Red shifts just enough to catch his attention. The soldier freezes at the sight of him, then jumps back instinctively with a shout. Immediately, the others at the campsite hop to their feet. The first soldier pulls out a gun and points it at Red. With his other hand, he frantically waves the others over.
Red avoids looking in our direction, but I can hear his thoughts. There’s some confusion among them, he tells me as he glares at the first soldier. The troops are wary around him. Like we’d been when we first saw him in the arena, they can tell that he’s built strongly, like a horse, muscled in the chest and arms, lean in his torso, as if he’d trained as someone who can fight. But he doesn’t look like a Maran, and his silence unnerves them. I look on as they mill about before forcing him to get to his feet by waving their guns at him.
Then a call goes up among them, echoing from one soldier to the next, each repeating the same word as the next.
It’s the Skyhunter, Red translates for me in his mind. They know who I am now.
They must have been briefed on how Red looks on the chance that they stumbled across him in the wilds. I wonder if they’ll relay word of this back to the capital immediately.
Below us, Red turns around and feigns an escape. If I didn’t know our plan, I would have believed him. Maybe it’s not all false, either—the fear in his eyes is tense and sharp, the same that I’d seen on him during the siege at our compound. He starts retreating down the path that leads back into the forest, away from the soldiers—but his movements are purposely slow, a pretense that he’s been injured or weakened by exhaustion.
They fire something at him. In an instant, Red collapses.
My every instinct screams at me to leap from the tree and attack the soldiers. I’m a better fighter than any of them, even with their more advanced guns and weapons, and if I take them by surprise, I could kill every single one before they could figure out where I’d come from.
It takes all my strength to hold myself back—to recall that Red reminded me that the Federation has no intention of killing him when they’ve invested so much in him, that they would bring him back to their lab complex and continue their work on him.
Through our link, I feel his consciousness shudder, his heart slow, and his body suddenly cool. He tries to reach out to me through our bond, and I grasp for him, but he’s gone before I can, and on the path below us, I see him go limp against the forest floor, surrounded by soldiers.
I watch in silence, trembling from the act of keeping myself still and hidden, as the soldiers approach to capture him. Underneath the steel mesh of their nets, Red looks surprisingly vulnerable, not a war machine but a human caught in their trap.
The soldiers exchange rapid words before one of them goes running back to the train station. Two of the remaining clap each other on their backs with a laugh, while several others point at one another, arguing. They look shocked, shaken, and even elated by their find. Their movements remind me of when prizes are won during Midwinter celebrations back in Mara, and I wonder if maybe there was a bounty put on Red, some reward for the capture of him alive. Perhaps these soldiers are arguing about how to split it, or imagining what they’ll do next with it. It must have been a significant prize. Each new thing they do sets my teeth on edge.
Only one of them looks up at the trees in our general direction. I still myself into invisibility, barely daring to blink. Several branches away, Jeran slowly inches farther into his hiding place so that even I can’t tell he’s there. The soldier frowns thoughtfully to herself, but she doesn’t seem like she wants to interrupt the others. And who would? They act like they just won the jackpot of their lives. Why question how it happened?
I hold my breath as her eyes wander from one tree to the next. But we’ve given her nothing to see except shadows and bark.
Finally, one of the others shoves her arm slightly and gestures toward the train station.