt the Federation a heavy blow.
My eyes return to the vials in Adena’s container. Then I stare at my mother. In her eyes, I see my father’s gentle face, the way his absence turned her hair white, the pain and suffering that has plagued us ever since we fled our homeland. I see everything that my patrol mates and I have lost, all the grief from Corian’s death. It’s hard to believe that it stems from something as small as this. A sample of blood.
If we can sever the Federation’s control from its war beasts, we’ll end all of that suffering. It is worth the sacrifice of a few lives.
My mother touches my hand. “You don’t have to do anything,” she signs to me. “You have no obligation to this world. But if you do, my heart will go with you.” There is an urgency in her watery expression now. She’s afraid, I realize, because she knows what this means for me.
Adena has the same expression mirrored in her eyes, the near inevitability of our deaths. No more summer days working in her shop here. No more afternoons arguing at my mother’s home in the Outer City, with the smell of hand-rolled noodles and soup wafting around us. But I see no signs of hesitation in Adena either. She knows, as well as I do, that we don’t have a choice.
“I didn’t want my brother to become a Striker,” Adena says quietly to me. She leans against the table, her eyes distant. “I woke up in a sweat one night and ran into his room, certain he was dead. He just laughed and hugged me. I asked him if he was willing to give anything in order to stop the Federation. He said he was. I asked him if he’d be willing to sacrifice me to achieve that. And he stopped to give me the strangest, most wounded look.” She shakes her head. “I’ll never forget that, as long as I live. Because to him, not being a Striker was sacrificing me. He told me he couldn’t control the future, only what he could do to alter it. He knew that my future couldn’t exist unless there were those willing to fight to protect me. Now that he’s gone, I carry his promise.” She lifts her eyes to me. “If you go, I go. This is the future we can alter.”
My hand tightens against my mother’s. I’m silent for a breath. Then I let go, and my hands start to move.
“It has to be a fast mission,” I sign. “Get into the Federation’s capital. Get into their labs. Do what we need to do, get out.” My eyes narrow as anger surges through me. “And when we’ve accomplished it all, we destroy their labs. Burn them down.”
Adena nods grimly. In her eyes is the reflection of her brother. “We will leave them with what they leave behind for the rest of us. Nothing.”
19
No one believes us. I can hardly believe us myself.
So the next day, the Speaker calls the Senate to gather with us in the Grid, where they form a ring around the large, muddy square of land that we use to test our weapons. A patrol of Strikers stands evenly spaced out before them, masks up, gloved hands resting on the hilts of their weapons. I stand with Red, Jeran, and Adena. In the crowd, I pick out Jeran’s father and brother, the former’s face stony and expressionless, the latter’s looking almost bored. The Speaker himself looks disinterested in the whole experiment, as if expecting it to fail.
Guards bring out the Ghost from the prison, snarling and squinting under the sun after many months in darkness, its fury turning frantic as its ears pick up the shuffling and voices of so many humans nearby. It tries over and over again to lunge, but its handlers hold tight to the chains radiating from its neck.
Red cuts a small line in his arm and lets some of his blood drip into a large bowl of water in Adena’s hands. Then Jeran steps into the circle with the Ghost, and the guards let the Ghost free. It dashes for the Senators—who part for it like terrified